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View Full Version : Do you think that Medieval Totalwar, will renoval the Totalwar series



Celtiberos Shimazu
04-21-2002, 23:08
Do you think that Medieval allows us play a Multiplayer Campaign?
Do you think that Medieval units will be balanced? (remember, about 60 different units)
Do you think that Medieval will be find a solution about defenders/attackers balance, in multiplayer battles?
Do you think that Medieval will be have a improved server?
Do you think that Medieval will allow us to joy of a great amount of maps, in multimplayer? (think about the approx. 10 maps played in hogun, all plains maps)

What do you think? Hardware in Medieval will be runs well, without problems?

Gothmog
04-21-2002, 23:21
Don't expect too much, mate. I'll be happy if the MTW turn out to be not too much worse than MI.


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Pain is weakness leaving the body.
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Kraellin
04-22-2002, 00:28
1. no. no multi campaign.
2. no. and it's over 100 units, not 60.
3. not even sure what yer referring to here.
4. possibly, but my experience is that something is always goofy, always left out, or always clumsy. let's just hope whoever is handling the servers this time is more responsive to our community.
5. we already enjoy a great amount of maps. it's the players that are, how do i say this....lazy and unimaginative. stw/we/mi has some great maps and a wide variety. it's the players that determine what gets used or not.
6. some will, some wont. hardware is always going to be a problem. if it takes 2 years to develop a game, the hardware has already evolved by the time the game comes out. best you can hope for there is new patches and new drivers. this isnt really something any game company can prevent or fix on the fly.

i believe that ign review mentions that there are going to be over 400 maps that come with the game. hopefully, there will also be an editor with the game, though nothing has been mentioned about that yet...that i recall. but i expect CA will include one, so you'll also have custom maps coming out.

i think it would take a year, all by itself, to truly balance the units and even then you're going to have problems if they do the system the same as in stw/we/mi.

now, most of those responses were negative and it may sound like i'm pre-bashing the game. CA has shown that it does listen to us. it doesnt always do everything we want. there's no way that it can and often, no reason why it shld. it's a small company still. they've got to feed their faces just like we do and so they can only invest so much into any one game in order to put bread on their tables. thus, we're NOT going to see a multi campaign. there are going to be aspects that some dont like and some do. there arent going to be a horde of new options and even if there were, some would still complain.

Activision is a fairly big company, but they are mainly a distributor, not a game developer. if activision is going to be handling the game servers then we're going to see some of the same problems we saw with EA handling the servers. their main function, from their viewpoint, is to distribute. what tends to happen is that, if the distributor is also the hosting server, the distributor distributes and loses interest as the game quits selling as much. and whereas it's true that if they handle the server side well they'll get more sales, it also tends to be true that as sales start to dwindle the server side of things tends to less profit generating and thus gets relagated to 'who cares' or, 'let's dump this turkey'. the problem is that the servers by themselves generate 0 income by themselves. indirectly, they will help sales, but after a while they become a bigger drain on resources than what they will generate, thus they start actually costing a company money rather than generating it.

i do think M:TW will be a hit. i think we'll all be pleased at first...well, most of us. and just like we/mi it will look very good at first glance and we'll oooh and aaahhh and then settle down to a more critical view. then we'll start ranting about needing a patch for this or that and then another and by this time CA will already be in the process of starting a new game, middle earth: total war or something and half of us will quit playing M:TW and wait for the next game to come out while the other half pleads with CA for one more patch.

ok, so i'm a bit cynical here :) but that's the game arena as it currently stands. very few games have any staying power and the ones that do are on pay servers. gemstone iii is still going and it's a text game. island of kesmai lasted for 15 years and it was a text game. asheron's call is still going and gets updated regularly. i'm fairly sure Ultima online is still going and everquest. dragon's gate can still be found somewhere as can mage storm, but these are all pay games. someone is getting paid to update the code and keep the game fresh and interesting. air warrior is in its 3rd or 4th major incarnation and is still going strong, but again, it's on a pay to play basis.

the total war series would work very well in a pay to play environment, particularly if they added in a multi campaign and played it as a Massive Multiplayer Game (mmg). the game could simulate the world in a given time period and be played ALL on one single massive world map. it's hypothetically possible to do this. WWII online has proven this. so has Asheron's Call to a lesser extent. but CA would have to want to do this, or Dreamtime, and they'd also need some backing for development, but it'd be an incredible game AND have staying power.

the old maxim about getting what you pay for tends to be true. twisting this around a bit, it might be better stated as you tend to get what you reward. pay servers reward the dev folks for 'continuing'. off the shelf games tend to reward for 'producing'. once the production is done, there is no more reward, thus a company has to produce again to be rewarded. to me, what this small community here seems to want, is more 'continuing'. we want innovations and fresh features and options and a multi campaign and so on. but what CA does is 'produce'. and therein lies our conflict. if CA were rewarded for producing AND changing then we'd have a different situation, but that would mean pay to play servers.

it may happen in the future, but it's not very likely in the near future, nor with M:TW. you tend to get what you reward.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

Vanya
04-23-2002, 21:21
The advent of MTW will usher in a new cadre of fresh talent... to be sacrificed to Vanya in exchange for peace on earth...

CeltiberoSkullXIII
04-23-2002, 22:20
man! how can a person write so much!?!?!?!?

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"It's better to let the enemy alive as to kill it ... To TORTURE it!" http://gifanimados.ya.com/terror/calaveras_banderas/flag_wht_blkbns_clr.gif

Magyar Khan
04-23-2002, 22:33
skull if it is in your native language u can do it....

tootee
04-24-2002, 00:21
As Krae once said, he alot is written but little is said http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

My answers to your question: No, no, no, no, no and no. Sincerely.

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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy (http://shogun-academy.tripod.com)
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Toda Nebuchadnezzar
04-24-2002, 00:36
Gah! Talk about optimism tootee. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

I hope we get an editor, because then we can have even more maps. But I also hope that they don't limit us to 500 maps. Thats so annoying.

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He is the Messiah
No i'm not the Messiah
Only the true Messiah would deny it.
Alright then I am the Messiah.
HE IS THE MESSIAH HOORAY!!!

Orda Khan
04-27-2002, 21:39
Will they give us another Ironing Bored?? Sheesh, why is this featureless yawn of a place so popular when there are so many excellent maps available. In the foyer last night four Iron Bored games up and they bitching coz no one joins! Realistic maps please even if it is only ten. Still better than a battle on pool table......Orda

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" Send us your ambassadors and thus we shall judge whether you wish to be at peace with us or at war..if you make war on us the Everlasting God, who makes easy what was difficult and makes near what was far, knows that we know what our power is."

TosaInu
04-27-2002, 22:36
Konnichiwa,

Maps like Ironing Board were made for testing purposes: what beats what on even ground. And they're 'fair' for both.

It appears that some people like to play all their games on such maps, it's their right to do so.

CA will make realistic maps, Ironing Board is just an exception. But a very welcome one as there's yet another application of this map: a 'blank sheet of paper' for a new map.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

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