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What priority should multiplayer have?

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What priority should multiplayer have?

How multiplayer impacts design

from JoeUser Forums

Last week I wrote about whether strategy games need multiplayer.  There are definitely strong feelings on the matter.

In the article, I referred to blogs written by top reviewers Bruce Geryk and Troy Goodfellow.  I want people to understand something specifically -- I referred to them because they are top reviewers in their field. They did not take any points off of GalCiv II because it lacked multiplayer. They were putting forth the reason why many people are passionate about multiplayer in strategy games.

For the people who have a group of friends that they play multiplayer with, then a multiplayer feature in GalCiv II would be ideal.  And for those people, having multiplayer allows the game to have a much longer lifespan on their hard drives.  My favorite PC game of all time is Total Annihilation. But if it didn't have multiplayer, it wouldn't have survived very long on my hard drive. It was its multiplayer that made it so popular.

In many respects, what I'm writing about and what multiplayer advocates are writing about go right past each other.  My argument is that multiplayer advocates have plenty of options to choose from.  Not only have most strategy games of the past 5 years put a lot of energy into multiplayer (Age of Empire 3, Civilization 4, Rise of Nations, etc.) but even this year there will be turn based games with significant multiplayer components such as Space Empires V, Sword of the Stars, HOMM 5.  The developers of Sword of the Stars argue that putting in multiplayer has no negative impact on the single player experience.  I'll have to disagree.  In having either designed, developed or been heavily involved in Entrepreneur, Trials of Battle, Stellar Frontier (a multiplayer space game with the Drengin, Arceans and Terran Alliance btw), The Corporate Machine, and The Political Machine, (GalCiv being the only game I've done that isn't multiplayer btw), I think I have some experience in being able to say that yes, having multiplayer changes the way the game is designed.  When I designed The Political Machine, I imagined how it would be played multiplayer first and then wrote the AI as a simulated on-line opponent.  I think The Political Machine turned out pretty well as a single player game still, but it's a very different game than it would have been had it only been a single player game. I would have made it so that top players would have a lot more data and information to put together far more sophisticated strategies.

Making GalCiv II have multiplayer as a checkbox is pretty easy. You could just send the saved game back and forth between players. But would people be satisfied with that?  Some would.  But even doing that adds time to the development schedule. It still adds budget, and you still have a bunch of other things that could make the experience non-ideal.  I'd rather a game decide what it wants to be. If you're going to have multiplayer, do it right.  And in my experience, doing it right means having multiplayer be part of the design.  In GalCiv II, we put in the piping so that we could do multiplayer later on.  But in terms of time and energy, we wanted to focus everything on making the single player experience satisfying.

The point on multiplayer isn't whether a strategy game should have it or not as much as what priority it should have in the development of a game.  Heck, if I had more development resources, I'd take the GalCiv II engine and make an RTS version of it. I'd love to see my designed ships up against someone else's in battle. ;)

66,343 views 56 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i have one thing to say,
IF you make a multiplayer for GC2, make it hotseat.
I've played heroes III hotseat allot as well as single player.
GC2 has a great single player and hotseat would make it better.
However i know during combat it can take 5-10 minuts before i end a turn, cause i have to switch productions, make ships, make a battle plan, see my stats, talk to oppononts (computer), trade, etc etc etc.
i imaging that if i am in war, and the other human player playing the same game on another computer not, he needs like 10 seconds for a turn, i need 5 - 10 minuts. it will get boring for him very soon imo.
and that is only with 2 players and some computers, no imaging 8 human players.
it would take ages before 1 round is finished.
Reply #52 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I thought MP or at least a hotseat-mode should have been with the original game, because without hotseat is for me GalCiv 2 not really better than GalCiv 1 and it is somewhat useless that I can now play as whichever race I want or like. Maybe MP would need more coreshipdesigns or the coreships should get always automatic the newest and/or better ship components, but that would be also useful for SP, because I wouldn't have to spend so much time with the shipdesigner.

Darklor
Siege of Centauri
Reply #53 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
My personal preference would be to give it a high priority. I like to play this game but it gets boring without anyone to play with. I guess to understand this you need to know where I am comming from. I got started on these types of games playing VGA Planets, an old PBEM game. I loved MOO and MOO2 (MOO 3 was ok but I had alot of issues with it). I like pitting myself vs my friends for domination of the universe. Sure it can take alot of time to finish a turn based game with other players but it is emensly more enjoyable.

I see some technical difficulties with this, including additions/mods installed by one but not all of the players involved, but this is easily resolved, expecially once the Mods Directory is fully up and running.

I would like to see multiple types of multiplayer added with the ability to change the type on the fly. An example of this is that we start a game in either Hot Seat or head to head play. In the early game turns can go fairly fast. Then in the mid to late game as the time to do your turn increases because of number of planets and ships to manage increase (or when some of the players net to go fo RL needs) then switch the game to PBEM game to be concluded at everyons leasiure.
Reply #54 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Not only would I personally buy a MultiPlayer expansion pack, it would cause me - and a few I know - to buy the game itself.

The *only* reason I've held back this long, is the lack of multiplayer.

I recently got into the demo despite this, and have enjoyed playing around with the game. It has a lot going for it. But beyond even this, I <3 the philosophies of these devs, their obvious dedication to their fan base, the level of information they present. They are a model that I dearly hope others would follow. These are the sort of devs that make you want to support them.

But unfortunately, I don't have the kind of money to throw onto a game which would in reality last me only a few weeks, and perhaps quick twiddle with major patch releases to see what was different.

An MP expansion, especially if it were to include TCP/IP simultaneous play mode rather than only PBeM would change all that. It would be a done deal, a must purchase, and I think this would place GalCiv2 back on a lot of front pages around the various gaming networks.

In any event, I deeply respect the Dev team at Stardock, and I wish them well no matter what happens with the MP expansion. If I need to wait for GalCiv3, then so be it. MoO2 emulated via Kali will have to suffice til then. But please god don't do that to us!

Take care,
-Naithin,.
Reply #55 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I vote for multiplayer. I feel that any possible feature that has this much discussion on it should be added at some point. I can't wait for the expansion even though it doesn't have multiplayer. I would be willing to pay for multiplayer on some sort of expansion or subscription method. I understand your point about keeping priorities straight as I develop software (ERP) as well. It is a very difficult balance that you have to maintain. One method that we have implemented is an application program interface (API) that allows our customers to add functionality to the program. Implementing multiplayer is a task but I also think that several of your forum members have the skills to rough something together. I will volunteer my time to the effort.
Reply #56 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Redundant, but I'd hate to see multiplayer take away resources from the single player game in any GC title. And any multiplayer mode would have to have a lot of flexibility in players dropping in and out and modes ala Pit Boss for Civ4 to have a hope of finishing anything but a small small game due to the nature of the series.