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?
Since we're talking about time... here's Archon http://achrongame.com/gameplay.htmlhttp://achrongame.com/technology.htmlan RTS game all about time travel, moving in real time and the technical problems of having to resolve conflicts... They use travelling time waves to resolve the superposition of states. Building destroyed or alive and downstream effects. They reduce the direct control over units with a hierarchy system to reduce the number of clicks required for actions.
The concepts are interesting and may entertain those here that are thinking about the best way of handling time in certain contexts. In tactical battles or on the clothmap, being able to spend mana/time/essence to give your unit a different order after it's moved... if it moved stupidly past the enemy due to simultaneous turns... or you could just have engagement ranges on units, give them action points that they can reserve for retaliatory movements and things... should work equally well on the clothmap. Have a guard patrolling having 1 move in reserve, anything enters visual radius and he'll move towards it during resolution of the turn.)
Ok, well I'm not going to read everyone's reply because I don't have time to.
Heres one alternative but if you read near the end of the post, i think i have a great idea.
Simultaneous turns could take the form of everyone planning their move and once everyone ques in their end turn, all units move at the same time and all buildings are planned to construct, and if any units bump into each other, a battle starts unless they are allies. Whoever gets there first, gets there, but there will be a battle if they are enemies.
Time bank sounds good as long as you don't let gold serve as a backing. I just don't like that idea, and I'd prefer to have just a standard timer for all players that runs out so the game doesn't take a million years. If people don't get all their stuff done in time, tough. Work faster the next turn. You should be able to adjust turn timers before the match.
One reason why I loved a game called Chrono Trigger, was that the enemy could take turns without you being ready. Maybe thats what you need. REAL TIME TURN BASED STRATEGY!!! WOOOT! Give individual units a energy timer and once it fills up they can move and act. It would be like final fantasy.
I'm a fan of the time bank, but it still doesn't give the players something to do while their waiting on Joe S(chm)low. I ellaborated more on my mini-game idea here.
You probably should have, since this has been suggested several times, and about five posts ago I pointed out one of the biggest problems with it: resolving conflicts. If I'm trying to reinforce a town and you're trying to attack the town at the same time, is the town attacked before or after my reinforcements get there? Both orders were given the same turn, but the order will drastically alter the outcome (namely if the town survives or not).
One solution to that is to make it so all movement happens, then attacks, but that creates a problem where it becomes impossible to attack anything that's moving, since it's never there by time the attack part happens.
You can design the game with that in mind to deal with some of the problems, but I don't think Elemental is a good fit.
I would voice a strong preference to have something along the lines of Traditional Plus (as suggested by TheGrayghost) implemented. If most of the city planning, movement decisions, unit design issues, etc. could be set up during other peoples turns, it would greatly speed up gameplay. During one's own turn one would have the option of altering some of these decisions to respond to other's actions, but largely one would just be confirming what has already been set up. There could / should be an agreed upon time limit as well. In my mind this would be an ideal way of playing these type of games. Strict hot seat options, as I see it, have no advantages over this typic of setup. For me, simultaneous turns would not add a significant enough benefit in terms of speed that I would want to put up with the game being increasingly more about who can click faster (ala RTS) than the thinking / tactical aspects of games which I enjoy. As an option, whatever.
While I don't mind if people want it as an option which could be agreed upon, I don't like letting people observe battles which they are not involved in unless 1) they occur within their territory, 2) they have a hero or other troops nearby which could observe, or 3) they have some special ability or device to accomplish the task. The information has too many tactical advantages in my mind. Personally, I would be fine spending the time modifying the appearances of my custom troops or city buildings or whatever, if these types of things were possible.
Also, what if one had to have a hero, the sovereign or possibly other select special units present in order to actually be able to control battles (as opposed to having the computer simulate them)? Furthermore, what if you didn't get to see what the opponents army looked like if you lost and the battle occured on someone else's territory? This would increase the number of simulated battles, thus speeding up gameplay, and would have some interesting strategic implications.
Anyway. Looking forward to this game!
Double Post.
Actually it's not a big issue imo. I've played many AoW II. MP games, and I never got bored while I was watching the moves of the other players in tactical battles.
My gut tells me that rollover time for turns will not help the pacing, nor will building any kind of building in game to give one more time for their turn. What does a "turn" have to do with this fantasy world we are in anyways? It may work out better than it sounds, but it seems like a solution to tackle the symptom and not the illness.
