Elemental Forums
I'd wait until next week to hear anything from Brad or Derek on the matter, since they're both in GDC at the moment. I know the team has a love/hate relationship with MP - we love to play it, would love to expand on it, but putting quality time into a feature that less than 1% of the players use is...frustrating (and we do have the numbers from other 4x TBS games to verify this number).
From a day-to-day perspective, we're focusing on single player aspects of FE, and obviously developing them in a way where they'll work in MP, but unfortunatly I'm not privy to the grand scheme of MP in FE. Sorry 
I think, if there could just be a single player style co-op version, with all the features from single player just with more human players, and no other MP, it would be very much appreciated. Also, if you had this feature it doesn't matter if people have to wait for their turn and for tactical battles to be fought, as all the humans would be on the same team and share comraderie. Maybe the only difference would be that you could have an option for watching and chatting in allied battles, and everything else would be exactly the same as FE vanilla SP. You wouldn't even need to have more than two sides in a battle, just being able to watch your fellow human's battle and coach would be enough I think. And hopefully, with a sequential turn order co-op mode that is very similar to SP, it would not take too many extra resources. 
I do hope it makes it in. 
Best regards,
Steven.
And that's all people want, but Brad keeps posting that MP is "going to go in an increasingly different direction from SP". If it's so rarely used that it's not worth focusing on, why is it worth coming up with a different version of the game for that nobody wants in the first place?
I'd also say that any number on usage for EWoM is meaningless, because MP was delayed so long after release and was so limited when it did appear that there was no chance of it finding an audience.
(I'd also say that if Stardock isn't committed to doing MP correctly, they shouldn't do it at all. Marketing the game as having MP support when it's so weak is just a bad idea.)
That 1% figure is true for other games in the genre as well, not just EWOM. The only one I've ever played MP was AOW2SM, and that was becaue the SP AI was non-existant. Stardock games usually have at least somewhat of an AI.
Focus on single-player is what I say. Screw my friends, I hate sharing.
It is the tactical AI that is bad, with proper planning on the part of map makers it can be very difficult to beat if you auto all the battles.
Most multiplayer is done as coop, which is best done via hotseat and LAN. I doubt anyone has numbers on how much those get used.
Yes, statistics can be misleading. All sorts of things affect how reliable a certain statistic is for the purposes of decision making. I would suggest to Stardock to bite the bullet and put in a SP-style co-op mode, certainly for TCP/IP, but also hotseat and LAN would be fantastic. HOMM certainly has this.
Best regards,
Steven.
Oh dont give me that BS BoogieBac, you go ahead post up the numbers my friend. Which game, which platform?
Lets see, 7 of us purchased Elemental because it sounded and looked great. We all know the game didnt turn out anywhere near what it said it would, and Stardock was basically lowering expectations for things like mutiplayer before the game was even released.
CIV4 had a very large multiplayer community be it lan or online. Civ5s multiplayer doesnt work correctly which has led the game to being panned (along with its dumbed down approach). Civ5 is pretty though. Ya know what, none of us who purchased it play it anymore because its simply not very good.
Back to your game though, we bought it with the idea of playing multiplayer against the AI and each other. You throw out a number around 1% I call bull crap. Try sampling from games that are the same multiplayer as they are single player, and are stable. If companies didnt half ass multiplayer these days and it worked properly, im sure more people would play it.
Take the poll of players who PURCHASED elemental already on the forum and the number probably sits close to 45-50% would like elemental to have a proper working multiplayer option.
S.R.
It'll be Derek's call. But as a reminder: If you try to be all things to all people you end up being nothing to them all.
Saying that game X has a feature you want is meaningless. Fallen Enchantress has lots of features other games don't have and vice versa.
That said, we are VERY interested in having co-op MP modes. But we won't sacrifice single player budget for it. So it's way too early to tell what will have what.
Sword of the Stars?
The number is likely larger that 1% if you include coop that is like single player, but I doubt it is 45%.
Btw Brad, on the voting thread, its 34 to 27 in favor of having a same as single player multiplayer. Just incase you were curious We understand budgets and all this, but if you make a stable version of Elemental or FE that is the same as Single player I will send Stardock a check for One Thousand dollars. Better yet, I will fly out there, give you a thousand dollars in cash, and get you to sign my copy of Galactic Civ 2, and Elemental Special edition box set.
