Collected wishlist from several forums

This thread will collect all possible ideas from the internet to ensure that Shogun 2 will be the best in the Total War Series.
Eventually we will make a poll of this and create a top 10...
I will modify this page and add more items in which i personally see some future in.... so get them comming. Please debate......

I added some priority myself based on what i feel in here....
GREEN = is currently considered high priority
BLACK = debatable
BLUE = pretty to have but not at much costs of resources

COMMUNITY and HOSTING BATTLE
~:lightbulb: A foyer like we had in STW/MI MTW with options to make own chatfoyers
~:lightbulb: Player Stats - All players have stats wins,losses,dcs, and tournament wins etc.. that we can view by clicking on their name in the lobby or game room.
~:lightbulb: Current NTW ingame chat-utility when writing must be clicked everytime, also the box transparancy should be able to set opaque
~:lightbulb: make it possible to swap battlesides in MP once all the slots are taken, in NTW you either have to kick someone get them to rejoin or put a cpu player in there to hold the slot
~:lightbulb: make it possible to look at the hosted map
~:lightbulb: set different koku values for attacker and defender
~:lightbulb: a more detailed description of each game in the lobby: Who has joined already, what options have been selected, what size units are being used, what the money level is, the map name, the weather, and any other settings you can have for the game. Currently, you have to join a game to find out most of these. This causes many to join, then leave due to some setting they don't like.

GAMEPLAY
~:lightbulb: Add a more realistic fog of war (where u really can hide units) if your units cant see the enemy than hoovering with the zoom/cam should not let them see either
~:lightbulb: Group Movement - remember in STW you could use Alt with your army grouped and change the facing plus be able to moving in that direction at the sametime. In NTW it seems you have to start at the end and drag across to advance in a different direction which is a worse way to do it. It would be nice to have that back in STW2 if it isn't there already.
~:lightbulb: Make it able to group a single unit
~:lightbulb: Better net code, so we can once again play 4v4's. 4v4's are currently impossible for some reason and 3v3's are so laggy as to be impossible to play. The game needs to be optimized for 4v4. That is what the old MP communities thrived upon.
~:lightbulb: Make ingame movies of messages optional, for mp games they are close to useless

MODIFICATIONS
~:lightbulb: A army-banner editor to make your own banners, only visible for yourself unless shared with others
~:lightbulb: A uniform editor to make your own uniforms, only visible for yourself unless shared with others

GAMETYPES, REPLAYS and OBSERVERS
~:lightbulb: Show player name in replays (not available in ntw now)
~:lightbulb: Show unit names and player name in replays when hoovering over minimap (not available in ntw now)
~:lightbulb: It would be great to have a time coded function added to the replays, and the ability to fastforward and reverse
~:lightbulb: Kill worth / Loss worth - Along with showing kills and losses you should also have this to display the actual worth of units lost and killed.
~:lightbulb: Gametype where you play the same map as defender and attacker and the Kill worth / Loss worth is used to decide who is the winner.... with same battles with the same army.

MAPS
~:lightbulb: Much more MP-suitable maps or a Mapeditor, an alternative could be that we can output every map from the strategic map in a way. Or if such is not possible make sure we have many many challenging maps....
An alternative... It would be nice if u could in a MP-online game select a map from the campaign map.... just move your mousepointer over the campaignmap and select the area u want and that particular map is loaded....another solution could be that u could select them offline and add favorites to your map selection and when u get online and host a battle u could pick one from your favorites.....Every map from the campaignmap is centred on a specific (X,Y) location so it should be available to anyone....
~:lightbulb: Deployment zone change to something similar to the original Shogun or MTW1: The current deployment zones are directly across from each other and do not touch each other. Most 3v3 games end up being mostly 3 1v1 battles, then the winners fight for the win. With the old deployment zones (3 in the back and one on the side, touching two enemy zones) you could rush the enemy, or set back and wait for them to approach. The 3v3 and 4v4 matches began with double and triple teams, rushes, etc . . .
The current deployment zones do not encourage such tactics. With Shogun 2 and its emphasis on hand-to-hand battles, the old Shogun deployment zones would work wonderfully and give teams the ability to surprise their enemy once again, instead of the "slowly approach one enemy in front of you, fire, then rush in with whats left after you run out of ammo" tactic.
~:lightbulb: Some maps similar in the original Shogun like Totomi and Nagishima and 4th Kawanasaki...
~:lightbulb: Fade out Effect - In STW this was annoying when you had an army in wooded areas you couldn't see your own army or watch the fighting very well in the woods as well as dragging lines.Trees should fade out so you can see your units more easly, but of course only x amount of distance cause you know you're in the woods.
~:lightbulb: Regular maps should not contain buildings and such which handicap pathing too much...

