First MP impression

[Kocmoc]

edit: After one day, CA came along with a quick patch, which solved many of the problems i wrote (you can read below).
For the sake of fairplay, CA was insane fast. If they continue to work this way, we will face a good time.

Right now, you can play teamgames, mostly it works, there are still some freezes and crashes, but a lot less than the first day!



One word i did repeat yesterday evening a few times was: Disaster!
At one point i was about to go berserk, but here comes the full story.

1. Changing settings still crush my game, so i cant lower clouds or change anything, game keeps crashing

2. Making a team with 2 or 3 people (i doubt with 4 it will be any better) is a complete disaster.
We crashed full time. If it ever start, than you sit there in the Setup-screen and the game doesnt start!
Since all get the "invalid Army" message. But you can check what who spent, its a bug, this message show up, even if all just sit there with the general!
This makes you reset your game hard, since you cant leave this screen.
We spent 3 hours and managed to play twice a 2v2, the rest of this 3 hours we crashed fulltime. Its annoying, its broken, its terrible done.

3. Disconnects happen a lot, player drop from the game, the game doesnt start. Your stuck to on the field with the black screen telling you its loading or waiting for other, than suddenly it shut off and its over.

4. After battles i see unitstatistics and to get out of the screen the left-side icon is greyed out and dont work at all.
Esc seems to work, at least it did a few times.

5. The Clancampaign-challange is (as expected) very dubious, noone will care right now about it anyway, people want to unlock maps in the first place.


In the name of fairness, the 1v1 Matchmaker works good. The games start, and you dont got crashes so far.
Hosting battles the normal way works also, we had just one test, but it worked. But with so many lvl1 people out there, noone join a game where they see an average of 4 or 5 stars... which is disappointing.



Summary. If you want to play MP right now, play 1v1 and use the MM, this is the only way to enjoy the game online, forget about the rest and dont think about to play as team. This needs a patch/fix.

Im sure, after 1 or 2 weeks with people having anything unlocked, we will see more hosted battles and we will probably end like other TW versions, with hosting and joining the normal way. Unless CA get the MM working properly for teams.

I want to add, that many people we played yesterday was highly frustrated, most was pretty much annoyed from all the crashes and bugs.
We got a bad start and i hope, that we dont lose too many new players.

[Crandaeolon]

So, would the best way to unlock stuff be playing loads of 1vs1 MM games under a clan? I understand clanmembers can get some kind of skillupgrades that no one else can...

[Kocmoc]

So, would the best way to unlock stuff be playing loads of 1vs1 MM games under a clan? I understand clanmembers can get some kind of skillupgrades that no one else can...

weird, i did answer already, but it did disappear.

At some point you can do that and use clanskills, yes. You need first vets and than you need to bring them to a certain lvl. Those upgrades you can only apply if your veteran is at least lvl 4 (i hope im not wrong).
This said, in the early start it wont make any difference at all.

Also, im not even sure, if you want to pay for these upgrades, they are expensive and it will cost you a lot.

[Cheetah]

So, would the best way to unlock stuff be playing loads of 1vs1 MM games under a clan?

hi Cranda,

Yes, yes. If you are not a member you won't be able to play on MP clan campaign maps on the first place. Of course you can create a one member clan and play like that, but arguably you won't have much of chance to win territories that way.

[t1master]

so it's similar to the last few releases in terms of stability and connectivity and bugs upon release. community pays to beta test? please post if it gets better kocmoc. :)

[gollum]

are you "wait and see" too t1master?

[t1master]

big time, especially since i'm pretty sure i'm pushing the bottom end of the required min specs. i'll probably need a partial hardware upgrade to play, but i'm not going to do it, if the game doesn't warrant it.

[gollum]

Once bitten, twice shy. Same here especially after the demo. Still have some hope but i'm waiting to see what people that know the game inside out will say within the next month or so.

From forum posts, it appears that for most the game runs just as good or even better than NTW in the same hardware/machine.

[Risasi]

:Turns back to his copies of RTW and M2TW:...

[DthB4Dishonor]

I believe they already did some stuff to the MP servers earlier this morning. So that might help with 2v2 and 3v3 MM's.

[Kocmoc]

The SP-campaign seems to be fun to play and works good, i follow different boards/sides and i can read almost only good about the SP-campaign.

My Warning is, if you want to buy the game for MP in the first place, wait with it, dont do it! You will be dissapointed. I hate to say this and i did hold back with my opinion till release, but this is truly a disaster. On each forum people complain about the many crashes and all the bugs. While I was a bit negative about gameplay and balance... haha, forget it, the game isnt even stable to play right now.

If you want MP, wait before you buy the game. It can be fixed and Im sure, CA is working on it. Just right now its apart from the 1v1´s almost unplayable.
If you look at steam, people reconnect fulltime, i played yesterday from 18:00 till around 01:00 and i stopped counting my crashes/freezes/reconnects by about 20.
Playing 1v1 is okay, its working good.
If you want to play a teamgame your doomed, really doomed! I spent yesterday 3 hours to try to get some 2v2 goin and i had 2 games in this 3 hours and more than 20 crashes! If this isnt bad, than i dont know what it is.

[gollum]

I have the feeling they will fix that though, Kocmoc. Its too much if the Clan Campaign depends on it.

SP seems good for people that enjoy that, yes, and i think that was clear pre-release too.

[Sp00n]

I played a fair few 2v2 games using the Match Maker with MizuTears, lots of fun tbh for me even though most of them were low funds, there are a lot of 1v1 1 gens out there but it was launch day so thats to be expected.

