Is our Game dying

[WarlordStorm]

Hi all just found my way to this forum, and thought i would put this question to the masses playing STW. I get the feeling that our game is currently in a state of decline, with many of the players i used to spend time online with no longer around. Clans seem to be disappearing one after another; even some of the larger and better known groups such as Space Cowboys and alike. New players certainly seem to be appearing but it seems as if they are only replacing the better ones who have left the game, is it the Patch? is it that the groups are now fragmented, broken into two groups one playing STW and one playing Mongols or is the game just getting stale. Many of the old clans also appear to have either dissapeared or no longer are able to maintain what was once there strengh in numbers, with webpages dissapearing quicker than you can keep up. And finally it was not long ago that on a saturday night or sunday you would consistanly find 100+ players online whereas now 50 is exceptional.I would really love to know what people think are my concerns valid or simply a delusion in my own mind.

Regards,WarlordStorm

[DoCToR]

I wouldn't say our game is dying...

More like our game is in a period of transition between the STW and MI expansion pack. Moreover, since the xpack brought so many improvements to the SP game i imagine it is alive more than ever.

The transition period is only really for the MP aspects...Once this period of transition has satisfactorily passed i'm sure you'll see the MP side blossoming again

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Online name: DrJambo Ouchi

[theforce]

Hmmm l think that you are wrong. Well there is a decline and many people maybe are focused on more importand things than playing games now. Anyway TotalWar is the best online RTS game ever and l don't think it will die. A good way to make the Shogun powerful again is having organised clans. Think that amazed me is the honor many players have in MI. They have very high honor but when you play them they don't reflect such a great player.
Things must change. In this l agree with you.


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Don't use only honour, use theforce, too.
http://lod.fateback.com

[NinjaKilla]

Definately dying.

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There's only one SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR

[Catiline]

I was playing incognito last night. THe main problem as I see it is the honour hogs. They play in the snow and they camp on hills. They deploy as far into the red zone as possible so htey can't be flanked. If htey DO anything it's rush you wiht Monks and NoDs as soon as you get close.Now, Tactically all this is sound and if it mattered would be exactly what I would do. But htese guys forget it's supposed to be fun, and some of us don't have the connections to host more than the odd low koku game. When I play 5 last night, mainly comp, but some friendly, and something along htese lines happens eveytime it's not good. Did i get a rematch in any of them after attacking mountains in the snow., of course not, it was out and hte foyer to find out their new honour, which considering it was new to test this last night and finished on about 94 wasn't giving htem much bonus. But it wasn't fun.

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Oderint dum metuant

[NinjaKilla]

Cat, I've said this in other threads, but I avoid all this bolla by just not playing comps (except fpr clan games). That way although you get to chuckle at people in the foyer 'challenging' others to run up mountains in the snow, you don't actually have to suffer the irritation of playing these games. Most people recognise that the honour system sucks and personally (I'm not knocking people that do pay attention to honour) I don't feel the need to prove anything. Like I know how god/bad most people are, I think that most know how good/bad I am without looking at a 3 figure number.

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There's only one SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR

[Vanya]

The are only 2 constants in life: Death and Taxes.

Thus, death of the game as you know it is inevitable as has a 100% chance of happenning. But life is also cyclical, with the death of some feeding the birth of others. Thus, be reassured that those you lost will likely reincarnate under the guise of new flesh within the next generation of players, and will be joined by new talent. STW was the 20th century, and WE/MI is the new millenium. And you are stuck on the countdown at Times Square for the New Year celebration!

[Anssi Hakkinen]

Nah, the game isn't dying. There are just periods more active and less active. I was first concerned about the game "dying" in March or thereabouts, but the following months brought on a resurgence of clan and MP activity I can't find any external explanation for - other than it being a more active period than the previous one.

I expect the final patch and the modding to improve the situation - from my vantage point, some of the STW community's most active periods have been in the times without any external impetus for activity, but such impetus is now present in abundance. The community is still going strong - sometimes in some areas and sometimes in others, but always somewhere. STW has proved itself to be a game that truly endures.

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"One cannot accomplish things simply with cleverness. One must take a broad view. It will not do to make rash judgments concerning good and evil. However, one should not be sluggish. It is said that one is not truly a samurai if he does not make his decisions quickly and break right through to completion".
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo: Hagakure

[solypsist]

hey man i am totally addicted to the sp campaign games. i swear i'm on it every night. i come home from work, spend a few minutes talking to my girlfriend, and then try to rush her to bed so she can get to sleep so i can play stw! it's gotten so bad i found myself trying to tuck her in at 9:30!! she hates this game.