UNITS
~:lightbulb: Not to much new -different- units to make it all overcomplicate
~:lightbulb: Make units better response to running/charging
~:lightbulb: All Cav can dismount and mount - Any cavalry unit can dismount and mount or at the very lest be able to dismount.
~:lightbulb: Clear distinction between your units and that of your ally or opponent if you both have the same faction, also when selecting one. the hopping banner in former TW games was very usefull. Perhaps allow players to make their own banners!
~:lightbulb: A bit more use of fog of war, in NTW you can scroll on the map and check every unit of the enemy, units behind large mass of trees or hills should not be visible......
~:lightbulb: Horsearchers should be able to skirmish like in STW... which missile cav dont in NTW...

MINIMAP and GUI
~:lightbulb: Make possible to move units towards point by clicking on minimap
~:lightbulb: Make minimap fully resizable
~:lightbulb: Be able to give signals on the minimap
~:lightbulb: Show unit names and player name when hoovering over minimap (not available in ntw now)

MISCELLANEOUS
~:lightbulb: A battle mode esp. for ranking and tourneys where you play a map 2 times (with the same army or different armies?), one as attacker and one as defender and the server calculates the winner based on kill/loss ratio and the worth of units....
~:lightbulb: Make options to disable all sort of things like the background movie when hosting battles and such....
~:lightbulb: Regular patching if needed
~:lightbulb: Being able to host different koku numbers for each side...
~:lightbulb: Real Prizes in Tourneys, CA generated tourneys
~:lightbulb: As a contest idea to use the database of ranked battles to determine the maprating of each map. When u host a battle on a certain map a maprating is added which is translated in the different available koku numbers for each side. After every game played of alle mp players using that map the numbers are if needed automatically adjusted.... lets say oldskool Totomi..... could have got a maprating of 95%, where the defender gets 95% of the koku that is available to the attacker

DONTS
~:lightbulb: Dont add area of effects like from temples in the multiplayer battlemap. Keep it on the map when the battle is a part of a drop-in campaigngame and such....

Can it made sticky?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Magyar Khan

Can it made sticky?

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Done. Pretty good list to start things off. :yes:

Also people willingly to invest in better pointed out/ better written parts of texts feel free to post them here....... I may adopt them....

Nice to see you here again Magy after all these years :), amazing how many of us oldtimers are coming out of the woodwork for Shogun 2.

One thing that does annoy me in NTW atm is the inability to move battle sides in MP once all the slots are taken, you either have to kick someone get them to rejoin or put a cpu player in there to hold the slot.

There is also no rout button facility don't know know what the view is on that but I'm sure we used to have it.

I agree about the distinction of armies, its terrible in NTW if people take the same factions, hard to work out whose who at times.

Map packs from CA would be nice as well as user created ones, NTWs maps arnt great we used to have some great user created ones.

Really hope they give us the lobby back though that is my main want for MP.

tx spoon.... point about the swap disability added..... and even if a map is 3 vs 3 we should be abl;e to play it 4 vs 2 imo...

Theres a common theme in these requests and its not new battle modes or new features its refinement of past features and existing features, i really hope ca are listening.

