Lack of multiplayer changed everything. » Forum Post by Monsterod

lol d00d no reel 1337 g4m0rz need MP its PROVD d00d lol ur all so stuoopid n00bs plz --- STFU!!

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I had to google that to understand it - lol! Now I feel really old.

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Quoting Wintersong,

reply 75

No because they are irrelevant for this topic.

ROTFL

you should really use your "arguments" with the 5 yo cousing of the other guy

here we are adults, bye

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Quoting ddd888,

reply 65

basically its like building a house with a fixed amount of money, making golden doorknobs and crystal windows and then suddenly arriving at the top floor and "oh there isnt more money, then we dont make the roof

Much work on MP has already been done. But after a resource accounting, it was decided that the living spaces took priority. The game room has been framed and wired. But the drywall, flooring and furnishings are on hold. The foundation for this house of FE has been set. It is framed, sheathed and roofed. Much of the plumbing and wiring is complete. The time is now to make any last minute changes to the floorplan before going about the finish work. Sometime before or after the fixtures and appliances are installed, they'll take another look at the gameroom and see what they can do with it, with any remaining resources.

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Yea, I'd say an MP feature is a "game room" within the floor plan. Not quite as critical as a roof, or a miscellaneous glitzy feature ... but a potentially important part of the primary floorplan.

If you do have a game room, the community can interact on a level of collaborative play beyond theory, and there is also an element of competition.

Sure, some gamers only want games where they can crush others to feel better about themselves, but others are interested in all forms of play, including solo games, Succession games, and Cooperative games.

Therefore, multiplayer is not a fundamental feature of a game per se ... but it is one of the fundamental reasons that many people choose to play them.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 19

TBS multiplayer is a chore.

Seconded... TBS games are just not suited for MP in my mind. Though, I have much less time for gaming these days, I wonder whether I'll get much FE in at all in any form.

But, like has been danced around above in varying degrees of intelligence and hostility, that's what it's about isn't it. MP is not in initial release, I don't give a crap because it wont impact me and I am a sucker for a good storyline (HoMM drooolllsss).

There are folk here that a clearly not to happy about that. Sucks to be you and I'm sorry...

On another note, there was a comment above (sorry I lost it) about how Mp and mod-ability was essential for a game to have a long shelf life. I concur, +1 to that guy. However, I wonder how much money that makes them? Consider Call of Duty, whose model is to realease a game every 12 months and charge $100 (more if you are a console gamer) for what is, at best, some new maps and skins as far as the MP community is concerned. And it sells! Why would they be looking at making a Starcraft/Civ4 game that hangs around for 10 years when they can make something that people buy regardless? Not saying you are wrong, but surely at some stage a company has to make the next iteration of a game to continue making money off it, "cult" status aside...

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 58

It's a lot more work to make a game work in multiplayer.

Remember the problems Demigod had? And that was made by GPG who had years of networking experience behind them. It's a lot of work.

There's a world of difference between a real time game and a TBS. I think the multiplayer part should be way easier to implement in TFE than in Sins of Solar empire for example. The main difficulty with TFE would be the heavy multi-threaded architecture you guys did

Synching all those threads for Single player is I think already a huge pain, but synching it for multiplayer with all the shared random generator and all would be a huge task and I agree with the whole thread not a priority for me anyway. I play a lot of online games (90% of my game time is online and competitive) but for a turn based game I never saw the appeal of multiplayer.

My games of Civ or FFH2 or FE span for a whole 8hrs minimum. It's way too long for a multiplayer game. The mp functionality would be cool to have as a bonus later for lans and all but it should not be a priority.

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Its pointless to have multiplayer in a turn based strategy game. If that happened then turn based strategy might adapt to the times and start becoming really popular. Oh wait, didn't Civ pull that off over a decade ago ?

Personally I am hopeful FE gets a real multiplayer mode so I can grab Stardock a few more sales and play with my friends. Of course no one is going to care about trying out a mode where tactical battles are always automated to use an extremely relevant example. Its frustrating that the only good argument against it is WoM's really terrible MP not getting clicked on much and regurgitated stuff from forum trolls. If a game doesn't have solid MP at release then I am not expecting too much substance from claims that it will be good if it gets tacked on later. Single player might sell a game, but multiplayer and modding keeps a game alive and sells expansions. I've played week long games of civ with friends, there is a handy feature called save game which helps a lot. I doubt there are many people who pick up turn based games who don't like to play for a while anyways.

The arguments I hate the most are the ones regarding budget. Stardock in general seems to put in a ton of randomish extra features in their games that I am sure took a lot of development time and money to produce such as player/ship customization, journals for all your heros, etc. Its one of the things that really disappointed me in the original Elemental, I couldn't figure out where the priorities were because the core game was really terrible but boy am I glad I could have pink spikey hair and a wicked badass bandana and type up a long bio that only I could ever see in a single player game.

Before I get flamed to death by fanboys for being honest (boy did I notice this a lot during WoM release) this also drove me away from GalCiv 2. You had no control in battle, there was no multiplayer (I think similar implied future multiplayer features were made), yet you could go ahead and do crazy customization on ship appearance even though you only saw it sitting still on the screen or being flown by AI. Sure the overall game might have been good but the game was simply outright missing features that had become unspoken additions to the genre, while having extra stuff that seemed gimmicky at best.

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I guess it depends why you want to play multiplayer. Usually the main reason is that the AI plays differently or isn't challenging enough. If Stardock does a good job making an AI that learns from humans and imitates their play style... you can have fun with just singleplayer.

