Feedback on Multiplayer after VI release

[Swoosh So]

Yes my universal khan i agree with all that you have said http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif Maybe if the person at ca who is responsible for mp took more part in online games of mtw the flaws would become more and more apparent.

Im sure we could offer him a position as a cub at teh wolves http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Crandaeolon]

Actually, Magy, I _don't_ assume that reviewers can ever test a game thoroughly. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif I know the process and the time constraints hardly allow for a deep knowing of the game. The people who are most concerned about reviews are the "mainstream" gamers who don't spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on a single game like we do. For such people the reviews do a fairly good job of describing the games. The mainstream gamers are the largest part of the market too, so dev teams most likely base their work on them.

I can understand the reviewer-gamer-dev connection, I've played gazillions of games for just a few dozen hours and I've often made a buying decision based on reviews. But, occasionally I stick to a single game for a rather long time, so I can understand the hardcore viewpoint too. And I agree with all your points Magy, in an ideal situation the devs would play the games they create... but unfortunately that's not the case. In the tabletop role-playing business it's probably even worse than with computer games.

I liked the SP parts of STW and MTW immensely before I ventured online. The skill and knowledge acquired in MP have made SP less appealing, though I still sometimes play SP too. I know I would play more if I weren't so good with the tactical battles. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

Finally, I fully agree with you (and others) that we need a patch. If MP were a more significant part of MTW, CA's (or Activision's) patching policies would have hurt them. Rome, with its shiny new 3d graphics, will probably be a very big thing in the gaming industry and it can't hurt to show that the company supports their existing games.

Edit: looks like you both evaded my question in the previous post... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif So how'd you rate MP in STW, STW/MI, MTW, and MTW/VI? Just a few words will suffice. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[Magyar Khan]

the patching-policies part of the industry is still underlighted except for a compagny like blizzard. if roleplaying World of Warcraft life up to the expectation players and blizzrda has shown than a new age is dawning.

u ever see the site of World of Warcraft?

[Swoosh So]

stw mp : great
stw mi : v poor untill patched
mtw : poor
mtw vi : average

so from shogun its all downhill although not a vertical decline nothing could be as bad as the first mi what a disaster that was, the death imho of a thriving online community So if we get another patch that addresses real issues the game may be good again, but never great due to different unit sizes that are impossible to balance, credit must go to ca for all the different units but it makes the multiplayer game unbalanced and abit mish mashy instead of the beautiful feeling of balance the shogun games had.

[Crandaeolon]

Yeah, I have. Looks very solid. A couple of years ago I was a Diablo 2 fanatic... it eventually became boring and I quit, but a few weeks ago I was astonished to hear that there's a _new patch_ coming out soon that will rebalance the game, add new mechanics, items and monsters, re-do the random generation of levels etc. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

Bliz has shown great interest in customer support... but they do have a truckload of resources. Still, there's little excuse for smaller firms to skip patching altogether.

[Swoosh So]

Can one assume ca is still a small firm after the success its had?

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]stw mp : great
stw mi : v poor untill patched

I'm not familiar with Shog's online history... why such a large difference? Do you primarily mean game balance here?

[Swoosh So]

Game balance is what its all about, it makes the game a much more enjoyable experience the engine graphics and music etc are all fab as is the interface, yes in mi units would fight to the death honor 9 ashigaru were all the rage, as magyar said each game was about unlocking the puzzle to rout an opponents army, whereas now its more like buy the best units and charge it was a more tactical game and maps had huge importance to the game (nagashima, dry river bed) with mtw any unit can beat any unit with some upgrades , now that 1 thing makes the game stale as it goes from a chess like game to a blind date and we all know how those turn out

[Crandaeolon]

CA has a "permanent staff" of 60. Blizzard has a "research and development group" of 150 and is a division of Vivendi Universal Games, which in turn is a division of Vivendi Entertainment. There's a difference, though CA is hardly one of the smallest out there.

[Skomatth]

Why wait for a CA patch? My superb comp era mod will be coming out soon. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Swoosh So]

sorry skomath but as we know its takes a miricle for the community to accept online changes that arent official. I heard tosa restored mi to what it should have been with an unofficial stat patch once i left, Does anyone know how widely accepted it was?

[Skomatth]

I know it takes a miracle, but if just Wolves, kenchis and Lrossa starts using it, (biggest proponents) more will likely jump on the bandwagon.

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]Game balance is what its all about

From the mainstream point of view balance is just one aspect. We may be most concerned about balance, but a casual gamer is more concerned about ease of use, reliability and the "overall experience", to which graphics, sound and performance contribute quite a lot.

