As long as you understand these are just your opinions; not at all facts.  And by the way, these two statements completely contradict each other.

But let's talk facts.  Think about why so many games have multiplayer today.  The idea of implimenting it to an otherwise complete, single player game isn't about making it better or "worth playing".  The reality is, in cases like these, adding multiplayer is often little more than a business decision.  It's about sales numbers.  Will the mere inclusion of multiplayer make a game sell better (regardless of its meaningful impact on the game itself)?  Many will claim the numbers say it does.  Because people (like RickyDMMontoya) will buy it -- not because it's a good game, but simply because they see "multiplayer" listed on the box, regardless of anything meaningful beyond that.  The bold quote above exemplifies this quite explicitly.

It reminds me of a conversation I've recently had with a close friend of mine who is a game developer.  Apparently the following is a lecture game developers get all too often (usually from their publisher): "This is a wonderful single player game.  That said, I don't care how you do it, I don't care if the netcode is terrible, I don't care if it damages the quality of the game in other areas or it just doesn't seem to fit in the first place, it MUST have multiplayer."  -- As a consumer and caring fan of a product, does this forceful and ignorant mentality sound like a "good" thing to you?  Just another reason forcing multiplayer on a game can sometimes be more of a detriment than anything else.

Speaking purely as a consumer and a gamer, I don't care how many units are sold.  It's not my job to worry about that.  Multiplayer or not, all I want is a solid gaming experience that I'll enjoy for an extended period of time.

Okay @ #27 "these two statements completely contradict each other" Are you aware of what a contradiction is? #24's first proposition says that adding the multiplayer feature to an already poor title will not save it from bad development choices, poor graphics, game-breaking bugs, etc. The second proposition is that lack of multiplayer support in an otherwise exceptional game renders it unplayable by his standards. (which I whole-heartedly disagree with, anyone who tries to tell me that Psychonauts or the first Portal game are "not worth playing" is blatantly wrong in my eyes) Neither of these statements are mutually exclusive. Neither of these claims have any effect on the other's validity.

Now, you claim to desire to "talk facts" and about "reality". You then provide a single anecdote about a rude and pushy game publisher forcing a developer to add multiplayer to his game. How is this proving anything more than #24? I would like to mark one of your comments on #24 with a 'return to sender' stamp: "As long as you understand that these are just your opinions" You have provided absolutely no reason adding multiplayer is a detriment to a game other than your personal perspective.

How does adding an optional feature to a product do anything but add value to it? If you don't want to play multiplayer then don't click the multiplayer button, does that not solve the issue? Is an extra menu option really that hard to live with?
I honestly cannot fathom an anti-multiplayer lobbyist's reason against adding bonus functionality to an already outstanding title. When was the last time you decided to not purchase or use a product because it gave you options?
I can concede that it may be off-putting that this will take resources away from developing more singleplayer content or that it could negatively impact the current level of support offered for single player. However, if adding multiplayer support brings in more players does that not mean that more resources will be acquired by the developer? Wouldn't that remedy at least some of the split?
Game balance changes need not revolve around competitive multiplayer, that's a developer's choice. The developer might just as easily leave things exactly the way they are for multiplayer. If one single strategy dominates all others in competitions then that is fine. If the developer wants to even the playing field a bit because of this then perhaps singleplayer needed the adjustment too? Or multiplayer could even just take a backseat while the changes to singleplayer mechanics dictate all balance changes.

TL;DR? Long-story-short: My opinion is that multiplayer is an optional feature that will add value to FE:LH and shouldn't be treated like some kind of horrible plague threatening to spread to the precious singleplayer game. If you don't want to play with friends, then click the singleplayer button every time you load the game. I would appreciate the option of adding social interaction to my gaming experience.

If someone out there feels that they desperately need to convince me otherwise then please, for the love of whatever deity you hold dear, use real-world logic and verifiable facts. Thank you. C=

So exactly what are we discussing here?

There is obviously multiple forms of Multiplayer:

- Hotseat

- Round-Robin

- play-by-email

But concerning The_Biz's point:

Maybe the other players could watch?

