A revolution for Totalwar Multiplayer

[Swoosh So]

MIke simspon stated at the eurogamer expo that he charged the mp team for shogun2 to make a revolution for totalwar multiplayer in the game.

MISTAKE imo and heres why... The game has more than enough multiplayer modes and all of them need looking at and improved unit controls bugs hosting bugs a FULLY FUNCTIONAL CHAT LOBBY maybe a ladder better mp map design and more map selection unit balance drops every single night when online instead theyre going to focus their energy on something completely new, if that something new is the above then great its just what the series needs! if its a new game mode and no focus on the above then oh for god sake mike simpson!

I get the feeling it will be some sort of multi battle setup where you fight a series of battles to some outcome and improve your general through some tech tree he has and even if thats great why even bother if the basics remain with flaws and the tools needed by a community to participate in mp are not there ie a fully functional chat foyer an unbuggy game with plenty of options for map selection - why bother.. Just get the mp right then in the expansion release your revolution.

They should live stream the meeting where the mp team present the idea to mike and his team and give the community a facepalm option to vote on the new direction of multiplayer. New modes could be fun but the only one the mp community really asked for was the mp campaign and thats sitting currently at 1v1 and needs improved. the others DID NOT WORK and we never did ask for them either, rememeber king of the hill? kill the general etc? me neither.

You can tell i expect the worst but the words a revolution for mp are bothering me that means something completely new and makes me think the problems that matter wont be addressed. People dont play the mp becuase quite frankly its crap if it remained solid throught the series it would have a massive following by now but they completely threw it away and never looked back after rome totalwar. We all know it were all sick of saying it.


If theyre pulling out all the stops and adding this "revolution" and fixing all of the above then great i salute them but highly doubt they will manage it since its only a year since NTW came out.

Ofc i could be off on the wrong track here but revolution does not mean fixing the games current problems. i wonder why theyre so secretive about the mp, would it not be better to get the communitys views on what theyre doing and we can all give ideas on how that would work and work well? hell it may generate some excitement at the very worst it would let them know not to waste their time on a bad idead cause the community doesent want it.

You could add in the most dynamic character progression for a general and a type of mini campaign for them to level up in and after a while noone will bother with it since the basics are broken. The thinking for Singleplayer - Lets fix the basics like AI before it goes out the door - the thinking for multiplayer (which is in a far worse state than singleplayer) lets do something revolutionary.....it just smells bad.

Look at the multiplayer campaign its good but its a REAL pain to setup a game and find somone who to play against who will spend the required time and effort to make it work, theres no lobby you either pre arrange a game with somone you know or you take a chance on some random guy that enters your game... If you had a lobby you could discuss and get to know the people online and find a suitable opponent easy. Its 2010 and were using the internet! and we cant chat!

So either we get a new game mode where you level your general maybe in a ladder or some series of battles that lead to some outcome or we get multiplayer done right with a great foyer for the community to interact, all the movement bugs fixed and hosting issues and drops resolved and a great selection of multiplayer maps maybe including a map editor and units finely balanced. I know which one i want and i know if i had to have both which order i would have them in.

Mike simpson says he wants as many people playing mp as do single player its just not going to happen this release, get the multiplayer right then we can aim for that in a future release. A new battle mode is not going to bring thousands of players running to multiplayer thats broken that would take something on the scale of battlenet and even then why would they stick with it when the basics arent there?



EG Expo: Shogun II presentation

http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/eg-e...tation?size=hd at 09:50 in he mentions the big area for new features for multiplayer and his revolution..

[TosaInu]

I get a bit nervous about things like this too. Too much ambition can slow a project down to zero. It's better to sort the basics first.

[Swoosh So]

I get a bit nervous about things like this too. Too much ambition can slow a project down to zero. It's better to sort the basics first.

Exactly, maybe im over reacting as usual but i was so glad to hear there was a dedicated multiplayer team and to hear this kind of talk makes me worry abit for the game. Maybe what mike meant was they were totally overhauling multiplayer the foyer the way its hosted ladders everything and making it a big focus. we will see...