At the moment there are around 115,000 players online playing various shooter games via Gamespy. C&C Generals is the most popular RTS game in the list with 383 players. MTW has never topped 200 AFAIK, and is usually closer to 100. How many of those 100 are hardcore enough to be concerned about minutiae in stats? Perhaps a half at max.

Let's face it, we "hardcore" players are insignificant specks in the scheme of things. If we want to make a case for a patch, we have to think about it from a mainstream perspective, singleplayer perspective if possible. Our best bets are to bring game-crashing bugs and appealing, easily done new features into the light, not squabbling about balance details. If there is to be a patch, we may get a say about balance, but there will not be a patch if balance is all we compain about.

[Magyar Khan]

if thinwidewiping lines bring in big unbalances than i rather moan than accept its not a big bug. a bug is something wich is annoying and unintented by the devs. LJ is stubborn enuf to defend the unintended.

imo moaning is teh best approach to improvments cuz future players may visit fansites and forums before buying a game.
moaning is the best approach cuz there is no equall leveled base of discussion with teh developers.

they are not allowed to join forums during worktime, they hop in topics that fits the strategical approach of tehir compagny or of which they can put up nice answers.

this is all true except some small exceptions.

a true fansite would list the most annoying bugs and shortcommings at teh frontpage of teh site as an ongoing list of wishes. if u say that blizzard made another patch for dia2, warcraft 3 is still patched as well.

[Puzz3D]

There were fewer units in STW (14), all units were the same size, and the rock, paper, scissors was stronger (8 point bonus to anti-cav units as opposed to the 4 point bonus of MTW). There was something like a rock, paper, scissors system within the 3 cav unit types themselves. The unit balance in MP was good with the warrior monk being the most unbalanced unit at about 10% over. The other inf units were exceptionally well balanced. The heavy cav was highly defensive and curiously ineffective, although it was the most expensive unit. It should have been the counter to the warrior monk, but couldn't defeat it, so the warrior monk was the most powerfull unit and second most expensive. There were no weapon and armor upgrades. There was only honor upgrade (the equivalent of valor upgrade in MTW) There were two spear types: a slower more solid type (yari samurai) and a faster less effective type (yari ashi). The honor upgrade was underpriced and you could get a situation where the yari ashi became too strong via upgrades if you play with too much money, but we played at 5k because the rout point was 8 points lower than it is in mtw so you had adequate morale at 5k and we bought units at honor 2. That created some balance problems because you could sell back honor on monks and get 16 of them, but monks had very low armor so if you were very good with archers and highly skilled overall you could defeat them. Forest was denser which made it's effect on ranged weapons more pronounced. Ranged weapons were more effective, and guns didn't fire at all in the rain, so it was risky to bring guns. The downhill combat bonus was more pronunced for some reason, although, LongJohn has said he hasn't changed it. That made small hills more important than they are in MTW. Cav seemed a bit weak relative to inf which made the game somewhat inf oriented. The cav archer was probably the most useful of the cav types. You never saw heavy cav generals. I used the yari cav a lot, but it was plagued by low morale.

WE/MI was very bad. A bug had slipped in which gave all units +12 morale. The new units were not well balanced. The Mongol era was really way out of whack in MP balance. The new naginata cav unit in the Sengoku Period turned the game into a nag cav/sword rush. The single man kensai unit emphasised peculiarities in the morale system which was unit based. The invisible ninja unit introduced a fantast quality to the game. Guns fired in rain and the kills/volley had been increased. Weapon and armor upgrades had a bug whereby the cost of upgrades was calculated independently for all three categories and then added together for a total cost. However, the upgrades increasing combat strength in a compunded fashion. The result was that the weakest unit (yari ashigaru) became the strongest unit even at 5k, and it was an anti-cav unit which broke the rock, paper, scissors system because you didn't need swords anymore. The idea army became a yari ashi/gun army. Also, bug fixes in the network code speeded up the game so you had less time to respond to battlefield situations. A group of players tried to fix the balance with the CA sanctioned v1.02 re-balance patch, but it was only partially successful and left the game with the ashi/gun problem, and somewhat faster cav which made the game even harder to play. The patch failed to restore the interest of most former STW players. Where STW had around 100 players in the foyer on weekends over a long period of time, WE/MI ranged from 30 to 60, and the 60 was only seen for about 1 month periods after initial release and the v1.02 patch release. We've had far more than 100 players in MTW for 6 months, but the VI split has cut that back to 60 in VI and I don't know what in MTW.

