Multiplayer Battles

[JackDionne]

I remember playing a mod on the original Rome with Lord of the Rings and how much fun we had. I can't tell you how cool that would be if this mod could do the same.
IT WOULD BE FN AWESOME, AND EPIC!
PLEASE MAKE IS HAPPEN!

[Ultra123]

To be honest id much prefer if the modders completely and utterly disregard multiplayer - Unless they dont balance it for multiplayer and simple allow it 'as is' with no work involved. A deep single player with all the expected unit imbalances that tolkeins world has has far more appeal to me personally.

[Mr.Jox]

I would say MP is a big CA's problem. It's too simply, boring. If they had better MP it would be much much better game. But even with MP we currently have it can be very fun playing ME heroes and units.

[Vikus van de Merwe]

We don't focus at the multiplayer at the time and also not in the near future. But if both players have the same mod installed it should be at least possible to play with the units of the faction of our mod. Nevertheless there could be noticed some balancing issues then (unit costs, etc.).

[Commissar_G]

If a multiplayer campaign was possible that would be freaking awesome. Teaming up as Rohan and Gondor and holding the west would be amazing.

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Yeah this would be insanely fun, i cant even imagine it! At the moment however I think the team have a good mindset to focus on SP and theyre already doing a fantastic job of it.

[cshewey]

Here are my thoughts on multiplayer.

Obviously on a mod of both this incredible following and incredible proportions single player is and must be the focus of the entire team. However, multiplayer is a very important part of this mod as well, (especially with the possibility of multiplayer campaigns). Multiplayer is probably the best way to figure out balance, and it also provides an entirly new mindset for the game, the whole "i am the best commander of Gondor" or "I am a better Sauron than you" is only possible in multiplayer, so it cannot be totaly neglected either. So, my plan for this if it were my call would be to
1 focus on single player until the mod is "finished"
2, allow multiplayer to happen in the private beta phase to help with faction balance.
3, Once the mod is realeased we can see what people want and react to it. IE if noone plays online multiplayer than in future patches there is no need to work on it. But if there are lots of people playing or wanting to play, than it can be a priority in post release patches.

I think thats the best way to go

[Privatecamping]

I think that MP should not be the main concern.. I think that the best way to do this is to first release the mod that is not bugy and is balanced and then based on the reviews make a MP.. And then you would have a nice SP and a balanced MP

[Alkar]

If there is a decent multiplayer I would never play with dumb stupid A.I. again

[Sheridan]

There could technically be a separate multiplayer balance, but it is extra work since it requires us to make a separate roster of MP-only units. So, if anything, it's better as a secondary goal once the singleplayer part is all done and set.

[Ang56]

One of the things I look forward to most about this mod is the possibility of a co-op campaign (I'm super excited about your mod whether it has that or not), I don't really feel it should be ignored. As to the multi-play battles, there is a community that gets very into it, TW games aren't really well balanced for multi-play battles to begin with and for the community that is playing them, they don't really need to be perfect. The people who want balanced RTS multi-play aren't playing TW games. For my group it's more about large scale battles with cool maps and armies.

We tend to have to police ourselves since CA doesn't balance all that well, but it is still a lot of fun and we are used to it. I guess my request would be to make the factions available for custom battles, balanced or not. We'll set-up games to be fairish and enjoyable on our own. And the big thing is make the custom settlements available by default. DAC submod for Third Age was great, but a huge headache to get setup for players since we had to get them on Hamachi and manually enable the maps we wanted to play because the custom settlements weren't available for custom battles by default (which was mostly just annoying more then hard), also there was so many factions the default DaC custom battle set-up menu didn't even allow you to select them all.

I don't think you need to waste time creating a balanced custom battle environment when really most of the people who play those games just want to fight a huge Minas Tirith (etc.) Seige with awesome looking Lotr units against friends on a sunday afternoon. Playing against real people instead of an AI that always uses predictable tactics and isn't very reactive to your actions is far more enjoyable. If our matches suck we reload and adjust the armies and teams to be fairer on our own. I think having custom multi-play battles non functional like DAC on release might close the door on it being popular at all, only the groups like mine who will figure out how to make it work on their own will be playing. Just enabling your existing rosters with some ballparked prices and your great looking maps for custom battles is enough, and doesn't immediately turn away anyone interested or require work on the users end that most won't know how to do.

Another point that I'd like to make is that the massive battle youtubers are going to be a very good asset to advertise and promote your mod. They will do what I'm talking about and setup games to be cool on their own. Just making it possible without other sub-mods, background programs or having to edit map files would be great.

Also it's likely that if you enable the great looking campaign assets for custom battles and people do play it unbalanced as it will be, someone else (or you when there's time later) will submod a balancing version down the road.

[Mr.Jox]

Noone said we won't make MP co-op. Of course this will be included.

[cshewey]

One of the things I look forward to most about this mod is the possibility of a co-op campaign (I'm super excited about your mod whether it has that or not), I don't really feel it should be ignored. As to the multi-play battles, there is a community that gets very into it, TW games aren't really well balanced for multi-play battles to begin with and for the community that is playing them, they don't really need to be perfect. The people who want balanced RTS multi-play aren't playing TW games. For my group it's more about large scale battles with cool maps and armies.

