So... still no answer from CA about "friends only dropin feature"

i had one of the best experiences this past weekend... while playing my own (selfishly playing it first without dropins) i got the heads up to join one of our fine GentlemenClub member's battle. It was so easy... he IM'd me and asked if I wanted to join, said yes... a few seconds later i got the textbox and the count down to play... and waaaaaaalaaaaa!!!

although i loss it was absolutely an amazing battle and now i am trying to quickly finish my campaign so that i can start a new one with "Dropin Battles Only"!!!



nontheless... what bothers me is that CA still has not said anything about the "friends only feature"... i tried it with another one of our members again this weekend and he keep selecting his battle to be a "friends only drop in"... but i never recieved the text box asking me if i'd like to join. we tried it nurmous times, but unlike the game described above... it never worked and he just got some random!!!

CA... is it still region specific... is it a bug... do you plan on fixing this??? Because if this is broken, the point of having set up Friends is pointless (in most cases!)

Was that the one with me (KrAzY Mofo)? Spain -vs- GB? I had the better troops but you had the numbers?

Epic battle, especially when your militia snuck around the cliff and assaulted my cannon after I had to pull the infantry to my other flank due to being overwhelmed. That could have been one of the funnest battles i have played to date in N:TW. Watched the replay at least 3 times now.

I believe that was my drop in battle Ragga failed to join. The strange thing is this seems to be a totally arbitrary problem. Sometimes the text box appears in campaign no problem at other times no joy ... frustrating as this is, it is normally possible to deal with this by the invited player joining through the 'drop in battle' section of TW Online.

In this case it was in fact someine else on my friends list who dropped in - they must have got the text box which failed to appear in Ragga's campaign window.

Nevertheless, the current system is clear evidence of CA's naivety when it comes ot online play. Two things should obviously be changed:

1) You should be able to invite a specific friend to drop into your campaign battles. Why this is not a feature is totally beyond me.

2) For general drop-in purposes, there should be an option to wait for a genuine campaign battle instead of being re-routed to a lameass small-units quick battle with another woudl-be dropper-in after a minute or so. The current setup is doing untold damage to the excellent drop-in battle concept as I believe very few people who click on 'drop-in battle' want to end up in a randomized ranked battle with platoon-sized units. I for one very rarely click on 'drop-in land battle' despite the fact that it can be the funnest part of the whole game cos I don;t wish to waste my time with piddly random units.

CA, this is simply a case of providing your customers with choice - I can't believe that it is a difficult technical change to make.

Multiplayer campaigns/dropins are clearly the long-term hook for serious players of the game and whilst many aspects of how it works are excellent it is infuriating how easy the tweaks are to perfect it. I even believe that the choice should be implemented for players to fight battles against the AI in their MPCs. I was up in arms when I first heard that this feature was unavailable; now having played a few MPCs with a human controlling AI armies I have to admit I would NEVER use the fight battles vs AI option as the level of challenge would be laughable. Nevertheless there are those who want this feature and once again it doesn't exsctly require a masterclass in programming to implement.

I have faith that CA will work to improve the MP options and functionality but the length of time it is taking them to do it beggars belief. Is it really too much to take a few days off creating the next DLC pack and add these options?

Drop-in appears to be mostly dead.
The last drop-in battle I had with you, wilo, when you msgd me and I actually went through the MP menu's "Find Drop-in Battle" and we got connected.
It's okay that it did work, but it also means that there probably was no one else looking for a Drop-in or he would have been connected to you.
(Of course, the "Quick-Battle if no Drop-in available" feature is to blame for no one looking for games anymore)

Also, the looking for QBs is majorly buggy.
I once started a search, got the countdown; got the short hangs when the system is trying to connect, but nothing happens, countdown goes on.
I wait, just to see what happens. After some time I get the dialog box "Could not connect" two times in a row.
I leave the MP menu to play Custom Battle; while I'm in the main menu (!), I get more dialog boxes "Could not connect" and "Failed to Host Game".
I play my Custom Battle; after I'm finished and come back to the main menu, I suddenly get connected to a Quick Battle!