[Magyar Khan]

thats very well summarised but i doubt it that i was the only one with an heavy cav general. furthermore the online campaigns had this hcav general as rule as well.

[Puzz3D]

I should not have said 'never' about heavy cav general. Also, I saw a few players who used heavy cav rather well on the flanks. However, the concept of a defensive cav was a bit strange. I think a lot of players tried to use them as shock units, and then gave up on them. I used the yari cav mostly, and I sometimes took a heavy cav and tried to set up hammer and anvil things with YC and HC combo. Sometimes it worked quite well.

[Cheetah]

Do we talk about HC generals in STW or in WE/MI 1.02? In MI it was quite common, I almost always had a HC gen http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif .... Hmmmm, in MI 1.02 even Yuuki had a HC general http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

BTW, defensive cav is not that strange idea, IMHO it worked well, as Yuuki said, it made a rock-paper-scissor system even within cavs. Also, gothic knights represent a very similar defensive cavalry.

[Puzz3D]

Actually, I was thinking of the contrast between STW and WE/MI v1.02 when I spoke about HC gen not being used in STW. The HC gen was common in WE/MI v1.02, but we designed it to be more powerful and more offensive than it was in STW. It was certainly worth what it cost in WE/MI v1.02, but it was hard to get that same feeling of worth in STW. In STW, the HC was a 2/6 (att/def) with moderate charge and morale 6. YC with one upgrade had better charge and higher attack value (3/4) at slightly higher cost and was the fastest unit, but morale 4 was lower. The lower morale made it difficult to use the YC to attack near the enemy army, but it was good for chasing down cav archers, and it got a 4 point yari combat bonus against both HC and CA.

[FearofFucy]

I agree with you guy. STW was more ballance.http://www.fucyuman.com/40BEER.gif

In my opion is that STW was one of the best series of TW cus it had less troops ( I think there were only 7 to 8 inf and 3 cavs). Less to think off.http://www.fucyuman.com/893idea-thumb.gif.

Now with MTW and VI you have to think of 20 other different units. Not just your own army but of the enmy army too.Wich makes it more complex.http://www.fucyuman.com/893smileystooges-thumb.gif

[Skomatth]

I hadnt played much 2.0 until today and at 15k all I have to say is:

booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

I'm not gonna go into detail but basically people can win trying only half as hard as they should. I lost by flanking, charging a forgotten unit in the rear and taking spears. The gameplay was incredibly boring with the standard ole pav duel. I did a lot of manuevoring and they did none, I still lost.

People frustrated with the 2.0 gameplay should wait for my Competition era mod. It provides the need for tactics and doesnt depend on a certain florin level. You can win by trying to win, not getting lucky...

ps; I hope the guys i played were undercover otherwise it means anyone can get good in a couple of weeks.

[Skomatth]

disregard my ps...perhaps i should have said... anyone can win vs an experienced player in just a few weeks.

[Magyar Khan]

nice conclusion sko and the bad news is, it wont be chanced unless a complete overhaul of ths stats. u progressing with them?

this game needs a good competition mod unless comp games like we play now are becomming a lotery.

[Skomatth]

well Im not exactly "overhauling" the stats, im making completely better ones http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif a so-called competition mod http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Div Hunter]

Maybe you just need more practice Sko, or are you just drumming up support for your STW conversion mod (or comp mod whatever you want to call it)?

[ErikJansen]

So whats being said now is that the 2max rule makes for uncertain contests and that units may be upgraded in unusual ways. The way to bring back 14 unit total era Shogun is via MODDING ways. Lovely. Things should be set in stone, no imperfetct glitches to exploit.

I shall download this mod and install it. I shall use it. Iwont depend on it tho.. no singular use Sko. ITs just too limiting for my taste.

[Tempiic]

Sko when i went to VI some time ago.... I kept loosing games for a period of 2 weeks till i figured out what I had to change. And that was mainly army make up as well as a change of timing rather than stopping to move around http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Some +/- after some times on VI whic make me think that it is a better experience;

+
Viking era is fun. *big brawl punch in the face*

Early era is much more interesting; no more vanilla crusader order army, I see much more diversity there and many different set up (instead of 4 order foot, 4 order cav everywhere). Byz might still be too strong for other faction to compete with in early... But right now, I see many factions played and many set up. Good.