Things I miss:

1 Detailed logfiles of each game (Cuts down on cheating)
2 Host option to set precise money levels for each team (Allows for handicapping and lets the community decide what money level is best, not some pre-set arbitrary level.)
3 A dedicated Lobby, with private, password protected rooms. (Helps out considerably with tournaments/leagues/clan practice/post-game discussions etc . . . Helps build community)
4 Ban/Blocked lists, which are permanent and associated with one username) so you don't have to see troll's posts, or have them join your game and continually have to add them back each time you log on. (Cuts down on troublemakers)
5. A chat feature like the original Shogun had: "T" for Team and "Y" for All. It was quick, simple and the best thus far.
6. What I call "Named Maps". Instead of generic names like "HillyInland 3" or some of the current Empires/NTW maps, have a map for each province (area) of the campaign map. It makes it very difficult to discuss strategy when referring to a generic name or map. I can say to many a veteran "Remember positioning your archers on that small rise in the middle of Totomi to best kill the enemy frontline units?" and each could envision the map in their mind and know of what I speak. You cannot do that currently. Either the maps are not named for a specific place, or they do not have any recognizable terrain features which help in discussing team strategies.
7. Better net code, so we can once again play 4v4's. 4v4's are currently impossible for some reason and 3v3's are so laggy as to be impossible to play. The game needs to be optimized for 4v4. That is what the old MP communities thrived upon.
8. Deployment zone change to something similar to the original Shogun or MTW1: The current deployment zones are directly across from each other and do not touch each other. Most 3v3 games end up being mostly 3 1v1 battles, then the winners fight for the win. With the old deployment zones (3 in the back and one on the side, touching two enemy zones) you could rush the enemy, or set back and wait for them to approach. The 3v3 and 4v4 matches began with double and triple teams, rushes, etc . . . The current deployment zones do not encourage such tactics. With Shogun 2 and its emphasis on hand-to-hand battles, the old Shogun deployment zones would work wonderfully and give teams the ability to surprise their enemy once again, instead of the "slowly approach one enemy in front of you, fire, then rush in with whats left after you run out of ammo" tactic.
9. One thing new, which I would love to see added is a host option to limit what units can be used and how many can be used. This allows the community to quickly find a good balance when certain units become a problem and not have to pray CA can find the time and money to make the necessary changes. (Artillery anyone?)
10. Lastly, I would love to see a more detailed description of each game in the lobby: Who has joined already, what options have been selected, what size units are being used, what the money level is, the map name, the weather, and any other settings you can have for the game. Currently, you have to join a game to find out most of these. This causes many to join, then leave due to some setting they don't like.

Nice to see you elmo :)

Another thing thats really bothering me is that when hosting a game my computer sometimes has a seizure when somone joins for upto 10 seconds, now i have an i7 4 gigs of ram and an 8mbit internet connection, why on earth should the game freeze and not allow me to type when we used to host 4v4 in shogun and people join with 56k modems? Ive played quite a few 3v3s that are running smooth always the smoother games seem to be with known players who are aware of their systems capabilities. but i see 4v4s goto hell all the time no matter whos in them. Why not have the game force a player to play with sprites and disable zoom if their pc cant handle the game they join? Noones in MP for the fancy 3D anyway we all play zoomed out and the game looks like mtw1 and runs worse for people with out of date pcs. The reason i think alot of oldies can stand to play ntw is that it kinda looks like mtw1.

And for the love of god disable that annoying video that plays in the background when were in the mp section of the game, NOONE likes it. If CA can point to 1 MP player that likes it ill hold my tongue. I have a sneaking suspicion that it causes problems too.
When did we ask for a multimedia sensation running in the background of the mp section of the game? noone ever watches it i couldent tell you what happened in any of the videos in the background from rome onwards its simply an annoyance and eye strain. We used to at least have the ability to disable it the switch -nm on the exe must have been one of the widest in use in the whole community through rome and mtw2.

The more i play the more i notice control problems with units, sometimes you can be sitting there and telling units to do stuff like run here and they simply wont do it, also when using a full army group sometimes the whole group becomes unresposive you cant command it to run or do anything untill you click a single unit then press ctrl a again.

