Multiplayer is the future

[Dionysus9]

You know, Tomi, I honestly believe it is just a matter of time. I don't think CA has it in them, for whatever reason, but they have shown the others the way.

It is just a matter of time before another company figures it out and gives it to us.

We aren't really asking for much, just gameplay really. A semi-realistic simulation of real-time battlefield tactics. MTW:VI was close to what we really wanted, except it was not accessible enough to the uninitiated. RTW even less so.

Look at the "graphics" in the game of chess. . .they are virtually non-existent, and yet it survives as one of the ultimate multiplayer games of history. Why?

Because of its tactical depth and accessibility.

The magic of the game is not in the packaging or the graphics-- its in the gameplay. Why so many software companies don't get that is beyond me. Flashy graphics and packaging might hook a few suckers initially, but they don't make for word of mouth sales or repeat customers.

Generalship is a world sport, whether it is being catered to or not. The sooner someone realises this and makes a suitable interface for the players--the sooner they get rich. It really is that simple. The key is to cater to the wargamers, and if you do it well enough, they will leave their painted figures and never go back.

So far that oyster has yet to concede its pearl, but it is sitting there for the taking.

[AMP]

i've been waiting 6 yrs for a game like TW to come out with a nice campaign and features like warcraft3. TW had the game play, but lack of support and features. warcraft3 had features and support, but not the gameplay i like. reason why i stuck with TW so long is cause of the nice battles in stw, it was simple and balanced. warcraft3 kept me around cause of it's features, but not nearly as long as TW. now TW's gameplay is so twisted it's not even worth sticking around unless they do something fast.

why they have it where the graphics only look sweet zoomed in is a mind buster for me. the 2d sprities in stw with the flags on the back of units when using a high resolution looked very nice, which made the game more enjoyable and easier to tell what was going on in battle - easier to tell apart units - . the graphics only look average now that i got a new system, but not everyone should need to have a high end system just to have good graphics and a good frame rate. the 3d campaign map is nice to have i'll give them that and how you move armies like in the old LOTR, which i wanted to see very much. if they wanted to go 3d with the units in battles you make sure the graphics look sweet when zoomed out!!! not just zoomed in!!! it just pisses me off how so many show screen shots for a new game all zoomed in except for like one... zzz give me a break

now they are talking about maybe a real time campaign which you can come and go as you please? you can't be serious, that's not the way to do it. they say it would take to long to finish a campaign... well yeah that's what we want.. lol. put the sp campaign into mp and allow people to save games and an option to play small parts of it for smaller campaigns, that's all we need.

i myself don't care much for historical accuracy in a game. i just like swords, cavalry, spears, and archers, that's all i need to be happy. and something that simple is much easier to balance and saves the whining of those complaining about inaccuracy in units and time periods etc.. but anyway all they needed to do was provide a LOTR type style game with better graphics, support like warcraft3 or atleast half as much, and new or improved features.

i know i'm not that smart, as you can tell by the way i type, but com'on how long do i have to wait for a decent RTS game with a nice campaign and good support. i'll be to old or have kids to worry about by the time one comes out and than i'll have NO TIME to play games or won't be interested!:-(

[d6veteran]

The magic of the game is not in the packaging or the graphics-- its in the gameplay. Why so many software companies don't get that is beyond me. Flashy graphics and packaging might hook a few suckers initially, but they don't make for word of mouth sales or repeat customers.

Generalship is a world sport, whether it is being catered to or not. The sooner someone realises this and makes a suitable interface for the players--the sooner they get rich. It really is that simple. The key is to cater to the wargamers, and if you do it well enough, they will leave their painted figures and never go back.

The two most profound statments I've seen on this thread yet (and there have been a lot of great comments).

[CBR]

Well I have no idea on how much work it would take to make the campaign available for MP.. But as they already got the campaign with the factions and units made, it would be the easiest thing to do instead of making up something completely new.

We all know how good CA/Activision are at hyping up a game, so if they had MP campaign they should be able to hype it up even more

I know I wont be doing much playing but mods with smaller maps/provinces might be ok once in a while.