If you play a multiplayer turn based game there is going to be some wait time, its as simple as that. Of the two choices I think simultaneous turns allows for the most interaction with the game and the least amount of idle time staring at a splash screen. There are issues of unit movements however. Are you watching other players doing their moves live? Will this lead to players just waiting until the end of the timer and then zerging their units around? Meh. Zerging is why RTS sucks imo, because its not REAL time at all, its a kind of hyper psycho cartoon speed that is unrealistic in the bigger picture of building an empire. Sure you cant go REAL time, but having defined turns gives that illusion in a much better way than computer real time does. So maybe people move their units and they dont see other AI or PC troop movements till the movement phase or something that happens between turns. So instead of actually moving, you plan a course you intend to move and then it is carried out after everyone clicks turn. If troops interact in some way on the map, then those empires can deal with those battles or negotiations or whatever during that phase. Meanwhile, other players should still be able to examine their cities and empires while waiting for that in-between turn phases to execute. Yeah, if youre waiting while two other empires happen to be fighting, youre waiting, but at least you can still do other empire stuff and bascially still be playing the game. New turn, everyone has movement points again. Wash rinse repeat.
I have a new suggestion.
Heroes of Might and Magic V had a ghost mode for mutliplayer. While another player's turn was executed, you could control a special ghost hero. The ghost hero could not earn levels, but could pick up minor resource boosts and influence actions on the map.
I think that idea could be borrowed and expanded in Elemental. Players could control dead heroes and use the dead heores to spread their races influence across the map. Minor resources could be gathered, special goodie huts found, quests implemented that affected the realm of the living. Ghost heroes could slow down/haunt an approaching oppositional force, perform special recon. duties, or boost a military attack by drawing on an ancestor's/relative's spectral will. It would be a way to play the game while not playing the game. (I have a crazy immagination so pay me no mind if my suggestions sound crazy!)
I also am in favor of time banks, but I don't think that improvements should be implemented in the game to affect the time. I can't for the life of me see how a time bank improvement could have any correlation to Elemental's universe. To me, that would make the game less immersive.
( I also have to agree with LetRBuck's "Turn Based Plus" approach. )
For the Turn Based playstyle, players should be able to "plan" their turns during other player's turns. Basically...
I take my turn, and now it's Frogboy's turn. During his turn, I plan movement with an army set a city to build a lumbermill, and change my research. All of these changes are queued in my Plan Queue. The other players complete their turns while I'm planning my next. Then, at the beginning of my turn, I can view the changes to the playing field (maybe Frogboy moved to block my troop, and their move is no longer of benefit, or is invalid?) and either confirm that plan or ignore it. If I want to ignore it, I just take my turn as I normally would. If I want to confirm it, I hit the button, the game quickly moves my troop, adds the build order, and changes my research. Turn ends.
If each player could do this during other player's turns, the game speed would pick up as players plan while another player is taking care of business. Since the Plan only takes action if I hit the Confirm button, I have the chance to see the other player's moves and determine if that's still what I want to do. Maybe an X next to each action allows me to cancel the Army movement, confirm the other 2 decisions, and then go move the army before the end of my turn in a different direction.
What do you think?
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.
Not as much an issue for me either in tactical battles. However, when people are making strategic moves under the cover of "fog of war," you'll definately be twiddling your thumbs.
I think the ordering thing isn't a big deal. You have some sort of initiative system, based on movement points, where units take partial moves through a turn, combined with the ability to issue orders like "intercept this unit", with combat being resolved after moves. So if our armies are equally close to the city, the defenders get there in time to defend; if the defenders are farther (measured in movement points), then the attackers take it and the "defenders" either arrive at a razed city, or have to mount their own siege. If I'm trying to attack a particular army, I issue an intercept order; as long as my army is fast enough to catch the other army, I can attack it.
A bigger problem (IMO) is that games like Elemental traditionally had an immediate-gratification approach to exploring and reconnaissance. Every move you made revealed new territory, giving you a real feeling of "connection" with your units. Delayed resolution might break that. I'd still be happy to play the game, but I could see this being too radical a shift for the genre.
I'm with you scout dog, let's take our time and enjoy this epic game.
This is slightly off topic, but what if it were possible for battles over a certain size, or taking more than a certain number of tactical moves, to encompass more than one turn. In addition to being realistic, it would offer the opportunity for reinforcement, etc. Also if razing cities is part of this game, I think it should take more than one turn at least in some cases. Nothing is more frustrating and unrealistic, than having a single group of spearman raze your capital when you were stupid and had a massive stack one square away (not that I've had that happen mind you).
OK my turn (week pun). Two ideas:
1) Maximize fun, and it doesn't matter
So we all agree that sitting at a "Waiting ..." screen while other people take their turns isn't fun.
MW2 solves this by letting you see each other player while you wait for the natch to end. IMHO, this isn't as fun as playing the game, but it's better than a "waiting" screen. (I think a better option would be a meta game bewtween all the elimianted players)
So it would seem that turn LENGTH is not such as issue, as long as you can have FUN while you wait. (think minigame, brickbreaker ,bejewleed,ect.) Have the games give random bonuses to your units to deter oppoents talking longer playtime.
