RTW patch suggestions

[CBR]

Just to create a list of features that we like added or changed for MP.


4v4 - Is there a chance we can get it back or at least get some explanation why it was removed.

Denarii levels - Either remove the preset choices and go back to STW/MTW days or add more options. Having a standard is very practical for tournaments and training but its a bit difficult with so few choices. As it is right now only 5k works for 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 but thats too low. We cant have 10k for 3v3... and 4v4 when we get that back So if anything add 30k, 40k, 60k and 80K. But just removing the preset choices is best IMO

Chat in battles - As I have been told it uses an akward menu. Most games use T and Y for normal chat and then something like V for advanced team commands. Others can provide more details on it but seems like it could use a fix.

Ignore/ban commands - Its missing now but will most likely be added in a patch. But just want it on the list so its not forgotten

One Faction only restriction - As Ignore/ban commands.

Hosted game info - A player cant see that many settings when checking a hosted game. That need to be fixed so we at least get the same info as in MTW.

Logfiles - A missed feature that I expect to come with a patch like in MTW 1.1

Greyed out when in game - pretty annoying you cant see if someone is actually playing.

Spending too much money - Just dont allow players to buy more units/upgrades instead of current system.

Free camera when routed + option to rout your army - worked fine in MTW so no need to limit players


Thats it for now. Feel free to add more and I will update the list.


CBR

[Tera]

I quote this list from .NET, feel free to add what was not mentioned before. It has a large number of issues. Some might be resolved or not a problem anymore, so anyone who has RTW and plays MP, please filter them out.

1: Speed and kill ratio.
2: 3v3 Max.
3: A faction can be picked only once.
4: Withdrawing is impossible in MP.
5: Some Balance issues. Cav charge too strong. Elephants are overpowered. Etc...
6: Game crashes to desktop while loging on.
7: Game info unavailable from lobby.
8: Players can logon with whatever nick they choose.
9: Denari levels are fixed.
10: Units refuse to take orders. Run button sometimes not working when you have units in group.
11: You have to press 3 buttons before you can chat in the game.
12: Many report server lag in MP.
13: You can't move whole army together. New control system can be real pain in the neck often.
14: There is no attacker and defender.
15: Rallying units is not possible after the death of general. And since it is a special ability if you pick a flaming pig unit as the general for example, you can't rally your units although he is alive because flaming pigs simply lack the special ability of rallying. Moreoever it is stupid to select general first and then pressing rally instead of just pressing it directly.
16: No #ignore or #ban options.
17: No telling if a player is ingame or not, the fadeout/in system was removed.
18: There is player limit on friendly room. No more than 30 people at a time.
19: Even after your army is routed completely off the map, you are stuck in a restricted-camera mode that will not allow you to check out what is happening across the map.
20: There is no fatigue bar.
21: Other (unselected) groups may respond to orders to a selected group
22: Game divergs DURING battle and results in different battles on each computer.
23: When in testudo, if a single unit walks into the formation, you lose control of that unit of the legionaries in testudo formation for the rest of the game.
24: Unit COLORS are exclusive as well, which is not great, as certain faction colors have a tendency of blending into the map and being VERY hard to see.
25: When deploying units on the battlefield, there is no way to tell which players have finished deploying. thus it is impossible to tell if the other players are waiting for you, or if you have more time to deploy. pretty weak.
26: No more F1 to view unit stats.
27: Text messages disappear after only a few seconds, EVEN when there are no other messages to 'push' the older ones out of the way.
28: When one unit in a group is selected, that unit is 'highlighted' but it appears just faintly brighter in the unit menu than the other units. VERY hard to see which unit has been selected
29: If the host drops, the game "freezes". All your units run in place and you can't escape or drop.

Tera.

[Orda Khan]

Yet I have a guy telling me RTW MP is great fun...
The MP issues list just keeps on getting bigger. Louis is right, I'm not going to pay out good money and then be 'patient' while CA possibly, maybe sort out some kind of acceptable MP. The game is obviously nowhere near a finished state so I will not be buying it. Maybe in twelve months time it will be almost playable

.......Orda

[AMP]

I haven't played much so far and i bet you can guess why, but here's my opinion on it.