They would most likely have to change it to simultaneously movement so all players could work on their turn at the same time. I remember that was done for Civ.


CBR

[nokhor]

rant on
one of my pet peeves is when people ascribe their particular reason for liking the TW series as being the main and only valid reason for liking it. what drew me to shoggy was the strategic aspect, and the tactical, and mp sides were more like fluff for me. but that doesn't make the mp side any less valid or less important in the game itself or why other people chose to get it. so when i see people type 'single player is the core of the game' or 'multiplayer campaign is where the focus should be' or 'the heart of the game is really mp' it irritates me. just because that aspect of it is what drew you in, doesn't make the other aspects that may have drawn another player in less valid.
rant off

that being said. i was shocked and surprised to discover that i had as much if not more fun playing mp as compared to sp. what i thought would be fluff turned out to be as satisfying as the other aspect for which i bought the game but in a different way. i loved mp intensely for many months whereas i liked the strategic aspect but over a longer period of time. again, that is my personal predilcition and i don't assume it to be valid for everyone. i tried medieval mp and the same issues that eventually drove me away from shogun mp [lag, some rude players, crashes] reared their head again. i quit after less than a week online. i haven't even attempted rome mp yet, and won't until at least patch 1.2 but from being on the org, i have a pretty good idea what to expect.

my heart goes out to the players that are primarily mp'ers because i've known what it feels like when your last ally has been routed and you're scrambled up on the hill and the your two remaining opponents begin to turn their bedraggled armies towards you...its an amazing gaming experience that i've never felt in any other game and i don't think i'm likely to for a while. that is what is so disappointing because, for me at least, shogun touched on it for a while and then it got worse in medieval and now even worse in rome. i think the tw community is losing an important part of its core constituents, not the only part, not necessarily the biggest in terms of numbers, but a very critical part nonetheless, and i strongly feel that the single player aspect of the game [the part i care about the most] will suffer because of us losing the mp community. i can already see it, because while there are some aspects of the new game that are amazing, such as campaign map, siege options, there are other aspects that have stoodstill or are regressing such as suicidal generals, ai pathfinding.

[AMP]

i had been playing populous the begining mp for 3 yrs about before i went to stw. i've played the sp for PTB only once will full version and once with the expansion, but after that it was just to boring to play again vs the ai, so i moved onto mp, which kept me for yrs, but had crap support and very little features, but kept me going cause the gameplay was great. i think there still is today a small crowd playing it using there own made up servers, which would make that for some of them playing it for 6 - 7 yrs! i seriously doubt that they would be playing it, if it only had sp...

when i played the stw demo i was figuring it would be only an average game online and have an alright sp. well when i got the full version i played the sp for a week got bored of the ai and moved to mp. i ended up playing stw mp for 3yrs as well! mtw online didn't last as long cause very few features were added and the balance wasn't as great. now rtw mp isn't even worth playing it's such a mess. rtw even with the nice campaign is already getting boring vs the ai.

stepping into mp for the 1st time with a new game maybe tough at 1st, but you'll find some people you connect with sooner or later. i met lots of good people online, even had a friend i met in PTB build me my 1st pc! if i were playing only sp i would be missing out on a lot. sure it's a matter of taste and if you can hack it online or not, but it's well worth the enjoyment once you made yourself a home in mp.

i can't play a sp for yrs, maybe there are lot's that could play rtw sp for yrs? now if it has a great mp i can play it for yrs as you can see. if TW only had sp i would just download it online or buy a copy of the game and copy the cds and send them back. cause i'm not getting my moneys worth out of it when i'm only playing it for under a yr.. just a few months or less.

[KukriKhan]

nokhor wrote: "...because i've known what it feels like when your last ally has been routed and you're scrambled up on the hill and the your two remaining opponents begin to turn their bedraggled armies towards you...its an amazing gaming experience that i've never felt in any other game ..."

Man, you took my breath away with that. It made me remember, vividly, standing on a winter-windswept hillside in Shogun...alone, facing the remnants of 2 remaining opponents. They kicked my butt - but I loved it.

