Hey,
Over 1 year since MT2W has been Released, but where is the TW Community, as a whole, at now? Your Thoughts?
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Hey,
Over 1 year since MT2W has been Released, but where is the TW Community, as a whole, at now? Your Thoughts?
anybody who bought the game, played it, or urged others to play it and see were told...
so i'm pretty sure this forum has become a holding pattern for that, and those who play m2 have moved on to other forums.Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
Where is the community. Generally into Europe. Strongest nations now are
Poles
Russians
Turks
Italians
Americans
Spaniards
Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
I think Poles are number 1 :yes: :beam:
But my family is Polish , and I'm not the #1 player around :wall: :sweatdrop:
Let me Rephrase my Question:
How is the TW Community Today. Is it doing good, bad, so-so?
[QUOTE={BHC}How is the TW Community Today. Is it doing good, bad, so-so?[/QUOTE]
It's fractured among the many different versions of the game. I think this happened because the multiplayer game declined in quality with each new release. So, the existing community didn't move on intact to the next game.
STW was played at 5000 money per player, and the playbalance was good enough that no rules limiting unit purchases were necessary. It was designed to be played at 5000 per player, and even though the system allowed a wide range on the money setting, 5000 was what almost everyone used because it was clearly the optimal value. In MTW it was unclear what the money per player should be, and a clear standard wasn't established. No matter what money setting was used in MTW there were significant imbalances, so there was no clearly optimal money setting. Judging from what I see posted RTW and M2TW also lack a strong standard. This prevents the multiplayer communities of those two games from becoming unified the way it was under original STW, and it increases the amount of time wasted trying to get a game with the settings for which you want to develop your gameplay skills.
Krook how can you call a nation strong when we talk about a computer game? Maybe i completely misunderstand you point and you meant the most active countries?Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
:inquisitive:
I can because there is no international community atm. There are some national or regional communities. Polish TW community is strongest from them.
Anyway how can i call? :)
I'm rising my finger and pressing key :D
uhm... right
Quote:
Originally Posted by {BHC}AntiWarmanCake88
Lost and Scattered.
Much like last year, but even more so.
The Total War community has deteriated more and more with each new game release.
The 'Good days' of STW are long gone. MTW did hold the communities attention up to and including VI. The days of the CWC games and CWB games were well supported.
It was the release of RTW that was the main reason for the rot. The well known clans did not 'move across' and thus the Lobby was 'taken over' by the present day type players and so it continued through BI, M2TW and now Kingdoms.
Needless to say, Kingdoms is not being played as we would expect due to different lobbies for each .exe and possibly the Securom (hidden file) that gets installed with Kingdoms.
this probably isnt the best forum to ask the question as hardly anyone even visits it anymore. im not quite sure what happened as i was in a delerium through it all but it may have been arguments and whatnot over an anthill.
to think all my men at arms and pikemen bled white over a small anthill. at least in world war 1 they gained a few yards or so before they got mowed down. before my swiss militia could plant their banner on the top of the small anthill which was an inchworm step they were trampled down in the onslaught that took place in this forum.
oops i just woke up out of my stupor. did i just write that stuff?
Not sure I know what this post is refering to.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
MIITW <> Multiplayer. For most of us because of lag.
What happened is the game deteriorated, and it's not an anthill of an issue because it's people's time that's being wasted. You can replace lost money, but you can't replace lost time.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
the games broken condition has not alienated the forum members of the .com or the .net.
so i would assume it has something to do with issues not involving the broken condition of the game that members and visitors no longer frequent the org as much as they used to.
however back to topic i would think that rome and mtw2 are workable as there really isnt any game out there until the xiii century comes out that will involve anything even remotely what these games have.
and no one knows whether xiii century will have any multiplayer at all although i tend to believe the game may actually be geared for multiplayer when it comes out.
rome was really bad about about people dropping out during the battles but with mtw2 the problem is getting everyone to start. usually if everyone can get on board and the deployment phase is reached and the battle starts i have never seen very many players drop.
the issue at hand is that total war games have to relay the positions, movement and killing of hundreds or thousands of soldiers at once. in stw and mtw/vi thats all it had to do was work out equations and relay them back and forth. now rome and mtw2 have to do even more than that and anything that goes out of place can cause a desynch.
its not comparable to a game like halo where the host only has to keep up with the positions of i think 32 individuals and other games where the number of units is much smaller than the number from total war.
the situation i fear will only get worse with empires as these games are geared toward the single player community who want a lot of eye candy. multiplayer comes second.
im fairly satisfied with the game balance now except for two hand swords and halberdiers. spearmen can now stop a cav charge well as long as they remain stationary.
the only way to get smooth performance for multiplayer is too remove the eye candy.