4v4 battles - why would they take this out and give us 6 players max with 20 units each? no good reason for that...

one faction per player - this doesn't bother me that much. i never did like people always picking the same faction as me. i would've maybe only allowed 2 people on the same team to pick the same faction. it still stops people from all picking the the best factions, but then again no faction should be over powered in the 1st place, if they would just spend time to balance the game.

Denarii set amounts - this one doesn't bother much either, cause i never did like 99k games being called balanced. i think it's better just to stick with a few amounts. i think it's silly just play around with lot's of money and upgrades, but that's just me.

balance issues - i've only played a few games so far. the marching speed seems fine of most units, but the running speed it's what's out of wack for lot's of units. missile units seem to do their job, but not against rushes. i haven't seen any chain routs yet from just flanking a few units, so that must be a good thing, but i've also seen weak troops fight to the death headon vs ones a lot stronger. i miss the old stw days when you could just target a unit with muskets that has little moral and no moral support and it'd rout...

controls - over all they should've just let them alone and not change it all around. what's the reason for that? sometimes i have to click 2 or 3 times to give orders or deselect units or even trying to open up the chat.. i've never had the prob in the other TWs. the grouping is all wrong or maybe i'm just missing something. i try to group units and drag a new line and i can't fix their depth? i can't group my whole army and change it's facing without moving it's position? the camera controls are different? all this was fine in the other TWs, why change it?

unit selection - they shouldn't allow you to go over with denarii even though you can't start when you do. when you are finished you should go back to the main host screen and still be able to chat and see who's not ready yet. when you're are done you're stuck in the unit selection can't type and have to wait for everyone to finish?

deployment - you have these cut-scenes everytime? they didn't realize how annoying this would get after awhile along with the general death cut-scene? why didn't they just keep it the same, showing everyones loading progress and go right into deployment?

foyer chat and game chat - once again they decided to not use up the whole screen and this time it's even smaller and the bottom line is barely readable. i have to click 2 times for chatting in game? why they didn't keep it t for all and y for allies? also the chat appears at the top and not the bottom now?

room limits - why 30? ok if 30 max allow people to make their own rooms and set how many players max. how do you expect to have thousands of players online with this?

system message - i tried to join a game and in my chat it kept saying system message- failed to connect or something like that every 3 mins and i couldn't chat or click on anything and had to restart the game. also sometimes when a player drops from a game in the host menu it'll say system message - players name and connection problems, but still show the player their and the host can't kick them.

i guess i'll list a few good things...

faction icons - they are very nice looking sooo pretty, but they should've kept them at the top like the other TWs.. just seems better there.

teams - can have any number and free for alls and i think the host can pick players to be a defender and attacker.. not sure.

[Tera]

By the way: no logfiles and exhausted units can run!

[AMP]

I just wanted to add i tried to logon to multiplayer and i crashed to desktop 4 times. worked fine yesterday, but also since anyone can use any name they please i already had someone using my AMP sig... sigh

[Nigel]

Ok, here are my comments :

One faction only restriction : This becomes very much an issue if you try to arrange specifically designed battles, like historical re-enactments or if you want 3 players playing as a single army, one commanding e.g. the cavalery the other the infantery and the third the skirmishers. The limitation will also make games in the style of Battle Isles or Bandits and Mercenaries nearly impossible.

Log files : maybe not a big deal for the occasional game, but priceless for judgeing tournament outcomes and the like. This is definitely worth having.

[Orda Khan]

but also since anyone can use any name they please i already had someone using my AMP sig... sigh

What a [ expletive deleted ] insult.

........Orda

[d6veteran]

Tera I agree with most of the list.

I'd like to add some comments to these:

***************************************

3: A faction can be picked only once.

>>MUST be changed imo.

4: Withdrawing is impossible in MP.

>>MUST be changed imo.

8: Players can logon with whatever nick they choose.

