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?
*Sighs*
So many posts already. Ok, I've skimmed through it all so I don't think I'm repeating whats been said.
I don't play a lot of multiplayer games, so I don't know if this is a new idea or not.
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Change multiplayer settings mid game. Lets say that the whole time bank system isn't working any more. Most of the players have decided that they would rather play at a relaxed pace. Instead of quiting the existing game and starting a new game, why not allow the players have a chance to vote to make changes the multiplayer settings?
Ofcourse, voting on changing the game setting should have a "grace period" where time halts (so no one is penalized for stopping to think things over). In addition, players who don't want to play the game with its new settings should have a chance to "quit in grace" (as in they are not flagged for rage quiting).
I enjoyed both Age of Wonders 2 and Civ4s simultaneous turn system. However in both games it was optional, you could choose whether you wanted to play sequentially or simultaneously. Couldn't Elemental do the same? Implement both? (Edit: I missed Frogboy's comment on page 3 that the game will support both.) I also hope turns limited by time is optional.
The one thing that did irk me about AoW2 was how tactical battles were handled in multiplayer. I thought the pacing of the game in the overland map was fine, I don't remember spending any time agonizing while waiting for my opponent to take his turn. However, I did not like what the game did when another player went into a tactical battle. When another player went into a tactical battle it dragged all the players to the battle to watch. Some of the tactical battles were really long. After the tactical battles were over I often times couldn't remember what I was in the middle of doing. I hope in Elemental that we are at least allowed to continue managing our faction (in some capacity anyway, I wouldn't want the player in the tactical battle to be at a disadvantage) while other players are engaged in tactical battles. (Edit: If you do intend to allow players to view other players tactical battles, my suggestion would be to not make watching it mandatory. Allow people to look at their cities, look at the map, read the equivalent of the civilopedia, etc.)
Yes I know that one could turn off tactical battles in multiplayer AoW2, but the group I played it with thought the tactical battles were one of the most fun parts of the game and didn't want to turn it off. I have a feeling that we would feel the same way about Elemental.
Dman that would be cool though, tactical battles in a resizable in game window (if your not playing in it). I doubt thats possible thou, lol.
To briefly add on to my active and passive phase idea. Would it be possible to make tactical battles parallel and variable in turn length? Because if you could make tactical battles independent then players in the passive phase could conclude battles while the active player was doing whatever. The only problem with this is you could end up with a player being engaged in multiple battles. Since the player couldn't be in more than one location at a time the AI would have to take control of his forces at the other battles.
This wouldn't be a problem for me personally. In fact I rather like the idea of multiple battles being waged at once. The player could also have the ability to switch to a different tactical battle letting the AI take over the current one thus allowing him to focus on whatever battle(s) were the most important and leave the rest to the AI.
Now if you were in the middle of a battle with another player and the active phase moved to you your options would be to continue the battle with the other player or leave it to the AI and attend to other matters during your active phase. This idea while very exciting to me would be very dependant on a good AI that wouldn't just fold to human players.
I don't really see how you do tactical battles and still make the turns go by quickly, and I have no suggestion as to how to make it not annoying to 3rd parties who are not involved.
Since Brad already said they are just going to throw everything in there as options I'm not even really sure what it is exactly that he wants discussed.
Anyway, my suggestion is to make auto-resolve very good and thus remove alot of the clamor for playing the tactical battles out, so that those who don't want to 'waste time' with them can feel comfortable using AR without having to throw cheese at it.
Though I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of tactical battle minigame so that you could just challenge people directly to the tactical portion of the game, though you'd need some mechanism to determine unit (and spell) value so that people could build their own sides to take on everyone else. That of course assumes that the tactical battles will be worthy of such attention in the first place.
Personally, I like the idea of queuing up orders and then resolving them simultaneously. The "simultaneous" games I've played in the past did the thing where moves take effect instantaneously, and I always feel like I'm playing an arcade game instead of a strategy game. (hah, moved my unit away before you could attack it!)