Those are forums for players who have lower standards for what's an acceptable multiplayer experience than the players who used to come here. The org existed before those forums and before the lower quality multiplayer games were released by Creative Assembly, so, the patrons here were accustomed to the standards that Creative Assembly set with the first game in the series. The community at that time was top heavy with highly skilled player. Some players went from here and established .net over disagreement on how to get Creative Assembly to impliment changes to the game after the Mongol Invasion debacle, and perhaps over what changes should be made. Another .net site was established later that emhasizes making mods. I don't know of anyone who went from here to .com because there you have to accept whatever Creative Assembly makes regardless of the quality.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
I don't think they are worth playing online in their present state.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
I'm not getting my hopes up for XIII Century. Les Grognards might be good and it should be out fairly soon, although, it doesn't have the statistically based combat model of Total War.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
Networking is not Creative Assembly's strong point. The basic idea is great because it limits the amount the data sent over the network during a battle to a very small amount. However, they don't seem to be able to optimize the communication protocol, and they insist on tying the communications during the battle to the matchmaking server which introduces additional instability. Creative Assembly acts as though they don't give a damn about how much trouble players have tying to play their game online.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
No it doesn't have to relay that information because the positions, movement and killing occur on each machine independent of the other machines. The only things sent over the network to the host are the commands that the player issues and a checksum to make sure that player is in sync with the host. The host then relays the each player commands to the other machines in the game. RTW and M2TW do not place an additional demands on the communications link than STW or MTW. The number of men on the fiield is the same because, although they went from 16 units in a battle to 20 units, the unit size was made smaller. This is why it's puzzling why RTW and M2Tw require broadband, and yet perform worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
I'm not satisfied with the playbalance of any Total War game that came after original STW.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
The graphics just put additional demand on your video card, by the dynamic visual effects can load down your cpu substantially if they are not fully handled by features within the graphics card. For instance, in RTW v1.0 flaming arrows absolutely killed the frame rate. This problem was addressed in a patch, and it wasn't such a killer after that.Quote:
Originally Posted by pike master
Gah Pu33ed - here you are talking like 90-year-old grandpa who remind his good times :)
Shogun was good balanced but shogun was not ideal of everything (I remember there were at least 1 rule about balancement).
CA simply can't balance game and this is a problem. There are only 2 bugs that really makes gameplay worse - cav bug and bug. Rest are only problems with balancing game. Before RTW balancemend depend really on 2 things - cav and inf. Missile units were strong, but almost every faction had same.
So - they were good platform to balance rest.
RTW changed that and with other mistakes made game idiotic.
MTW 2 is much better but balancement of unit sucks - infantry is simply too expensive and missile unit are too weak (archers) or too strong (miskeeters) - which connected with range but makes gameplay impossible on early (because without missile certain fractions is useless) and late era (because muskeeters are as effective like machine guns).
First job to modder should be correcting missile unit - for example by giving every nation pavs or and improving archers (missile) attack for example - about 1,5 to 2 times. Then do same with horse archers (and lower their price).
When archers will be doing normal damage - time to correct range bug.
After that we will be having good common platform to correct cav and infantry. Nothing more - nothing less.
I am 85 year old, Puzz3D must be at least 105.
Annie
Last time I met him, he could only drink tea... Not sure he had any teeth left :inquisitive:
And I am an awful old papasmurf!
Louis,
I'm talking about objective standards that you can demonstrate in tests. These are not my standards. They are the standards of gameplay and playbalance that Creative Assembly set 7 years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
There were no rules used until after Mongol Invasion was released which was about a year after Shogun. However, Shogun was not perfect. Instead of addressing the imperfections, Creative Assemble immediately started, with the Mongol Invasion add-on, down the road that they continue to go down to this day notwithstanding the improvements effected in MTW/VI with the relatively brief return of LongJohn to the design team.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Well, we have what I call "byproduct balance". MP is basically a byproduct of SP. If the SP game is such then the MP version will be good if not then not. SP will be ofc balanced by SP criteria so there is no guarantee that it would benefit MP.
Shogun was good because it happened to have a very simple and reasonably well balanced SP game.
Same holds for maps. Maps were good as long as they were made by humans (in Shogun and in MTW), as soon as maps were generated from the campaign map they were useless in MP.
All in all, Shogun was excellent because the stakes were high. CA had to prove that the concept works. So they made fantastic, captivating maps, nice 2D sprites, good AI (!!!) and they worked out a good balance.