Luckily I am used to selecting units individually so I found them easier to control that way instead of the group commands. You are right, when using group commands, your orders were sometimes ignored or worse yet, implemented in the wrong manner or at the wrong place. :) I don't know how many times my men set up with their backs turned to the enemy after I did a group move.

I really miss the soft grouping options from the early totalwars with hotkeys to the group, you had soft grouping and grouping on the UI and they were seperate things. I remember kocmoc having about 17 groups with a 16 unit army :D

first of all, please, please, please.... "on knies" please, get soem proper Betatests done. At least for MP the betatester should be kicked instantly. I made on our forum a long post about all the thing, i wont repeat that here, just some short notes:

1. If u play 1-2 hours, you will clearly notice, that twice the same faction or even worder, 3 times is just not playable anymore, not sure why this wasnt noticed in the beta!
1.1. colors for units, was something we had already in STW 10 years ago, why things which are more than useful are not used anymore?

2. Spread army in NTW. Since 10 years unit gets spread, there are many advances. I personal would have reacted to this and (just an example) never did allow line infantry to spread lower than 2 or 3 lines.
When i see that 2 armies almost use a full 4v4 map to setup their units something is wrong.



now to the wishlist.

Why i cant grp a single unit? (maybe i just dont know it, than im thankful for some advice) Actual i have to select my gen or a single unit with mouse clicking. The grouping seems buggy anyway, sometimes the units are in one grp, but can get clicked (to move) on the map anymore. Also sometimes i cant cancel a grp during the battle, which is many times needed, since one unit u dont want to use in the frontline.

Woods and units in it. Its almost impossible to see units in the woods, your own you only can see while holding down space. The enemy are many times very hard to see, controlling in woods is a pain.
Its easy done by making a transparent key, so the woods are blend out or thin out. This game is about tactical war, i dont want realism, i want more controlling.

Fog of war is an old idea and it should be there. Right now the game is very static, in STW you had the options to harras the enemy, little skirmishes here and there, some pressure and so on. In MTW this was already gone, you had almost always very static gameplay, shooting and than people who close a border somewhere.... very annoying, in MTW i did "exploit" within the gamelimits and pushed two full armies uphill (was elite for the CWB, if i remember well) One reason for me to stop the game...

Anyway, now we see the same, that you can counter a cav with your line infantry isnt a bad idea, but to almost cut down cav, which has only an effect on a few units or other cavs or vs bad player lower the momentum even more.


MP Setups for the hosts, i dont want to host a game and need to tell other player my "rules", why not just give us an option to set the rules while hosting?

Example: You set up and noone can choose art or more than 4 units from the same type... thats not hard to program and would be an awesome feature.


Koc

Custom units and banners. (colors and logos), return of the chat lobby. Please, Please and Please.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grudge

Custom units and banners. (colors and logos), return of the chat lobby. Please, Please and Please.

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Custom units in MP is a no go imo, colors will be a nightmare, logos im with you.

The game basic works only, if you clearly see whats goin on, a unit you see, you also know the power. With time you get a feeling.
Custom units might be interesting for modding the game, in MP it might work, if everyone use the mod and have the same units.

Color ist easy, imagin a 2v2 and everyone use a combination of green, brown and yellow. That should be even better as playing with 4x france now!


the widespread of possible ways to play the game is already too much, what sense make it, to play with max cash and big unitsize, when you already cant spread your army on a normal map?
Why we can play with small, mid and large units, with different amounts of cash and rain. Rain is best, noone wants to play on a rainy map, but we got the option.

Imo, there should be a competitive and fun way to play the game, the fun way may offer options to play a selfmade campaign, where you might want to play in rain.

The competitive setup has to be very smart and offer very small options, since this is the only way to balance it properly.
We all know how more or less cash makes one ore the other unit/faction more or less powerful.

I think custom banners/units/uniforms should be a must Kocmoc. It will spark more esprit de corps per say with members and their clans and be good for tournaments and clan wars.

