Yep.

Nah, Inst was a mentalist.

Hello chaps, (if anyone's still looking at this thread)

Wafflecakes_WG wrote:

Nah, Inst was a mentalist.

Hello chaps, (if anyone's still looking at this thread)

Well since its been updated we are now

Clearly waffles is the best of all time

ACE wrote:

Clearly waffles is the best of all time

Awww.. And here's me thinking I was the only one who'd noticed.

Don't worry, he's clearly on some bad drugs

Wow, Naka posted. I don't think Naka ever posted on a forum in the 10 years I "knew" him.

And Golden Eagle was a beast, just for the record. I'm with carny, I highly doubt he ever cheated, he was just extremely good. And I can't remember now cause I'm drunk, but whoever said DS.. Darksphere was a top player, is absolutely dead on. That guy could destroy just about anyone on most cd/dc maps. Jim009 was very solid as well.

Carnage in his day wasn't too bad either, kid could play.

I'm just dissappointed that I didn't make your top five Immy, after all the beatings I gave you as both Copperhead and Tarosking. I'd think you'd put me up there somewhere. =)

Guys, in my personal opinion, you do not understand there is NO best player of all time! You can hardly put the players in three categories: Noob (ARTHAN, for example), Experienced (Henrique, for example), and Master (Joker, for example). It is so difficult even to categorize TAK players in these three categories (Noob, Experienced, Master) and you claim you know who the best player of all time is? Everyone believes himself/herself is the best TAK player ever, except from me who believe that I am the greatest Noob ever {LOL} and some other people who don't give a 'thit' about who is better and they just want to play TA:K online. Why should we care who is better or worse than us, we don't even know for sure !? Why don't we just play an amazing Real-Time Strategy game called Total Annihilation: Kingdoms?

yeah Arthan. I dont understand this shit too. Some want to feel best because they are probably poor in their real life ^^ idk lol

yeah. Somebody earlier called me King (Arthan in my birthday wishes) so my pride and glory rising.
Maaan i dont remember when I played last time ... sure it very fucking long ago

My post on this topic was not aimed to Landherr. It was aimed to all previous players who have posted here and they are 100% sure that the best TAK players ever are them and their best friends. And Myst, when I called you king, I meant you are king of sex, not of TAK, my dear {LOL, do not take this seriously, I am just kidding.}

lmao i know. my previous post was joke (and bit sarcastic)

IMP_ARTHAN wrote:

My post on this topic was not aimed to Landherr. It was aimed to all previous players who have posted here and they are 100% sure that the best TAK players ever are them and their best friends. And Myst, when I called you king, I meant you are king of sex, not of TAK, my dear {LOL, do not take this seriously, I am just kidding.}

It's pretty easy to form "best of all time" lists if you played the game when it was competitive. It is not based off of "friends," but based off of performance in tournaments and ladders. Pretty easy things to track and rank.

Paddy was one of the few people to earn the golden shield during bone yards, didnt play a ton on mplayer, but never lost. On gamespy he won king of the hill & other tournaments quite a few times before the game became too noncompetitive. I personally played with him more than any other person, and he was the only person that had a winning record against me. So i don't see how he can't be #1 when you consider he dominated when people actually played the game competitively. Many players had maps that were their specialty and that they were hardly ever beaten on. Paddy had about 3/4 of all cd/dc maps on that list.

Sinistrad was a phenomenal player, and taught me how to play the real TAK and move away from the mana maps. He was also a very solid player from BY, mplayer, and he came back late into gamespy and was very good, and competitive, played in tournaments (smurfed). The winner of multiple KOTHs i believe.

Fenix was before my time from BY, but i did get the chance to play him on the map i was known as the king of (sewers). He was the previous king of sewers (If u dont know history u think its Sinistrad, but it was fenix), and i played him on the map and he hadn't played TAK in years. We split 1:1. He gave me first loss on sewers for over a year. He won countless tournaments etc.