I had forgotten the thrill. I haven't MP'd since the early MTW days. Thanks for that memory-jogger.

[Oswald]

You know I would be happy with SP if the AI was better.

Multiplayer has dominated wargaming for 1000's of years, the present dominance of SP is, too my mind an aberration based on a market full of powerful PC's, but still in late infancy on Broadband. I just cant beleive that, say, in 20 years time, single player mode will be anything other than a training tool.

The real issue becomes whether Total War becomes the platform?

It is easy to forget that we do now in 40 mins what used to take me a weekend. It is also easy to forget that the computer is a fair referee of the rules, so many games I recall were wrecked by the simple question 'How long is an inch?'

I love the graphics, but I want an engine that makes for a good game. Otherwise we all end up 'gaming' the many bugs. It would also be nice to maintain some historical accuracy.

anyways.. great thread.

[Tomisama]

Yes, a great thread!

After if finished checking in on it this morning, and had already turn off my computer and was getting ready for work, it hit me!

“The Clan Wars Competition can sponsor a Rome Total War Campaign.”

With in seconds all of the pieces started to fall into place and I could see how it would all work out. I took a few minutes to scribble a few notes, and am now going to work up a rough draft to present to the CWC Administration Council to see if they think it could be a reality also.

Of course everything rides on the patchability of the game, and it won’t do anything for individual multiplayers who want a campaign. But I believe it can be done for Clans, and if it can (and not just in my head), then I am here by committed to do it!

For those who have been around for a while, yes I know that this has been tried before in STW. But the CWC has the extra experience of almost two years of pitting Clan against Clan. And we have a base of now 45 registered Clans, 33 of which are veterans of our style of contest, some entering teams in as many as 5 of our championships. If it can be done, it will be done...

[Puzz3D]

The magic of the game is not in the packaging or the graphics-- its in the gameplay. Why so many software companies don't get that is beyond me.

I think it is the flashy graphics that sells the game. There are more people playing RTW multiplayer right now than played any of the previous titles, and the MP battle doesn't even stay in sync. The SP game has something like 100 bugs, and it still got a 90% or better rating in every review except one which was 89%.

Total War is a commercial endevour, and the majority of the sales occur within a short time of initial release. The developer isn't trying to make the best gameplay or the longest life game, and given the good graphics in RTW the gameplay doesn't have to be as good as the previous titles. So, we get things like suicide generals and then a closeup cut sceen of him getting killed. That feature isn't an accident.

The title of this thread has the reason MP isn't the focus of Total War games. Multiplayer is the "future". It isn't the present. With CA now pursuing the mass market, that market determines what the game will be like.

[Duke John]

I only tried R:TW MP three times. The first time was before the patch, so I couldn't log on. The second time I logged on got into a game with no idea what the settings were (great feature!) and found out that it was 100K for a 1vs1. I immediately left and didn't bother to spend more time finding a proper game. The third time, I forgot to disconnect the router so I couldn't join games. With this thread in mind and all the other bugs I had already lost my appetite.

I'm not really a fervent MP player, but that is mostly because I'm spending too much time modding. I have the hopes that the Sengoku Jidai mod will catch on good enough so that I can finally just play MP games and occasionally a SP. I have the hopes that the patch 1.2 will fix alot of bugs. If that isn't the case, then I there is a big chance I will forget R:TW since I'm not going to spend hours and hours modifying a game that isn't working properly. The mod may look good, but if the gameplay isn't good then it's just a waste of time (but apparently that is not a view held by all...).

This may have sounded off topic, but it's the MP and gameplay aspect that keeps me modding TW. If it isn't patched correctly then I'm outta here.

[Swoosh So]

On the other side of the fence is BioWare's Neverwinter Nights. Five years of development created a game that tapped into a market that no one believed could exist. Explicitly designed to appeal to D&D players who wanted to bring the tabletop experience to the PC, NWN boasts ever-rising player numbers, with an average of 7500 players online at any given moment and 30,000 unique users logging on per day.



BioWare's gamble that a market for such a game exists and that independent content designers will deliver the goods paid off. Few, if any, other games permit end-users so much power over their own product. Many of the modules for Neverwinter Nights were better than the original campaign, and some rival the expansions in popular appeal and quality.

