What would you like to see in shogun2 Totalwar Multiplayer?

[Tomisama]

To be able to go to a room and upload a replay to everyone and start it where everyone is viewing it together and can point out stuff etc would be cool.

Works well with my favorite new idea.

What I would really like to see is "unlimited spectators of live games” (recorded is certainly good too).

No interaction with the games themselves, just a stream out available to as many as wanted to see what was going on in a particular game.

A spectator’s only chat (of only that game) sounds good also.

Maybe with a host selectable delay for competitions?

[AMP]

Swoosh, yeah you're right it dose sound like that, but you got it right I just don't want to be able to see the enemy moral same goes for him not being able to see mine. I liked it like that, so at least an option to toggle that off before a match in the settings of a game would be nice to have.

Warman, I know I said anything in my wishlist that is in already in the TW's I would like to make sure they have it in STW2 as well. I didn't play much RTW only loads of STW and MTW and it was always 2 teams attacker and defender. :(

Tomisama, Yeah that'd be pretty sweet to have cause I remember in World in Conflict people wanting the same exact thing. You had a cap on spectators and you had chat for them, but it was pretty crappy. If STW2 MP were to be pretty competitive or a future TW lots of people would like to watch the experts play in real time and replays and go over them with friends or clanmates, your ideas would fit nicely with that. Normally if it's not very competitive people don't wanna watch anyone only log on to play a few games and log off for the day, but I could be wrong, so it'd be nice for them to throw it in to see how many people would use it. :)

Another thing to add to the wishlist...

Spacebar showing units endpoint as ghost - In NTW demo I only saw arrows, so what happened to the ghost of the unit where it was going to end up after you gave it a move order? Well it use to show dots of the unit anyway, but a faded ghost of the unit would be better because I worked with that A LOT in STW and MTW. It might be in NTW, but it didn't show it hitting the spacebar (only arrows ) and I was a little shocked. I hope it's in STW2 cause it's a very useful tool to setup advancing units.

[Tomisama]

I’m not very bright I guess, but I don’t understand how it can be say that these games are not competitive. Over at the Clan Wars Competition (CWC) we have been able to put together multi-partner team (3v3 and 4v4) competitions for every era from Viking to Napoleon, with never a shortage in applicant Clans. We mostly have best 2 out of 3 game knockout tourneys, and have had hundreds of Clan teams in membership, and I am sure individual team players in the thousands (ya I know those are only big numbers for Total War games ).

This last contest (still in process) was limited to 32 three player Clan Teams fighting through a five round Swiss format (every team plays in every round), in a two battle point scored competition. The top eight Clan teams are now in a best 2 out of 3 final knockout round playoff for the title of Clan Wars XXVI Champions.

Maybe we just don’t know better???


Two more wishes for the list:

It would be great to have a time coded function added to the replays, and the ability to fastforward and reverse, or at least go to a particular point in a battle (time referanced) to review the action.

And a feature that I miss from earlier games is the ability to program way-points with the caps-lock key, so you can send units on complex missions without need to re-order every direction change.

[Swoosh So]

Just my thoughts a map can easily be balanced without being a mirror of itself and i would tbh be dissapointed if i had to fight on mirror maps.

[AMP]

Total War is competitive, but for me the competition was in STW and MTW:VI because of balance. I only played a little RTW and MTW2 same with ETW because balance was off the charts in some areas. To see some people say unit selection takes skill makes me laugh and sad at the same time... you never heard that in STW. There is a reason why a lot of good players quit after VI, but only a few will understand why.

I just hope STW2 is well balanced so the competitive lvl can rise and competition can grow. If I lose or win I want it to be more so cause of my skill on the battlefield and not unit selection. I wanna see what people call skill and balance uploaded on youtube as well. :)

I like the replay ideas because that's exactly what we needed in World in Conflict when going over replays with mates.

I never used way points much because you were limited to what you could do with it. I want to be able to make a unit walk here, run there, and setup formation like this... or else I won't bother with it just like all the other RTS way points.

I'll take all kinds of maps and would like to play an unbalanced map in tournaments as well cause all you need to do is switch sides and if it's 1-1 the winner is the one with the better k/l ratio.

Lots of time yet so lets hope they at least add something good to the MP. I wanna be surprised.

[Sp00n]

TBH without a foyer I won't play, I've been playing a lot of Napoleon over the last few weeks and in general the experience is awful, you get kicked with no reason, players host clan only a lot of the time, players are rude, people slag you off in game etc. I find it quite amusing that people said the foyer from Shogun was bad in terms of idiots, the latest game with no foyer is just as bad if not worse so give us back what we had 10 years ago please.
In terms of balance its not great and nearly every battle is a turkey shoot with players running for the best angles and the odd cav charges mainly with lancers to negate your oponents cav. There is some skill in it but in general the battles take forever and are mainly all the same, no variety at all also army selection is extremely important.

A lot of players left MP because Rome quite frankly was awful in MP unbalanced and buggy as hell and it destroyed the community from the first 2 games. I'm quite worried at the amount of units stated for Shogun 2 being 40ish, the original had 12 which was what made it more balanced online, even with Naval and Seige units thats going to be some step up in terms of units which puts us possibly back in the dreadfully unbalanced mess of the last 4 games.

I hope not I really do.

[Tomisama]

As presented above by Shibumi:

can be added as a wish to the new shogun game, please consider pricing for units for multiplayer, do not base it on the single player experience

And alluded to by Spoon:

I'm quite worried at the amount of units stated for Shogun 2 being 40ish, the original had 12 which was what made it more balanced online, even with Naval and Seige units thats going to be some step up in terms of units which puts us possibly back in the dreadfully unbalanced mess of the last 4 games.

The crux of the problem is that Multiplayer has always been a derivative of Singleplayer, made worse now by the illusion that “more is better”.

Multiplayer pricing, army configurations, and maps, need to be considered and designed separately for Multiplayer use alone.

That is the only way you will have a true competitive balance.

Then once that is perfected, apply that understanding to Singleplayer design to get the very best game that can be created (and the best AI).

Games are about competition; people versus people or people versus machines, it is all about the quality of the competition.

And designing from highest level (people versus people) is the correct order of successful game design.

And more is not better, only better is better, and in the long run this will prove out in sales.

We are swimming in a world of choices, but it is not the choices we are after, it is the best product; in this case the highest quality competitive game you can produce!