Matt200001 that dude was a great player, i owe him as much as sinistrad in helping me to develop my game into something competitive. He was absolutely amazing on sewers. Held high ladder spots and placed very well in tournaments

Dark Sphere was a hell of a player from BY through mplayer through gamespy. He would come in and out and immediately be competitive in tournaments regardless of a hiatus. Some large island map? i think is the map that he was an absolute beast on.

I consider myself a very good player. I played from mplayer thru gamespy. I know from the time I played, i won more tournaments than any other player (by virtue of playing in more tournaments than paddy). Started winning KOTHs in mplayer and thru gamespy on real accounts and smurfs. I know for about a 1.5 year period nearly every tournamnent was won by myself or paddy or our smurfs.

As previously stated, lists can be formed based on competitive play. You can't dodge players when playing in tournaments, you play or you forfeit. We even had a few laddering systems to rank players, although you were able to dodge in those and you had to report your own losses. I know I smurfed numerous accounts to #1 on those. I know toward the end of competitive gamespy around when WC3 came out, DC (Cage) was coming on strong as well as sinistrad under their smurfs and they won a few tournaments. I tend to not include DC in my list because he lagged extremely bad, but he still won competitively, and he also held the #1 ladder spot a few times.

These are a few names that I can say I personally played against and can vouch for their skill, and their competitive records and tournament wins back up their status as one of the best TAK players. There are plenty of players from BY that I did not have a chance to play that undoubtedly deserve to be on the list, IE all of the golden shield players. I believe cavecat and some zhon player actually had a golden shield.

I obviously don't know the people that play now or how good they are compared to how good TAK players were when the game was actually competitive. By definition, "best of all time" lists are nostalgic and mostly consist of past players. From what I can tell of the people that actually play this game currently, only Sammuel (Tarosking) can comment on the quality of players from BY thru now. And I'm sure he's lost half of his memory to old age

Don't be butt hurt because I consider players that actually played the game when it was competitive to be the best. Sadly, you new players can never answer if you are better than the old players on the list because no one plays this game anymore, and if they show up to play it a couple of times without having played it in 10 years, it doesn't really answer much.

Hmmm.... and here we go again lol.

The beatdown wouldn't be so sad if you could play as much as you can write... because that's what happens whenever some kid with big ego comes. Not just today, always. It's not about how rust and slow they are when they come back, it's about their overall skills and knowledge about TAK. They come back today and just shock at what's known today.

This game was never competitive if you consider number of players. This game never had the interest of a massive number of people. Best player knows how to play, can play. For example, you can't compare top GSA players with top Mlagger players. The difference in skill level is so huge that the confront is funny.

But it's cool, you did good before. But this is a dead game played by few people. ALWAYS was. This game was dead after the 1st week of sales. So, it doesn't matter if you used to beat a bunch (a little bit more numerous) of CLUELESS players. I have witnessed how people play for more than a decade. Just a small few know exactly what they are doing. And NONE of them have played during BY or Mlagger, simply because there was no conditions to play this game at a high level. There was no time to understand the game as deep as it was understood later.

That's pretty much the reason a top player from Mlagger, at the highest skill level he attained, would struggle to win 1 in 20 vs a top player from 2004+. That's why they hardly make a top 50 of all time. That's why they just write. And play worse than any decent player from the current time whenever they show up.

And let's be honest, 90% of the ppl on the top players list of those 2-3 guys quit because they lost and were shit. Always were.

Clay4141 wrote:

no immy just talked mad shit and pissed me off. bring that mother \"******\" back and lets introduce him to joker...

Lol it's funny how his speech changed drastically recently.

I'll reiterate what "best of all time" means. Take any sport or any other video game, you compare era's based on wins and titles and dominance over peers. You can compare different eras on these things because the same criteria exist--- except in this case. TAK players now have no real barometer.

Yes the TAK player base and competitive scene was very small compared to korean invaded starcraft or wc3 or c&c3 or sc2. It did have competition and tournaments and, albeit shitty, ladders. You can't play the older competitive players, sorry, spend your time on a game that matters if you need the validation.

Like I said, don't get butt hurt, but you can create lists of players based off of tournament wins and actually competitive ladders and play. Sorry you guys cannot do this anymore for what is a dead game.