But remember they said they would make a multiplayer campaign back in 2000? well look how that turned out we got a 1v1 multiplayer campaign in 2010! The post where the shogun announced it is still in the shogun forums here.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Didn't they say the same thing for M2TW though Swoosh that they were "dedicated towards helping the Mutliplayer community" and M2TW failed to keep the older vets interested for more then a few months. I remember in 2006 this very month when the game came out, me and Magyar just finished a game (he beat me in case you are wondering ) and I asked him what he thought of it. I believe he told me it wasn't bad but it needed "at least 3 patches".

[Swoosh So]

They have said the same thing with every game just enough to give people interested in multiplayer some hope for the series, they have never on any occasion delivered for multiplayer after the release of mtw1 except with Napoleon totalwar it is a small step in the right direction and "playable" I dont mind NTW at all except that it suffers from bugs and lack of grouping options the community sucks cause theres no chat foyer and the total lack of maps drives me crazy! give a map editor i say and dont make the game go incompatable just because you have a few maps installed.....jeez. People always copy other people and CA will probably go big on some kind of achievement thing, trouble is games that work with achievements in MP are already very solid! totalwar mp is not solid at all and lacks the very basic tools the community needs to thrive. Whats the use of having new game modes if noones gonna play them.

[pevergreen]

I can't think of anything that they could include that would be new, or beneficial.

Sure, plently of cool features that have been done before in other games.

Until they get something like the battle.net 2.0 that will come (add chat rooms/clans and its fine, apart from custom games...grrr) But that is basically the top of multiplayer experiences for now. All of CA's games fall way short of that. Set the basics up and you can try funky new things, like a twist on your idea Swoosh, how about battles back and forth. You play one, if you win, you move forward into their territory and play another scenario where you have different objectives. Its still MP but gives that bit of extra story/grudge incentive. "We're being pushed back, in this scenario we have to hold them at all costs". Theres no Campaign set up, its just another MP battle, but it feels like more. They could do so much with a concept like that, but if the basics are not there, its useless.

[Magyar Khan]

something revolutionary could not be:
- a simple worked out ladder, we had a reasonable one before
- battlemodes.... we had them before and didnt work, fun for a few days but failed....
- mp campaign 1 vs 1 we have that in ntw and its good

so what could it be....
- a flawless foyer and hosting environment....... that we didnt see before
- flawless network coding..... that we didnt use to see in the first releases of many tw series....
- 4 vs 4 mp campaigning
- drop in battles you can assign to people which show up for them when they login... and ur online too
- roleplaying element where u carry over your general from game to game representing you..... and over time virtues and abilities are added when u win or lose games.....and when he dies u have to start over with him

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

- roleplaying element where u carry over your general from game to game representing you..... and over time virtues and abilities are added when u win or lose games.....and when he dies u have to start over with him

Maybe we can also use this to do our Japanese Interactive Histories also Magyar.

[Swoosh So]

Theres only one thing for it we must perform an INCEPTION on mike simpson, a simple idea that the foundations must be strong before expanding. Or that the basics are crucial.
I need to go assemble a team anyone here a good architect? It will pay well but do not join the team lightly his mind is most likely highly militarised and trained to resist intrusion with battlefield ninja, elephants and flaming pigs! We will surely encounter naked fanatics on the 2nd level and will have to be careful not to get caught in the limbo of the 8 player campaign from which there may be no return...

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

I'm a Hussar, I can scout and move fast and fight aggressively, I'm in.

[Swoosh So]

You will need a totem warmann, A Totem is an object that is used to test if oneself is in one's own reality (dream or non-dream) and not in another person's dream. I use my steam account if i can host more than 2 4v4s in a row without a drop i know im still in the dream world...

[Kocmoc]

Well, im mostly with you on this topic, but its a bit "small minded".

All I see here over and over again, are people who talk about the current community. Sure, the current community is the thing you have to work with now.
But what happens, if (lets say) there are 100k new people once S2 hit the shops? What again is the "community"?
Right, the current community is not interesting and important at all, unless you dont get new/more/other player.

If MP will be a success, than the current community means nothing at all, thats logic...