Once they proved the concept they focused their effort on the SP campaign side (which soon turned out was the selling point). From that point on everything we "got" in MP is a side-effect. Though they made a short lived attempt to turn MP into an RTS style game (see RTW: green arrows, RTS interface, war eles etc) but it was a failure (in every aspect but in terms of popularity too). After that MP was completely abandoned by CA, they just provided the minimal services to be able to claim that the product has an MP side.
The sad, sad thing is that those players who absolutely loved this game and loved playing Shogun or MTW (Yuuki, CBR, smurf, Annie, etc) are still (almost) all here waiting for the day when CA will produce a game which is on the same level as Shogun or MTW was (not even better but at least the same), and this day will never come ... the SP gets more and more complicated, and Shogun MP, regardless how much we loved it, was a commercial failure.
How about no ashi rule? I don't remember if it was stw or mi.
Anyway I liked MI - funniest battle I have ever played was when I killed 15 units into 1 minute and then I was killing one val 9 kensai for 10 minutes :)
Kensai was introduced into S:TW/MI and it was one of the destabilizer and bad move.
Annie
I know when kensai was intruduced but im asking when "no ashi rule" was introduced.
BTW Kensai was nice Annie :) I remember guy charging me with 4 kensai and 3 of them killed by muskeeters.
If the unit balance is improved via MP feedback it improves the SP game. This can be seen in the Samurai Wars mod for MTW/VI which has a strong SP campaign on the normal difficulty setting using units that were playbalanced in MP. When the units are unbalanced the strategic AI doesn't know which units are unbalanced, but after a while the human player figures out which units work better and will buy more of them giving the human an advantage in the battles. The greater the unbalance in the units the more advantage the human player can get.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheetah
In an old interview back before Shogun was released, Mike Simpson touted the inherent playbalance that the Sengoku period provided as an advantage for the gameplay. I wonder what happened to this kind of thinking at Creative Assembly? It's as though Creative Assembly found out that playbalance isn't particularly important to sell games, so it isn't cost effective to spend a lot of time playbalancing. This kind of thinking no only hurts MP gameplay but also hurts SP gameplay.
You could attack in Shogun MP at least in team games on any campaign map with a reasonable chance of winning with the exception of bridge maps. In fact, hilly maps like the original Tosa map or Mimanska were favorites of some teams to attack. This was possible because attritional play was dynamically balanced with positional play. This allowed the initiative to be an important tactical advantage which the attacker could utilize to overcome the static tactical advantages of the defender. This was quite an achievement in gameplay design considering that the attacker had no advantage in combat power over the defender.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheetah
The no ashi rule came in with MI. A no ashi rule was never used before MI and neither was a 4 max of one unit type rule used. These rules were both consequences of unit imbalance. The ashi was imbalanced because the weapon and armor upgrade costs were miscalculated, and the 4 max on guns because the guns were overpowered. Forseeing problems in unit balance in MTW due to the large number of unit types in the game, LongJohn coded a 20% tax increase on more than 4 of one unit type, but I wish we could get rid of that tax in samurai wars because we don't need it since the units are all fairly well balanced. A well balanced game doesn't need unit purchase rules.Quote:
Originally Posted by Krook
The kensai unit is a problem because the battle engine can't properly handle single man units. Even without the battlefield upgrades in MTW/VI, I was not able to balance the kensai in MP and had to eliminate it from the unit selection. It's still present in SP, but players complained about it being able to kill whole armies of 3000 men. I reduced it's combat power, but now it's underpowered and the strategic AI clans suffer if they spend a lot of money training kensai. There is no optimal group of combat parameters for the kensai that I can identify that will make it balanced against 60 man units. Also, you can't depend on guns alone to be the counterunit for the kensai. But, you have identified and are an example of what I think is a basic reason why we aren't getting a better balanced game out of Creative Assembly these days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Krook
Wait wait wait Pu33ed. Remember that I'm not playing samurai wars - give me link, maybe I will back there :)
Anyway I agree almost with everything you are talking about, maybe without one thing;
When the units are unbalanced the strategic AI doesn't know which units are unbalanced, but after a while the human player figures out which units work better and will buy more of them giving the human an advantage in the battles
Here I can't agree. Into Barbarian Invasion Eastern Rome (into single player, when commanded by AI), used great army, which influenced multiplayer a lot.
They were taking 20 units of plumbatriarii - and it was almost undefeated.
So, in R:TW/BI multiplayer, we now expect 20 units of plumbatriarii running around, in overlapped and tight group attacking an imaginary point behind the opponent's battle line?Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Annie
ps.: look at Puzz3d signature for SamWars
NO - 18 into 2 lines (8 and 10) units of plumbatriarii come to enemy line, threw 14 plumbas per soldier which kill 90% of enemies and then attack meele, which will rout enemies into 15 seconds.
