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Yea me too. Alexander is the only one I haven't played. I'd love to find a mp campaign. I haven't really had to to see what the hotseat is all about so I haven't really messed with that at all, although, It does seem interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magraev
By the way, I couldn't handle this game, I thought it sucked, until the official 1.2 came out.
As of now, I like campaign better because you can role play and battles and troops have a more emotional attachment:)
Whenever I get used to the campaign and can whip the AI, I generally start getting into the mp part. Right now, I have only been to the early stages of this m2. The only way I've been able to upgrade my cities is by capturing French cities that have been upgraded. I love the French, I can now use longbowmen thanks to them:)
not to stray off topic but what exactly is the proxy server tool for?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug-Thompson
MP results are scary.No Wonder no one cares about MP.:shame:
I can't believe so many people like the launcher. That thing is totally pointless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheetah
my first post but i thought this intresting to reply..........im one of the older gamers over 30, and like most of the people i know they just are not intrested in multiplayer gaming anymore, why ??.........online gaming has become a joke, kids and uneducated adults with bad attitudes and think cheating is the way to win have put off all but the most patient of gamers.............
imagin you set up a game now win or lose you just want a good game right ?? well if only that was so..........you are playing for say 30 minutes and start to win, what do they do ??leave the game.........or worse still they have found an exploit and have an army of zombies that won't die.
multiplayer is a joke for anyone over 25, its full of kids with bad attitudes, i prefer single player or over Lan with a buddy......one things for sure , i and the people i know never will play a multiplayer game again.
Really, MP not the way to go?
Strange, I thought even consoles were connected these days....
...must be a generation thing.
the first launcher poll was preliminary. when will they come out with a finished one?
Nothing to do with age, even the griefing Centurie complains about cannot be entirely blamed just on 'spotty faced adolescents with more adrenaline that brains'. I've certainly met mature online gamers with bad attitudes and a lot of younger players who were very good. It has much more to do with the type of character the player is in real life, or the type of person he would like to be of course.Quote:
Originally Posted by PutCashIn
The fact is that any online MP game is going to attract people who in the real world you would prefer not to associate with. Like I said on the World of Warcraft forum, the mere fact that someone plays WoW does not make them a nice person. Every online MP game is going to attract its fair share of cheats, liars, theives, thugs and bullies and they all detract from the gameplay and do their best to ruin your enjoyment of it.
If your going to play MP games you have to learn to live with the other people who you meet on the way, as I said a 'fist in the face button' would be nice but not likely to happen. More to the point I think that in-game theft should be considered a criminal offence, particuarly in subscription based games and that game hosts should be legally obliged to prosecute.
However, the key issue is whether the game concept works as an on-line game and one of the real dangers I have seen over the last few years is the inappropriate use of the on-line real-time format for games that really needed to be turn-based to work. Most of those games like LOTR3 have flopped big time, but thats hardly a consolation when they had the potential to be brilliant and you paid good money for them.
I play online MP games when the format is appropraite for the type of game, e.g. WoW, Call of Duty 2, Guildwars, Settlers etc. I don't when the format doesn't work e.g. LOTR3, Europa Universalis and that weird French made Napoleonic game whose name I always forget.
BTW: Centurie being 30 does not make you a mature gamer, I think your actually about 5 years below the average age for a TW player and most WoW players are over 25.
SP campaigns are really that good? When I read posts about a VH/VH campaign completed by turn 40 or whatever I fail to understand what is so appealing.
As for MP, and the droves who no longer play...speaks for itself
.....Orda
Re: Online play.
I'm really getting tired of having online play options shoved down my throat whenever I get a new game or any piece of software. The automatic assumption that every computer (or console) is connected to the Internet at all times is driving me nuts.
It's not customers demanding this. It's companies who see this as a way to increase brand loyalty.
I can't recharge the battery in my wife's iPod mini, or whatever those little clip-ons are called, without dialing up the internet first, getting on iTunes, and hooking up. 99.9999 percent of the time, I then go off the Internet.
I play singleplayer. I was never on the Internet while playing a game, so I used to turn off my virus and spyware protection and such when I was playing. This greatly smoothes out performance. There was no risk because I'd turn the computer off after many happy hours of gameplay and the protection came on again with the reboot.
