If you can’t do something well. Don’t do it.
That’s been my philosophy on game development from the beginning. In Galactic Civilizations, it meant not having any multiplayer. We didn’t have the budget and resources to do multiplayer well. So we didn’t do it.
In Elemental, single-player is our focus. But we have decided to have multiplayer and that means we are going to do make sure it is done right.
Real-Time strategy games do well in multiplayer because the game continuously moves forward. Players don’t have to wait for other players. In turn based, players inevitably have to wait and that makes them less ideal.
From a design perspective, having lots of different options for handling turns is going to be our focus. From a sheer budget point of view, we cannot justify the resources required to do multiplayer if only hard-core grognards are playing it online.
So let’s look at the different options and then we can discuss your ideas on how we can make a turn-based strategy game fun in online multiplayer.
Elemental will be able to support multiple different turn options so we don’t have to pick one (though we will ultimately *default* to one).
Option #1: Traditional Turn-Base
This is where each player gets their turn. They hit the turn button and then the next person is able to move. There is typically a time limit on turns.
Option #2: Simultaneous turns.
This is where all players move at the same time. When done, they hit the turn button. There is typically a time limit involved on turns or a timer that starts when the first person hits the turn button.
So what are some things we can play around with here? What are some other OPTIONS we could have?
I like the idea of a time bank. You get N seconds per turn. If you finish your turn early, you get to add those seconds to your time bank. If you run out of time, it starts to cost you gold. Like 10 gold per second. If you run out of gold, the turn goes automatically.
There could be city improvements that give players additional time to take turns.
Example:
The default time you get would be based on what “League” you were in. 5 seconds for the “gold” league. “10 seconds for the “silver” league and 15 seconds for the “bronze” league. We’ll talk about these leagues more at GDC.
Player could build a Time Bank improvement that adds 1 second to what they get.
Each second they don’t use, goes into their global time pool. Players could “cash in” seconds at a rate of 5 gold per second they want to exchange for.
Obviously, the above would be for experienced online players of the game. Players could choose a variety of options here but what we are looking for is a way to satisfy players who know the game and want to play online with other people and not have it be a long slog.
Certain things would need to stop the clock. Namely, battles. We are inclined to have tactical battles turned OFF by default for online but players can turn it on depending on their setup.
Tactical Battle Options would include:
We will also have a Tactical Battle Threshold for minimum battle rating necessary to turn it into a tactical battle (ranging from 0 to 1000). You may not want a tactical battle of two soldiers but you might want a tactical battle when it’s two grand armies.
A lot of you, like me, have tried to play turn-based games multiplayer. And a lot of you, like me, found them very tedious and not fun because of the pacing.
I like playing mulitplayer RTS games and FPS’s but multiplayer turn based just has never made the cut. So, what do you think would make it something that would be compelling to a larger audience that you would enjoy?
I've never played a simultaneous multiplayer turn-based game before, how exactly does it work? Suppose there's a critical situation where two players want to move to a square before the other does. Is it just who's fastest to click when the new turn starts?
Usually yes.
Iirc you in Civ you could be inside a city while the enemy conquered it in simultanious mode, which lead to a crash.
As for multiplayer, don't really have any idea or opinion since I won't ever play Elemental online anyway.
But a spell that steals enemy seconds could be deliciously evil.
I would say the X amount of gold per second is a good idea, but you should allow players to set a cap, just in case they're not paying attention, and suddenly... you're bankrupt. So, Player A sets a cap of automatically skipping the turn once X <= 100 gold, or something like that.
I really hope for Simultaneous turns, I really think that main reason for people not playing TBS games in multiplayer is how long turns and games last. Simultaneous turns really help with game pace but also can cause issues, like people who move fast can take stuff faster etc. Still I do prefer Simultaneous turns over traditional one.
I am extremely opposed to the idea of connecting time to anything other than the turn system itself... time banks and gold costs just seem very WIERD to me..... and would probably be either useless or way overpowered, depending on how much they're worth. I rather like the idea of just running a timer for moves like they do in chess, but I would prefer assorted turn-length settings with time determined at the lobby, complete with an untimed area for slow patient people. That way, the twitchers can play with each other, and the people who play while eating ice cream, watching TV, and doing their homework can do the same.
Connecting time and gold seems very odd to me...
When there's a time-out for a tactical battle, it would be nice to have something for the players not involved. Perhaps the option to let them be able to observe battles (although this would provide significant intel, so should be able to shut off). Perhaps some sort of mini-game that you play (relevant to the game, perhaps winning the mini-game gives you an extra second the next round?) Alternatively, since you're getting all this flavor text, perhaps short lore segments come up when there's a time-out for tactical battle or when you finish your turn before others.
Bottom-line, give us something to _do_ other than wait for others to finish what they're doing.
Perhaps all tactical battles resolve at the end of the turn when there's a simultaneous turn?
Lords of Magic has always been the best sort of showing for me.
It was 'Traditional' and I still enjoy it immensely. The problem for me with Simultaneous is that it ends up with people making moves they wouldn't have if they had any sort of info.
Things like moving a group three tiles past where your enemy moved them. Which allows your enemy to simply run in and destroy your city while you're too far away to respond.
