Steam

[Sir Beane]

Wait just one moment here!

Just what does that mean?

Is it going to update its self every time it has a connection?

Gosh I hate programs that do things I haven’t told them to!!!

Particularly when it comes to patches!!! Most of the time I find my self being more satisfied with the original install than the stuff they have messed with and the unintended consequences there of…


Thanks for the prompt post though Mr. Jack Lusted!!!

Steam will update itself every time it is open and it has an internet connection. You can, however, tell it not to. This isn't advised though because if you don't let Steam update itself for a while it will take ages to update when you finlly get around to it.

[Polemists]

This is one of the reasons no one likes updates anymore.

A long time ago updates used to be able to download on this thing that you youngins don't know about called

"Dial Up"

In the modern day world, that speed equates a horror movie.

Patches used to be small 20 mbs, 40 mbs, but then games weren't even gig's bit. Go look at how much space shogun takes up sometime.

Now though, since ETW will probably be around a few gigs of space, any patch that is semi major will be a 500 mb patch at least, and steam will probably want a 100 mb patch to go with it.

So if you have cable internet your fine, but otherwise your stuffed.

Of course we'd know how it's speed works, if we had

a Demo

[Sir Beane]

I think official figures say Empire is 10Gig on the hard drive.

It's hasn't been that long since I had a Dial-up connection. And let me tell you, I still have nightmares about it, the numbers, things downloading so slowly..... truly those were the dark times.

[Polemists]

If I don't have to hear that annoying beep sound it's a good day.

Alot of people seem to be behind steam, which leads me to believe it is not the seem pos that I was playing blueshift and half life 1 with, that lead to maps never matching quite right.

I am still leery of it's matchmaking system.

but of course

I am less leery of it

Once we have

a

DEMO

[Sir Beane]

If I don't have to hear that annoying beep sound it's a good day.

Alot of people seem to be behind steam, which leads me to believe it is not the seem pos that I was playing blueshift and half life 1 with, that lead to maps never matching quite right.

I am still leery of it's matchmaking system.

but of course

I am less leery of it

Once we have

a

DEMO

Steam'm matchmaking cannot possibly be worse than Gamespy. How I hate them so...

All in all Steam is a good platform for multiplayer, with very reliable servers used to dealing with traffic that big games like Counter-Strike manage to grab.

[Polemists]

but see that makes me wonder.

Steam has never handled a graphically intense game.

Half Life, Blue Shift, Counterstrike are all very low end system spec games.

Even half life 2 during release was hardly the top of the tier.

I'm not sure if graphics matter but since I'm told they suck up bandwidth I assume they do.

So I hope Steam is putting proper resources to CA's game and not just thinking we are some no name game like Sim City 5000

They will of course see the incredible passion for this game.

Once we have

A demo

[Sir Beane]

but see that makes me wonder.

Steam has never handled a graphically intense game.

Half Life, Blue Shift, Counterstrike are all very low end system spec games.

Even half life 2 during release was hardly the top of the tier.

I'm not sure if graphics matter but since I'm told they suck up bandwidth I assume they do.

So I hope Steam is putting proper resources to CA's game and not just thinking we are some no name game like Sim City 5000

They will of course see the incredible passion for this game.

Once we have

A demo

There are quite a few graphically high powered games that are distributed through Steam, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Games like GTAIV probably use much higher system resources when playing 32 player multiplayer. The highest number of players a TW game can have is 8, which is significantly less than many other game son Steam.

[Zenicetus]

Alot of people seem to be behind steam, which leads me to believe it is not the seem pos that I was playing blueshift and half life 1 with, that lead to maps never matching quite right.

It's good to hear that it's improved, but there's also some consumer psychology at work there. For people who are already running other Steam games, a new one on the horizon has zero additional impact. They're already living with the trade-offs like background processes, authorization requirements, potential game obsolescence without a physical disk, etc. It looks a little different when you haven't bought into the concept yet, and you're being dragged into it kicking and screaming just because you'd like to buy that one single game. I appreciate the user feedback from current Steam users, but I take it with a grain of salt.

Right now I haven't seen any other game I'm interested in on the horizon that requires Steam, other than Empire. And I'm not interested in playing online (recovering WoW addict). So it's basically down to whether this one game ends up being good enough to warrant that. It definitely puts a damper on any enthusiasm for early purchase, because I'll need to see plenty of user feedback first.

P.S. @ Jack Lusted, thanks for the answers so far, even if it isn't what some of us want to hear.

[Belgolas]

Oh everyone can calm down about steam going down in the future. Steam has it's own back-up program so once you have downloaded a game you can put it on either a disk or a back-up hard drive so even if they did go down you could still play it with a no-cd. Although the likely ness of them going down is pretty slim. Even games companies that get bought out you can still play on their servers for multi-player. Plus any company would be stupid if they bought steam and didn't support it because of how much money is involed. You are just paranoid.

I PREFER Steam over a physical disk so there is ZERO trade off.

Ituralde there is already a total war community on the steam forums. I don't think there is a group for this forum on steam but there is a Total War Center group and plenty of Total War clans and a few dozen ETW groups and most are even language based groups. There are Total War fan clubs.

[BeenPlayingSinceRTW]

Right now I haven't seen any other game I'm interested in on the horizon that requires Steam, other than Empire. And I'm not interested in playing online (recovering WoW addict). So it's basically down to whether this one game ends up being good enough to warrant that. It definitely puts a damper on any enthusiasm for early purchase, because I'll need to see plenty of user feedback first.

P.S. @ Jack Lusted, thanks for the answers so far, even if it isn't what some of us want to hear.

I agree.

I went out and bought the last few TW editions in the first week, but I'm definitely going to wait on this one...

[satchef1]

I've been using Steam since Half Life 2 was released, really glad to see Total War is going that way.

1. No more searching around the net for updates - games can update automatically
2. Smaller updates - games on Steam tend to get patched little and often so (hopefully) no more 250MB downloads!
3. An end to game disks and CD Keys - you only need them for the initial install!
4. You can download the game from Steam servers ANYWHERE in the world
5. Integrated friends lists, community features, server browsers and matchmaking

I'd also hope for good mod support, Valve have managed it with the Source engine so hopefully CA will follow suit (as Steam will make our normal ways of modding a little more difficult). A Total War SDK? Finally?

[pevergreen]

Then again, automatic updates can be beneficial.

Say MP testing requires unit x to be toned down. instead of waiting, make steam change a file, boom! Its balanced, and everyone online is automatically on the same version!