Later on in the evening the MM broke, games either crashed, turned in sea or siege battles or just woulnt start. This seems to of been fixed though as later on and this morning I played a fair few 1v1s with no issues.

When making normal games we coulnt get anyone to either see the games or join not sure which tbh as we could join the games friends were hosting.
I did experience a steam crash at about 10.30gmt also and Im geting issues trying to join Aggony clan.


Disasters a strong word though, it seems perfectly playable to me on MM at least and most people are going to initially use MM to gear up their gens anyway. I had a whole lot of fun and its a major improvement over Rome, MTW2, and Empire, NTW I just didnt like the era but the game itself was ok online.

Sure its a buggy but its still the most fun ive had online with a TW since MTW. The avatar levelling is pretty addictive too,not sure what I think about the bonus building though, they are already on day one causing issues for me with peeps moaning I'm capturing too many or just as i said they would camping and rotating on the best one.
Anyway enjoyable so far and can only improve imo of course. I can see why your dissapointed Mike but after 10 years of dissapointment from CA I think this time around I was expecting bugs and issues at launch tbh.

[AMP]

I don't know why they didn't just leave the avatar system for MM only and classic mode for custom games with an option for skill points to spend. Right now people can abuse that by playing with friends and settings themselves up to get the exact vets they want plus lvl them up giving free kills - and afterwards bring that to MM battles.

I don't like the way the ladder system works anyway. I can be ahead of someone with a 7-0 win streak (with only those 7 games played) who has a 30 win streak, but has 3 losses, that seems silly to me. I wish there was a classic mode MM ladder, but that would divide things up to much. It's just because I dislike how you can't lose XP with the avatar system, which ofc you can't because you lvl up from custom games as well, plus you can bring tweaked vets into MM to play for the ladder. In the end we're all going to be playing as lvl 10 in a couple of weeks and playing as lvl 10 forever *yawn*.

So far it's been running fine for me, but I've haven't played much yet either. The annoying bug for me is not being able to alt-tab or the game crashes...

[Crandaeolon]

Thanks, Koc & Cheetah. I guess I'll just set aside a few hours in the next couple of days and keep mashing the MM button. Now I'm getting reacquainted to the controls after almost 10 years of break from TW, and I've got one more question: is there a simple way to set groups so that they make one neat scalable line when rclick-dragged?

[Napoleon The Emperor Of Europe]

Yello.

Does the Multiplayer work or not?

Cause I have eight hardrives on my computer.

When should we buy it then?

probaly at the end of march?

Perhaps it could work then?

I dont belive this is happeing(CA would have tested the multiplayer a lot,before release).

so..what happens,buy it at the end of the month?

[gollum]

The game will be patched (fixed) over the next year or so Emperor. If you get it now, it will improve over time in terms of bugs (problems) for certain. You could buy it now and start playing to learn it well.

[OUT4BLOOD]

Sometimes I get stuck on 'searching for players' during MM. Very annoying.

What's with the size of the rooms also? 21,000 people playing the game at peak... and only 50-60 people in the multiplayer lobby. Can you only play with people from the same country as you?

[Kocmoc]

Sometimes I get stuck on 'searching for players' during MM. Very annoying.

What's with the size of the rooms also? 21,000 people playing the game at peak... and only 50-60 people in the multiplayer lobby. Can you only play with people from the same country as you?

1. Yes, there are still some bugs concerning the MM. From my experience it is the best, if you restart the game after it happend.

2. Each country seems to "sit" in one room, the only way to get into a chatroom with people from other countries is, if you are in the same clan.
If there is another way, i didnt found it yet.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Besides the CTD's I have sometimes, I really don't have any major complaints.

[OUT4BLOOD]

1. Yes, there are still some bugs concerning the MM. From my experience it is the best, if you restart the game after it happend.

2. Each country seems to "sit" in one room, the only way to get into a chatroom with people from other countries is, if you are in the same clan.
If there is another way, i didnt found it yet.

Reboot doesn't work often, i'm in a vicious circle of not being connected to MP and not being able to reconnect/refresh

[Risasi]

OUT4BLOOD,

Are you the same of Rise of Nations fame?

[CanCritter]

my first impression was that TW and WOW had a bastard lovechild and called it shogun2...could do without the powerups

[Sid_Quibley]

my first impression was that TW and WOW had a bastard lovechild and called it shogun2...could do without the powerups

Lol, was thinking exactly the same from peoples comments, though I aint bought the game.
So any scope in this game for good old fashioned 4v4 slugfest? Preferably without gimmicks.

[quadalpha]

Just to offer a different perspective on things: I've been playing TW since Shogun, but I've never ventured online before until today. It is awesome! Playing against something that is not AI! No pausing! Not finding out that the unit you charged was not katana but yari sam until your cav has routed (because you couldn't pause)! I'll probably be a jaded vet with time, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

[Ishmael]

I wholeheartedly agree with the fellow above - I'm new to MP too! Just a quick question, has the bug whereby your opponent can start with negative funds been fixed yet? A few times when I've played, I clicked on the opponent's tab and it says -500 or the like, and the countdown circle at the bottom will say 'unable to start as a player has overspent' or somesuch, yet it's still starting. Are they just changing troops quickly and I'm not noticing?

[AMP]

If someone goes over funds and the timer runs out, it just takes away that unit which made funds go over and then starts, so no worries.

I agree with the one guy it is abit of a pain having to mouse over units just to tell some apart, instead of just being able to read off banners, but sadly all groups share the same icon.

[quadalpha]

I can't complain; my graphics settings are so low that I can't see anything on the banners anyway.