OT: There are rumours about RTW 2

[|Heerbann|_Di3Hard]

On a german news page I have found the following statement:

Scott Steinberg: "We’ve got the Creative Assembly guys doing Medieval and the follow along to Rome which we haven’t announced yet."

What do you think, will they change the multiplayer part? Will we get a MTW2 with roman legions or a brand new MP game, lag free with new features and balanced factions.

I think, that means too, that there is no hope for new mtw2 patches.

[CBR]

AFAIK they are working on a patch for M2TW so no need for gloom and doom.


CBR

[Puzz3D]

AFAIK they are working on a patch for M2TW so no need for gloom and doom.


CBR

But they have said the engine has to be re-written to fix the multiplayer.

"We are aware there are technical issues with MP that need addressing and although I can't answer for CA-OZ (I'm sure the OZ guys are doing work for Kingdoms), we here at CA-UK are most definitely looking at trying to resolve as many issues as we can, as a matter of course, for the next big TW title. We are actually at this time working on the next (full) TW title and we're rebuilding the MP section from the foundations up. There were a number of unfortunate limitations that the Rome and Med2 engines placed on us that should, fingers crossed, be less of an issue this time around. How well much we manage to fit in is still subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous games development, but we really are going for it. image " - Cn Iulius Flamininus (CA Staff) posted 05/30/07

[CBR]

But they have said the engine has to be re-written to fix the multiplayer.

Yes but thats something for next engine and has nothing to do with the patch for M2TW.

This seems to be either a bad translation or someone that just didnt explain it properly. They are working on the expansion (Kingdoms) while another team is working on the next engine (name and era not announced yet). Nothing new there as thats how its been done since STW. Patches for expansions might not be high priority but so far CA has done something for all expansions IIRC.


CBR

[pike master]

there is not going to be a rome 2 total war in the near future.

and if the multiplayer part of the game(rome total war) is so horrible, why is it the most active lobby of any of the total war games right now?

[Puzz3D]

Yes but thats something for next engine and has nothing to do with the patch for M2TW.

It means multiplayer is not going to be fixed in Kingdoms because CA doesn't re-write engines "from the foundations up" for an expansion pack, and that's what it's going to take to fix the lag in multiplayer. In addition to that he goes on to say in a following paragraph that the development team isn't given enough time to work on these games. That has been my impression for several years now. It's commonly referred to as "biting off more than you can chew".

[Puzz3D]

if the multiplayer part of the game (rome total war) is so horrible, why is it the most active lobby of any of the total war games right now?

STW foyer was shut down a long time ago, and MTW now has trouble running on new hardware. RTW networking works better than M2TW, so it's the logical choice. I was on the RTW v1.2 beta team and we spend months getting the RTW networking to work well. It was a very commited effort by a community based team and the laison person we had with CA to get the network code fixed up.

[|Heerbann|_Di3Hard]

This is the original news:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...=6594&Itemid=9

[CBR]

This is the original news:

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...=6594&Itemid=9

And that could mean the next engine will indeed be R2TW as the first game. We can only hope they will build up MP properly this time, as Iulius Flamininus mentions.


CBR

[Swoosh So]

I think its safe to say that if he said that ^^ then the next game will indeed be rome total war 2, for which im delighted :D

[Swoosh So]

Heh i remember the days u boys looked on CA with big smiles and glints in your eyes, whats the full story? :D

[Wolf_Kyolic]

Kingdoms will NOT solve lag. Actually it will NOT improve the situation even for a little tiny bit. MP code has to be written from scratch if they want to TRY to fix it. I say "try" because even the devs have got no idea what is wrong with some parts of the code. It is not "oh yes..we have to write this and that and change that to this and add this and that and mp will be working pefectly".

It is: "dunno man...it should work. may be not...dunno".

Under these circumstances, CA still promises a good mp for the next tw as they had promised that for MTW2.

They always promise some mp stuff and we poor fans believe them and buy their BROKEN, BUGGY, BETA or sometimes even ALPHA stage games and expansions.

Same till RTW.

It is an OBVIOUS fact that the game is no more for MP. May be they can make it suitable for MP by hiring better coders and spending several thousand hours but WHY should they? Their game sells millons already even though its broken and buggy so why should they spend money for trying to fix it?