High; not that different from before. No arb, has IMO made foreplay more interesting in reducing no man zone size and make raiding ennemy line easier. Foreplay is IMO more tense. Many takes Eng... But LB does not feel that overpowered so it may change. If anything, moving arb too late made other archer more interesting, and I see more missile than before now (including more HA).

Late; same as before with more factions.

+ The real good thing is I feel the 4 eras are now much more different than they were in 1.1 which increase the number of interesting situation one face in playing MTW.

- different foyers

- dropping bug / game overall less stable.

Louis the Simurgh,

[Skomatth]

Quote[/b] ]Maybe you just need more practice Sko, or are you just drumming up support for your STW conversion mod (or comp mod whatever you want to call it)?

Maybe you need to read my post more closely...flanked...charged in the back... btw the armies were almost identical except for me having spears.

I agree that more variety is possible but most of the time it just doesnt happen b.c. ppl who take variety often lose.

The principle of my mod is balance=fun. I hope its not too like shogun except in the balance. There will be muslims and christians. I've nvr played shoggy online either if that comforts you.

so far with my mod there are at least 54022500 different combinations of units to take (more but i dont know how to do the math) and the difference from the regular game is that these armies still provide a chance to win.

Hopefully too the COMP era mod will be released in conjunction with CBR'S MPWARS mod which means you have more options. If you dont like my mod ill be more than happy to play mpwars with you, I support anything good thats not 2.0.

[Magyar Khan]

sko, why dont we sacrifice an era , or a faction and use it for the comp-mod so we dont have to statswap or like that.

i suggest we try to pursuave the devs that they include an empty era for tw rome the online community can fill in themselves

[CBR]

You dont have to sacrifice an era. As long as you dont change projectile stats you actually dont need to statswap.You can make different stats that is used by a new era that people can download.

The only problem is that changes are most likely needed for projectiles but I guess that depends on what you want.

Not only stats like range, lethality etc are in that file but also the cost reduction for upgrading missiles and that cost reduction hurts balance. And it screws with current unitcosts for both Sko's mod and my mod too.

CBR

[Magyar Khan]

cant u balance it with unitsizes?

[Skomatth]

I actually like unit sizes now, 60 man defensive spears can be too easily avoided. Plus cav's effectiveness on units is about +2 morale compared to normal, so a 40 size sort of balances that out.

btw cbr you may be surprised at the "historical accuracy" my mod will have. hopefully the units will be historically based, but the stats a little different for the sake of balance.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Magyar Khan @ June 01 2003,20:07)]cant u balance it with unitsizes?
Hm yes and different amount of ammo for units. But still some problems left:

Javelins are still a bit limited and should have higher range....maybe use the new darts instead just with more ammo, they just dont have the same armourpiercing as javelins.. I dont know.

Arquebusiers, yes I know thats just for Italians Wars in my mod. But they really suck and need some improvement.

And you will always have the cost reduction for missile units upgrades. Shortbow units are reduced by 200 florins when you buy an upgrade, if they cost less than 200 you will actually recieve money for each upgrade. And that completely ruins they way I have done unitcosts...buy a few upgrades for the missile units and you have lots of money for melee troops.

And even if we try to play with more normal florin levels so we can use the same projectile stats we will end up having same problems as we have right now: heavily upgraded missile units that doesnt get killed by cav..yes you can make missile units really bad in melee so upgrades doesnt help much..but what if you want units that both can fight and use missile.

As I see it there are no easy solutions. Either you keep using same projectile stats with all the un-balancing that comes with it and some missile weapons being very limited. Or you change the missiles but have to swap stats before you start up MTW.

CBR

[Kocmoc]

like many other, i cant agree
u cant balance it about unitsizes. it becomes more and more unbalanced with different unitsizes. we have to many differnent units. and this we never will balance for many different areas or/and florinamounts

like other already mentioned, the best solution would be back to a standart unitsize. 60 men and a few different units, cav with 40 is ok and some other lowmen-units are ok too. but units above 60 makes it not possible to give us a longterm-fun gameplay.

i agree about the javelins but they are not important right now, we have other problems, the player leave especially the oldtimer this shows, there is something wrong.
times change but so many cant be wrong

we need a standart wich is very easy, so i say....
back to the roots

koc

[Alrowan]

Koc, ive seen a few old timers in MTW VI a lot.. so i gues they still play, and if they didnt, it doesnt speak for the community, many still play, even greater than before. I love the new era, and i have nothing wrong with unit sizes as they are, every unit has its counter, its a matter of finding it, and you do that by playing, not avoiding it... how do you knw something is bad if you refuse to play?