One thing that I think would be nice regardless of how turns are resolved is a "grace period" before the next turn starts. i.e., once everyone has hit "end turn", the game alerts players that the next turn is about to start. Maybe they can even cancel their 'end turn' if they suddenly realize that city X needs its production queue adjusted. The main thing here is to encourage people to hit "end turn" sooner, rather than delaying because they aren't 100% sure they checked everything that needs to be checked; they can do the checking after they hit "end turn" and abort if they still aren't done. (of course, a time limit might work just as well)
On the other hand, I'm not sure I'll have time to play this in multiplayer regardless of how it's implemented, so...
sorry i did not read the thread, so shoot troll me if this has been suggested before
now to the issue: in both cases: simultanous turns and classical turns will have you wait (how long depends on certain factors) so with that in mind, why not make the waittime more then just boring loading screens (or waiting for the next player screens) and add some minigames (fall from heaven for example has the minigame somnium)?
or why not handle diplomacy in the waiting time?
Sorry for the long post. TheGrayghost said the exact thing I was going to say. It's kinda weird to think about, but it will really speed things up. If you didn't read his post, my idea goes like this:
Finish your stuff, then end your turn. At that point, your game goes into like a "queue" mode. Since in a turn based game the opponent will not be affecting every single unit and city of yours, you should be able to have access to these units and cities and change them just as you would if it was your turn. So send your heroes to that rampaging monster, send a settler to start a new town, etc. But nothing happens yet. When your opponent finishes his turn, an option pops up if any pieces you changed were affected, and those changes are disabled (because this city was attacked, or that unit of yours is now dead). Another popup asks you to accept or decline the other changes you made with 1 click. Then you deal with any changes that were causes by an opponent (with multiple opponents, there might be a few; but the beauty of this is that while you're dealing with those changes, the other opponents are doing the exact same thing you did: finishing their next turn). Then if you're truly done, it's just a matter of hitting the end button again.
If you mix this in with a time bank idea, this will really make the turns go by quicker, and make for a much more exciting game. For example, 3-5 minutes for a turn (which of course, would mean EVERYONE can use that 3-5 minutes to do either their turn (the current player's turn) or their next turn (everone else).
How about some random number of times you are allowed to go over your time bank allotted time. Maybe like a 5 strikes and you're kicked, sort of thing (that would make online games REALLY tense though Of course, this is a bit harder to implement in a 32 player game, because there's so many changes that are happening. But in 32 players, I'm assuming the world size is enormous, so it might still work.
I'm not a turn-based guy myself; I have played master of magic a lot, and a few others, but never turn-based online game. RTS of course, but that is always interesting because of the speed. But if there was one game I would like to try online, it's Elemental. There are a few things I would like to see, that would make a non-turn-based guy like myself more likely to play it multiplayer (not sure if these have been mentioned, since I'm new to these forums, but here are my ideas):
1. I want to watch other people play. My offline games, especially in MoM, deal with rushing to tough units and heroes and beating on the computer. I don't know how to really handle human opponents in turn based games, so I would like to see what people are doing on their turns in some type of spectator mode. Also it would be cool if you could click on the units, cities, etc. and get the same info the players see. Maybe the players could see that they have some spectators watching their game. And since the games are on a Stardock server (this is true, isn't it? I thought I read this somewhere that there's a central server) then it's not killing the players' bandwidth. If this is at all feasible, without lagging the game, then I would love to see this.
2. Whatever you do, make the online games move quickly. Default most of the "extraneous" stuff to disabled. Keep the online games as streamlined as possible. Maybe have instant battles, but only the players who are fighting really need to see the battle (the others, especially with the idea above, can be moving their pieces around for next turn, or at least finding out what they need to do; or a popup can ask them if they want to watch the battle).
Anyway, those are my ideas, hope others find them useful. They might be a bit out there, but it's all in an effort to make the multiplayer more fun to play.
Here are some silly options, either crazy enough to work or crazy enough to have me institutionalized.