The problem here is the lack of communication, while each successfully working puplisher/producer is involving the player more and more, with tons of infos, movies, betatests and so on, CA simply ignore it and do what they always did....
The problem for CA is also clearly around, the "times" are going out, CA has to think about magic eras or future eras and if this doesnt help, they make a revival, but all in all the game keeps same.
You have a campaign, with a map to move units and build up things and the MP part where you fight the battles, in the end it didnt changed much back from 2000 till today.
CA hast to grow up and they dont do that, apart from better grafix the game dont really got better.

Sorry, time is running and if CA cant move on and improve greatly they are dead in a few years.

Koc

[Tempiic]

Revolutionary would be something akin that battletech 3025 MMO that got cancelled or whatever it was called

Like at the moment you log in, you assemble your army and then you walk around a map (either a heavily zoomed in map, or a more strategic one) where you encounter other armies and then you'll start fighting them if you cant outmanouvre them 24/7. Or something like that. Quite simply said and lots of details to be fleshed out and can go lots of different directions, but generally speaking, that would be quite a revolutionary MP TW and RTS wise.

Other than that, after listening to that broadcast, I am completely unsure what to think, and what they would consider revolutionary for MP. Slowly I am thinking and dreading it would have something to do with unit abilities, rpg elements and sieges. But I'd guess that the sequal of S2TW will turn out to be better anyways.

Btw I am not sure who he is, but I find him not such a pleasant speaker to listen to. Not a bad voice though. Sorry ;)

[Swoosh So]

Hes the head honcho at CA, mr Dr Who himself mike simpson.

[Tempiic]

Right. Uhm lovely voice though ;)

Also did he say 13/14/15/30/40 different unit types in the game? I can't hear the difference between these numbers well.

[Swoosh So]

Btw i have to disagree mike totalwar has changed, theres mp campaigns drop in battles, naval battles and ofc different eras each new release or at least an old era on a new engine. Most games work this way look at call of duty, world of warcraft essentially theyre the same as they were day 1 with just as many changes as totalwar. Its fine to make changes now and then and i think they need to make them to spice up single player but multi is different it has many problems and not even the most basic stuff is there. Its not like mp has gotten steadily better its gotten mostly worse with each release so what im saying is lets get the basics right and build on it with each release like they should have done from shogun onwards instead of having it static and then declining from rome onward. And if theres 100k new players in multi there still will be the same community problems if theres no foyer. At least with a foyer we would have the chance to mould some community no matter how many play. There could be 200k people online and we'd never know unless they all joined a hosted game 1 by 1 and we counted them..

[Tempiic]

In a way, thats revolutionary too right? I mean not all revolutions proved to be a good thing... or much change in the end.

[Swoosh So]

40 i think.

Btw hes a nice peep really every jacket he buys im sure that money is given to charity :)

[Tempiic]

Well he does sound nice, and more importantly, enthusiastic. Bit less of uhms would have been nice. I think 14 different unit types then. :P

Anyways this is what I got so far that affect MP... everything else I am not caring much about.


It be secret until release, but the focus was something revolutinary, but at this time he isn't sure how revolutinary it is or will be.
There be lesser amount of unit types, but they are much more customizable than before.
General focus on RPG elements, sieges and unit special abilities.
Also a focus on pathing and collisions...and for some reason japanese trees.
Duration of a melee sequences/rounds is longer than before.
Faction abilities got mentioned, but could be simply limited to SP.
Unlike european naval warfare, japanese naval warfare allows for a rock/scissor/paper approach much better.
Battlefield Ninja's. Very likely.

[Swoosh So]

Battlefield ninjas are not such a downer anymore, many units in ntw work the same way and can hide in the open. They will probably be able to deploy advanced like the spanish units also. Im not really one for realism id be quite happy playing with orcs elves and dragons tbh. Although with shogun its kinda different as the setting is already nice and cool so better its left unchanged.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

You will need a totem warmann, A Totem is an object that is used to test if oneself is in one's own reality (dream or non-dream) and not in another person's dream. I use my steam account if i can host more than 2 4v4s in a row without a drop i know im still in the dream world...

Sounds good Swoosh. I'm hoping to play in 2 3v3's without someone leaving or crashing.