[Catiline]

NK I know that, usually I only play friendlies for precisely this reason, htough the problem wasn't entirely confined to Comp games last night. It' s just when there are only comp games up, which seemed to be hte situation gfor about 2 hours last night when I was on you don't have much choice. It's daft, there can be 5 comps set up with good latency, all begging for players, and a foyer of people asking for friendlies to be hosted. You don't want to join comp if you htink you're going to get dropped even if you are playing an idiot

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Oderint dum metuant

[Matrix2]

There situation is that the masses of warrior monks+guns factor is too constant to see.

Whereas maps like Totomi could no longer be a fair map to complete( when skills reaches a certain level), and others such as green are too boring for many to play.

We need new balance/design in troops and maps. We may need to enhance the effectiveness of cavalry and the accuracy of archers and ability of the naginatas.

We need a new patch. A patch that gives life to the game we once adored.

[evilc]

ok, i will buy MI, eventually

[Cruelintentions]

combination of:
bad server
ppl crying all the time
small room number
cheaters
bad patchs
and arogant ppl

r certainly killing the fun of this game off

[MIZILUS]

Yup, unfair ladder-climbers (snow, huge hills) or they play nothing but the mongols and think they are really somethin. AND COULD SOMEONE PLEASE BE ORIGINAL AND PLAY SOME OTHER MAP THAn TOTOMI!!!!! Jesus! Go into the foyer and all you see is totomitotomitotomi. Who was the idiot that told these people that "totomi" is the fairest map?

Mizu you wanna play Awaji then?

Guys, if only CA included all the map pack on the official patch...everyone would have the maps...thus everyone would play the giant amount of flat custom maps around.

Since most newbies don't have the map pack, thus everyone plays totomi which is known to be the fairest original map.

Tera

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Honour to Clan Torîi Aku.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us...

[MagyarKhans Cham]

seems someone is referring to my khan here.

for me the biggest problem is the unbalance and the number of assholes around. although small in numbers they keep parasiting on many others.

furthermore it is common that a game looses interest. Shogun is a brilliant game but the lack of professional support will kll teh game and we can only hope it will be better in the crusaders future.

[Vanya]

Quote Originally posted by MIZILUS:
Yup, unfair ladder-climbers (snow, huge hills) or they play nothing but the mongols and think they are really somethin. AND COULD SOMEONE PLEASE BE ORIGINAL AND PLAY SOME OTHER MAP THAn TOTOMI!!!!! Jesus! Go into the foyer and all you see is totomitotomitotomi. Who was the idiot that told these people that "totomi" is the fairest map?[/QUOTE]

YEAH! Go get the vanyasake map... I have yet to see any bastids online playing on this map... When I try to host on this map, everybody says they don't have it! This sucks... I thought they sent out a map pack with all the new maps...

[Note to self: get map pack sometime... ]

[Puzz3D]

I believe that CA/DT will improve the playbalance of the WE/MI online game to something that is acceptable and interesting to the majority of players, and, once that happens, people who have temorarily left will come back to the online game.

Being rushed or shot off the battlefield by an all-this or all-that army just isn't fun, and it isn't fun to me to be dishing that sort of thing out either. I want something more challenging where you must use a variety of unit types to be successful. Why even have all these different types of units if you loose by using most of them. It's not easy to balance something like this, but there is still hope as CA/DT has not given up on it, and is listening to the community.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Shoko]

After all these discussion,its just a matter of ppl moving with the times, which is a shame...as we all know STW is without doubt a superb game

[WarlordStorm]

Well it is great to see how this subject has shown there is stll much passion out the for the game, and also the fact that it seems to have crystalized some of the real issues hurting the game at the moment.
1. honour grabbers who only play heavily biased maps, that anyone could win on.
2. rematches never being offered, to be fair and even.
3. Continual whinging and provoking of players who nag people to come and play them.
4. The lack of large friendly games available for the sheer fun of playing.

Two quick thankyou's DragonSnake who offered me a rematch on same map same koku so we both had a chance to attack and defend.And two Cancritter who always puts up large games for groups to play for fun, thankyou guys you are what the game needs
So is there anything the older players and Clans can do to help smooth the transition period ??????

Regards,
The Storm!!