I guess this is why Hotseat is possibly the most likely multiplayer we will get.

This is stupid to say.

I explained why I need multiplayer in a 4x game. It's like a boardgame to me. I want to play it with people. I want to socialize with it. I want it to be the thing that brings my friends/family together for a night of beer and pretzles.

I can forego multiplayer in an RPG, like an Elder Scrolls game, where there's a compelling story. I can forego multiplayer in a quick little action game, like Hotline Miami, where it's gripping moments of quick action.

I can't forego it in a 4x. It's quite boring and bland to push pixels just for the sake of it against an AI that will always fall down. There's no actual diplomacy. The AI will just make stupid demands/offers without anything behind it.

Put a person behind it, and that trade agreement means something.

Why should I bother to play FE:LH? There's no story to speak of, there's no novel mechanics to explore beyond the first 10 minutes.

These games are repetitive by their nature. If you've played one game of Fallen Enchantress to the end, you've seen everything there is. The only reason I have to play them - ever - is to beat up on my friends.

And to the players who say that this style of game can't function in multiplayer? WTF. Have you ever played any of the genre leaders? It works. It works well. Have some patience and quit being an ADD spaz.

Stardock games the way they are designed just wouldn't work with MP at all, so they shouldn't have MP, as it would be a waste of resources.

Hopefully GalCiv III will be designed to work that way. Maybe the GGPO license could work for MP games somehow, I think that license only costs $5,000.

It could probably work reasonably well if there was an option to disable tactical battles, and force auto-battle only. But even then your talking about a game that was not designed to be balanced competitively. What kind of start you get often determines in a big way how powerful you will be. Against dumber AI you can come back from a bad start but against other players it's unlikely. Imagine how long you would be sitting there rerolling maps until all players were satisfied with their start. These kind of issues pop up when you take a game that was designed for single player, and try to force multiplayer into it.

For me I just don't care. Even if multiplayer is added I wont play it. I don't like to commit hours at a time to play multiplayer. I need shorter sessions. So for me, and it's perhaps a bit self centered but I would rather see them focus development time elsewhere. Thinks like a better diplomacy system, more tech tree difference between Kingdom/Empire, and so on.

If you're playing a pirated version of the game you should purchase the game or leave.

Intellectual property violations are not the same thing as theft.

By pirating the game, he didn't cause any single instance of the bits to flash out of existence.

But he did steal the money that would have been paid to Stardock and the other companies involved had he bought the game legally. Some of which goes to pay for things like heating, lighting, the wages of its employees etc. Which in turn pays for those employee's homes, families, food, clothes etc. So by stealing a copy of the game, he's stealing from everyone who worked on the game or is connected to it.

Also if Stardock gets less money, they have less money to put into their games, which means less content for everyone.

So his theft affects everyone. Intellectual Property Violation Is Theft.

Someone who takes something that doesn't belong to them is a thief, no matter what sort of mental gymnastics you use to pretend otherwise.

And those games are designed for MP.   Tacking on MP willy-nilly just doesn't work- you have to implement it intelligently.

Brad decided (and most of the forum from many polls agree with Brad) that the man-hours/money-hours spent for MP would be better used improving other features.

I"d love to see Stardock so a 4X TBS game with MP, but I want that game to do it right- it wouldn't be done right with Elemental.  Now GalCiv 3 or FFH3 could be a different story.

WoM.  The grand disaster that was Elemental:World of Magic was designed top-down to support multiplayer.  I think all threads about MP should have one reply with a bare URL to the metacritic page of WoM and then be locked.  There's nothing else to talk about.

FE is better than WoM.  LH is better than FE (and is a really good game).  And these games are better than WoM in part because they don't do multiplayer.

Agreed.  The problem is that GalCiv 2 was so tight that wedging MP in there might break the whole thing to pieces.

The problem is that Stardock approaches games in a way that hearkens back to the early days of PC gaming.  They have a single-player mentality and they make (usually) great single-player games.  They've taken shots at the MP market with WoM and Demigod, did they learn enough from those failures to put together something new and interesting for multiplayer in the 4x genre?  Can you even make an interesting MP game in the 4x space?