>>This isn't good, but I think GameSpy is moving to this. Remember, there were many many complaints from the MTW 'crowd' about their GameSpy profile not being recognized or whatever. So this is the solution I bet. This is GameSpy and not CA if I was to make a guess.

11: You have to press 3 buttons before you can chat in the game.

>>MUST be changed imo. Plus the messages are in a huge font!

12: Many report server lag in MP.

>>Lag is not necessarily the net code. My experience with online games with high end graphics is people playing with their settings to high will have lag. A host with the settings to high will cause lag. Does everyone in your online game have cable broadband, a P4 3.0 and 8x AGP? Probably not.

Additionally, there is a memory leak as best I can tell on the host machine. This starts causing lag around the 2nd or 3rd game, unless the host restarts RTW.


13: You can't move whole army together. New control system can be real pain in the neck often.

>>I like the new control system, and my assumption is that people haven't learned the controls yet. They are different. You can move you whole army together. Why haven't I heard people applauding that you can now wheel a unit formation? Weren't we asking for this since STW? Get to know the controls, then make a detailed post on what is wrong. Otherwise my assumption (and I assume CAs as well) is that you just aren't reading the manual.

14: There is no attacker and defender.

>>Are you sure? This option is in the manual and I'm pretty sure it is in the mp ui.

15: Rallying units is not possible after the death of general. And since it is a special ability if you pick a flaming pig unit as the general for example, you can't rally your units although he is alive because flaming pigs simply lack the special ability of rallying. Moreoever it is stupid to select general first and then pressing rally instead of just pressing it directly.

>>I don't think it is stupid that your general has an ability to rally ... I think this is awesome! This is actually an improved feature imo. The bug is that you cannot route units.

19: Even after your army is routed completely off the map, you are stuck in a restricted-camera mode that will not allow you to check out what is happening across the map.

>> This is idiotic. You should be able to withdrawal and or route and then spectate. Why was this removed?



I was thinking about all the things removed from MTW mp. It occured to me that since RTW was being developed alongside MTW, perhaps the RTW team never really got to know the MTW mp. ?? Just trying to figure out how this happened. How great options have been yanked.

[GilJaysmith]

14: There is no attacker and defender.

There is an attacker/defender selection; next to the team icon in the battle setup room.

17: No telling if a player is ingame or not, the fadeout/in system was removed.

I'm told:
In Rome the player's name changes colour to indicate they have joined a game or they are currently playing a game. When in set-up it is possible to use team chat and also filter out room chat. players can be selected for PM by highlighting the name and using the chat buttons to the left. The tiny icons next to the player name indicate their current chat status. When in set-up it is still possible to PM players in the lobby, and vice-versa unless the room chat has been filtered.

[tootee]

15: Rallying units is not possible after the death of general. And since it is a special ability if you pick a flaming pig unit as the general for example, you can't rally your units although he is alive because flaming pigs simply lack the special ability of rallying. Moreoever it is stupid to select general first and then pressing rally instead of just pressing it directly.

>>I don't think it is stupid that your general has an ability to rally ... I think this is awesome! This is actually an improved feature imo. The bug is that you cannot route units.

*have not got the game*

i agree that it's good that only the general has the ability to rally.. a change maybe towards slightly better realism.. flaming pig as general?

also agree is really nonsense if only the general can rally, why the need to select him first.. one-stroke is better than two.

I wish to suggest to CA its better to employ the principle of least keystroke for most-frequent use command in the control design.. most-frequent commands like chat, rally, run, hold, etc..

[Pitt_Slayer]

Hi all

(1)4v4 battles - why would they take this out and give us 6 players max with 20 units each? no good reason for that.... (TOTALLY AGREE)

4v4 (yes) with less then 16 unit's would have made MP more enjoyable also giving weaker player's more of a opportunity to enjoy the game.
(that's if we're talking about attrackng more member's to TW gaming community)

(2)one faction per player - this does bother me as we'll start to realize like in the other verison of total war, that some factions are more stronger then others,
everyone must remember byz faction in MTW 1.1.