(As I look around, for my possibilities, I was so hard to please, look around. . .)
Further editations: As for the idea of a 'time bank'
Mmm. It's an interesting thought, but I don't know how well it would go down. If you could impliment it for Beta 2 and we could muck about with it. Other than that, I really can't envision the idea well.
The time = money idea is interesting and novel, and it could be a really neat option for experienced people who play multiplayer frequently. However, it doesn't solve the problem you yourself brought up in the beginning: "From a sheer budget point of view, we cannot justify the resources required to do multiplayer if only hard-core grognards are playing it online." The idea you suggest here would probably largely be used by just those hard-core grognards
Sadly, though, I have no suggestions. I've thought about this for a while now - I love TBS games, and I enjoy playing multiplayer with friends and family, but the waiting gets really old. Simultaneous turns does manage to get passed much of the waiting in exchange for some compromises and sacrifices (in some cases, important events coming down to who can click first, etc).
The way I see it, there are two ideal goals:
1) Minimize waiting by allowing players to play their turns simultaneously, while somehow avoiding the drawbacks of the current manifestation of simultaneous turns. I'm not really sure this is feasible, as the problems seem inherent to the system.
2) Minimize waiting by giving players something else to do during other players' turns. I think this is might be more feasible than #1, but will probably not reduce the time spent waiting as much.
No. A whole system to make your turn last longer in multiplayer? Based on having a good economy to sustain it? Money not to be spent in the actual game? I'd prefer normal gameplay systems offer collateral benefits to the lenght of the turn (magical towers having effects of the spacecontinuum or whatever). Or something like "Spend 1 Essence to get an extra minute". Or maybe mana if you want it to be more fluid and accesible than Essence (which is already quite limited). It's more limiting than the money thing, I know, but I honestly have trouble seeing that money system. I'm open to change my mind if offered something solid though.
Just make allies to play at the same time.
And timers seems the best option to me.
32 players you said?
Juat brainstorming too - what about simultaneous turns like in Dominions - where all players set their Orders simultaneously, but no-one actually moves until the computer resolves the outcome and displays accordingly... Then doesn't just come down to the quickest with the mouse on that turn. Plus it's faster - and all resulting tactical combats can appear in a list - perhaps players spend seconds/gold to take charge of a particular one...
One of the reasons we never play HoMM is the lack of simultanious turns. It's just a bunch of finger-tapping the majority of the game. Age of Wonders & Civ4 have great simultanious turns systems, and anything simular would be great with Elemental.
Players being able to view other players battling would be incredible; no worries there if you observe someone also on your team or in a normaly viewable area of the map. There could also be spells to hide your army intel from other player's views.
Perhaps you could "round-robin" the different things players can do during their turn. For example, it might be player A's turn to work on his economy; player B's turn to move units; player C's turn to carry out all tactical battles. Next turn, rotate the turn type. Just a thought, because so many times in TB games I wished I could do my economy or building while the other guy is fighting his battles.
As another off-the-wall thought - Not about overland main-map but tactical battles probably - I remember a really good old game (MoM era!!) called Space Hulk that had pausable Real-time play (I believe something like pausable real-time is what we're expecting for Elemental tactical battles), except that pausing used 'Freeze-time' - Basically you had a Freeze-time 'bar', and when you paused the game (via a big 'Freeze' button) to give orders it ran down. When you un-Freezed and real-time rolled on, the Freeze-time bar started to grow again. If you were unlucky enough to run out of 'Freeze-time', the game just carried on then and there, which could be very disconcerting.
This meant that you couldn't endlessly micromanage, and had to stick to economical ordering. Plus there was always tension. Not sure how popular/applicable it would be here - but I've always liked the idea of that mechanism in something similar to an RPG.
the decision between simultanious turns and conseq. turns is, that it is a very important design decision not only for multiplayer but for the whole game.
I really like Civ IV (what a coincidence, Civ V and Elemental on the same day, - Do you think gamers can multitask Frogboy?) - on the other hand i also really like VGA planets 3 (everybody not knowing it should play it!!) and MoO (like most). Games are just different.
The idea with the gold / time conversion is nice but might totally unbalance the game (On the other hand caps big players and helps smaller ones).
What about some small gimmick games for the waiting players (snake, minesweeper, ...) - havent you some odd beta ideas which didnt made it to the market ?
Superb solution - have the same feeling in some games
Unless I am mistaken, but there is an important diffference in movement between Dominions 3 and Elemental: in Dominions 3 an army can only move into an adjacent province. In Elemental, if your unit have sufficient movements points it could move few titles (a sovereign buffed by movement potion can easily move 10 tiles in a turn). In order to be able to submit a complete path for a fast unit, you need to set waypoint for your unit
Since Stardock want a system where 32 players can play the same game, I guess some master system is required to determine who arrives the first on a given tile.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri had, if I recall, simultaneous turn-based orders. It worked very well, for the most part, but could result in some turns taking much too long if a player really just sat there and thought. Or spent loads of time designing new units. Which I did. Much to my wife's chagrin. So some sort of time resolution mechanic is probably necessary.