If you'd just stand there and let them shoot you... yes id agree with you.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
There were many different tactics to counter roman plumbatarii spam, just like pretty much everything else too. Don't make BI worse than it was please.
LadyAnn, I suggest you simply give it a try and see for yourself. BI should be available for a very low prize now. It was good and still is a good game despite all the bugs and the lack of mp support.
Nope. BI is much more refined than that. I dare to say BI is the most overlooked part of the series, I dare to say it has better balance (with a few rules) than MTW. Just the key features:Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyAnn
- very strong archers (gothic raiders, ER archers)
- strong defensive units with offensive abilities (plumbatarii, first cohorts)
- strong offensive units vulnerable to missiles (chosen axes)
- strong spears that can absolutely slaugther cavs and can withstand cav charge in sciltorm (gohtic spears, etc; sciltrom actually works!)
- strong but costly cavalry, heavy cav almost twice the price than spearmen and costlier than any infantry; light cavs cannot be upgraded to beat heavy cavs (even though upgrade on heavy cavs count a lot)
- good HA (too good for some ~;p)
There were only two unit types out of balance: war eles and berserkers. So with no arty, no ele, no zerk rule (and optionally with max 3 or 4 HA rule as some were not happy about the HA spam which worked well) it had a very, very good balance.
This was the only game in the whole series with several efficient strategies on team level. It was possible (i) to turtle with strong inf/archer combo; (ii) to play a balanced army with strong archers, offensive inf and cavs; and (iii) to rush with upgraded cavs/offensive inf and some cheap archers.
We played the CWC final with 2 other chinese (taiwan?) clans (Long was one forgot the other, mea culpa) each clan played a different style. We played the balanced game, one of the chinese clans was a rusher, the other was a turtle. Each of these styles worked since we all got into the final and there were heavy competition. The outcome was very interesting. We beat the turtles, the rusher beat us and the turtle beat the rusher (at the end the turtle won on points).
I have not seen three styles in any of the other TW games and I played tourney finals (CWB, CWC, TWPL) in all TW games. In MTW the dominant style was well balanced with a few good rusher clans (well actually one: SA). In RTW it was rush (with some skirmishing on occasions but essentially it was a rush) with a few turtles (like Rapax). In MTW2 it is again rush with some clans playing HA skirmishing but that is not very frequent.
All in all BI has a balance and diversity which none of the other TW games has not even MTW!
Shogun ofc is a different story ...~D but I was not a clan player at that time ...
the problems with BI is that
- most players were scared away by vanilla RTW
- it was an expansion (like Kingdoms) and fewer players had it than RTW, as a result it was more difficult to get a fun game of random players
Actually if there is anything that has the balance of BI, though it is entirely different period (and thus hard to compare), is the NTW2 mod by Lordz! Brilliant work, too bad it is only a mod.
Sorry Cheetach - BI was even less balanced than RTW.
With rules you were talking about most players would take rome, and rome would be dominating. Every barbarian nation would be destroyed - sooner or faster. Some by archers and plumbatriarii, some by meele rush, some by undefeated cav. We tested that with Fireblade - rome was crushing everything.
BTW Bersekers were one of most balanced units into WHOLE TOTAL WAR HISTORY. Extremely powerful when good used (but after 1.6 patch berseker hardly killed plumbatriari into meele only), but expensive, vulverable to missiles, charging and you had to kept them into mandess :).
You can call me Lional, RTK2Lional that name should be more familiar to you. ~;)Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Well, I should have been more clear, I was not taling about 1v1. What you said might hold in 1v1. I was playing mostly 3v3s and in a 3v3 all kind of factions, i.e. chosen axe barbs (burgundii, alemanii, etc), archer heavy barbs (goths) and romans were very useful.
Zerks were not that costly and any good player would hide them into other troops. Also there was not much time to shoot a rushing enemy anyway. If they were so balanced why were they banned in all competions?
Cheetah.. does BI still contain no penalty for overlapping friendly units?
I do not know the exact stats but if you mean the blobbing exploit that killed vanilla RTW then it is not working in BI. Well, actually you can squize your troops into a small area (perhaps not as much as in RTW) but you wont get that huge advantage that you got in RTW.
There is still a mild push-through but nothing that cannot be stopped with a few spears in schiltrom. Some ppl will try it I am sure, especially against spread out troops but it is not working against reasonably thick formations.
On the other hand do not expect a neat 1 on 1 match up of each unit like in MTW where each MAA were carefully matched up. Some ppl might do it, with some units it might worth to do (like plumbatarii) but on most occasions (still talking about 3v3s) it is more like group vs group.
However, it is not RTW. Brute force push through does not work. Match ups matter, i.e. which group against which one, chosen axes vs plumbatarii is not the same as chosen axes vs spears in schiltrom etc.