For revolutionizing multiplayer gaming, introducing multiplayer to RPGs and creating a new kind of community, Diablo and Neverwinter Nights share position Number 5 on FiringSquad's Top Multiplayer Games of All Time.


taken from firing squad website for best 10 pc games...

This could be a personal message to ca yet its just taken from the same site....

StarCraft

The game had staying power, because aside from the three uniquely balanced races, Blizzard actually took an interest in the game after release (what a concept!). They actively adjusted the game balance over a period of months and years after release and added enhancements and tweaks to the battle.net interface as well. It's amazing that many RTS games today still can't get matchmaking right, and it's five years after Blizzard provided the blueprint with Battle.net

hmm hmm

[Thrudvang]

I dont see why multiplayer is a must? 20 years from now nobody is going to be playing R:TW online, but people will still be playing the single player.

Multiplayer should remain as it is, a side option for people who want to play it, not the main focus of the game. When a game's main focus is on multiplayer there's no real point in buying it, all you can do it play it online until everyone stops playing it and then it just gathers dust.

Also, you can only do so much in multiplayer design, single player still gives limitless options.

And please, dont use FiringSquad. They overhype like crazy..

"On the other side of the fence is BioWare's Neverwinter Nights. Five years of development created a game that tapped into a market that no one believed could exist. Explicitly designed to appeal to D&D players who wanted to bring the tabletop experience to the PC, NWN boasts ever-rising player numbers, with an average of 7500 players online at any given moment and 30,000 unique users logging on per day."

It didnt bring any tabletop experience to the PC, it brought a shallow crappy game with a few (and mostly changed/broken) D&D rules slapped on. Not to mention all traces of a RPG missing.

"BioWare's gamble that a market for such a game exists and that independent content designers will deliver the goods paid off. Few, if any, other games permit end-users so much power over their own product. Many of the modules for Neverwinter Nights were better than the original campaign, and some rival the expansions in popular appeal and quality."

The original campaign was terrible and extremely dull and linear, taking a dump in the toliet can make something better than NWN's original campaign. There is probably a few good player made modules, but the engine is still total crap. Real time with horrible rule implementation still make the game suck. Can you say no cleric domains?

"For revolutionizing multiplayer gaming, introducing multiplayer to RPGs and creating a new kind of community, Diablo and Neverwinter Nights share position Number 5 on FiringSquad's Top Multiplayer Games of All Time."

Funny how neither is an RPG...

[hellenes]

I dont see why multiplayer is a must? 20 years from now nobody is going to be playing R:TW online, but people will still be playing the single player.

Multiplayer should remain as it is, a side option for people who want to play it, not the main focus of the game. When a game's main focus is on multiplayer there's no real point in buying it, all you can do it play it online until everyone stops playing it and then it just gathers dust.

Also, you can only do so much in multiplayer design, single player still gives limitless options.

And please, dont use FiringSquad. They overhype like crazy..

"On the other side of the fence is BioWare's Neverwinter Nights. Five years of development created a game that tapped into a market that no one believed could exist. Explicitly designed to appeal to D&D players who wanted to bring the tabletop experience to the PC, NWN boasts ever-rising player numbers, with an average of 7500 players online at any given moment and 30,000 unique users logging on per day."

It didnt bring any tabletop experience to the PC, it brought a shallow crappy game with a few (and mostly changed/broken) D&D rules slapped on. Not to mention all traces of a RPG missing.

"BioWare's gamble that a market for such a game exists and that independent content designers will deliver the goods paid off. Few, if any, other games permit end-users so much power over their own product. Many of the modules for Neverwinter Nights were better than the original campaign, and some rival the expansions in popular appeal and quality."

The original campaign was terrible and extremely dull and linear, taking a dump in the toliet can make something better than NWN's original campaign. There is probably a few good player made modules, but the engine is still total crap. Real time with horrible rule implementation still make the game suck. Can you say no cleric domains?