Absent Strategist:
For people who like to take their time, but don't always have a lot of time to take. Meaning, there are no time limits, and the game saves at the end of every turn. In this way, players can leave the game and come back to it another day, just like a drawn out long-distance game of Chess. I think this would be a fairly easy thing to implement. It would also be good if players could open up the saved game on their end without the other player(s) needing to be online, just to be able to organise things in their empire and plan for the next turn(s), or to take their current turn if battles are set to auto-resolve.
Action Based Turns:
Each player has a set number of actions they can perform per turn, typically a limit on moves. Once a player has made all their moves, the turn is over. This would simplify the turns and speed them up, as the player only has to plan a few short moves at a time. All strategizing and detail checking can be done during an opponents turn.
RTTBS:
Real-Time-Turn-Based-Strategy. Game turns tick over automatically every X minutes, resetting unit moves, influxing resources and adjusting all relevant variables. *EDIT - I forgot to mention that this mode is simultaneous in playstyle*. All battles auto-resolve but with a twist. Statistical adjustments are made based on who initiated, who was in some form of stealth mode, the terrain the attacking group just moved from, the terrain being fought on, how many other fights a group has been in that turn, a group's proximity to their respective sovreign, and whatever else can be thought of. In this way, battles can still be somewhat tactical without having to control the fights manually.
For example, attacking from a hill tile to a plains tile would give "High Ground" advantage. Other terrain types could give a defensive advantage (I don't know, I'm not an expert on real-world battles).
Also, I support the suggestion to allow players to organise their empire whilst waiting for their turn, as well as the suggestion to have a minimum time limit.
Lastly, the following is genius:
Must have:
(1) Capped Time Banks: This is Genius. This could break the TBS multiplayer gaming into a real gaming community as opposed to something that small groups of RL or forum friends do. These add a strategic element. Faster players gain an advantage. That adds depth to the skill involved in the multiplayer game. It would morph the game as chess morphs into speed chess and I think adds the creativity needed to make multiplayer TBS a real genre - Awesome!
(2) Live Battles based on Size of the Battle: This is a great idea, but it probably needs slight tweaking. You don't want something static that makes end game slower due to frequent live battles. Perhaps it needs to scale or simply scale in monetary value of the armies (end game armies are more expensive). Or if end game armies have better combined stats maybe that is the stat that should scale. But (2) goes with (3)...
(3) All players must be able to view all live battles. Period. And everyone must be allowed to chat with everyone. This option, when properly paired with (2) would transform battles into moments where players could have fun spectating or conducting diplomacy or just bsing with all of their friends.
I like the time bank idea, but I hope you'll find some lore example instead of just "time bank".
Simultaneous turns where the faster click wins is a no-no for me.
If you can't avoid times of wait, let the player do something while that time (maybe let him design units, review their kingdom, let them do diplomacy, take care of some quests for their heroes, etc.)
Or TRUE simultaneous turns : you give orders, but they aren't processed immediatly. They are only processed when everyone has given their orders (like in dom3)
*side note* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSd4QJBEMvk
I might just have to preorder this game sooner than later.
The only reason i still play CIV4 is because of (simultaneous) multiplayer, which i play regularly (once a month with 4friends).
I've played many TBS multiplayer that didnt have simultaneous moves, but only rarely more than 2 people.
civ3, age of wonders 1&2, heroes of might and magic 1&2&3&4&5, disciples 1&2 etc...
The only reason i never played GalCiv2 much more than a month maybe two is because of lack of multiplayer.
Simultanious turns might work in elemental, but it needs a sanity check that is bettr than in Civ IV. In Civ there are units called siege units. They can damage an entire stack of enemy units. That mans that whomever moves first in battle - that is, whomever reacts quickest - gets to decimate the enemy stack without the ability of the other player to do anything about it.
therefore it might be wise to have the player plan their turn, then when they are done the proposed moves occur. The boardgame 'diplomacy' handles turns this way and it works rather well. I dislike any system in turn based gaming that awards twitch moves like clicking slightly faster than an opponent does. Any such rewards have to go for me to even consider multiplayer.
