Finally Multiplayer Gets A Lead Role

**IncubusDragon** · 06-30-2010, 14:58

Certainly saying the right words there... suddenly I'm wishing it was next year already, hehehe

Don't get me wrong, a chat lobby/foyer is high on my wish list too, but at the end of the day, I can't get STW or MTW to run on my machine, so it's the best chance I have of reliving some of the most satisfying gaming experiences I had.

**ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88** · 06-30-2010, 17:48

Agreed. They might add in 1 or two new ideas, say, better MP campgain and a actual MP ladder system, but that's probably all they will do.

**Swoosh So** · 07-01-2010, 00:27

Could not agree more spoon :) No multiplayer foyer and its already crap no matter what they add.
They should do the basics right then throw us their new innovations, mp foyer, ladder and balance, nice maps etc.
Tons of games now have great communications in game, world of warcraft for example having guild chat, whispers and several channels the players can chat in as well as the main chat and trade foyers/channels in the cities.
Keep steam if they want even though its a pile of steam... ....., but make a multiplayer foyer and let us at least have the ability to communicate for the love of god :p

Mike Simpson likes to talk about evolution and revolution in totalwar games...

Shogun Foyer: Excellent Design with ability to host tournament or seperate chat rooms, Simple and very functional.

Medieval Foyer: More basic but still "good" lost ability to make tournament or seperate chat rooms.

Rome Foyer: Terrible Design with Video running in background (bad idea) and worst colour scheme ever, Almost every player hated it.

Empire/Napoleon Foyer: There is none!

So the mp foyers devolved then became extinct, so hard to understand why this happened, its not even close to hard to throw in the simple yet excellent shogun foyer!
I feel so strongly about this and i bring the subject up every totalwar release, and with each release im more dissapointed.
I actually like NTW its OK but i cant bring my self to play the thing because of the lack of a foyer it just makes the whole mp experience so damn shallow

Aside from that will be interesting to see what they come up with for mp ideas, lets hope they dont go back to the ideas introduced in the shogun expansion tho, they were so bad i cannot even remember what they were lol! noone ever played them(dont want to be too critical as at least they tried and the ideas just did not fit with a totalwar game). Still we had the option to play them or not so wasent a disaster and i hope they do experiment with some new ideas as long as we have the option not to play them if we do not like them.

I'm really looking forward to Shogun mp campaign mode i must admit, give old opponent and some free time and let the good times roll :)
If the games a sucess and includes a good foyer i will with the assistance of friends setup a clan campaign, even if its just 1v1 we can allocate players to control certain generals or armies or simply designate the players to each battle as the clan leader sees fit.
The clan campaign that was run years ago was excellent for the community and almost all the big clans were involved even allowing unclanned players to join as ronin, was excellent and im sure with the ability to now run it fully in game it would be so much better now if we can get a community going.

If i were them id add a Mp chat foyer, and give clans the ability to register in game and have their own chat channels like the guild tab in world of warcraft, have friends lists and be able to whisper players as well as chat in the main lobby, also allow players to create tournament lobbies.

**vartan** · 09-09-2010, 18:37

Originally Posted by AntiKingWarmanCake88

Agreed. They might add in 1 or two new ideas, say, better MP campgain and a actual MP ladder system, but that's probably all they will do.

I'm not the philosopher of SP and MP and I'm certainly no statistician of the trends of SP and MP, whether one is gaining ground at the expense of the other, or whatnot. But what I can say is that a ladder system or any pro-active support and push of the MP community by CA is better than nothing. Great job creative director.

**AMP** · 09-10-2010, 18:53

Everyone for some strange reason screams for a better AI when the fact is making an AI that can be competitive to you're average gamer in this game is next to impossible with today's tech. I don't know why they bother to beg, but they do. I'd rather play against a human player with equal footing than a buffed up AI in stats or more units just to give me a challenge.

I have a feeling too that they are just going to add one or two things and that's it.

They are gonna have steam again so the odds of a foyer diminish greatly. :(

The MP side lacks A LOT of features and information and how much will they add after all these years? Just take a look at STW MP all the way to NTW MP and look at how much has really been added over the past 10 YEARS.

I want STW2 to be great, but I'm sure it'll be lacking in many areas...

**UglyElmo2** · 09-10-2010, 23:36

Originally Posted by AMP

I want STW2 to be great, but I'm sure it'll be lacking in many areas...

Not if they decide to go to a subscription-based game, like Wow. Which would mean they would have a REASON (Monthly subscriptions) to make MP the focus, and to continually update the MP game.

As much as I abhor paying a monthly fee to play an online game, I would be willing to pay for Shogun 2 if it catered to the MP crowd and offered up continually improving features, options, and community enhancements.

Actually, I think the only way we could convince CA to even consider making MP the focus is if we can prove to them they could make a lot of profit from doing so. Monthly subscriptions might be THAT way.

I would pay $15 U.S. a month for an MP focused game, which offered clan tags, a great chat lobby with all the bells and whistles, and a continually improving game engine, and not only a battle mode, but a mega-campaign. I think CA would love to do such a thing now, but might not think there is a large enough market for it to make it profitable.

**Swoosh So** · 09-11-2010, 06:07

I agree elmo it would be nice to see a totalwar thats constantly updated with new maps stat balances and new campaigns etc even for a fee. But i think CA are still a way off that theyre a completely different company from Blizzard who have massive pre release beta and alpha testing of their game before release by a large section of the community. It would be a massive shift for CA in philosophy and structure. If the blizzard community are shouting that somethings badly needed more often than not they get it. If any major exploits are found in the game theyre hotfixed within 24 hours or so. Also blizzard impliment mods that the community have created with a little modification directly into their game. I payed for wow for a good while but to be honest it was only because totalwar online degraded from rome onwards i just couldent stand to play it online. Also wow has its problems even though it makes so much money for blizzard. Some servers have a 1 hour queue to get on each night and if you want to fight a battle in battlegrounds depending on server the queue can be anywhere from 10minutes to 1 hour on some servers which is unacceptable for a game you pay monthly for and is one of the reasons i finally quit it.

Shogun2 with subscription and really well supported with a nice community with all the tools needed to keep the community going chat foyer, map editors, ca released maps every now and then units, campaigns all that would be great. But considering this is their first officially stated focus on multiplayer i think theyre miles and miles from producing a mp game that people would pay monthly for unless a hardcore fan. I mean were not even sure how much we can read into the statement, this is the big focus on multiplayer and so far we had lots of talk about ai being a huge focus and a single player campaign preview and a historical scripted battle. What id like to see from CA is some form of updates about Multiplayer, surely they can tell us if theres going to be a full chat lobby with player lists etc, i mean were all dying to know and everyones calling for it. We dont need to know all the multiplayer bells and whistles but some information on the basics would go a long way. I would really love to see a staff member for CA in a preview vid saying the community wanted it back so were giving it back ( chat lobby ) and theyre going to make sure the game ships with really well tested multiplayer maps and remaking the shogun classic maps that everyone loved so much, even throwing in a map editor or/and magys campaign map selection idea. These wouldent be big announcements in ca's mind i think but for the community these are the issues that count above all else.

Im rambling now off to bed!

**Gregoshi** · 09-11-2010, 06:30

In the IGN.com Q&A, CA mentioned more on MP will be revealed in the future. I'm hoping they will cover the full range of the MP experience from logon to the end of game, game types/options and not just focus on what can happen on the battlefield with 56000 men.