Now their latest promise is "good mp for the next tw" which will be released one and a half years later at best.

But interestingly enough, many of us will buy it anyway. And many of us will buy Kingdoms as well. I respect CA in that sense. They are the master of puppets.

[Mars]

Kingdoms will NOT solve lag. Actually it will NOT improve the situation even for a little tiny bit. MP code has to be written from scratch if they want to TRY to fix it. I say "try" because even the devs have got no idea what is wrong with some parts of the code. It is not "oh yes..we have to write this and that and change that to this and add this and that and mp will be working pefectly".

It is: "dunno man...it should work. may be not...dunno".

Under these circumstances, CA still promises a good mp for the next tw as they had promised that for MTW2.

They always promise some mp stuff and we poor fans believe them and buy their BROKEN, BUGGY, BETA or sometimes even ALPHA stage games and expansions.

Same till RTW.

It is an OBVIOUS fact that the game is no more for MP. May be they can make it suitable for MP by hiring better coders and spending several thousand hours but WHY should they? Their game sells millons already even though its broken and buggy so why should they spend money for trying to fix it?

Now their latest promise is "good mp for the next tw" which will be released one and a half years later at best.

But interestingly enough, many of us will buy it anyway. And many of us will buy Kingdoms as well. I respect CA in that sense. They are the master of puppets.

Many of us? Well, i doubt many of the MP will buy more TW games like it is now.

I playtest any TW game and will continue doin this, but i wont buy any game.
They should pay me instead to play their game!

There is a lot of frustration. It doesnt matter if there is Rome or whatever. We hardly will face any new game which will fit our expectations.

Mars

[Wolf_Kyolic]

They should pay me instead to play their game!



Mars

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Kingdoms will NOT solve lag. Actually it will NOT improve the situation even for a little tiny bit. MP code has to be written from scratch if they want to TRY to fix it. I say "try" because even the devs have got no idea what is wrong with some parts of the code. It is not "oh yes..we have to write this and that and change that to this and add this and that and mp will be working pefectly".

It is: "dunno man...it should work. may be not...dunno".

Under these circumstances, CA still promises a good mp for the next tw as they had promised that for MTW2.

They always promise some mp stuff and we poor fans believe them and buy their BROKEN, BUGGY, BETA or sometimes even ALPHA stage games and expansions.

Same till RTW.

It is an OBVIOUS fact that the game is no more for MP. May be they can make it suitable for MP by hiring better coders and spending several thousand hours but WHY should they? Their game sells millons already even though its broken and buggy so why should they spend money for trying to fix it?

Now their latest promise is "good mp for the next tw" which will be released one and a half years later at best.

But interestingly enough, many of us will buy it anyway. And many of us will buy Kingdoms as well. I respect CA in that sense. They are the master of puppets.

or in more Sense,


God Help us all with RTW2

[Swoosh So]

Ill buy rome totalwar 2! :D not because i believe they will fix lag or finally change the foyer like everyones been asking for or that i believe they will balance it or fix the combat engine like us oldies want... but because i love the single player game and have finally accepted that totalwar will always be a naff mp game :D

Still ill throw my 2 coins worth to anyone who will listen to me about how to improve multiplayer but i wont invest any length of time like i used to in the game online.

Rome is a great era for a game and i very much look forward to rome totalwar 2 on a medieval2 standard engine, will be lots of fun with the great modding community that we have now :D

Still games and modding take alot of time to come up which is bit of a bummer :\ its good that CA have introduced hotseat mode in kingdoms (as far as i can see taking this idea from the modders) its an ingame multiplayer campaign without the battles, i strived so hard to get this working with amp in rome and was only able to do it in rtw vanilla with a hacked exe and we could play the battles online with a bit of messing around, it was fantastic. that we couldent replicate in 1.2 and patches beyond , so i look forward to trying this with people, who knows the next step could be playing those mp campaign battles online! :D all they got to do now is export the campaign player v player battles to a text file similar to a historic battle so we can setup those games online as kocmoc, magyar and others always pointed out. So were 1 step away from a fully functional online campaign.

Anyway theres progress in the series just not the areas i would have hoped for but overall totalwar is a very fun game single player with new possibilities opening up for mp campaigns which is interesting.

