Why doesn't CA care about Multiplayer?

It makes me sick that they spend all this time on Singleplayer and yet they keep neglecting Multiplayer and they wonder why it's so small compared to other games.

Seriously? TW series have traditionally been about the Singleplayer experience.

Originally Posted by |Sith|5|DarthWarman88

It makes me sick that they spend all this time on Singleplayer and yet they keep neglecting Multiplayer and they wonder why it's so small compared to other games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lGmp4fpg3k

They're putting a friggin multiplayer campaign in what are you talking about?

Originally Posted by D.B. Cooper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lGmp4fpg3k

They're putting a friggin multiplayer campaign in what are you talking about?

This what I mean. You people are noobs when it comes down to MP. I been playing TW Mutliplayer for over 6 years and I just seen the MP side of TW get worse and worse with bugs, server issues and so on, yet CA refuses to help. They think releasing a campaign and walking away will shut us up?

Originally Posted by D.B. Cooper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lGmp4fpg3k

They're putting a friggin multiplayer campaign in what are you talking about?

And a drop-in feature, AND multiplayer historical battles. This is actually the most multiplayer-centric TW to date.

Originally Posted by D.B. Cooper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lGmp4fpg3k

They're putting a friggin multiplayer campaign in what are you talking about?

Yeah people should think before they come on here to flame CA

Originally Posted by |Sith|5|DarthWarman88

It makes me sick that they spend all this time on Singleplayer and yet they keep neglecting Multiplayer and they wonder why it's so small compared to other games.

It's not the MP game they neglect, it's the serious MP one.

Originally Posted by LEGIO_Desaix

It's not the MP game they neglect, it's the serious MP one.

Pretty much.
Its not that the MP is bad, its actually fully featured and quite reasonable considering its not the focus of the game. its all the various imbalance issues that they ignore thats the problem.

NTW has 2 player campaign and 4 (or probably 8) player battles included. If you have any ideas how to organize campaign for 2+ players and make it playable + enjoyable for all of them please post it. I'm sure that any other types of MP will make players wait for too long or lag a lot. Just think that 95% of battles involve only 2 sides/armies and all other players would have to wait for a lot of time. I hate to see such topics blaming CA about most optimal of their decisions.

Originally Posted by |Sith|5|DarthWarman88

It makes me sick that they spend all this time on Singleplayer and yet they keep neglecting Multiplayer and they wonder why it's so small compared to other games.

Well that makes sense for them to put efforts into SP. Making AI do what it needs doing without flaws is a major haul. Look at ETW. Count the threads. How many less people complain about MP setup, than crying outloud for AI bugs and SP blunders.

I dunno.

Multiplayer campaigns and drop in battles for Single Players.

I think that's quite a bit of attention towards multiplayer in any total war series.

I've never been interested in TW MP because after playing many other pc games online, I figured out people are either going to cheat, or quit before they lose.
Now when I lose in an online game, it's always in the back of my head that they easily could have been using a hack or a cheat of some kind.

Plus, by the time I get around to buying most games the MP community is usually well established with experienced players and as a noob I get slaughtered, which isn't fun.

i've logged several hundred hours on ETW MP. the MP component for ALL TW games has been weak. In ETW it is especially so due to the lack of centralized servers and a player lobby and the extreme lack of balanced maps for the first 7-8 months of the game. Other problems on release included no way to team chat in-game or in the pregame, no way to check settings once the game is joined and even when you look at a game from the lobby you can't see all the settings, one 4 v 4 map, no 3 v 3 maps, and no free for all maps, no way to counter spam armies, no way to check pings, steam servers going down constantly, certain players having incompatibilities with each other preventing them from ever playing on one anothers host, etc. The ranking system is also lacking and reports only the most basic information. It won't tell you anything meaningful about the player, such as the number of games they have dropped out of or othrewise not completed.

with MP CA has really made a self fufilling prophecy. This game, like ALL competitive games, would shine in MP if only CA had implememented it correctly. Some suggestions I'd offer to CA: make a way to detach units to other players on your team. Make a way to write on the minimap so teams can visually coordinate their moves and give instructions. Make maps substantially larger with terrain that breaks up movement on the map to make the age old question of whether to divide forces or not more relevant (rivers with limited crossings for instance). Make redline boundaries circular instead of a square to eliminate corner camping. Add a *realistic* FoW option that makes scouting and questions about dividing forces relevant, and makes actual ambushes possible. add control points/objectives to the game to eliminate the camp fest, such as fighting for control of a hill, a house, etc OR make a mini-campaign... anything to give the battles context. the list really goes on and on. If anyone is interested in seeing what a well done MP component looks like for a real time tactical game, check out myth: the fallen lords and myth 2 soulblighter by bungie in the mid 90's. bungie.net servers are long gone, but the mechanics and features of the game are LIGHTYEARS ahead of ETW, and really naything CA has put out with regard to MP ever.

warman is exactly right about this.

Originally Posted by |Sith|5|DarthWarman88

It makes me sick that they spend all this time on Singleplayer and yet they keep neglecting Multiplayer and they wonder why it's so small compared to other games.

I can only play Single Player! And I don't care about Multilpayer!
Singlle player is all for me!

MP strategy games have always been a bit boring for me, either you get a ass who spams or is a sore loser, or you have connection problems...

for MP I stick to shooters...

They don't care because they don't care. They just don't even understand concept of MP balancing or what people need, judjing by MP changes in ETW since 1.0. I say we are happy to have 1 additional map to the MP and they added it only because it is flat and they don't have to work much on it. CA never ever add additional game modes apart from standart battle and siege because they never intended to.
The only way CA can turn to Mp is recent innovation of "Replace AI" concept. Devs realised that they failed miserably on AI and decided to solve this problem by replacing it with human player.
Still I'm sure they never gave a second thought about vulnerabilities of this system, especially for delicious trolling. One sucsessful troll can join and ruin game for players in a moment.

TW is a strategy game. Most of that genre never offer multiplayer campaigns. CA is offering more in NTW as far as MP is concerned than any other title. Additionally, it's natural for them to focus more on SP. Multiplayer in it's very nature requires more: Another player. It also requires internet, which not all computers have a secure connection to for a long battle. SP only requires the game itself and the person who's playing, so it will be more used. SP is always more used than MP with the majority of games, so it's natural to focus a bit more on SP.

TW is Singe Player based!

And also CA implemented the MP GC and drop-in battles, so what are u talking about???

just because TW is single-player based doesnt mean they should completely neglect its MP and render it useless

connection issues, horrible filters, no lobby (will be fixed)

there have been improvements on it though from what weve seen in screenshots

TW is a single player game. The MP side is grand but relatively unimportant. After all the screaming for a multiplayer campaign 15000 people played it, on a game that sold over 810,000 in March alone. I have 10 years of TW games playing and there is nothing of any importance in the game except the GC, whether it is multiplayer battles or the RtoI all insignificant. The GC is everything in a TW game so why waste resources on anything else, they should just get the GC right first.