Well civ4's (all of them really) combat isn't exactlly amazing.
I don't see how that would be a problem here though anyway - tactical battles would nullifiy that no?
Now if its a spell based system (LIGHTING BOLT!) then there should be someway to do something similar at the start of a combat or that could be an issue, i.e. "DEVESTATING FIRE!" on enemy tile and then attack with a army forceing the other player into a battle with no chance for counter offensive spell casting.
Will there be 'combat' spells outside of tactical battles?
My favorite would be a simultaneous system with 3-4 phases:
You can manage your cities, research and the like during any phase.
1. Order phase: You can give orders to units and you also flag them for different AI behaviour in carrying out those orders (from exactly like I commanded to different reactions to the behaviour of other people). Once you think you are finished you set the end turn flag but you can still continue. When all have set that flag there is a 5s countdown and then it proceeds to the next phase. There is a maximum time limit which depends on an automatic calculation taking into account the average size of the current empires (or other limit types set at game start). You can also set a flag that requests more time, less time or equal time for the next turn (or abstains). But only on consent the time length is changed (otherwise it continues according to the preset function).
2. Movement phase: This is an automatic phase in which the computer executes all orders according to the set AI behaviour for each unit. Battle situations end the movement of a unit for this turn (so only one fight per unit per turn).
3. Battle preparation: For each battle situation you set up if you want it to be auto resolved or tactical. If there is no consent between the combatants the default (which might depend on battle size) is used. You can also set up AI behavior and maybe initial setups for the fight. There is a fixed time limit for this phase (which is not that long).
4. Battle phase: Auto resolve battles are computed. Then all tactical battles of this round take place at the same time (and some armies might arrive late if they meet late in turn on strategic). Whichever you do not watch at a time are controlled by the AI. You can switch between the battles you can see or do some more city management. Battles end after a fixed time (to be continued on next turn).
The problems I see might be that the server cannot handle many tactical battles at once. So maybe there is a selection of tactical battles and the rest is auto resolved.
I don't know if this has already been brought up or mentioned... I don't have enough time to read this entire thread but what about something like a Magic the gathering phase system (with some modifications obviously)? Like everyone starts the turn at the same time...
first phase is building/econemy where you would go over your existing cities/reasearch/unit creation/unit building/etc. This can occur simultaneously for all players. Once everyone is done (or time runs out) this phase ends.
Second phase is the unit movement/attack/magic phase. Now this one in theory should be each person gets a turn to move their units to avoid the Civ4 issue of troop movement. But I think the order in which people go should work something like the system from Risk 2010 where you can bid on your turn order placement using some currency/essence/token system. Bid's are blind meaning each player makes a bid but has no idea what anyone else is bidding. You can choose to not bid at all meaning you get placed randomly after the people who did bid are resolved. The token used in the bidding should idealy be used for other parts of the gameplay and be scarce enough to not be splurged willy nilly but abundant enough that people would want to use it. The highest bidder gets to choose their position, next highest then chooses, and so on until all players are placed. Then whoever is first gets to move their units and cast their magics. An option should be available so that if everyone agree's with the turn order from the previous turn then it can be used for free without having to bid.
Tactical battles should only be fought vs human players (i also think that those not actively playing should get a chance to watch the battle to keep things interesting while waiting)... and perhaps only certain battles to keep things moving along.
All phases should have the option of a time limit of some sort on them.
Just because it wasn't mentioned in this thread before, the title refer to a Bangles song titled 'Hazy shade of Winter'.
On topic:
For me it looks like that the simultaneously turn based game is the way to go.
But that isnt what will make the oppontent wait for you to complete your turn. It will be the tactical battles. If these battle could be to toggled on and off that could solve the problem on the cost of a fun element in the game.
Why im focusing on the tactical battles as time consumering element of a turn is because of my experience in the game Age of Wonders 2. This game basically has the same elements as Elemental when playing through a turn. You move, go get into battle which is resolved as a tactical combat.
