"FriendsOnly" Feature - DropIns

We at the Gentlemens Club have had several issues with this...

We are wondering if anyone else has actually gotten this feature to work properly. We have an assumption that it might be "region specific"; hence why while we tried to select "FriendsOnly" in a Campaign Battle while 3 Friends, who were in our Community Chat waiting, did not recieve any invite.

We did the reverse and each person tried to access the other for a "FriendsOnly" DropIn Battle.

We even tried to select the DropIn, then use the "Invite to Game" selection on Steam... but to no avail.

Finally we discussed that since I am located on the East Coast of the US, and my "testing" mates were EURO (east and west)... that may be the issue; however, the EURO guys were unable to make the "Friendsonly" function work either??????????!?!?!?!?!??!?!

One other note... while they were able to access a "Room" in the Multiplayer Lobby... I was not?!?!? I could create one, but they could not see it.


CA a response or fix is needed (or the "friendsonly" option is pointless)

hmm i wonder if i correctly anticipated that the new features would have serious bugs (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=331707)? GIVE ME A FIN COOKIE.

regional division of players has obviously done a lot to hamper this drop in feature. Instead of a pool of potentially thousands of drop in opponents, regional servers cut this number dramatically depending on your region.

If you want a drop in battle, i think your best bet is to switch it to a region that is in the evening time, when most people are playing.

I have played the "friends only" drop-in with a friend successfully several times (Italy and Egypt). He got my invites, I got his and we successfully played the battles. We both were on the East Coast though. I have to note, it took some time (a minute or two) for the "invite" notifications to pop up though. Maybe it has to do with the number of Steam friends one has? I do not have too many, so the search engine might have been able to find the one who was playing NTW campaign easily.

On a different note, I would like "invite a specific friend" option in addition to "friends only".

I just recently selected friends only and got a drop in from someone on my friends list in my campaign. In fact I have had no problems with people droping into my game. However I have had no luck in my attempts to join others games. Or drop in to their campaigns. I press the drop in balle button in the MP menu and it continus to look for players forever. Ideas?

Originally Posted by Scooter

I just recently selected friends only and got a drop in from someone on my friends list in my campaign. In fact I have had no problems with people droping into my game. However I have had no luck in my attempts to join others games. Or drop in to their campaigns. I press the drop in balle button in the MP menu and it continus to look for players forever. Ideas?

Could it be, that if you have the "friends only" option activated in your latest campaign, the MP section's drop-in button results in the search engine looping through your friends rather than the general population?

Ive also been testing guys. Seems friends is certainly not working MOST of the time & it's certainly not possible to invite a specific friend . Whether this is because of friends being in a different steam region is hard to tell . What has become obvious is that while 19 times out of 20 when you search for a drop in battle you get a quick battle , other people in their own single player campaigns are getting invites for drop in's in other peoples campaigns .So while i'm spending approx. 1 hour quitting quick battles so that eventually I get a campaign drop in , other people who have'nt even applied for a drop in get a game.

Both these issues need to be fixed promptly . I know my patience with drop ins is getting low & I presume I'm not the only one . Also the fact that often when you do get a battle your name is on the enemies army . So when you win it's recorded in your stats as a loss & visa versa .

Please get a hot fix out for this CA.

Just wanted to add this guys . From reading through the forums both here & at Total War . com it seems there is another problem being posted by people playing single player campaigns . Apparently the game is far too picky over what games may be played online - i.e. what meets the balancing criteria . Approx 10% are allowed to be played as drop ins is the figure being banded about . Seems this needs to be added to the fix list too .

Has anyone seen or heard about dropins being "region specific"? i really hope this isnt the case!

Sounds like we may have to do a bit more testing!

There's also a bug if you are a reinforcement army to the AI and you request a drop in battle. The other player always drops.

@ ragga


My guess is that is the problem . All i know for sure is that when you send out a search on 'friends only ' , the most friends never get the invite .

Originally Posted by scottie3

@ ragga


My guess is that is the problem . All i know for sure is that when you send out a search on 'friends only ' , the most friends never get the invite .

Has this been tested properly? When someone is in a battle (with the AI, for example), he would not get the invite. Same applies if the invite is sent during the time when the engine loops through the AI's turn. Basically, the only time one would get an invite is if the player is hovering over the strategy map.

I'm not talking about when I 'm on single player campaign . I'm trying to get a drop in battle from the mp screen . I talk to some other people from my drop in battle group who are in single pl. campaign . They are looking for a player to drop in as AI . They send out friends only invites only I don't get an invite.Ever. I joined the group exactly for this reason - to get invites for drop in battles . I havnt ever had 1 so I guess something isn't working as it should be . Whether this is because of regional splitting I have no idea . The most frustrating thing is people are getting invites who are not actively looking for a drop in & are busy in their own campaign . In the mean time I'm having to load & quit approx 15 - 20 quick battles just to get 1 drop in . lol . Very frustrating & the system needs to be altered / fixed before people lose patience with this great new feature .Apart from a few minor bugs , this game is almost faultless - in my opinion of course . The drop in battles is the 1 major thing CA needs to address quickly.

