14 DAY TRIAL // Developer The Creative Assembly has revealed a new Total War: Arena video game during the Game Developers Conference, designed to take and mix elements from the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena and the real-time strategy genres.
The entire experience is an MMO take on the Total War multiplayer gameplay and the most important mode will see teams of 10 players battle one another, with a total of 500 soldiers on each side and the players involved controlling just 3 units.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun quotes leading developer James Russell as saying that, “Playing in a team of ten is far less intimidating than playing 1v1 on TW MP, especially for new players.”
He adds, “In TW you can control 20 units, where in Arena you can control just 3. 20 is a lot of management, requires expertise, and CA want that for Arena. It has to be as active and skill-based as the classic game.”
In order to make sure that players were not bored during Total War: Arena matches, The Creative Assembly is introducing a lot more manual control, allowing gamers to manually launch charge for cavalry and aim their archers.
The team is also adding hit points to individual units in order to make sure that damage does not instantly diminish a unit's offensive potential.
The Creative Assembly is also exploring the possibility of simply splitting every unit in a match in smaller groups in order to give each player a lot of tactical freedom even if he is only using 3 units during a match.
Total War: Arena will also have an overall progression system for players, with upgradable generals and new abilities for units.
Total War: Arena is expected to be released later during 2013 and the team is already preparing to launch a closed beta.