I like the idea of giving orders at the start of a turn and having the orders executed simultaneously; the map could show arrows to a ghosted icon to show what the units' "new orders were". The only way this can go badly wrong is with units trying to engage each other, swapping positions, etc; you would have to implement some logic to resolve that... also, that in itself doesn't stop someone "filibustering".
Another curious idea comes from the tabletop wargame "Battlegrounds", where all units have "standing" orders (move ahead, close to nearest unit, fire on nearest unit, etc) and the player can only CHANGE X number of those orders per turn. It opens a few options while also providing a built-in leveling mechanic (a player with fewer units therefore has more flexibility, and you can "spend" resources to get more changes). Doesn't work so well with this, but it's an interesting idea.
So really, you have two separate problems: 1) How to resolve turns so that moving fast (or slow) isn't automatically an advantage or disadvantage, and 2) making sure "slow" players don't delay the game for others. "Planned turns, simultaneous execution" would solve 1) nicely; some sort of time "bank" would help 2).
(sorry for double-post; errors in browser)
That's a good philosophy!
I like the idea of a time bank. You get N seconds per turn. If you finish your turn early, you get to add those seconds to your time bank. If you run out of time, it starts to cost you gold. Like 10 gold per second. If you run out of gold, the turn goes automatically. There could be city improvements that give players additional time to take turns.
I like it.
It would stress the hell out of me when I have to make a difficult decision but that's part of it, and the opponents have to make the same difficult decisions just like in a MP RTS game. Think fast & good or die
Example: The default time you get would be based on what “League” you were in. 5 seconds for the “gold” league. “10 seconds for the “silver” league and 15 seconds for the “bronze” league. We’ll talk about these leagues more at GDC. Player could build a Time Bank improvement that adds 1 second to what they get. Each second they don’t use, goes into their global time pool. Players could “cash in” seconds at a rate of 5 gold per second they want to exchange for.
I haven't checked the replies yet but I'm certain people will say that you "ripped off" StarCraft IIs bronze, silver, gold leagues
Edit: By the GODS this forum is primitive! Can't multiquote! So I'll just bold my answers....
I used to heavily play an online turn based game some time ago. The game gave turns per time period. You could sign on every time a new turn was awarded or let them pile up for a while and play them all at once. The game host could set the turn rate so a casual game would have a lower number and a more hardcore game would have a higher number.
My feeling is that taking turns sequentally in a public arena would not work well. Games would never get finished since people tend to come and go a lot online. Though, it would probably work well in a LAN setting with friends. Online play needs to handle people dropping in and out so the game keeps moving forward. The game would need to be an environment where things are always moving forward and it's up to the player to keep up.
One possiblity would be to offer two different modes, sequential for LAN or time based for internet. It would be novel to offer options in online play. I don't think anyone has ever done that.
I think playing time (outside the game) should not be mixed with gold or other resources (inside the game).
Maybe you could have a time-bank instead. On the game setup you could set an average turn time (ATT). If you are faster than the ATT a portion of your left-over time get added to your pool which you can spend to exceed the ATT on some other turn. When your pool is depleted your turn is automatically finished at the end of the ATT.
You could cap the pool so you don't get excessive long turns from someone who "saves" a lot of time at the beginning.
edit: got ninja'd by CraigHB.
Well the way I see it multiplayer games will always have to have some type of time limit unless you were to make an option for real time. However there should also be times where players could take actions that wouldn't directly effect another players turn. For example if Player A is building a city on his turn perhaps allowing the other players to queue up build orders, movements, etc would help keep the game moving at a nice pace.
So basically every player would have a passive and active phase. All active phases would be timed (perhaps scaling to the overall state of the game) and would function similar to a regular turn in which the player could do whatever he's able to do. Everyone else would be on the passive phase in which they could perform or queue up any action that wouldn't directly interfere with the current player's active phase. This way every player would always have something to do which addresses the boredom issue but at the same time maintains the turn based style you're shooting for.
That's my two cents however.
Time bank with a cap on it would also be a nice option
Aye this is the way I would go. I've played a fair bit of HOMM multiplayer and as far as I can tell, not being able to "do" anything is the corrosive force that feeds on our fun. So even if the above idea is technically impossible, I would still focus on having civ management tools available at all times. Being able to click around your towns and refine your economy whilst you wait for player b really takes away the pain and combined with a player agreed time limit, this is all you need imo.
One of the big drawbacks of a "time-bank" or turn rate is the possiblity of things happening while you are not online. Even when you're out of turns, you have a tendency to sit online just to see if someone is going to take all your stuff. This was one of the reasons I quit playing the game I mentioned before. You'd spend weeks or months playing, only to sign on one day and find you're dead. Maybe you could have done something to defend yourself if you had been online, but you can't be online all the time. Of course, battles get really exciting when they happen real time, in other words, when both parties are online and playing. But more often than not, you're killing someone who is offline and can not react.
The "stuff happening while you're not logged on" is an inherent disadvantage of turn-based online play. I can't see a way around that without halting the whole game waiting for some flake to log back in again. To me, it's just something that "has to be" for turn based online play.
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