Also, moral is very important. Unlike in MTW2 it is possible to get chainrouts with proper tactics, it is not easy though, brute force push through wont do it unlike in RTW.
It looks like a one-trick army.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Annie
Ok, but that's just by chance that the AI trained a lot of that particular unit isn't it? I doubt that the strategic AI recognizes that the unit is that effective tactically, although, it might be doing some kind of cost effective analysis, but I doubt it. The strategic and tactical AI's are completely separate in all the Total War games which is something that's supposed to change in ETW.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
The SA clan did win MTW/VI CWC finals with a rush style vs my clan's more balanced style. There was a no artillery rule.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheetah
The three styles: rush, balanced and turtle are also usable in Samurai Wars in both 1v1 and team play which is something that happens when the game system is balanced. (There was some imbalance in original STW which slightly favored the rush style.) In addition, co-ordinating all 16 units individually to make matchups is important because the game mechanics penalize men who have less than 1 meter of space to fight and the RPS is relatively strong. Also, the morale level is optimized to allow enough time for flank attacks to be carried out, but low enough that flanked units will rout which can trigger chain routs as well. This isn't easy gameplay to master despite the relatively small number of unit types, and it might not appeal to players who would rather a gameplay where control of fewer groups is the effective method of play.
Maybe near the end of total war series. What ever Empires will be, they will be nothing like total wars before. IMOQuote:
MT2W:Where are we now??
Australian section is closed down (after they finished Kingdoms), RTW had new engine, MTW2 had new engine and ETW will have new engine. I guess that what will be left to us is MTW/VI with samurai mod or without, RTW/BI with excellent NTW2 (I doubt that anyone is playing it on MP this days) and MTW2 with retrofit mod. Have you noticed which word is repeating? Mod. Do you know World in Conflict game? When you enter into MP section you have an option to run a mod. A feature which was never provided by CA. I don't doubt that Empires will compleately change total war series. Bad for some and good for others (majority - SP) I guess.
*I can see Elmo reading this forums from time to time with a smile - long ago he mentioned what might be the future of TW series* ''and there be dragons''
Lional or Cheetach - I'm [SC]KrooK and how about that. Nicks are not playing.
Do you know why into 3vs3 every fractions were being used.
Because into most competition there were rule max 1 kind of fraction per team. So you could take 1 roman fraction 1 "axemen" fraction or 1 horse archers fraction.
I don't know who banned bersekers. I think someone who was in charge into tourneys but did not play BI longer time. Personally I made some test "axemen" barbarians vs rome and almost every time rome won - no care about bersekers.
Lady Ann - it was one trick, but if one always works why should we need more. Plumbatriari had range about 60 - 80 metres, practically like archers.
And on 1.4 they had attack 14, sniper precision and dozens of plumbas.
If you spend 20 % of plumbas on enemy archers, they are down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!
lol
Where are we now?
Nowhere :thumbsdown:
First time back in a bit...
Nice to see folks like Puzz, Annie, Louis St., and Lionel are still around. :laugh4:
I stopped after Rome. The big issue for me was that the battles -- which sucked even in SP. The battle-game (the strength and point of the original STW) became almost an afterthought to the overall strategic game (which, even with all the eye candy CA added was still a lesser economic game than the Civilization series).
With Rome a big problem on the battlefield was that the units ran around almost uncontrollably fast -- like chickens with heads cut off. It became less an exercise in tactical generalship and more a fast mouse-click fest. Also, when units engaged each other their individual fights were over so quickly that any attempt at army tactics was useless. It lost the beautiful pin and flank tactics that were possible with STW1, STW/MI and to a lesser extent with MTW1 -- tactics that made possible the defeat of a more powerful unit by 2 lesser units by having them act in concert. This was something crucially missing in almost all prior wargames and, unfortunately, also with all these later versions of Total War.
Sadly, with a decline in MP I'm pretty sure the forums declined as well -- the MP built the clans and the clans built the community.
With all that said, I'm still holding out hope that one day CA will go back to its roots and build a good battle engine that plays well in MP.
I just beleve that the MP players here should be more active (I would, but hard to when you have wrist tentidonts :shame: :shame: ). I know MP isn't great like it was before, but I just think it be better if a lot of us actually stayed and help out, and not complain and leave the TW for good, or leave TW MP but not the fourms.
I think you guys should try the new Retrofit Multiplayer.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=100848
Hello shingenmitch2.
Hello shingenmitch2.
It's been a long time m8. :tumbleweed:
When I get back into MP I am planning on playing the Retrofit MP version. I believe it should be the standard for everyone to jump on board with.
Nice seeing you Mitch, playing anything fun at the moment?