"For revolutionizing multiplayer gaming, introducing multiplayer to RPGs and creating a new kind of community, Diablo and Neverwinter Nights share position Number 5 on FiringSquad's Top Multiplayer Games of All Time."

Funny how neither is an RPG...

The only thing that you have to do is to go at the .COM (or even here) and see how many people are complaining about the RETARD "AI"...With a MP campaign youre getting a FREE Deep Blue as an opponent!!!!
While i understand the difficulty to change ones views his concepts and principles ANY company should work on the line of COMPETITION!!!
Do you actually know how MANY copies of RTW have been downloaded from emule/sold illegally? Why should a casual cutomer pay $50 for a game that will get BORING and there is NO MP? Does the CD key actually WORTH anything? And the whole "it cant be done its too complicated/none has done it before/too risky" makes me think: if all the people were thinking like that would i be typing this post in my pc? would my pc exist? Electricity?
All things aside the ACTUAL merge of RTS and RPG genres will lead imo into a tottaly new definition of the pc games market and will be copied/studied and even set as a paradigm...

Hellenes

[R'as al Ghul]

Is Multiplayer the future?
I think it's a great part of the future.
I came to Total War because I wanted strategy and tactics. I've always been a strategy gamer and actually bought Shogun because I knew the board game Shogun where you also had to conquer Japan on a province map. It's very similar.
At that time, my only MP experience was connected to 1on1 Console games, Lan-compatible games like UT or AoE and the like. When I started playing Shogun I couldn't play the 3D part because of my machines specs. It took a while until I could play this part of the game and it really became something new. But I didn't play MP until Medieval came out. It had again to do with my machine. When it was finally capable of running a 4vs4 custom I logged in to Shogun MP. This may sound silly but the atmosphere of Shogun, its whole Samurai-theme made it more attractive to me. Once logged in on a Monday evening I met people like ShinGaijin, Mimesaka, Kansuke and a lot of others who gave me the feeling to be really welcome, although I was a really bad player at that moment. But it gave me confidence to try Medieval MP, too. Well I have mixed feelings about Medieval, the Lobby was crowded with idiots, insulting each other and spamming the lobby into unreadability. I did some nice games, won some lost some but it didn't really catch me. The limited number of different armies and the almost impossibility to win with Turkish forces put an end to it. I returned to play some Nap Mod games, which was fun, but again not that good. It's also a question of time. I would often join the lobby to find a decent game and had to wait for an hour for the game while people dropped out of it, didn't join, took ages to build armies etc. In that time I could've played a few campaign battles.
BUT, after a while it's just no real challenge anymore. Well sometimes the AI could surprise you, but most of the time you would rule the field. So, the real challenge lies in MP and people want to be challenged. It's no fun if you can't loose and the ultimate fun is to compete against another human that you know nothing about except his nickname. You don't know what to expect.

The point I want to make is, that the SP part has to function properly and provide a challenging AI with tactical brains. All you really need for the MP part is a set of balanced playing pieces/ i.e. units. Like in chess. I may agree that it is up to the players community to develop the best settings for a balanced play but the rudimentary engine should provide the best start possible.
If you look at the development of computer games you can see that when computers started to communicate they started to play against each other. This development led to the idea of world-wide competition and rankings. Some console games do a very good job in this respect and I dare to say that any game that wants to be a classic has to be part of this development. Rome needs a good MP part to compete with other games. Even if the SP part would be perfect there would be the urgent wish to compete against other human players.

R'as

[Puzz3D]

I dont see why multiplayer is a must? 20 years from now nobody is going to be playing R:TW online, but people will still be playing the single player.

Play RTW SP for 20 years? I don't think so, and I doubt the game will even run on the hardware people will be using in 10 years. Multiplayer does have a limited lifespan for as long as the matchmaking server is available, but the multiplayer community is willing to move on to the each next game in the series as long as the quality of the gameplay is maintained.

We can talk about the desireability of adding a multiplayer campaign, but right now we are talking to a company that can't even maintain the quality of the battles only multiplayer. RTW has enough problems in both SP and MP that it could negatively impact sales of the add-on as well as the next game in the series.