Now if I do that, I get an error message every 15 seconds that's something like this: "WARNING! You turned your virus (or spyware) protection off, you moron. If you don't turn it on again right now, your computer will die horribly of AIDS. What were you thinking? Can you think at all? Don't drool on the keyboard, either."
Every day, my PC becomes more and more like that little box in "1984" that you can't turn off without being sent to prison.
But at the same time Doug, online is one of the option features, just like LAN and I like the products I buy to do what it says on the box.
There are only so many times to give the AI an utter spanking before things become tedious.
MP used to be so much more than 'just a win' as I've read here. There were map packs galore, genuine friends online and communicated tactical teamplay. Co-ordination with team mates and those special battles where you stared defeat in the eye only to turn the tide and snatch a victory made MP a sweet experience.
One memory of TW that I will remember when all others have faded was the time when myself and ShinGaijin made a final stand at Totomi. It was a 4v4 that was surely lost (I won't bore you with a detailed account of the battle)our other two allies had been routed after a vicious, bloody battle yet our tactics at the end snatched a victory from the jaws of certain defeat. I would wager my house that he still remembers that battle. Send him a PM and ask if he remembers a 4v4 on Totomi where he and Orda lived to tell the tale; I know I won't be homeless.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the SP game has improved for you guys but some of the posts I read in this thread show little compassion from SP'ers as to the plight of MP. The thing is that where your game has improved the MP standard has not even been maintained, it has deteriorated and that stinks whichever way you look at it
......Orda
Orda;
I know you'll understand. My rant is against the constant, programmed, automated nagging to get online. It's not just a problem with TW. It's a problem with any game or whenever I try to get the best performance out of my computer. I am frustrated by warnings that I have no virus protection when I turned my protection off deliberately.
I know there are people who turn it off and then forget to turn it on again, but the nagging is insulting.
Once they get into the game, I wish any player of TW — MP or SP — all the best.
Doug, tell me about it my wifes sony mp3 player has to load special software to load songs (no longer drag) and has to plugged into a pc to charge the battery. The corporations are desparately trying to gain complete control over teh internets, then thay can intrevienously shove their product branding into our brains..coke is it... sorry that just slips out sometimes like a nervous twitch
Orda
I agree mate the game is worse off for the deliberate deterioration to MP - I dont think anyone would argue that it is not. The problem is this happened despite the communities vocal protestations... probably because (as has been discussed to death) the numbers were telling CA "dont listen to those whiners - everythings on track".
As for the fantastic community, tactics, epic battles, and friendships that evolved back in the STW days - Ive now accpted that this was a once off, and anomomoly. Perhaps because the game wasnt that widely known as a MP game, so alot of the 1337 111!!! crowd werent present and were playing D2 , and it was these guys like you and me who had discovered this game (I remember thinking pfft my wife bought this wargame - looks boring - Ill probably play it a couple of times to make her happy - yeh I think my wife regrets buying that game now). Then we discovered the many intricacies there were to the game, height, weather, facing, morale, fatigue - and how the game played true to the teachings of fuedal japanese warfare. We were all sitting playing on 56k modems and loving it!! Because the games were long wait and setup times - a code evolved between the regular players to minimise time wasting (playing against idiots) and to make every battle as enjoyable as possible. I think even if you deliberately tried to recreate this - you could not - it was just this happenstaces that occured - by chance.
Dude you say what about MP, I say worry about SP because from what Ive experienced - its not far behind. The SP game is in critical condition - all the strategy and epic battles and challenge of the old game is almost gone since the change of the map, and the dumbing of the battle AI. SP campaigns are no longer these epic long games that you look forward to playing the next turn, but have become tedious repeditive, predicable and transparently tiresome. I struggle to find the motivation to even finish a campaign, I used to love making it to the end of a STW campaign and the ending gave you satisfaction, and reward ( a great movie).
So in summary dude the reason I am concentrating on SP is because Im trying to save this game from becoming yet another play for the novelty of the graphics for a week and then put on the shelf (a mediocrety that STW used to do to other games) - the game as it stands has lost replayability and longevity - the units are cookie cutter, the games plays out identically, the world is made up of identical everything, theres no challenge, the AI behaves like its got one strategy - build army attack human ( the sort of repeditive piece meal attacks akin to AOE2).