I agree custom units in mp would be anightmare waiting to happen but no worries anyway CA are not creating mod tools for shogun2 and if anyone did change the colors themselves they would not be able to play with anyone else due to having different game files. A practical 8 base colors is fine 1 for each player in a 4v4.

Of all the things we are expecting for MP, I think custom uniforms and such has to be very low on the priority list. The custom logo seems pretty harmless and might be a cool extra to have assuming everything else is right.

"Sure MP is a nightmare to play, but, hey, check out my custom mon!!" :shrug:

Custom mons would not be that hard to impliment actually. Most multiplayer games simply fetch any missing user made graphics from the server when you connect up, so doing this in TW for something as basic as a few KB clan mon would be very simple to achieve.

:2cents:

since almost 10 years i repeat my lovely phrase over and over again, i wont stop to repeat it, so here we go: "Keep it simple!"

This is a tactical wargame, not a painting contest, if you want eyecandy and more unimportant stuff, than go and play monkey island.
I myself rather take average looking units, but some awesome gaming and great balance of the units.

Who of us really watching the units fighting? Do you zoom so far in? Me not, if i do, i waste the life of my soldiers on some other point.
Im leading a battle, i dont have the time to watch my men die.

Like Greg said, there are important things and less important, custom uniforms, units or whatever is actual the last thing i would care.


With all those ideas swimming around, which are mostly real nice, i remember the same situation back in 2003, an insane wishlist, tons of good ideas and than we got ROME!

Another thing I have noticed in NTW is that the Missile Cavalry don't have a skirmish ability, you have to manually control them at all times, the light infantry have it but they don't.

I really hope this is available on Shogun's Cav Archers , we had it before and it was very useful. :P

Also I'd be prepared to pay my own costs to do some beta testing.

ok will add the skirmishing cav archers..... which is obvious yes

Some of them can skirmish, just some of them cant not sure why maybe they can only have so many buttons and its taken up by the dismount option on some not sure? :)

Custom banners seem nice and all, until the :daisy:hats show up with swastikas and genitalia. I would advise against unless the foyer/matchmaking system has a properly implemented rating/ignore feature.

hahah yes good suggestion..... i think people are firstly satisfied if their own banner show up in their own games..... and a share banners button when joining battle would be fine....

Banners with genitalia.....I would have been that guy on the first day, sad to say. Oh well, I will make the sacrifice for the good of the masses. But imagine all the puns that could have been

well, there are solutions for anything.

There could be banner for certain people, if CA would accept some help, lets say from the ORG, Clans could sent/puplish theyr banner here.
Once some Moderater or whoever is in charge, did accept it, the banner gets "free" in game. Thats not a custom banner for everyone, but still it would be something...

I can also imagin to give personal banners to tourneywinner as a price.
Without to know, how much effort this is, the custom clan banner is surely something solid and a good thing. Put some rules up and done.

Heck, I know a lot of clan members who would pay for a DLC of their clan's banner. It could be a small source of income for CA. I would pay a dollar U.S. for an Ugly or Hunter Banner for myself. The clan's could design them, and CA could implement them for a small fee.

I would pay for a banner for something. Swissland banner :clown:.

Custom Banners as reward/recognition items is an interesting idea. If they went through an approval process (to avoid swastikas and genetalia, etc.), then there would be quality control. The costs to maintain the process seem minimal if server-side tools to perform this simple thing were implemented. It has the potential to be something many players would want--visual, symbolic distinction in the community, on the battlefield.

This reminds me of clever daimyo who glorified tea ceremony, and by doing so, created incredible value in the artsy items used, to the point where such items could be offered to vassals instead of land, which was always a premium in Japan--but an expected exchange for military service. Value from nothing, essentially.

But, since I see willingness to pay for banners mentioned, I imagine that'd be a more popular idea in the eyes of the business. Revenue. [sigh]

I figure offering up an idea, with a small profit, increases the likelihood of said idea being implemented. hehe