[Maeda Toshiie]

MP wil foreverl last longer than SP. The main reason being that another human player will be a better opponent than the AI. Of course, that is IF the game is good enough, and not get tossed into the bin a few weeks after the player gets bored.

However, the MP side is not the profitable side of things. Maintaining multiplayer games require tech personnel, servers band bandwidth. All that is an ongoing cost. If the initial profits go to the dev of the game, what is to pay for the support of the multiplayers?

Starcraft is a very good example. I can imagine few would play for SP, but MP is still very much ongoing, even long after the release of WC3. Starcraft on BNet is bleeding money from Blizzard. It can hardly expect much current sales of such an old game, even when sold at rock bottom prices in bargain bins. Most of the profits come from the initial sales years ago. Tens of thousands are still playing it online. Seriously, many have really gotten their money's worth in that sense.

So basically, MP, if it truely becomes popular, reduces the profits. What they want are people to be suckered in to buy the game, play for a short while and ditch it for the next new release. So basically, flashiness is part of the business, because it suckers people to buy it. All that hype about the graphics. Wow, I can see glint from the armour! Whats that if the AI is stupid and the gameplay sucks?

Personally I am a believer of the KISS principle and also, if it aint broke, dont fix it.

Prior to the release of RTW, I had great respect for 3 companies: Blizzard, Valve and CA. Now it has gone down to 2.

CA might as well move off to the console market and sell its games there. No multiplayer to worry about.

[shingenmitch2]

I dont see why multiplayer is a must? 20 years from now nobody is going to be playing R:TW online, but people will still be playing the single player.

Multiplayer should remain as it is, a side option for people who want to play it, not the main focus of the game. When a game's main focus is on multiplayer there's no real point in buying it, all you can do it play it online until everyone stops playing it and then it just gathers dust.
...

Not to crack on you Thrud, but I see that you joined the org just this year. How many times did you play MTW as a multiplayer, did you ever play STW as a multiplayer? The reason I ask is that your comment appears to come from someone who has never played multi more than a few times.

I bought STW for the SP. Loved it. But after a time the AI just got tired and repettative. I was never an MP guy, but tried it out on a whim. It blew me away, it was amazing. It was like play Uber-chess. The challenge was unbelievable. Then I started playing team games and the strategy kicked up another notch.

I can't even play SP anymore. The AI is horrible. I win anything close to an even battle in SP. The only way the computer can hope to win is to have either overwhelming numbers and/or units that have super morale/armor/weapon upgrades -- i.e. not fair fights. In short, it is just boring.

I'd never have continued playing STW/MI/MTW for the last 4 years if it was just an SP game -- the challenge of playing "uber-chess" versus creative and surprising human opponants is what has given the game longevity.

As testament, this is the only "chat board" for a game I have ever visited, and not coincentally it is the only game I play as MP. Beacuse of MP there is a community -- I've spent many hours playing with and against the peeps that are here.


----------

Bachus is correct, poor MP numbers and lack of emphasis on MP are self-fullfiling prophecies -- if there is no committment or belief that MP can build and become a vital aspect to game sales & series longevity, then it never will be. But, yes there is $ risk involved in putting in the time. I do think though, that if that earlier suggestion (I think by Tomi?) for aggressive MP support with all those fantastic ideas for tourneys, etc would build up the MP numbers. If that was done from the start of STW and servers were always merged and tweaks/fixes/improvements were carried over from each version of TW to the next, I'm certain that the MP#'s would have steadily increased for each release. 2%, 4%, 6% perhaps more? I also think it is an exponential/critical mass type thing -- the more peeps that do it the bigger and faster it grows. But all this pre-supposes a committment to try to build the business that way.

------
I fell off my chair laughing with Yuuk's Elmo slam --- Elm that was too damn funny and came out of nowhere. Elm, you're not the only one who has perfected their rout technique -- I thought my run style was quite accomplished. Some day I will go to the derby (I got a friend that goes yearly) and will share a jug with you Elm.

[CBR]

Thrudvang is correct when he says "20 years from now nobody is going to be playing R:TW online" Its more likely 20 months and for some of us 20 minutes


CBR