TAK was a blast of a game, but it was never a skillful game. The game lacks the micro and macro intensity of other RTS games (starcraft, wc3, sc2). The competitive scene was also extremely miniscule compared to other RTS games. I'm a competitive gamer, always have been. I've reached pinnacles (US pinnacles anyways--koreans unfair) in WC3, SC2 C&C3 --- which puts it at every single RTS i've ever played ive at least made the top 5 at some point in time.

Trust me, my ego doesn't need stroking on a game that never caught on, i've always been able to stroke it in every RTS (more skillfull and competitive RTS') i play by looking at my ladder rankings or tournament victories. I just wanted to point out you can definitely make "best of all time" lists.

Mhh ok, this is getting away from TAK and becoming another "hey look at me I'm a special person" again. Is Pelé a better soccer player than Messi (or C. Ronaldo, or Ronaldo, whatever)? Doesn't matter.

In TA (the original) there's a guy with a intensive SC (and SC2) background that kept playing TA "competitively". But he could never surpass the other 3-4 guys that never played seriously those other games. Doesn't matter if you're good (or not) in others RTS. This is about TAK. You can be good at pingpong, but suck shit in TAK.

Also, micro/macro level depends on who plays the game. ANd, speaking for myself, I know exactly what I'm doing and I can do it as fast as anyone else possibly, considering any RTS level.

I don't come here for "validation". You must be so good at those games, that you have to come to a dead's game desert forum to talk about how cool you are.

Again, this game was always dead. You can't make a best of all time list if you have only played when everyone was shit. Potential maaaany people have. Now if you ever truly learned TAK, that's another story. But you can make a list of your top players of yer time, and share it with the other 2-3 people that care, no problem.

Ps: I played TA when it was "competitive" and was #1 at a ranking of hundreds players during 2 years (when I was 13-14 years old). I know how RTS work.

edit: and rly I dunno why I keep discussing with people that I can beat with no effort. I think that speaks for itself...

Carny, I remember DarkSphere raping on Savanna Hunt, if thats the one you're talking about? But that was a jungle map not an island map.

Or maybe he just destroyed me there alot, I can't really remember.

And landherr, i'm really not so sure why you think players from past generations couldn't hang today if they were still motivated to. I can honestly say, not much has changed since the play on GameSpy other then the "average" player is far better. The elite and top players aren't really any better than the elite players were on GS or Mplayer, or probably BY for that matter.

Paddy is by far the best player i've ever played against. You would've been a solid player on GS when we had 50 players a night etc. Probably would've given Paddy a run for his money. Same with DarkSphere etc. I'm not sure how you think the game has evolved so much past 2004 as you put it that those guys can't compete.

We knew the same things back then that you do now. Since I came back and played a little a few years ago, I can honestly say i've learned no new tricks or anything I didn't know back then. I'm still good at microing, I just suck at using my monarch. Always have, always will. The game is literally no different (except for a few minor unit balances.)

I'm not sure if thats coherrent and makes any real sense, been writing this while doing a bunch of stuff and i'm sure it's disjointed. But I think I made my general points.

Let me say my opinion too, though I was never a very successful TA:K player.

@CarnageKing:

"TAK was a blast of a game but it was never a skillful game."
* Totally false. You contradict yourself here, if TAK needs no skill to be played, then all the players are of the same level and there were never top TAK players.

"The game lacks the micro-macro intesity of other RTS games (SC,WC)."
* Totally false, again. In TA:Kingdoms you can controll ALL of your units at the same time, even if they're more than 150, and macro-micro managing them according to the situation. On the other hand, SC or WC or AoE or other real-time strategies have a limit in how many units you can control at the same time, limiting micro-managing in combat seriously in comparison with TAK. Furthermore, in TAK you can train infinite units of a certain type in each factory of yours and order them patrolling your opponent's base, putting yourself and your opponent in a continous combat sequence from the very beginning of a match. In other RTS games, you don't have enough resources to train an infinite number of troops, making their combat phases less frequent and less intense than TAK's ones.