So absolutley lets campaign to improve MP, but lets save the game first, because Im seriously thinking Im not buying another game of frustration like this one again, super powerup generals or not.
sorry to game fans (rant end)
edit: yes I know the graphics are incredible, and bring tears to my eyes they are so wonderful - unfortunately the immersion ends there (particularly when the enemy army stands under your towers and allows itself to be wiped out to a man)
Its not that people like the launcher its that people who don't like it will not answer the questions so the question's answer is biased toward people who are interested in the survey and keep going.Quote:
Originally Posted by CMcMahon
Also, you should be able to play at least a simplified campaign mode against another. I understand that it would probably be dumbed down and even knowing that that is unwanted it would be understandable.
Lastly, hotseat mode is too difficult to implement so I haven't tried it yet. In the future it would be nice to maybe before starting a campaign to click on an option to play more than one faction and which factions to play. That way after each turn of lets say British, it would automatically go to the Turks for me to control both every other turn. Even better of an idea is that during a battle between the British and the Turks, both sides I currently control, whichever side your current turn is on you control or your have the choice to autoresolve.
Yeah... I was one of those fish swimming with the D2 multi crowd at that point. Jesus, what a damn mess. Talk about the perfect example of everything we've been complaining about. Even the closed servers were having hack issues, and God forbid you would ever set foot into an open game. And then there's the whole separate issue where everything great in D2 single-player meant nothing in multi. Multi-player just became rushing characters to get the advancement quests, then standing in a room gaining experience while people who actually might not die did all the work of slaughtering cows/bosses/whatever high XP thing. So sad that all the greatness of that title vanished in multiplayer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yun al-Din
I think D2 likely more than anything is what's killed my multiplayer enthusiasm. Once you realize you've been addicted and it's just become clicking for gold, levels, and items, it kinda takes the joy out of it (if there ever really was any to begin with). Certainly the community there was one of the worst I've ever seen, and that even more than the degraded gameplay put me off. It's really amazing how much greed drove that game, and what a good item drop could do to people, esp if someone else picked it up. So yeah, it really wouldn't surprise me at all if every other multiplayer game out at the time benefited in community quality from D2 sucking up so many "bad" gamers.
At the least I can say D2 multi was so sour I've avoided WoW entirely, though almost all gamers I know have some part of their lives consumed by it. It's also the reason I shouted for joy when when they said Starcraft 2 will not be a departure from the original. If they had changed the idea much in online directions, I would likewise be avoiding that. Instead it's more akin to Blizzard returning to its roots than anything I've seen them do recently, and I think it will carry fan support as a result. Maybe Total War would benefit from a similar return to its roots, since it seems to be straying from the gameplay fundamentals that really drove the earlier titles (by most accounts I've heard from older players).
I must admit the one thing I miss more than anything about STW is the ability to pick up a unit counter and put it where I want it.
I know that might sound a bit lame but there was a positivity about that action that gave one a sense of satisfaction. It was a bit like moving a chess piece on the board or being Napoleon moving a corps on a campaign map. It had a sense of reality about it, and immediate positive feedback that that unit was now where it said it was.
The animated movement of units which came in with RTW, really didn't offer much in the way of benefits. There was an ability to have movement blocked by the position of another unit, but essentially that could have been achieved just as effectively and much more quickly by simply limiting the placement zone for a counter. More importantly it would have avoided all the delays whilst one was forced to watch spies, assassins, priest and princesses do their personal impressions from Monty Python's ministry of silly walks. Also it would have avoided the really irritating auto-rerouting bug that causes units to wander in circles when their paths are blocked by previously unseen obstacles. (Must add that to the pet peeves thread)
I've always felt that the switch to animated movement was ill conceived. STW had a much more classic and stylish feel to it which ought to have been retained even when the 'one province = one battlefield' concept was improved upon.
If CA had stuck with the concept of the campaign being plotted on a campaign planning table with counters rather than switched to an 'eye in the sky' world with oversized people wandering around it I think it would have been a much more satisfying game to play.