If any of the lads from CA read this I would like to say congratulations on a fantastic game. However please take a look at the drop in system & rethink how it is implemented - especially the possibility of seperating quick & drop in battles.

Thanks, scottie3.

i pm'd Jack from CA... hope an answer arrives!

Well if Lusted is watching here's some things I think everyone wants from the drop in feature.

1- A difference between quickbattle and drop-ins in MP. People either want to play one or the other, not combine both

2- There is a bug involving AI troops and drop in battles, basically if there are AI forces (a 3rd nation) then the game will drop the other human player. I've seen this as a reinforcement to an AI army.

3- Stability, I've had disconnects and later met up with the same players and they said they didn't quit out

4- The drop-in Human has no idea if he's the attacker/defender until the map loads. The Drop-in player also doesn't know the odds, the faction he's playing, the units he has, the reinforcements and where from the map they are coming from, and unit sizes. In other words the drop-in player has no idea what he/she is getting into. It would be nice along with the game invite that we see the battle setup screen or making the loading screen have the appropriate information for the drop in player. It would be better if this information was also given before accepting an invite.

5- Friends only is also regional, I don't mind the regional matchmaking since it allows me to have lagless matches however friends should be universal. I've played other region locked games that allowed me to invite gamer friends from the UK and such.

6- Battle difficulty settings affects the human player. So if a human player drops in to a game where the other player has the battle difficulty set to easy, then the drop in player get's handicapped like the AI would. This hasn't been confirmed however a word from a dev would go a long way into separating rumor from fact. Right now I suggest everyone set their battle difficulty to normal before accepting any drop-ins (this can be done in game).


It would also be nice if there was a rematch feature. In other words say I fought someone who I liked during my campaign, it would be nice to invite that same guy to play the battles for the AI faction or to roleplay the AI general he was on the battlefield. Like a "invite previous opponent" button or something would be very helpful along with maybe a "10 previous opponent list" with ignore options and favorite options allowing us as players to filter the people we like to play with.

changing steam download server changes the NTW mutiplayer battles avalible. that is very clear when you try play a game in Hong Kong.

Originally Posted by Jonathan654

changing steam download server changes the NTW mutiplayer battles avalible. that is very clear when you try play a game in Hong Kong.

This is the exact reason why region lock was pointless to begin with. It should be based on connection speed and not region, since my neighbor could be on 56k however I could be playing someone in the UK with fiber optics and the lag would be better. I'm fine with region lock since I believe there's other issues behind it then what's better for the player.

Right now the workaround is that everyone in the club agree on a certain region and looking at the membership list, there's a good amount of Europeans and Americans so no matter what region is picked it's going to impede some.

@ Ragga - well done mate . Lets hope we hear something soon .

@Lord Nova - I actually am pretty sure that difficulty settings do not effect human players - thats only judging from my experiences though . Are you sure friends are regionally split ? This would certainly explain my difficulties getting invites if that is the case & should certainly be opened up , as are friends invites in custom battle mp .More info on the loading screen is also needed for sure . Often by only giving generals names its impossible to work out who's attacker / defender etc.

Thanks for putting the effort in guys,

cheers, scottie3.

Originally Posted by scottie3

@Lord Nova - I actually am pretty sure that difficulty settings do not effect human players - thats only judging from my experiences though . Are you sure friends are regionally split ? This would certainly explain my difficulties getting invites if that is the case & should certainly be opened up , as are friends invites in custom battle mp .More info on the loading screen is also needed for sure . Often by only giving generals names its impossible to work out who's attacker / defender etc.

Thanks for putting the effort in guys,

cheers, scottie3.

Actually I believe I played you sometime yesterday. If you recall I was Russian and fought with usually a 30%-100% number advantage. If you are indeed in Europe and weren't using the steam regional cheat of changing your download location, then I would say the problem is now more on the fact that their queue system is slow or not very well optimized in searching out games with friends only and with public games.

Yes i remember now Lord Nova . I am indeed on the UK download region. So it seems regional differences in download areas are not the problem after all. The invite friends only function is just not functioning that well i guess.

I'm curious about something now. People have reported that they get invites from friends whilst they are in single player campaign mode for drop in battles. However I've not heard of people in multiplayer getting invites for drop in battles .The only invites I get are indeed for normal custom battle MP when I'm in mp. Can it be that this is the case - you only get friends invites for drop ins if you are in single player ?lol. Sounds strange .

Can other people post if they have any usefull experiences on this please.

Thanks,scottie3.

Are you talking about a Steam game invite here? Because the "invite" you get when campaigning is different.
As for my experiences, I got Steam invites from Ragga to join his game before I even had NTW; I don't think he specifically invited me so I assume that automatically happened when he started a friend-only drop-in battle
(I had joined the NTW Gentlemen Group already and we were friended on Steam already).

EDIT:
I stand corrected, Ragga did sent me a Steam invite explicitly.