And Sammael, yes there is difference in nowday's skill and past skill, version 1.0 of TAK is a totally different game (in terms of balance) if compared with version 4.1BB. Also, CD/DC is not the main kind of map; nowdays players play mostly 3rd party maps with faster and different strategies in comparison with CD/DC maps.

@Arthan
"version 1.0 of TAK is a totally different game (in terms of balance) if compared with version 4.1BB"

version 1.0* was in short period time (dirgible was big, game took many resources from computer system etc etc)
v2.0 was released after 2-10 weeks TA:K released
3.0(BB?)(lastest official version released in 2000 or something) compared to 4.1BB have no many differences


*even DEMO TA:K i could download on 2.0 DEMO version LoL (there is probably no any 1.0 DEMO version)

IMP_ARTHAN wrote:

And Sammael, yes there is difference in nowday's skill and past skill, version 1.0 of TAK is a totally different game (in terms of balance) if compared with version 4.1BB. Also, CD/DC is not the main kind of map; nowdays players play mostly 3rd party maps with faster and different strategies in comparison with CD/DC maps.

Arthan, Mplayer and after used 3.0. 4.1bb is so minutely different than 3.0 that there is very little strategic difference.

People have also preferred 3rd party maps since mplayer. There was a difference when 3.0 came out after playing on 2.0 for a little while. The difference was you had to tier up rather than just flood tier 1 and mon pimp as opposed to what you could do on most maps.

Typically the best players preferred cd/dc maps or at least 3rd party spread mana. However, the majority played grouped mana. Mplayer maps with like 10+ lodes were popular, then on GS people realized it was retarded and started making grouped mana where you'd have like 4-6 in base and then maybe 2-3 to fight over. Which was atleast an improvement, but I've always felt like grouped mana ruined the game of TAK, but thats my opinion.

The last time I was relatively active most of you guys were playing the same 3rd party maps we were on GS. Anyone who was good on spread mana, would be effective and good at grouped mana 3rd party maps. The same can't be said for the other way around. People just like playing a game for an hour so they can see a dragon and feed it birds, woohoo. (obviously there's more strategy than that, I guess.)

I don't know if it's a pride thing that people want to act like the game has evolved so much or what... it quite simply, hasn't. Take my opinion for what it's worth I suppose. But as carny has mentioned... I've literally played and been active for atleast a time period on every single server we've ever played on.

Or be stubborn cause clearly I wouldn't have any idea what i'm talking about.

ya 3rd maps with mana only in bases (or more than 90% total mana in whole map are in small areas) dont require the skill from player to good macro economy and building properly
everything just happens in one line that can be boring

i hadnt see on SC* koreans championship** maps with not spread resources
they fight just usually for resources, or try to destroy minor base, defend minor base and they fight and fight and wins in 60-80% games person who control more bases for longest period time.

*comparing two games can be bad idea but in every RTS fighting for resources is something which must be, in 3rd maps u just fight and try to push enemy to end of map LOL


but i like 3rd maps orms seems usefull really much


Edit
@carnageking
"TAK was a blast of a game but it was never a skillful game"

just not enough koreans play this game LOL (only Choi I know and he rape me with weird methods, he also very good play SC)


**
but now on battlenet or gameranger become popular "fastest map" they are simillar to 3rd maps every base got many resources and sometimes some res. is on the middle (but usually not)

Sammael wrote:

Carny, I remember DarkSphere raping on Savanna Hunt, if thats the one you're talking about? But that was a jungle map not an island map.

I forgot about his Savanna. His savannah was very good, so was his Tale of two castles? And also Some island map, it had a lot of mana, not per mare.

IMP_ARTHAN wrote:

Let me say my opinion too, though I was never a very successful TA:K player.

@CarnageKing:

"TAK was a blast of a game but it was never a skillful game."
* Totally false. You contradict yourself here, if TAK needs no skill to be played, then all the players are of the same level and there were never top TAK players.