Talking of D2= my lasting memory of D2 is of my son and I hunting hackers. We had got fed up with being lured into the dungeon by griefers using invincibility cheats to steal our gold and equipment so we formed what we called the Guardian's Guild.
In effect, the guardian's were anti-hacker hackers, using the same mods and hacks as the griefers to get some pay-back in game. We would hang about in town using characters deliberately designed to look like 'noobs' and asking nooby questions until we attracted a griefer. Then we would allow ourselves to be conned into entering the dungeon on a promise of help with our quest. These guys would even give us money and equipment to lull us inot a false sense of security, knowing they would get it back when they ganked us.
It was usually easy to spot the hackers as their characters when viewed through the hack overlay usually had stat anomalies, like excessively high hit points. We would then wait for the griefer to spring his trap before pressing the 'switch-char' control key that used the same hacks they were using to morph our characters into invincible mode and laugh our heads off as the griefer struggled to work out why he wasn't killing us. Finally having confirmed that the target was a griefer we would access his character account, over the network, delete all his character equipment, erase all his gold, and change his character name to something like '<snip>' before returning to town and flaming him.
It was always funny to try and guess just how long it would take the guy to work out that his account had been hacked and that he now had a character with a really dumb name (you can't actually see your own character name in D2, so it sometimes took a while for a greifer to work out that everyone else was reading '<snip>' over his chars head). However, towards the end that was the only fun you could get out of D2, it was impossible to play as a serious game, simply because of the hacking that was allowed to take place. That was about the nearest I ever got to having a 'fist in the face' button on my PC.
EDIT: Language ~sapi
I only play multiplayer with a select number of trusted friends. This way, I know I will have a decent game. If I play Combat Mission I will often play with members of "Band of Brothers" website where you need to be sponsored to join. I have never had any major problems. (I did have an arguement with someone there about Macs v PCs... we settled it with a battle duel using the game and I won :jumping: )Quote:
Originally Posted by centurie
Didz - ha ha ha thats a laugh man - kudos to you for getting even with those 'no-lifers'
Foz- I hear ya man talk about the deterioration of a game - it like any game you joined you could guarentee the bosses would all be gone and the rest of the acts left untouched, or some ubers would join your game and then go Ive got the relics and WP lets go do the bosses, and your like - no I wanna play through the act. And then there was the whole trading BS where dudes would try and trick you by switching items in the trading screen - check out the complaints on WoW - some things never change - its just D2 for 20 bucks a month
that was my wake up to online game communities - these are the computer gaming people of the world - god help us - theirs some tormented souls amongst that lot
Although it has worked to season me up to hold my own in the BF2 community - dont get too close or Ill tk you and them spam screens of abuse - see you have to become a monster - so the monster will not break you (U2)
Yeh I agree Didz the change of Map seriously hurt the game - even now Im still just discovering more of how - I guess RTW was a different game in some ways (and I wrote it off as worse - fairly quickly). But now seeing M2 vs MTW its all becoming painfully clear - there is no comparison to be made
edit: I had to add OMG item drops - the quick or the dead - then it was time for the begging to start "Foz give item" ke ke ke - ^^ - sorry couldnt resist rekindeling that little gem
I do like the way the RTW map allows you to position your army on map locations like, a river crossing, or in a wood, and know that this will have an influence on the battlefield terrain. That was a positive improvement over STW, although I was surprised to discover it got slightly nerfed for MTW2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yun al-Din
However, that same result could have been acheived without resorting to animated movement which just wastes time and causes the annoying auto-reroute problems.
I would have liked the benefits without the unecessary cost.
Doug
I know what you are saying and I agree with you whole heartedly. It's such a shame we need anti virus programs and firewalls at all isn't it. I guess it's the <snip> world we live in and it's getting <snip> by the day.
Yunus,
You've highlighted the issues that drove me away from SP campaign. In each title I've retried but can't find that interest.
STW campaign had its failings but it certainly had atmosphere and that's never been recreated
......Orda
EDIT: Language ~sapi
@Doug : if it's Windows XP "Security Center" you're talking about, you can disable it's attention-whoring little popups. Of course, fishing for the right window and the right checkbox is loads of fun, but it can be done.
Not that hard, just start>accessories>system tools>security center.