If you want to play with people you know IRL, then there is no substitute, and people are willing to spend a whole year playing 1 turn by email each day.

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Publius of NV

Join Date 08/2002

+233

Ratatosk7, I appreciate your ability to write in clear English, complete sentences, and coherent paragraphs, unlike some posting in this thread.

Due to my age, job and family responsibilities, and other interests, I don't have the dedicated time to devote to a MP game. I need something that is entertaining yet can be paused frequently and resumed later - the AI's don't mind my delays. So single player is the way for me, but I acknowledge that others have other interests, and I leave it up to Brad and the Stardock team to match their product to the market.

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Quoting UmbralAngel,

reply 84

I guess it depends why you want to play multiplayer. Usually the main reason is that the AI plays differently or isn't challenging enough. If Stardock does a good job making an AI that learns from humans and imitates their play style... you can have fun with just singleplayer.

But it cannot. AI cannot even beat humans at go, and it is a much simpler game. There are way too many variables in this game, way too many things to do that AI will never be a challenge without cheating, unless the player does not know the rules of the game at all.

The best we can hope for is an AI that does not do too many things in an obviously stupid way.

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Quoting DarkGaldred,

reply 86

But it cannot. AI cannot even beat humans at go, and it is a much simpler game. There are way too many variables in this game, way too many things to do that AI will never be a challenge without cheating, unless the player does not know the rules of the game at all.

That is an assumption. The AI in my modded game is already able to equal me in research and economy. The ones that I have comprehensive unit designs even challenge me in battle. I can still win, but the advantages are things that are very possible for the AI to learn. Have you ever played GalCiv2:TA? It had the best AI I have ever seen. I still lose sometimes to that AI after I modded out all the cheese. I still have nightmares about those damn Drengin. Seeing as this is the same AI programmer and the game is even more flexible, there is no reason to assert that the AI will not be at least at the same level.

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I think the solution here is pretty simple. Someone gift ddd888 a copy of Elemental:War of Magic. It's got modability and multiplayer.

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Quoting jackswift85,

reply 88

I think the solution here is pretty simple. Someone gift ddd888 a copy of Elemental:War of Magic. It's got modability and multiplayer.

stubborn ppl probably may overlook the fact that if im here i already have it and that not even a kid would laugh at such a terrible joke

but ehy, this is the internet, stupid nonsense pics, trololols and smeley are on vogue

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 87

That is an assumption. The AI in my modded game is already able to equal me in research and economy. The ones that I have comprehensive unit designs even challenge me in battle. I can still win, but the advantages are things that are very possible for the AI to learn. Have you ever played GalCiv2:TA? It had the best AI I have ever seen. I still lose sometimes to that AI after I modded out all the cheese. I still have nightmares about those damn Drengin. Seeing as this is the same AI programmer and the game is even more flexible, there is no reason to assert that the AI will not be at least at the same level.

That's not an asumption, if a game is more complex than go or poker, a computer cannot win against a good player currently. I have not tried your mod yet, but I am just finishing a game in Ridiculous in which I wiped the floor with the AI. I have not played Gal Civ 2 that much, as I didn't really like the gameplay (too much like Civ in Space for my taste). I'll give it another try. But the need to jungle between civilization and heroes make the work of the AI much harder than in Galciv. If the game has enough randomness, the AI can still win sometimes despite being inferior (as in Armageddon Empires), but it cannot consistenly win on a regular basis.

Optimizing the tech tree is relatively easy (it is only a problem of optimizing bonuses). The hard part for the AI is understanding positioning, and the combination of special abilities, to know where and when to attack, such things... If you are into going for a tech race against the AI, you might not be playing to your strength

I would be interested in trying your mod, though.

Concerning the bigger multiplayer vs single player issue, the percentage of players playing multi is not that relevant : for instance, I only play about 5% of my games in multi, but I much prefer them to have MP, for the following reason:

if the game is really good, you can get the most of the gameplay if the game includes MP, while on the other hand, if it is SP only, you know you'll get to a point where there is nothing left to do with the game (except mod the hell out of it, but I am not patient enough for this).

More often than not, if I don't play MP, it is because I don't like the game enough to spend dozens of hours to play it in MP, or because I don't think the game would play well in multi at all.

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While I respect the OP's post regarding multiplayer I would use my vote to counter it - stating that I do not enjoy multiplayer strategy games and I think it should be left out. The problem I have with turn based strategy multiplayer is waiting for the other human to finish:

micromanaging the appearance of some unit
getting back from the bathroom
taking a phone call
making sure they moved *every* unit this turn in case they missed something
etc (add your own reasons)

If multiplayer is added, it should be added after the main release and to cover a niche audience.

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Quoting ddd888,

reply 89

stubborn ppl probably may overlook the fact that if im here i already have it and that not even a kid would laugh at such a terrible joke

but ehy, this is the internet, stupid nonsense pics, trololols and smeley are on vogue

I don't think you're giving this small part of the internet enough credit. There's been many rational statements and arguments that you have ignored, denied or refused to accept because it somehow threatens your view that anything less than Stardock implementing MP (despite the notion that they will probably implement it in the future if FE sells well) is wrong and should be changed.

You'll find that over here we value rational thoughts, well presented arguments and correct grammar and spelling. It's hard to take you seriously (and some have tried, I commend those of you) when you come in here and troll other board members while claiming it's you who is being "trolled".

If you want to be taken seriously, feel free to form a rational argument and present it in a clear manner. Otherwise, don't be too surprised if people like myself laugh off your posts.

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