Don't take my quote out of context. There is no contradiction. Compared to the other RTS games i've played (popular ones) TAK takes far less skill than the others. Resource management(forgiveness for building wrong shit) is not punished heavily. Fighting for resources, especially on 3rd party maps is minimal, even spread mana because they don't run out. Compare this to SC2 or C&C3 where you really gotta figure out a way to earn income. If you've played other popular RTS games, this really isn't anything worth arguing. I don't know who would ever argue that TA:K takes more skill than starcraft or warcraft 3. That is an insane statement, NOWHERE close.

IMP_ARTHAN wrote:

"The game lacks the micro-macro intesity of other RTS games (SC,WC)."
* Totally false, again. In TA:Kingdoms you can controll ALL of your units at the same time, even if they're more than 150, and macro-micro managing them according to the situation. On the other hand, SC or WC or AoE or other real-time strategies have a limit in how many units you can control at the same time, limiting micro-managing in combat seriously in comparison with TAK. Furthermore, in TAK you can train infinite units of a certain type in each factory of yours and order them patrolling your opponent's base, putting yourself and your opponent in a continous combat sequence from the very beginning of a match. In other RTS games, you don't have enough resources to train an infinite number of troops, making their combat phases less frequent and less intense than TAK's ones.

Controlling all of your units at the same time takes LESS micro. OMG i wish i could select all of my units in WC3 or SC1/2. Being limited on unit selection and having to set up that many hot keys, remember what all hotkeys are etc. That does not limit micro, it makes me have to cycle constantly, increasing my key presses exponentially.

TAK making infinite units patrolling is what also dumbs the game down. You dont have to manually queue units, IE you do not have to pay precise attention to when you make units, to resource allocation. You can start building structures WAY before you have the resources. In wc3 if i make a grunt, i cant tech up. In TAK i can build every single thing at the same time if i want to. I also have to remember to constantly make units in WC3 or SC2, if i forget to make 1 single unit in an even match, I auto lose.

This brings us to timings. The design of TA:K removes emphasis on precise timings of when to build things. In wc3 and SC2 and C&C3 you have to know the exact timings of SOO many different strategies in order to defend against them, if you miss time by a few seconds, it is gauranteed game over.

TA:K Has the "Oh shit!" button known as a monarch. \"****\' ups can easily be masked by good monarch play. And besides the monarch, the penalty for losing units is almost non existent in TAK. If I carelessly lose a single teir 1 huntress or grunt in WC3 in an even skilled game I automatically lose.

Multitasking in TA:K is very minimal compared to other games because of the above points. Your comment about no steady combat in other games compared to TAK can be true based on playstyle. My play style in all games (thanks to TAK btw) is constant combat and harassment. I do not like base play and stagnant build up, that always reminded me of 3rd party maps in TAK that i hated. Instead, I always opted for immediate and constant harass and annoyance while precisely macroing and microing on my end to gain an advantage thru distracting my opponent.

It is also very hard to gain an advantage through distraction in TAK. So what If i distract you, your factory still makes units automatically, you still gain resources automatically, you still shift queued like a thousand buildings. Macro can only minimally be distracted in TAK.

And the unit cap, it weighs all units the same. A Monarch, A titan, a golden dragon. All 1 unit. No food management like other games, no penalties for going over food caps etc. I'm sorry, there are just far less skills to worry about during a given TAK match than most other RTS' .

I will say TAK had more strategy variability, advantage, and reward than most RTS though. Cookie cutter is what is rewarded in other games, TAK rewarded well thought out overall strategy, even if it was completely different. Two people rarely had the exact same strategy, It was very entertaining that way.

I've written a novella over the topic now, suffice to say, regardless of if it irks you--- there's a reason TAK doesn't have a large player base, my above comments regarding skill nullification are amongst those reasons.

Sammael wrote:

We knew the same things back then that you do now. Since I came back and played a little a few years ago, I can honestly say i've learned no new tricks or anything I didn't know back then. I'm still good at microing, I just suck at using my monarch. Always have, always will. The game is literally no different (except for a few minor unit balances.)

I really want to know what magic new abilities you guys discovered after 2004 as well. Pretty sure I opened all the game files and read the coding for what units did, downloaded tons of mods and modded my own units to see how it works. Really, what was hidden?