I agree the change of map has some adverse effects, although for me it is for the degree of challenge rather than the feel of the game. Unlike Didz, I must prefer RTW/M2TW manevouring on the map to shifting counters a la STW/MTW. It just feels more immersive and like real military operations to me. The role of terrain is also intuitive and you don't have to draw on outside knowledge to know how the battlefield in Shinano or wherever will look. And man, did I hate STW bridge province bottlenecks. But this is largely a matter of taste and there's not much point debating it, as tastes differ.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yun al-Din
However, I do agree it has hurt the game in that the strategic AI has still not fully adjusted. The Risk Style map in STW/MTW made the strategic game feel almost like chess - there were some really tough decisions to make and the AI was quite a threat (attack here, the AI will hit your weak point there etc). The big province blobs also made it easier for the AI to concentrate its forces.
The M2TW strategic AI has improved over RTW: it is capable of more surprising aggressive moves (esp. those naval invasions post 1.2); is capable of advancing in areas where you are weak and keeping out of reach where you are strong; and it also sometimes double-teams and allows stacks to be adjacent to provide mutual support. All of this means that the early game, say as England on the continent can feel rather like MTW/STW: you fear attacking in one direction because the AI may grab a territory at the far end of your lands. But despite all that, I am still finding the vast majority of fights tend to be ones where the odds are in my favour. So however good or bad the tactical AI, it does not really matter - the strategic level is not giving the AI a fair chance at battle.
I think this could be quite easily tweaked. Program the AI to only attack at 2:1 or better (not at 2:3 as happened to me the other day). And program it to keep out of reach of your armies if you are capable of attacking at 1:1 or better. Heroes of Might and Magic III had this kind of canny strategic AI and it could be quite challenging, if you add to it some generous AI resource cheats. It was quite hard to defeat the AI in detail and so it had a fair chance of bringing its greater economic power to bear. With this kind of tweaking, and perhaps some tweaking to strengthen AI garrisoning of border settlements, I think the negative aspects of moving from the Risk map would be largely alleivated.
@econ21
Well as I said the only negative aspect for me is the actual method of moving the counters. The orignal 'pick up' and drop system was far faster and more accurate and didn't come with the risk that the unit would do something stupid if its path became blocked.
I certainly agree with you that the map based strategy provides much more variety than the STW province=battlelfield approach. My only concern in that respect is that MTW2 seems be lacking the close relationship between map and battlefield terrain that existed in RTW. Hopefully, this is not the start of a trend towards universally abstract, or balanced battlefields but merely a consequence of lazy or poorly prioritised game design.
I agree with you about HOMM too, now that I think about it the AI on that game is far superior in handling risk assessment than MTW2. In fact its difficult work out the logic of some actions the AI takes in MTW2 many of which seem to have no strategic value or chance of success.
Lol, Didz. That was half the trouble. I think the government/police call it escalation - each side just upgrades its equipment and methods in order to marginalize what the other is doing, but in the process the situation only becomes worse. In the case of D2 it pretty much made it impossible to be anything except a hacker or anti-hacker successfully... and anti-hackers are really just hackers anyway, only more selective. Everyone that stopped being just a normal player was really part of the problem. Not that I blame you, I'm just saying that hacking to kill hackers just removes even more players from the normal population, making it even harder to play anything resembling a normal game. I ended up eventually just playing passworded games with my college roomies and friends as a result, and feel far better off for it.
Yeah, that's definitely stuff to look at. I'm sure it will be especially easy to get the AI to operate with better border garrisons, as I seem to recall there is actually a defensive posture that indicates it focuses on defending the border. Likely as simple as making a new decision with higher priority than the other ones, and having it trigger border defense (whatever the file calls it - defend_frontline I think) or else defend_deep (have to experiment) for any country it has a border with.Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
The sometimes poor attack decisions I believe are often motivated by the AI file's "raid" feature. Basically if it wants to hurt you and doesn't think it can win an outright war, it'll send some troops your way just to harass you. I'm not sure it works out as a very valid strategy though, and the AI might well be better off without it, or more ideally still adding those more-or-less wasted troops to its border garrisons instead. IIRC the AI's normal (non-raid) attack decisions are generally based on local strength ratios and/or faction border troop ratios, which means they already do account for a balance of forces check, which is why I speculate that the raids are likely the problem. When I get the chance I'll go into the file and try to dig up the various attack decisions and quote more concrete numbers and facts for the benefit of discussion.