2) Imperial Focus
Another unfleshed idea would be something from the early days of Moo3, Imperial focus. (the idea was later scrapped)
Basically, as the ruler of the galaxy, you don't have "time" to worry about build queues on the 3rd moon of a colony on an outpost settlement. Therefore you were allowed a set number of Focus Points (FP's) per turn, and each action would consume a point (some more than others). If you wanted to spend all your FP's micormanaing your cities, you would have none left for movement, reserach, or battle (comp automated). So instead of a timebank where your time = gold, you could stockpile points, to allow for more actions in the future.
I would take this idea and expand on it even more.
The planned moves, while I wait, would queue up in a pop up box with a check box. Default is Checked after queueing. The queu can only hold so many actions (# TBD) Any town or resource based build order (say I want a Hut and a Lumber Mill, takes only 1 spot in the queue. A move order, for any single or company (etc.) sized unit is 1 spot in the queue.
When it then becomes my turn, my tumer kicks in and I get X seconds to un-check, any queued items I don't like, for that Turn, but leaving then in the queue so next wait time is already in progress. Deletions and re-queueing is also possible during any wait period.
As an aside. For "Time Bank" idea I think of Curling (crazy I know). But each player/Team is given a set amoutn of GAME time. Each turn/end burns off time from the total alloted. Amounts can be set by the Host in the game set up screen.
Also, each player/Team gets 3 time outs that stop the clock. These are 1-2 minutes in lenght for those really tough decisions but when you use them all up, the Timer cannot be stopped again during a Players/Teams turn.
Given that, an available Game could be listed in the MP Lobby Game Selection Screen like this.
Game name. Map name. Time Bankalloted. Thus if I have only 30 minutes to play, I seek out 30 minute games. If I want a 2 hour game, I create or find a 120 munite game etc...
I would like to see 3 options for MP:
a) Classic Turn Base
b ) Simultaneous Turns (everything moves instantly)
c) Simultaneous Turns (Everything moves after all players gives orders and hit end round button)
Money bank sounds interesting, but never tried anything like this before, It might be quiete good for competitive players.
Round time limit (Being able to change it in a middle of the game would really help)
Also soft time limit might be nice. For example in 3 tiers... if you finish your round in 1 minute, you get some good reward. In 2 smaller reward, and after 3 minutes nothing and round ends.
For a Battle options I would like to see:
a) Only instant resolve
b ) Being able to choose 1 tactical battle each round. Other would be resolved instantly.
c) only human to human tactical battles
d) Timer on battles, where battle take part for set amount of time, and after that time, winning side wins instantly.
e) without restrictions
It is really necessary to have good instant resolve system, not only fair one, but also informative one, so one always know what happened, how and why and make changes in his tactics accordingly. This can speed up game alot. Also rewards for instant resolve must be same as for playing it normaly (xp, gold etc...)
Being able to set what battles can be played by rating is really nice feature.
I would also like to be able set if we can watch other players battles (all of them, or only allies/ teams, or none) after we ended up our round.
Last thing, please let us do everything when we are waiting for other players. Allow us change research, change build orders, units destinations, make it possible to equipt and make new units etc.. This is really necessary, to be able use diplomacy, look at the battle logs, and get all other informations on units, towns etc !!
Edit: Ohh, and I have forgor, let us see who already finished round and who does not.
Simitaneous turns are bad. Very bad. Nice concept but open to abuse and also open to bugs.
One of the ideas I mentioned before in this thread was to take the turn orders, and those that occur at roughly the same period, and randomize the orders. Or, have an intiative stat and roll off. A lot of TBS games have eventually gone this route, Civilization recently patched it in.
For those who don't really play TBS games, why don't you fire up a TBS multiplayer game with a group of friends? Spend some time to analyze where the game slows down, why the game slows down.
(Games with strangers are completely different. Strangers play only as long as they want to or are able to. Once they drop from a game they have no way of communicating with you, so you can't join back up later most of the time. There's a reason "Faster," is the most popular game setting in Sins public games - it's so a game can get played.)
@Tridus: Conflict resolving is quite possible with a bit of AI and initiative. Like a unit moving to defend a city and arriving late would only appear after a certain amount of time in combat has passed (That would also give some interesting strategic options to keep it from reaching the town gate or other things).
Most conflicts are easily resolved by considering the units moving linearly over a certain amount of time (so after half the time they have moved for half their movement points). Others can be resolved by AI settings like "Fight any unit coming nearby" or "Avoid enemy units" or "Move this unit exactly as planned and fight whatever stands in your way".
An average time/turn rating for each player would be good information to give out when starting a game. Also games played/completed, and times won.
What kind of screen are we looking at for multoplay froggsie?
Here's one small idea that could be part of the bigger solution.
The new Total War game, Napoleon: TW, allows an opponent player to take control of the NPC army during Player vs NPC battles.