(since it seems that noone is actually playing MTW2 MP, we might as well turn this forum into an "any other fun game around?" forum, right?)
Smurfy,
TW is not a MP game anymore. VI was the last one in the serie which could be played online. All the releases after that are for SP.
If that was not the case, 90% of the MP community would not quit playing it.
Game is broken (a non-functioning engine with endless bugs and a non-hapening MP) since Rome and the devs do not give a damn about these facts where they are already able to sell 2 million copies to SP customers with every release.
Ctrl+A and double click enemy. That is how they plan it for the battlefield and MP peeps can go play other games if they don't like it. Selling 300 less copies do not bother them at all. They have two choices: Please MP community of 300 players and loose several hundred thousand SP customers or just ignore the MP and sell millions. Which would you choose if you were the owner of CA?
If you like campaign, that's fine. You can enjoy TW for a couple of months. If you want MP, just forget it.
ETW is on the way and that will be an even bigger disaster than Rome for the veterans of the game. All but all will be random in the battlefield. Note these words of mine somewhere. We talk again when it is released.
Just cope with the fact that TW is a story of the past. Was an epic story -but it is over. Get used to that and move on.
Sadly ..... I agree with all of the above. It's a real shame that they can't make more of an effort for the MP players. Our voice just seems to get swept under the carpet.
Who said theyll loose their SP customers customers if they make a better battle engine with better balance? Even SP players complain about balance and exploits, its lazyness, only laziness, and carelessness, as most fanboys will buy it just to see how it is, and they have made their money, even if it sucks ****. Than theyll make flawed patches, the big uplightening was retrofit, but now most players seem to prefer vanilla LOL.
Many here dont play TW or at least dont M2, so test it and see the main tactic(im not referring, to kyolic that seems, even if not playing it to know the "best" tactic)
The way I see it is they get a budget to complete a game.... So where do you think they will put most of their energy and money?? It stands to reason that that MP will always be the poor relation to SP. And MP's will always be moaning about some imbalance or other. :wall:
I guess most of us will try out Empire in the vain hope that MP will be a balanced
experience. Then come straight on here and moan about the injustice. The sad reality is that we are haemorrhaging MP's with each release.
Why should I do that? I would have to buy a new computer to do that, and my clan won't play M2 online. Nothing that's been posted about M2 + K + "any optional mod you want to include" suggests to me that it would be worth playing even if I got the game for free.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lupu
The codebase of this game has become so large that it is beyond the ability of the company to produce a fully functional game. After the game is released they only fix the stuff that's relatively easy to fix and new bugs are created by that process which proves that the game is beyond their control. Multiplayer suffers very badly as a result of this problem because it requires virtually unflawed functionality and very good playbalance. This project management deficiency became apparent when RTW was released, and they haven't solved the problem yet. Unless management becomes more realistic about what they can achieve with the available resources, the problem is not going to go away.
Retrofit mod brings back some VI experience. There are few things like flanking and so on which will be fixed in next addon but overall this mod is very good. Like NTW2 was for RTW. Of course this is not addon like Viking Invasion was yet
most of the clans are now playing Retrofit.
Fenix, I agree that the retrofit mod has improved what was largely a poor rush based experience.... I play retrofit only and to say that most of the clans are playing it may be a bit of a exaggeration. I would however say that there has been an upturn in the numbers of retrofit games in the lobby over the last week or so due to the GS tournament which people seem to be practising for. This in my book is a good thing as It's now easier for me to get a game.
Now we need a 2v2 tournament open to anyone, with lose regulations to promote game play. Anything that advertises retrofit is a good thing in my book.
It's not that the community is dead for Mp as such, just this community. Take a look at clan community sheild they manage to be engaging whilst allowing freeedom and keeping an eye on the behaviour of people. That is why theres no surprise that it transformed from a tournement site to the home of the MP community.
To be hoenst I would be surprised if this Mp section of the forums got more than 30 veiws a day, let alone some actually meeeningfull posts.
Most truthful post this topic tbh lolQuote:
To be hoenst I would be surprised if this Mp section of the forums got more than 30 veiws a day, let alone some actually meeeningfull posts.
At One Time this fourm used to be the home of MP, maybe it will become so once agan one day?
Quote:
Originally Posted by tibilicus
Community means the forum posters? Or the players who are present there at the lobby?
How many players can you see online every night during the week? 40-50? And weekend nights? 60-70? And how many of them play Retrofit? 12-13?
What a big community that is! Laughable.