Im dead serious.
How about the budget for competive MP that less than 1% are interested in (if there is still any budget for it)?
The competitive MP crowd has a shorter attention span (I am sure you noticed how short while playing Starcraft II) than the coop group, so if they are not into Elemental by now it is highly unlikely they ever will get into it. And judging by there only being 2 ranked players, they are not.
Ug i hated sword of the stars but then it was Sword of the stars or Sins of a solar, and Sins was prettier, and easier to get friends to play.
Im thinking the Elemental crowd, I dont know what the Sword of the Stars and its players are like. I only knew just a couple people in our group that played.
Its Multiplayer and Singleplayer are interchangable to the point people can drop in and out of the game and let the AI play for them while they are gone. (As the manual puts it, singleplayer is multiplayer is singleplayer).
For $1000 I'll sign!
Good incentive, but don't make SP-style co-op only for that reason. 
Best regards,
Steven.
Wow - you really did give up some control. Kuddos. Watching things develop with great interest. I'm still playing the crap out of Demigod and looking forward to what you guys pull off next.
Yeah, totally agree. The MP mode worth investing in is the one that plays like the SP game and gets the benefit of new stuff you add to the SP game. It's not the one that wants to be Starcraft 2.
Competitive players have moved on, and they're not coming back (assuming they were ever here in the first place, which is something I seriously doubt).
I agree. If there are already hooks in the Elemental code to allow for MP as SP play, and quests could continue to be completed per player rather than per team, there is not much more that needs to be added or allowed. And seriously, I don't think that human allies viewing of and chatting in human vs. AI tactical combats would be that difficult to put in, if it's not in already and just switched off currently.
Best regards,
Steven.
See if they just came out and said hey look, we screwed the pouch on this game and we are making it right, we promise to make multiplayer later id be totally fine with it. Id just like them to stop beating around the bush.
Brad lays it out here in reply #34: https://forums.elementalgame.com/406054
The screwing the pooch thing has been explicitly and implicitly explained via many beaten to death horses. Bottom line: get the oom shit done, mechanics refined, a good single player experience, and then focus on MP possibly via DLC later. See Brad's explanation in the OP of this thread: https://forums.elementalgame.com/406061
If I were Brad or Derek I'd say and do the same thing: get the single player stuff done and let everyone know MP is still in the mix for later.
I'm not even sure how to address the 1% remark. How does Stardock get those statistics? Do they count the number of game sales and compare them to the number of people who have logged into multiplayer? That's not an accurate sampling because it's counting the people who picked up the game, bought it, didn't enjoy it, and moved on with their lives. There are a lot of those.
Even so, the TBS multiplayer market is very real, but Stardock definitely isn't tapping into it. Poor MP performance killed interest. Disabling multiplayer for a time definitely killed a lot of interest. Direction from the top that it wasn't a key issue to them has killed interest. Lack of customer confidence in recommending the game to their friends has killed interest.
Capturing the market and increasing Stardocks' share requires bold moves, not passive dismissal of what should be a valuable asset.
Remember: the single player crowd has no need whatsoever of Impulse, outside of a store. The featureset being developed (communication, connecting users) and its competitiveness with Steam is contingent on people who actually want to play with other people.
I'm not critizing you, or Brad, or Stardock. I would like to see Stardock succeed for many reasons. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be posting here. What I'm typing is an honest opinion from a member of a demographic that would like to be included, but currently isn't.
I'm not even sure how to address the 1% remark.
He probably works for the "government".
Exactly.
Yes, good practice for developing Impulse as a whole.
Not including a good "multiple human sides allied against the AI" mode is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, like I mentioned in that other thread.
Best regards,
Steven.
This is not true at all. One of the best features of steam is the in-game chat, though it does not simply connect two players playing the same game. In fact, when I use this feature, I tend to be playing a different game than my friends. The beauty part of this functionality is not that it allows enhanced match making or party creation, but that it allows all the users of the larger system, in this case steam, to communicate with each other in a unified manner. While this is a good feature for multiplayer games to find and gather additional players, it is actually a good feature for all players, both MP and SP.
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