The first paragraph of this IGN review explains it: http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1070234p2.html
I have played Sword of the Stars MP (as coop mostly, about 28 games total) and HoMM (3-5). I vastly preferred SotS, simultaneous turns helped a great deal with that. We began with time limits on turns, then turned them off once we got into the practice of not taking ages. It felt natural.
The one annoying, unfun, bit came when combat came along. For those unfamiliar with SotS, its TBS with real time combat. Fights can last multiple turns, the default max time for a fight was 4 minutes. If someone had 3 fights, thats a 12 minutes wait. There was autoresolve of course, but SotS combat is actually quite complicated and autoresolve cannot account for many factors - and autoresolve is no fun. I believe quite many people will want to play battles themselves, and if they dont, then I would probably consider it as a sign of something being wrong with the battle system.
Another problem with SotS was slowdown, a technical issue of course, but in a big fight those 4 minutes could take 6-10 minutes to actually finish. Still, a group of us played 28 games, most of them to a "winning point", after which it was just the standard TBS cleanup to be done and we often did not bother.
With HoMM the combat did not slow it down too much, however each player having to take their turn did. I cannot be certain but a simulturn may have been present in the 5th incarnation, it has been a while. The one thing the 5th did have, which I have seen mentioned here, is the ghost mode.
A minigame within the game, a bonus to those who were faster, the longer your opponents took the more actions you could do in ghost mode. I liked this, and I feel it is good to have a system that gives you something to do while waiting, I found in HoMM5 that I wanted my enemies to be a bit slower, so I could use my ghost.
It has been mentioned that Elemental will have RPG aspects, perhaps room to do something with your heroes while others finish their turns? Something which you can advance in and grow stronger, but not on a strategic empire-altering level, but an RPG style one. Mix in some dungeoneering research and let players who have finished run around a dungeon or a small overland map getting a slightly sharper sword or rescuing damsels or whatnot.
One thing I noticed with SotS is, everyone occasionally had a long turn - and lots of the time they occured in complete disharmony. Everyone got a turn at playing alt-tab-Firefox, providing a fun, relevant, not too important but useful alternative could go a long way.
In Diplomacy you write down your orders secretively (tho you can show them to others, with the caveat that the orders you show may not be your real orders), then when all are done the orders are shown together and then resolved.
In Squad Leader turns are divided into 8 phases:
-Rally Phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired)
-Prep Fire Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may fire on enemy units; any units that Prep Fire cannot move or fire again for the rest of the player turn)
-Movement Phase (in which the player may move his units on the board)
-Defensive Fire Phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved)
-Advancing Fire Phase (in which any units that moved may fire)
-Rout Phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover)
-Advance Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may move every unit one hex
-Close Combat phase (in which any units from opposite sides that end the turn in the same hex engage in close combat).
It wouldn't be this complex in Elemental, but a scaled-back version might be something like:
-build phase (queue up new buildings/units, create new units, set tech research, etc.)
-prep movement phase (chart out intended movement, give orders to fortify/etc, etc.)
-movement phase (movements are resolved)
-battle phase (if units occupy the same space at the same time at any point during a move, are at war, then there's a battle; if those units aren't at war then the option to declare war is given; battles are resolved either automatically by the computer or on a tactical screen)
This system's strengths include:
-an increased 'fog-of-war' from not knowing how your opponents are acting during the turn, allowing more 'surprises'; not knowing the outcome of a battle before plotting movements of other units or inititiating other battles, etc.; not knowing if there will be a battle until it's initiated; not knowing exactly where a battle will occur; etc.
-by dividing up the turn it should decrease waiting time or at least the perception of waiting (as everyone does the build phase simultaneously then waits, then moves simultaneously then waits, etc. -- giving more/smaller wait periods instead of a single, longer waiting period).
Weaknesses include:
-you'd have to implement a system to chart a unit's moves without having the unit move
-cpu overhead to remember/resolve the movements
-the perception that a turn takes longer because it's divided into phases
-others that I've forgotten or not thought of.
I'm not a fan of tying resources to decision making but understand why it would be considered. The problem with "punishing" a player for taking longer turns is that it becomes hard to develop a strategy with an unexpected amount of resources. For example, if I plan on using the 15 gold I have next turn but find myself with 7 gold, I then have to readjust my plans and create a new strategy on the fly - which takes MORE time and possibly costs me more resources resulting in a spiral of frustration.
I think a better solution would be to reward those that finish early depending on how early I finish relative to the other players. This option indirectly punishes slow decision makers but in a way that gives them an opportunity to carry out their plans and finish earlier. Faster players can still carry out their plans OR risk "punishment" by adjusting them as they decide where to spend the extra resources.
Another option is to separate kingdom management from unit movement. The big frustration with HoMM for me is that I had to sit and do nothing while my opponent took their turn. Let them move while I work on my kingdom.
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