PS: As I stated in my previous post, game is broken seriously and the Retrofit mod tries to fix the balance issues at least and the majority of the tw veterans moved to it. So that is why I refer to it.
agreed, it doesn't matter how many are posting it's only ever about how many are playing
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf_Kyolic
Argeed with Kyolic also. I mean, I remerber when I started Viking Invasion Back in Early 2004, there would be 200-250 people on MTW/VI. It Differ on the Weekends and days, but it still more then the max number of people now. What is the highest number of people on a TW game today, 80 ot 90 like Kyoilc said?
TW is mainly a SP game. MP just doesn't cut it. It will never appeal to the market...
That's because this community wouldn't accept the degraded multiplayer experience that constitutes the new TW. Original STW had more people playing online than M2TW does now. That means the original MP community was bigger than the current community.Quote:
Originally Posted by tibilicus
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
It used to.... that's what we are saying:wall:
Single Player was the easy money, and the natural path (safe) for developers to take in the beginning. Multiplayer was, and still is an add-on, only existing so that they can have something else to write on the box.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
In that beginning (STW), Multiplayer’s only represented 5% of the buyers, so it was never taken seriously, and never developed to its full potential as an engine to drive sales.
From my perspective, this was and still is the major shortfall of the Total War series. They missed the big picture of how to sell games, and so have settled for a mediocre place in the market, with mediocre profits, and a mediocre future.
The concept is simple. People are attracted to crowds. The more people you can get together, the more people will come to see what’s going on (Woodstock, Loto, etc.). Multiplayers are very visible, and a strong Multiplayer community is the best evidence that a game is worth playing. This is true for both other Multiplayer’s, “and” Single Players alike.
The logic being; that if there are that many people playing it, it must be good!!!
Too true Tomi too true.
I think most people who played M2:TW eventually realised it was a very poor game and have moved on.
Compared to Rome, MTW2 is a lot better. Well Rome was a joke anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marius Dynamite
But if you compare it to the original (MTW1), you find out that it just does not cut out. When you play MTW, it just feels solid where 90% of the resolution taking place has got a logical reason. That 10% chance factor is always there and that is not avoidable at all (initial charges and etc). Yet it is compensatable with player skills and in the past, it never became a huge concern unless you were a bad looser.
However the chance factor with MTW2 is much more higher than that. I don't want to state a specific ratio but trust me. It is much more higher.
Even that is enough reason to loose interest with the game.
Apart from that, the engine does not work properly. CA introduced animations with Rome and at that point units started to react according to their own will instead of the players orders which was the begining of the end.
Besides that, the number of the bugs that the game contained were countless. There was a petition for a patch and we listed more than 30 bugs demanded to be ironed (may be much more). Go figure it out.
MTW2 has the same engine as Rome. Just a revised version. So some of the issues that Rome had due to a broken engine are obviously still present there. And it contains many bugs as well.
So when you compare MTW2 to MTW1, you simply find out that MTW2 is way inferior. Only area it excels is the graphics and that is when you zoom in. Zoomed out, it is easier to identify units in MTW1.
However it is a fact that MTW1 feels "old" after this point when you compare its design structure and design quality to the other recent games in the market. It just does not feel high end. So "then let's go back to MTW1" approach won't work at all.
Unfortunatly, CA simply cannot manage to bring it together. When game play is there, the high end feel is missing and when it is there, (sort of) this time the game play is missing. It is always "wait till the next release" since Rome and upto now there has been 3 releases (BI, MTW2 and Kingdoms) which failed utterly and dissapointed the veterans of the game. And none of those releases were "free". People paid for their broken games.
As I always tell; right game, wrong company.
Returning back to the quote; yes, MTW2 is a poor game. Just the eye candy and that is all. It just does not feel right if you know what the real concept of the game is and how the mechanics should work (Shogun and MTW1). Originally TW is about skills (unit control, micro management, speed, making quick and right decisions and etc) and using your brain and creativity (tactics and depth). MTW2 lacks that depth which MTW1 and Shogun had. It lacks that because to have that, you need a perfect engine which is "operating". And it has to be bug free as well. MTW2 is too far from that. And yet devs try to avoid complexity on purpose because the game has to reach to masses.
Retrofit mod which the community plays makes everything a bit better to a degree but that is all. Modifying your Ford Focus does not turn it into a Ferrari no matter how hard core the modding is.
TW MP never appealed to mass market...Even at its best...Quote:
It used to.... that's what we are saying
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
If you are talking about everyone who buys that game then yes as I have said SP has a bigger following. What I am saying is that MP had a larger following than it does now.... far larger.
The anticipation through the community for RTW was unbelievable. We'd all seen the graphics and we were awaiting it with baited breath. It was a real shame when we were let down so badly on gameplay.