A way to solve the waiting time when a player attacks an enemy and enter the tactical part of the game, could be to let the game turn continue... This will mean a battle could last for more than 1 turn, making it stategical importent to value your turns outsite of battle, or choose the option of auto resolve the battle.
By determin the length of a turn... gives you x mins to complete the tactical battle yourself. The possibility to quit the tactical battle while the player is in combat should also be an option. It therefore importent to show the time let of the turn.
Another way to solve this could be that at each turn the tactical battle will end and the player will be transfered to the main page of the turn info. Then when the player is done with the stategycal move ect. he can then join the tactical battle once more to try and completet the battle this turn.
This will resolve in a new element, giving the enemy an oppitunity to gather reinforcements to the battlefield, which will then make the battle take even longer. The longer the battle, the larger oppitunities enemies has to attack other places.
That was just some ideasi could come up with in my lunch break
I have some ideas. (As opposed to opinions)
1. Instead of waiting for everyone to press the 'end turn' button, how about a button that says 'don't end the turn yet', which only appears after the first person presses 'end turn'. So, if you really need extra time, you press the button.
2. The current system of giving orders is not good for a phased system. One should be able to say 'intercept that army', 'attack that city', 'guard this area', 'go there'. Each army could then have a queue of such actions, which it executes when possible. This way you don't have to manage each army every turn, and the phased simultaneous turns won't have stuff like units running around each other etc.
3. Design units, buildings etc. instead of waiting.
4. Minigame: each player plays a musical instrument on screen, so they can make music to entertain themselves/each other while some players take their time. There could be some kind of a rhythm/beats system so that lag doesn't make a mess of it.
5. Dominions 3 style tactical battles could work well.
I would like a fixed time simultaneous turn game to keep things moving. I like the idea of a bank of time that can be spent when additional time is required to think over a complex situation. Im not sure that use of that bank should be linked to gold. Even with a fixed pool of additional time to spend over moves, I think you may need a mechanism whereby all players can agree to increase the ceiling of the timepool mid game (if everyone is running out)
Perhaps rather than gold, time not used from the bank adds to the points recieved in a scoring mechanism for the game?
Certainly if possible in turn by turn mode having the non-turn-time players being able to do everything other than move i.e. set research, build queues, movement orders, stances - whatever.
I vote for these:
- Traditional turn based tactical battles [..or at least it should be optional.]
- Time limit / turn [..we should be able to configure this, while we are setting up the MP game.]
- Time out [..we should be able to change the number of timeouts / battle, while we are setting up the MP game.]
Then who wins when two orders conflict? If I have a bunch of units about to enter a town and help defend it against a force that's attacking at the same time, the order those things happen is extremely important to the outcome. When we both give those orders and the game has to figure out how to resolve it, who wins?
If I'm chasing down someones fleeing unit, who wins? If two of us are trying to build towns in the same spot, who wins?
The reason why simultaneous turns work is because the answer to all these questions is simple: whoever does it first. Sure it's sorta kinda like a twitch element, but it's also easy to understand and entirely under the control of the players themselves.
If one day the game decides my defenders get to show up in time to save the day, and another time they don't, then the outcome really isn't under the control of the players anymore. Adding stats or rules just adds complexity to the situation (especially for new players who don't understand why they're losing some races), and using the RNG to sort it out will simply frustrate people when they get a streak of bad luck.
I don't know if I have said this before, but I think that if there is two or more players currently in war with an AI (just to give an example) that they can tac-battle with the AI simultaneously.
Basically, I think Multiple Tactical Battles should be able to occur at the same time.
Also, if there is a Sovereign defending a city, or if there is a potential for a Sovereign to die, then that particular player would be able to decide whether he wants a tactical battle or not. Meanwhile, other people can fight tactical battles (if they want) or contintue their side-quests, or maximize the efficiency of their empire by giving it another couple once overs and perfecting build orders.
Maybe an Adventuring party can move every X amount of seconds (30?) so that they aren't so fully limited by the turn based system, and thus have more flexibility (ie for Questing paths)
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