Petition List

[Tera]

There is one thing we all agree on: Multiplayer needs several fixes and additions. It's not satisfactory as it is. It's useless to fight among ourselves on what to fix and what not: especially on rather trivial/merely annoying tidbits - or else the developers will just divide and rule. And I don't blame them when all they see are a handful of multiplayer monkeys fighting on a piece of bread. Bachus often mentions a prioritised list of multiplayer wishes --this should be done.

However, this petition is flawed in certain aspects. The list was posted middle-way in the thread and the discussion is rapidly degenerating. Let's first agree that multiplayer needs attention, needs a complete, extensive patch. This is the whole purpose of the petition. CA are saying that "multiplayer is good as it is". Let's first show them it's not...

Then we can move on to a complete, prioritised list ...and hopefully can start a discussion with CA on what is fix-able and what is not. For example -realistically - the general will still have the special ability to rally. The community is divided on the issue and personally I don't see a reason why those who didn't play STW/MTW before would want it changed. For God's sake, the struggle here is not between those who played STW/MTW and those who didn't. It's not the hardcore vs noobs. The struggle is between those who want change and will fight for it, and those who want to resist change or are indifferent to it: either because they never saw Total War MP as it was before (ie. new players) or because they are of the "will you stop ranting" stock, who accept RTW as a totally new game and are willing to start anew. I'm sure many new players would fully appreciate most of our concerns about MP. The new players never saw a 4v4, never had withdraw or rout: its our responsibility to share our concerns with them. We would undoubtedly gain many new powerful allies, because we would pull the marketing target group of CA onto our side.

Some issues will never be solved. The old multiplayer community enjoyed the old features while the newer community is enjoying the new ones. The old timers are just fond of the traditional way-of-things and want to resist change or evolution. Here are two: the run ('r') toggle and the rally special ability. CA will never change anything if an issue/s is only affecting the smaller hardcore, old multiplayer community, while the newer players are fully enjoying themselves. And you and I can't blame them for that. CA will only fix issues which the large majority of the whole community would benefit from.. That's why we need to identify the issues which should be given priority and are agreed upon by everyone. There are several: I don't think anyone would object having better logfiles, the F1 unit screen info, the option to choose the same faction twice or more in the same game or a map editor! And we're NOT speaking of tidbits in unit balance yet -- and there will be probably many! We need to work on these issues, and make sure we get the support of everyone.

Other issues are all about flexibility. For example, let's take 4v4:

PROS: 4v4s were huge fun, it was very exciting with eight armies clashing against each other.

CONS: 4v4s in RTW would lag too much. Moreover, most competitions used 3v3 anyway, where's the problem? In addition, now we have 20units/army so - ha! - you still got your 10,000 troops!

Solution? Give us a 4v4 option. Those who don't want to play 4v4 won't be coerced to play it, wouldn't they? However, give the possibility for everyone to play 4v4! If it lags, we can always restrict the number of units/player...say having sixteen units per player rather than twenty - while still having eight brains in one huge game.

Another take...the unit tax (5th+ unit of the same type costs more) was removed in RTW. The unit tax was introduced in MTW merely as a 'medicine' against mediocre unit balance. There were several overpowering units that needed to be controlled somehow and getting five, six or more of a single unit-type would prove to be extremely expensive, thus the unit tax was very good to avoid seeing 10 byzantine infantry or 10 lancers. However, removing the unit tax makes sense in a nearly-perfect balanced environment since there should be no truly overpowering units. However is RTW perfectly balanced? Having no unit tax will mean that we will be forced to create an official patch/unofficial mod balanced environment. Nothing against that, but it's reality. Through the unit tax, we could somehow get away with byzantine infantry or lancers, since their numbers were controlled at normal money levels. Obviously, there is another upside of having no unit tax: finally we can have excellent tactical battles like a player taking all-cav while another taking all-infantry - and so on - without any money restrictions.

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On again..off again...I hope we get something out of this.

I fully support the purpose of the petition.