I know the crap tier of players did nothing but spam fire demons + blade demons all day. Better players knew how to use rictus, fire mage, lich, dark hand etc.

@Sammael:
Well, you may know better if you were around TAK all the time, however after hearing the most famous TAK strategies of the previous years and watching various TAK matches I can say the way modern TAkers play and behave is different than the way old Takers played and behaved.

@Carnage King:
1)
Selecting ALL your units at once gives TAK greater combat versality than other games, but you will never win just by that. Serious combat versus a skilled opponent requires serious tactics and skilled micro-management. Your Monarch by itself is a highly micro-managed unit and units with special abilities in TAK (Assassin, Kamikaze Rat, Harpy, Neo Dragon etc.) require even greater micro-managing than vanilla ones. But even a single Verunan Warrior of yours is better micro-managed, since it will gain experience and it will become stronger. Micro is VERY improtant in TAK.
2)
I don't think that losing a single unit in any RTS will make me lose the game, though it makes me to have a disadvantage. If that's the case, then players would auto-quit all the time. Furthermore, relying the whole game in training a unit / constructing a building at a very specific moment or avoiding losing any single unit makes the game boring and less RTS-like. I don't think that's true, but if things really are like this, then TAK is even better than the rest RTSes.
3)
Managing various resources & villagers is RTE (Real-Time Economy) and not RTS (Real-Time Strategy). Most RTSes include a lot of RTE in their gameplay, lowering the RTS-part of the game at a significant amount. On the other hand, TAK has resources but their management doesn't interfere greatly with the combat sequence and strategies, making TA:Kingdoms more RTS than the other RTSes.
4)
Though mana is a single infinite resource, it still is a resource and it is slowly gained, so spreading it wisely among your factories & builders and/or repairing seperates good players from bad ones. Take COH for example; its resources are infinite, but the more flag-points you control the more income you have. Furthermore, the difference between 5 Lodestones of yours and 6 of your opponent can be proven HUGE during a whole match, that's why you either need more Lodestones or must destroy your opponent's ones. So, resource managing in TAK is simple, yet challening.
5)
Harssing your opponent from the very beginning will make you lose units and if you're carelessly and not buy time to upgrade and expand, then that harass will be a waste of mana. Yes, you can make them again and again since mana is infinite, but if you waste X points of mana means your opponent has X more mana than you. There is no great difference here in comparison with other RTSes. The difference is that in TAK its easier and more frequent to train 'kamikaze' forces ready to sacrifice them in order to serve as a decoy, Lodestone destroyers, Monarch assassination team or just slowing down your opponent (but if these forces fail, then you're at a disadvantage).

Overall, TA:K has much less economy managing but much more serious combat managing and I believe it is more RTS than the rest RTSes around.

Your points mostly focus on why you like TAK more than other RTS games. This is fine, not going to argue that.

1) Other games have plenty of ability units (ie witch), except their require much more precise positioning of skills--- play a few games of SC2 and you'll know what i mean. While a veruna warrior does gain xp and become better, other games also do this, and losing that warrior doesn't really effect the outcome of a game. I promise you, losing one single, and not even important unit in SC2 and WC3 can and will cost you the game in an even match. In other games, you save your injured units, or use them at precise moments, you dont patrol /m-attack them from your factory.

2). Losing a single unit matters in WC3 and SC1/2 matters .
3). Call it what you want, TAK resource management is extremely easy compared to other RTS games.
4). Yes resource management is simple. Challenging? not that much, its more of a territory management than resource management. Resources are just part of the territory. Other games separate these things, and the resources in any given territory are not infinite.

5). Difference is if you sacrafice early units in TAK its not a big deal, in other games if your harassing units die without creating havoc, you will get gg'd shortly after.

6). TAK does not have more combat management. I promise you. The micro-combat required in SC2 and WC3 is WAY more taxing and involved than TAK. It's just what it is.

I also agree that TAK has more strategy than other RTS games. I've always thought this. TAK is more of a true RTS, emphasis on the S, while the others are more real time -tactics and micro/macro management, very little emphasis on overall strategy.