[LordTed]

Shogun for me is as fun as it ever has been. Its just that every so often you must add an extra dimention to the type of play that you do online and off line. In my case playing with low koku has made shogun a lot more interesting for me.

[ragedevil]

The Game went through a big bad patch and still hasn't totally recovered yet, but seems to be on the way. On the topic of camping honnour hogs, there are many out there and always have been, even in old shogun 50% or more of the names in the top 100 never attacked, or played a flat map in their whole lives. The guys who do this obviously dont beat many people at much so get great fun in winning whether unfair or not...sad but true...solution; dont play people who host hill maps, just check the map and game description before you join it. If all of us did this, they would only get games from newbies with low honnour and playing guys with low honnour only lessens your average, thus lessening your own honnour. I hope CA do improve a few more aspects of the online game, such as guns being far too effective and Jap Cav too weak, as this will bring back even more of the old skool players i reckon and improve the overall standard of the online game
RageDevil

[Khan7]

Hmm.. perhaps decree a community-wide boycott of informal comp games, and set up a parallel system to determine some sort of loose ranking based on tourneys only?

Sounds like a plan to me.. an automatic honor-dispenser is too easily abused, and is the root of most of the evil in the online community. Change the system so that skill is not only "honorable" but beneficial and required, and the community could well turn right around..

Anyway, I really haven't played online much recently, but there's my idea..

Matt

[WarlordStorm]

Interesting Khan, what about a patch that forced players to play one game each way, that is one attack then defend after attack you must defend or can not play and visa versa. That would make the game totally even

WarlordStorm

[A Nerd]

Though things die...they will inevitably be reborn...

[tootee]

This is what I suggest. Boycott Totomi and other such popolar maps (not saying they aren't no good ) for a week! Refuse to play them for a week! Host new maps! We have so many good new maps around.. Vanya's Obake's, Krae's.. and mine (gf_totomi)

We'll get people familiar with these maps, and eventually they will get to like them. Changing is always difficult, but I'm sure we all can make MI/WE like what once STW is.

Recall the old days when we were all starting out.. who would have guess Totomi will become so popular.. it's because it's new (then), refreshing, fun, lots of people is playing on it.. I'm sure many of the new maps are as fun! Give Totomi a break and let's rock&roll!

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tootee the toothless warrior (aka goldfish shimazu)
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[This message has been edited by tootee (edited 10-12-2001).]

[Major Robert Dump]

The game is as fun for me as it ever was, but maybe thats because i have a lot of Ugly padres to play friendlies with.

As for Comps, i still play them and will play anyone regardless of their honor and give rematches out the kazoo, although if i know of someone being an honor hog i will play only if they let me host (tee-hee!)

Hope to see u alls online
Go Sooners!


"I am so smart! S-M-R-T"

[Tachikaze]

I stopped playing for a while because I got busy. I received the Warlord Edition as a gift and I've started again to learn the new troop types and modifications.

Some of you have referred to a "bad patch". Is that the original 1.11, the new Mongol/Japan games themselves, or the 1.01 beta (which I haven't loaded yet)?

[Jaeger]

Don't personally think shogun is dying as such, the MI should keep it going for another year or so i guess but then that depends if someone comes along and puts a bullet up EA's a$$ with a better game. There looks like some real gems that are due for release or in development. As always the honour table reflects nothing except for a few who deserve their positions but these are outnumbered by the undeserving (you know who you are ). The abusive and arrogant culture has gained momentum with the influx of newbies which makes it all the more fun to kick their butts. Funnily enough tho i've been beating a few of these so called high honour players and theyve escaped just b4 the end, weird huh?
Anyone else find the gun culture amusing? haha i played one guy who had 8
For me as long as these idiots grace the server the game will not die as i have plenty of peeps to try to take down, be it on a hill or everyones apparent fave totomi

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FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS

[This message has been edited by Jaeger (edited 10-12-2001).]

[Krasturak]

Gah!

Krast is hoping that the Clan War campaign will spice things up!

Who cares about playing for 'honour' when you can play for land for your Clan!

Those are real stakes, and real excitement.

Also, the number of idiot honour climbers is annoying but can safely be ignored.

The real danger is if the numbers fall below a critical point ... then there won't be enough to sustain the game online.

How many do we need? 20 players at a time? That's a total community of about 2,000 regular players, something like that.

Hmmmmmm.

Perhaps offering free soup will keep people involved?