We tend to have to police ourselves since CA doesn't balance all that well, but it is still a lot of fun and we are used to it. I guess my request would be to make the factions available for custom battles, balanced or not. We'll set-up games to be fairish and enjoyable on our own. And the big thing is make the custom settlements available by default. DAC submod for Third Age was great, but a huge headache to get setup for players since we had to get them on Hamachi and manually enable the maps we wanted to play because the custom settlements weren't available for custom battles by default (which was mostly just annoying more then hard), also there was so many factions the default DaC custom battle set-up menu didn't even allow you to select them all.

I don't think you need to waste time creating a balanced custom battle environment when really most of the people who play those games just want to fight a huge Minas Tirith (etc.) Seige with awesome looking Lotr units against friends on a sunday afternoon. Playing against real people instead of an AI that always uses predictable tactics and isn't very reactive to your actions is far more enjoyable. If our matches suck we reload and adjust the armies and teams to be fairer on our own. I think having custom multi-play battles non functional like DAC on release might close the door on it being popular at all, only the groups like mine who will figure out how to make it work on their own will be playing. Just enabling your existing rosters with some ballparked prices and your great looking maps for custom battles is enough, and doesn't immediately turn away anyone interested or require work on the users end that most won't know how to do.

Another point that I'd like to make is that the massive battle youtubers are going to be a very good asset to advertise and promote your mod. They will do what I'm talking about and setup games to be cool on their own. Just making it possible without other sub-mods, background programs or having to edit map files would be great.

Also it's likely that if you enable the great looking campaign assets for custom battles and people do play it unbalanced as it will be, someone else (or you when there's time later) will submod a balancing version down the road.

I suppose i dont know where the paranoia comes from here? Don't assume our mod wont be fairly balanced for multiplayer, we will certainly do our best. As to custom settlements, we should have them, and i doubt you would need an external program. Everything should be ok as far as MP goes.

[DjAci]

To be honest id much prefer if the modders completely and utterly disregard multiplayer - Unless they dont balance it for multiplayer and simple allow it 'as is' with no work involved. A deep single player with all the expected unit imbalances that tolkeins world has has far more appeal to me personally.

Unfortunately, these fantasy mods have a given problem. The SP/MP relations are even more strained than in vanilla TW games. The fantasy lore lovers are completely into the depiction of the lore and keen to maximize it over any gameplay (this means also SP gameplay, and all of MP as it is all gameplay). They make up for about 2/3 of the people (did a poll about it in TATW times). The rest of 1/3 players likes to prioritize gamplay. 1/3 is less than 2/3 but still a very hefty number, and bad gameplay in SP (and MP by extension) is a real offputter for many of us.

I waited for two years for TATW, best mod ever, but then ended up never finishing it because of abysimal gameplay. Tatically it was rubish (despite being very nice and polished visually). I want to play a game, that has a challange, not just look at Tolkien based eye candy.

I don't expect perfect MP balance for the first release. But I do expect a carful singleplayer and relatively balanced rosters (that means balanced rosters by itself, not campaign map positions + rosters like a rich starting position with good units) All playable factions should have good rosters and no undersog factions should be present.

Also, I think this is achivable fairly easily without breaking the lore. You can make elven units less numerous and more expensive with stronger soldiers. Thus making a balanced unit with all lore requirements.

[Mr.Jox]

This mod use lore only as a base.
Balancing will be almost not affect by lore. Why? Let's say we take 50 elves in unit and take 200 orcs in unit. They will have same unit type(infantry, melee). On Battlefield these units may have same quality(coz of amount of men per unit). But our balancing system is more complex and depends on much more factions, like armour material, quality, race, class, menpower, weapon etc etc.

[DjAci]

I am very happy with that plan

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

I like your signature (And yes Multiplayer will be awesome)

[Ang56]

I suppose i dont know where the paranoia comes from here? Don't assume our mod wont be fairly balanced for multiplayer, we will certainly do our best. As to custom settlements, we should have them, and i doubt you would need an external program. Everything should be ok as far as MP goes.

I didn't mean to come off as paranoid. I was just skimming through this thread and posted a tired middle of the night rant after reading a few of the comments . My post wasn't really inspired by anyone on the RoM team but a handful posters who were saying effort spent on multi player was a waste of time or would need extensive work on your end for balancing to be worthwhile. and I phrased the post poorly. Usually I try not to post in forums when I'm exhausted but can't sleep.

I do have a lot of faith in this mod team from what I've seen and read so far. I just love my weekend afternoon big multi-play battles with my friends is all. Combining that and this mod would be pretty great.

As for my hopes for the mod, it sounds like you're taking care of it anyways.

[Ang56]

and really it was just the 1 post about disregarding multiplayer that inspired my post.

[gloin99]

How are they supposed to focus on the singleplayer if there won't even be a custom campaign map? It would be better to first make a MP ready mod and implement the single player when possible instead of waiting for CA to miraculously release tools some time in the future. At least the former can already be achieved while the latter might never happen. I don't quite get where this mod is heading right now.