Interesting results though, as it has been tangetially pointed out, the results are pretty dependant on whether or not you even received the question.
I intentionally sat for about five or ten minutes one day and received mostly the same 4 - 6 questions about "will you pay 10.00 for additional campaigns" "should we offer new features or fix existing ones" "did you play MTW" Did you play RTW" etc.
There are results in the poll for several questions I've never seen. "would you play a fantasy version of MTW"
"Middle Earth:Total War"
Yeah. I'm thinking I'd do that.
And I only saw the 'have you played a mod' question once.
Speaking of which, can we get an "I plan to" option or a "Do you plan to play a Mod in the future? Yes/No"
I plan to play Carl's mod and or LTC eventually.
The animated movement thing mentioned earlier is definitely something to work on. Even displayign whether or not the army you are moving to engage an enemy will have enough points to actually engage or just to sit next to it would be an improvement. Agents losing their volition to move forward when they're blocked by an army they've seen 2 times in the same place or while another agent displaces is also annoying when at best there are dozens of agents and units moving around anyway. It's just too much work. Not that Medieval 1 didn't get boring if you built huge amounts of priests to convert the rest of the world, but Agent Movement has been on the "issue" list since RTW came out.
I also like to talk about the "cavalry is strong but weak" -problem. I believe that most single player campaign players like to have a unit behave somewhat uniformly, ie when their cavalry charges it charges and does not stop to pick up daffodils, and when it actually charges it still cannot go through a granite wall. Not to mention cavalry charging cavalry, causing few losses. Of course this means that the player has to counter cavalry and it takes a lot longer (thus making it harder to charge infantry), but this in turn just makes it more profitable to just get more cavalry units to do the job.
I know this is not a complaint thread, but I believe that it is suitable for discussion about the subjects outside of the poll as well - after all, it is all for the development of the game experience. It's still a great game, otherwise I would've stopped playing it months ago and installed Civ IV, which I still haven't even tried because of the thrill the (somewhat strategically forced) aggression gives me.
True, but in the absence of the 'Fist in the face' button it was the only option that allowed for any marginal payback against the people who were ruining the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foz
The same is equally true of games like World of Warcraft today, where cheats, hackers and thieves are doing their best to ruin the game for everyone else. The problem with WoW is that so far there is no counter strategy and so one merely has to live with the griefers and try to avoid becoming a victim.
What is sad about WoW is that Blizzard themselves seem unwilling to act against these people even when they have been clearly identified. For example: when my youngest sons account got stolen and trashed by a thief, I actually happened to be on-line and so was surprised to get a 'Friendly Log-on' report as I knew my son was at school. I instantly challenged the player and got an invalid response from them, and so logged an GM note straight away to report an ongoing account theft.
It took literally hours to get a response, by which time my sons account had been cleared and all his characters deleted. Not only that but when I demanded restitution of the lost elements and justice against the thief, Blizzard seemed completely unwilling to act at all. They filibustered for weeks, trying to claim that they had no means of tracing the person responsible, which is rubbish, as they have must have constant activity logging of all their servers if only to allow recovery in the event a a system failure and I was able to provide them with the exact date and time when the thief accessed my sons account. so they could tell exactly when the theft occurred and which account the stolen items had been transferred to.
They also refused to replace the stolen equipment claiming that they had no way of detecting what had been stolen, which is again lie as any log record prior to the event would have given them a full inventory of my sons account.
They actually suggested that my son beg, other friends and players on-line for money to replace his own kit. Which I considered to be an obscene suggestion given that not only did it encourage begging but actually spread the damage inflicted to other players. Why should other honest people be made to suffer because Blizzard allowed a thief access to their game.
The consequence of this in the end was that Blizzard lost about a dozen players. Because my son folded his guild and all the players quit and switched to playing Planetside. That does not seem to bother Blizzard at all, they still haven't prosecuted a single thief, nor do they have a restitution plan for people who fall victims to the incompetence of their own software.
any word on updated poll results?