(3)Denarii level,lol for once CA has listened, remember the hundreds and hundreds of posts about fixing the florin level at 10k???

(4)Controls- this is my main beef with CA why fix something that work's

(5)copied from another post:
unit selection - they shouldn't allow you to go over with denarii even though you can't start when you do. when you are finished you should go back to the main host screen and still be able to chat and see who's not ready yet. when you're are done you're stuck in the unit selection can't type and have to wait for everyone to finish?
( hehe i can't believe CA would miss something like that )
ps i can't get into MP but this happens in custom battles.

i've had the game for less then 24 hour's and i noticed all these bugs with-in 10mins and hmmm i'm not impressed BUT the graphic's are out of this world and should impress 12 year old kids BUT as any MP player will know
(FAR TO BUSY COMMANDING A WINNING ARMY TO ADMIRE REALISTIC LOOKING ROMAN SOLDER)

ps newbies will probably keep dropping from a hosted game "if they can't get the faction they want"

[Colovion]

I know there has been general things about teh Denarii level - but I think it would be really good to have a counter for each member of teh team (or even a thing that doles out the total amount of money equally amongst the team) because I find that a lot of the time people are greedy and get really good units when they get into the battle first and everyone who comes later usually can't get their fair share of units (or they overspend and everyone has to bicker about who is going to remove units from their stack).

[metatron]

Scipiones!!!!

[Sp00n]

I agree with all of the above its still fun to play but some of the above stuff gets very annoying, mainly unit formation and movement and that damn left mouse drag bug when setting up hate the shift 12345 buttons to get the lines correct.

No rout is a huge annoyance as well, 3v3 lags terribly.

Sp00n

[FearZeus]

I have just emailed activision to alert them of the problems, I know CA make the game but as activision distribute thier games i'm sure they would benefit from the knowledge we can give them. Here is the email I sent them...

Hi,

Thankyou to yourselves and CA for 5 years of fantastic gaming of which I have thoroughly enjoyed and met in excess of 400 people of those 5 years.

However we (all multiplayers of Rome total war) have encountered serious flaws/bugs in the new Rome total war series which have promptly stopped multiplayers from playing this game, here is the list of problems that all Rome total war players are encountering, some however are things we hate and others are bugs.

1. sort out the join multiplayer drop to desktop issues
2. Copy chat for warhammer 40,000 or go back to MTW that was fine
3. the camera control in a nightmare but i hear you can chage that back to MTW style (yet to try so i will leave this here as a fix)
4. when at max height, can't make the units out and the game looks really bad from max height too (it's ugly)
5. the chat has gona backwards (just one key for allies and all)
6. multiplayer needs 4 v 4 or even 5 v 5 so why go backwards again to 3 v 3 plus it laggs, get this right first
7. flaming arrows seems to add fire to the lagg problem (pun intended)
8. overall the game just looks tacky and unfinished the units look small the yellow arrows you get from a height just look bad etc
9. How on earth did you make the game look so bad when MTW game play etc was spot on you seem to have changed all the best bits and made them worse???
10. can you please keep us frustrated souls updated on what your plans are, or do we all have to take our games back and demand refunds to get the message across?
11. make available denarri flexible
12. make all factions available to all players in the game
13. allow multiple units upgrading in unit selection screen
14. add relog files, how the hell could we ever held tourneys?
15. solve replay issue not showing real battle
16. Syncronicity -- Ensure game state is not diverging during the game
17. Replays-- ensure they are syncronized with game (currently they are NOT--we can't run tourneys without replays).
18. Unit/Army control is flawed--No way to move army and retain facing (in MTW this was alt-left click), no way to have groups within groups (as in MTW). Formation/orientation is destroyed when dragging a line of units: Say you have AAAABBBB units in a group. When you set them like this AABBBBAA and draw a line the result is AAAABBBB again. Units turn back to their original state and your setting/formation is ignored.
19. Grouped units often refuse to take orders (most commonly the run order). Some report un-grouped units are responding to orders directed at a group.
20. When in testudo, if a single unit walks into the formation, you lose control of that unit of the legionaries in testudo formation for the rest of the game.
21. allow Withdrawal/Rout in MP ("W"ithdraw doesn't work in MP!)
22. game info available from lobby
23. allow faction to be selected by more than one player
24. proprietary player names (so some jerk can’t steal your name and ruin your reputation) [linked to CD Key like MTW]).
25. allow “quick chat” (t/y) like in MTW, chat should not fade/scroll so quickly
26. Fatigue bars on units/exhausted units should not be able to run (but they can)
27. allow for custom denari amounts
28. #ignore/#ban commands for gamespy lobby
29. fade-out names for “in game” players in gamespy lobby
30. allow selection of faction color
31. show who is deployed and who isn’t deployed on the battle map.
32. Bring back F1 to view unit stats and players/factions/teams list (and grey out names of dropped/routed players like in MTW)
33. Unit tax for more than 4 units of same type
34. We need 2 keys to toggle run– if you have a group in which half the units are already running, pressing “R” makes them walk. So “R” becomes useless in groups where some units are walking and others are running. We need a “Run” button and a “Walk” button please.
35. Trying to order an engaged non-cav unit to fall back should result in a major morale penalty when they turn their backs. This doesn’t seem to be occuring.
36. Once routed, “restricted camera” mode should not apply to you. Please fix.
38. Look into reports of server lag.
39. Look into reports of host-drop crashing all players computers.
40. Brighter highlighting for selected units (some say it is difficult to tell selected units from non-selected units)
41. Being able to use general’s rally ability without having to select his unit.
41. Kill rate/game speed
43. Balance (cav/elephant) [more testing needed]

I speak for all Rome total war players and here is a few internet forums that may open your eyes to the problem we are all facing, I will report back to the forums as soon as I receive your reply.

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...icID=305.topic

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=31

http://www.totalwars.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4244

Thankyou
John Robinson also known as FearZeus in the total war community.

P.S A patch is surely needed to prevent many vets and long time players

[The_Emperor]

1) The 30 User Limit on Multiplayer that causes the game to crash to desktop when people join... It Needs fixing badly clans have trouble even getting a couple of their members online for a game! (much less organise tournament matches or friendlies)

2) My other major complaint, No Campaign Battle Replays. This should really be sorted, I used replays all the time in MTW campaigns to review my most spectacular battles & assaults. I would love to be able to replay the sack of Rome, or other fantastic battles.

3) Limiting one faction per player. This annoys the heck out of me because its a first come first served basis. If you miss out ony our fave faction because someone got them first, well that just hard luck! Sorry I don't buy that at all, I like to have freedom to choose anyone thankyou.

[Sp00n]

I asked ATV1-Leonaedes who is apparently a key member of Activions team involved with Rome today about some fo the above issues.

On not being able to move the Army properly he 3 times stated you could, I explained that you cant move in formation without taking out groups and also that you have to click and hope that they go in the direction you want( and they rarely do), he suggested we use the < > keys but this only seems to work when stationary to change unit facing and again they cant be grouped, basically its cack.

On 4v4s he made a charcastic comment asking if my pc could cope with 4v4 with 40000 warriors I explained that 3v3 was nearly unplayable most of the time and that to even get that working we would prefer 16 units max, just so 3v3s run, no comment from him on this.

I also mentioned the lack of money selection in mp games and how the set amounts made it impossible to play the same money levels that you can play at 1v1 or 2v2, his comment they are just set now its different.

Mentioned the pertition to him he knew about it but failed to comment.

Good luck asking him if you see him as I was getting abused by a Raven clan member just for asking these questions and told to stop moaning.

MizuSp00n

[Postino]

no auto route in MP.
when routed no free camera in MP.
difficult chat menu in MP
cannot save SP replays
no abort connection button in MP lobby, had to reboot program twice, got stuck in connection attempt loops


other than these, CA has once again raised their own bar, and an excellent job balancing units this time around.

[Sp00n]

13: You can't move whole army together. New control system can be real pain in the neck often.

>>I like the new control system, and my assumption is that people haven't learned the controls yet. They are different. You can move you whole army together. Why haven't I heard people applauding that you can now wheel a unit formation? Weren't we asking for this since STW? Get to know the controls, then make a detailed post on what is wrong. Otherwise my assumption (and I assume CAs as well) is that you just aren't reading the manual.

.

You are missing the point we were making with the new controls system, you can change unit direction using the < > keys and you can use the mouse wheel but and its a big but if you have been playing Total War games since the start, you cant group any units and then move the army in formation, it just doesnt work, this was a standard control that 90 percent of the online community used.
I checked the controls with an Activion guy online yesterday and he stated that the move grouped units controls just arnt in Rome and yes I have read the manual and yes like many I agree the new controls are cack and Ive now played over 40 online games and my opinion wont change they suck.

Grouped units dont move properly either they have made it control more like a standard RTS game like Ground Control or Warcraft not like Total War which is a real shame when its a military strategy game, the new controls are much slower to control you army and considering the speed of some units in particular infantry missiles ( which are nearly uncatchable with light cav obviously rocket boots were available in 270 bc) it makes it a lot harder to coordinate the type of strategy that we all used in the past.

MizuSp00n

They have added many nice features to Rome but in doing some lots of the basics have gone, I agree with Amp about the lack of chain rout being a good thing, but there are way too many bad and missing items that need to be addressed.

[Puzz3D]

During a battle, inform the players when someone has gone out of sync. There is no point in playing out a battle that has lost sync.

[FearZeus]

regarding this control issue I would also like to add that in RTW when we did group our units they showed on the bars in the order they where on the map, now in RTW they group in blocks? this bugs me, it's more organised putting the groups in the same order the army resides on the map. Hope this is sorted out too.

[Krusader]

Did a search on this page for the word "pathfinding" and didn't turn up anything.

Whenever I'm in sieges, it seems the pathfinding aint that good at times. Sometimes, my units will go outside the city gate and in again when I order them to move a block down the road for instance. Or take a whole different route than the one I believed they would take.

[d6veteran]

Sp00n, I know about the alt control in the previous games. Isn't this control feature now assigned to ctrl?

And yes I agree the gouping BUGs need to fixed just like the other bugs.

[CBR]

ctrl to do what?


CBR

[d6veteran]

When I use Ctrl + right click, the units selected move, keeping formation just like using Alt in MTW. I don't use that function much so I could be wrong, but I think it is the same behavior. It is buggy with grouped units though like some of the other controls, but if the units aren't grouped it works well.

[CBR]

Alt left click in MTW meant the formation would keep its original facing when it had reached its destination. AFAIK there is no such command in RTW. Alt right click does work but only for one unit. For a group its suddenly used for turning.


CBR

[d6veteran]

Ahhh yes I think I remember now.

Funny: I always thought that that feature in MTW should keep the formation but turn the entire formation facing in the direction you move them, which is now in RTW. Perhaps that is the way the dev team thought of it too?

Who knows.

I do like the new controls though (minus the bugs).

[tootee]

I played my 1st rtw game 1 hr ago in LAN multiplayer to test out the control.. i think the control is ok so far.

I have no problem with no ALT+Left_click for army now.. the control can be achieved quickly with another even more flexible one.

I particularly love the improved nav points system, of which it was buggy in STW and MTW in which u cannot make a walking unit run to nav pts 1/2 way en route.. and they always walk to attack the enemy even when you double click them.

but i really dont like the green chevrons on the ground.. ghosts are much better.

[FasT]

I played my 1st rtw game 1 hr ago in LAN multiplayer to test out the control.. i think the control is ok so far.

I have no problem with no ALT+Left_click for army now.. the control can be achieved quickly with another even more flexible on

but i really dont like the green chevrons on the ground.. ghosts are much better.

U can get rid of the green chevrons........

So which controls u usin instead of alt+left_click? to achieve to same results?