Ill play online from time to time just to catch up with members of the community and keep upto date with the mp scene and if we get a decent mp experience ill try to rebuild the wolves clan or make my own.

For me to play this game regularily online requires an improved foyer easy on the eye with interactivity options such as the ability to create tournament rooms, a more responsive game engine, and of course the ability to do 3v3s at least without all this lag. if people havent te pcs for 3v3 play then maybe they could make a multiplayer cam that only uses the sprites who knows...

If they cant achieve those not so major changes then fair enough, ill still get joy from playing the sp game. So for me the game is a bargain as it has no monthly fees like wow (a game im constantly dissapointed with as it changes from month to month, for example you spend ages collecting gear then that spec gets nerf nerf nerf and you want to reroll a character that will take 200+ hours, thats real dissapointment for me) in the case of totalwar i spend £30 mod the game abit myself or wait on some good mods coming out and i get more than my moneys worth from the single player game alone. If they add good muliplayer again the game becomes a hobby for me again, if not its a good bang for buck single player game.

[Puzz3D]

Heh i remember the days u boys looked on CA with big smiles and glints in your eyes, whats the full story? :D

We were told by CA back in January 2005 that they would no longer fix problems that were only of concern to hardcore players. Palamedes' recent blog indicates that this hasn't changed. According to him, they are making the game for a phantom majority that never posts.

[Zeph]

You wanna know why ca don't care and more players don't play because this is the first place you find on google for the multiplayer community and CA seem to like it here, but it's just full of a bunch of has beens whining that the game is no longer mtw1 or shogun.

[Togakure]

@zeph: Who's whining? If you don't like it here, then why not leave and not come back?

Congratulations on the comma. Buh-bye .

***

"Phantom majority?" How convenient. Why not just say they were going to make the game however they like instead of referring to some intangible entity, lol. True concerns for a patron's desires are demonstrated by action anyway, not banter. As I've said before, they are merchants at heart, not artisans. For me, that explains all of this.

[Mars]

Well, let me say it liek this.


We juts can pray that CA has some insane luck to make a good MP part of the next TW game, since they are not able to do it on purpose!

[Swoosh So]

lol zeph, has beens? i played with u the other week and im sure most of these guys could reach ur level of play in a week of playing online...

Aslo zeph we dont complain the games not shogun or medieval totalwar 1, we complain its not of the multiplayer standard of those games. As a player of all the totalwar games why should we not complain if the games multiplayer loses quality with new releases.

[Puzz3D]

You wanna know why ca don't care and more players don't play because this is the first place you find on google for the multiplayer community and CA seem to like it here, but it's just full of a bunch of has beens whining that the game is no longer mtw1 or shogun.

Creative Assembly admits that there are problems in the M2TW multiplayer that are going to have to be fixed from the foundation up. They are not going to be redoing the multiplayer from the foundation up for Kingdoms, so save your money if you are thinking about buying that for multiplayer unless you don't mind wasting your time.

I don't care if the new game is not mtw1 or shogun, but I do care if the gameplay is degraded from the original standard. It's when the players don't care about it that a company can get away with degrading the gameplay in subsequent releases. As far as I'm concerned, Creative Assembly embarked on a quest to see just how little effort they could invest in total war multiplayer, and now it's hurting their credibility so they are starting to make promises about the next game in the series.

[Swoosh So]

Creative Assembly admits that there are problems in the M2TW multiplayer that are going to have to be fixed from the foundation up. They are not going to be redoing the multiplayer from the foundation up for Kingdoms, so save your money if you are thinking about buying that for multiplayer unless you don't mind wasting your time.

I don't care if the new game is not mtw1 or shogun, but I do care if the gameplay is degraded from the original standard. It's when the players don't care about it that a company can get away with degrading the gameplay in subsequent releases. As far as I'm concerned, Creative Assembly embarked on a quest to see just how little effort they could invest in total war multiplayer, and now it's hurting their credibility so they are starting to make promises about the next game in the series.

Yes lets just hope they get the next totalwar right, was talking with cbr who explained that if they screw it up will be at least 4 years for a chance to fix. that realy would be the end of the totalwar series multiplayer for me.