This thread is about dissatisfied MP's I'm not interested in the "mass market" SP side of the game
:wall:
read man! i said TW MP never appealed to the MASS market. I know it had larger following in the past... but it never appealed to the MASS market.Quote:
If you are talking about everyone who buys that game then yes as I have said SP has a bigger following. What I am saying is that MP had a larger following than it does now.... far larger.
The anticipation through the community for RTW was unbelievable. We'd all seen the graphics and we were awaiting it with baited breath. It was a real shame when we were let down so badly on gameplay.
This thread is about dissatisfied MP's I'm not interested in the "mass market" SP side of the game
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
As far as I know, MTW2 sold around 2 million copies.
Yeah but how many people are in the multilayer foyer nowadays? Again I am talking about MP not SP. This game (MP) is stale. MP didn't change from the days of STW...which is sad really...Quote:
As far as I know, MTW2 sold around 2 million copies.
BTW how come u guys are fixated on this game? As far as my experience go other RTS games (warcraft/starcraft/age series/war hammer 40K/Company of Heroes..) provide a better much more deep MP experience...
No Total War game was ever developed intentionally for, or promoted to the mass market as multiplayer, so how can you say they never appealed to the mass market?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
For an example only:
http://www.mpogd.com/news/?ID=2351Quote:
January 25, 2007
SAGA Breaks Open the New Era of RTS Gaming
Saga, a new Massively-Multiplayer Online Real-time Strategy (MMORTS) game from Wahoo Studios, is set to revolutionize the way RTS games are played.
“The biggest innovation happening right now is that battles aren't self-contained anymore … You build up your armies and you carry them forward from battle to battle … Injecting a little RPG element into your army is the future.”- IGN article entitled “The State of the RTS”, April 7, 2006
According to IGN’s recent article, the future of RTS is persistency. The present of RTS is playing for a few hours, building a mighty city and army, amassing resources and money, all just to have the session suddenly end in victory or defeat, game over, sorry try again, start from scratch…
Saga brings persistency to RTS gaming. You build cities and armies to defend and manage a persistent online kingdom in a persistent fantasy world. When you’re offline, your kingdom continues to function; your guild wars progress as your friends and teammates play, your resources continue collecting, your kingdom continues to defend against enemy assassins and espionage missions…
“Think World of Warcraft from a thousand feet up… instead of having just a character, you own hundreds of troops and fight massive battles against other players,” says Jason Faller, Saga Creator and Executive Producer.
Saga’s features include military questing, an auction house for trading troops and spells, guild wars, espionage, and more. Kingdoms and armies gain permanent experience that carries forward perpetually for a more realistic and more exciting RTS experience.
Additionally, Saga brings the excitement of collectible gaming to the online environment. Rather than pay subscription fees, in Saga you pay as little or as much as you decide. Just as in collectible card or miniatures games, players can buy ‘booster packs’ of random troops and spells, which are traded and customized to create the strategic army of choice for each player.
Saga is the future, and for that matter, the not-so-distant future; internal Alpha testing is under way; closed Alpha testing begins late January, signups beginning immediately. Saga is slated for Beta release in Spring 2007. Visit http://www.playsaga.com for details and further information.
About Wahoo Studios, Inc. - Wahoo Studios is a leading independent developer of PC and console games. Based in Orem, Utah, Wahoo Studios has worked with the top game publishers, creating outstanding titles for all age groups and all platforms. Under their NinjaBee label, Wahoo Studios has also developed several critically acclaimed titles for the Xbox Live Arcade downloadable market.
To bad it wasn’t a Total War game :sad:
i said TW MP never appealed to the mass market not TW MP can never appeal to the mass market. Although I think that TW MP in its current state can't (in no way) compete with other (RTS) MP games.
Magazine/Game Websites articles are all hype and marketing we all know that. They count for nothing. As an example RTW scored on all game magazines/game websites more than STW/MTW... And we know that RTW is a crap game...
I am presently checking out Company of Heroes, hoping to find what I personally want in a multiplayer game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga
Thanks Nobu :wink:
I agree :yes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf_Kyolic
But if you are going to try to make the best of the situation, be sure you understand that there are “two” Retrofit mods (Retrofit 1.0 and Retrofit MP).
They are completely separate Kingdom mods (MP does not require 1.0).
Retrofit MP is the one you want for the best multiplayer version.
Apparently the latest patch (Kingdoms v1.5 ) upgrades the original Kingdom mods ( Britannia, Crusades, Teutonic, and Americas), but does not effect any of the other mods.
So if you have Medieval II Kingdoms, and the Retrofit MP mod, I believe you have everything you need for the best multiplayer experience you can get with this game.
Have fun :beam:
Which is very limited.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomisama
But are mere dumbed down DUne2 clo(w)nes....Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobunaga