I speak to you now as a gamer. A person giving his own personal opinion of Elemental's multiplayer experience.
I don't find Elemental's multiplayer in 1.0 to be fun in general. Elemental was designed as a single player game that happens to have MP. And this has come through in the final version.
There is one exception: Playing 2 people as part of a team vs. AI players is fairly fun. But playing against random players is just an exercise in frustration. This is a game that requires a significant amount of time investment and too many random games will end in dissatisfaction in my opinion.
I do think the game has potential with a group of friends playing together. But I don't think it's there yet. I think it'll take more time and more thought to do this.
Here is what Stardock will need to do, and plans to do, in order to make MP more enjoyable:
#1 Local Servers.
On day 0, all MP games will get their data from dedicated servers that Stardock has put in place around the world. We are doing this to eliminate connectivity issues. Connectivity marred the launch of Demigod and it is my opinion that if we had had dedicated servers in the first place, Demigod would have had a much better experience. (as opposed to having a particular individual host a game).
However, in the mid-term to long-term, Stardock WILL be providing custom servers so that people can mod up their own games and put them on their own networks to host games. The priority this is given will depend on the demand of course but regardless, it is something I will be insisting be done because I really think that the best long term success path for Elemental is in letting users take Elemental and do cool and interesting things to it.
#2 More Multiplayer Game Options.
I would like to see the tactical battles take on a life of their own. The day 0 multiplayer does not have tactical battles in them. We took them out. Yes, in an ideal world we could have made this an option, but anyone who has been on a forum for any amount of time knows that you'd still have people flaming us who found tactical battles boring because while the other guy was fighting some drawn out battle, they were stuck watching it.
I don't have any ready ideas on how to make this better except to say that I would like to see tactical battles made into a seperate game mode where players pick their units before the game and then go up against other players with those units.
This is an idea we'll have to think about more and see when or if it can be implemented at a reasonable cost.
#3 LOTS more game play styles
I don't really have any good ideas on this as I don't generally play TBS games in multiplayer (even with friends). We play a lot of Settlers of Katan here and Twilight Imperium as board games but I think we will have to look at more game modes (and these can be made available in SP as well) to help make MP more fun.
My advice would be this: If you are buying Elemental primarily for MP, don't. It has it. It works. But IMO, it's not worth $50 to play the game MP primarily. If you like MP in ADDITION to having a fantastic single player game (and make no mistake, Elemental, as a single player game, is awesome in its release form) then absolutely, get it.
So there's my 2 cents.
Not being funny but the devs have never confirmed anything about MP, you may have assumed as did i that MP would just be SP with real people . But the dev's have never outlined exactley what features were going to be in the game and how they would be implemented. So you we were never mislead, you only led yourselves to believe what you wanted to believe. This is a common problem throughout the Beta process, which is why i doubt we stardock will be doing another beta in the same way.
I would prefer Tac battles in MP but i was never promised that it would be there so the only person i can be angry at for pre-ordering is me. But i am not as i have been following the information provided by the dev's and playing the Beta enough to have a clear picture of what has been promised and what is just forum speculation and my own hopes.
I respect the decision to remove the function, I design and build for a living and sometimes stuff just isn't up to snuff. I feel confident that they will address the issue and provide multi-player combat when they are happier with its functionality.
Off topic, I'm just stoked to be getting such a game, effectively just moments away...
My wife and I love to play civ and AOM in hotseat mode, you could have hotseat and include the tactical battles that way.
Also, Raven X mentioned wizard duels and I think that could be a very interesting idea!
The decision to not make tactical battles at least an option in multiplayer will keep me from purchasing the two additional copies I was intending. I fail to see how having the option would cause people to flame. In this case, we are being restricted with no recourse.
Well then there's no point in talking at all.
We do know some things. We know more or less how the game plays from the SP beta, and in the absence of different modes we can infer that MP plays basically the same way (streamlined tech trees if they exist won't change how the game plays fundamentally).
We know there's no tactical battles. We also know what watching other people do tactical battles is like (at least those of us who have done it in other games do).
We know from the Firing Squad interview that there's a turn time limit of some type.
Most importantly - we know what we'd like to see.
So useful things can be gleaned even without having the game yet.
Crystal clear or must I elaborate more?
* for which I haven't positioned myself in this thread about if I agree about it's lack or not.
Are any of those missing? IIRC they've mentioned playing coop before at the office. If you can play against someone in multiplayer, then deathmatch is in, as is FFA if there's more then one person. It'd be pretty surprising if you can't do that.
And there's an endless stream of complaints at how the game isn't well suited for playing against random people. Because it's not. You can make it work anyway, but it simply works better playing with friends then with random people.
That's all I'm saying here. The amount of work required to make Elemental work well as a game to play with friends is significantly less then the work required to make it work for fast random games.
Yeah, me too.
This is your idea of not antagonizing? Or this:
That's little better then flamebait.
Then this. Since taking tactical battles out of MP does make MP worse, there's nothing wrong with what he said.
Honestly I'm a bit surprised tactical battles got taken out of MP completely. It seems to me the easier option would be to leave it in, but let whoever is creating the game set the threshold. I would imagine it's always better to be able to have tactical battles and chosing not to (by just clicking auto-resolve), than not having the option. If people complain that tactical battles in MP aren't fun, you can improve them and in the meantime they're free to skip them, which in my opinion is a better compromise than just taking them out for everyone while improving it.
no there isnt
the only thing we can discuss is the cut of tac battles
since we know what tac battles are and what means to not have them
every other speculation or suggestion or discussion is useless
yeah thats what everyone thinks
#2 could work, but it would take a good bit of work, maybe an expansion pack's worth. Unsure if that's worthwhile.
I do agree with the philosophy of single-player first, as quite honestly, my friends who are getting this- none of us really have much interest in MP. We might do it once if it gets improved. We're too old now and have jobs and stuff which get in the way (plus we all work different hours)
One thing I do disagree strongly with you on: The gimping of features in MP: most of it should be an option whether the players want it gimped or not. It's like you are enforcing "Final Destination, no items, Fox Only". Great for tourney types, but most people aren't tourney-style competitive. That said, the "mp mode" does need to kept in, it just shouldn't be forced on everyone.
Also, despite your best efforts, eventually people will find flaws, and someone will make a MP mod that is better.
Maybe put some effort into cooperative MP?- you got a good enough AI (or will), and some of my friends refuse to do competitive MP but will do co-op.
Another IMO, Really and truly- I think GC2 would have been a better MP game then what I've seen from Elemental so far. Elemental will be the much better single-player game. So any MP stuff, it could help out when you do GC3 (guessing that's three-four years away now, which is a shame, I know I'll be ready for it in a year or two)
My thoughts:
-It's no secret that I was expecting the full-featured game to be available in MP, as that's the way the other games in the genre have worked... Civ4, Age of Wonders, etc. It honestly never occurred to me that significant features wouldn't be available in MP. I don't just mean tactical battles, I'm also referring to questing, etc.
-It bothers me a bit because of the way, and more importantly when, this information was communicated. I didn't know about the difference in MP until the GameShark preview on August 18. That's less than a week away from release, for a game I've been waiting for over a year, only to be given this information now. While I do trust Stardock and do believe MP will see some love down the road, it sure would have made waiting for the 24th a lot easier had I known. I also had a LAN party scheduled for next weekend, with some people coming in from out of town, to play an epic game of Elemental MP. Yeesh.
-I understand it's a SP focused game and that SP wouldn't be compromised for MP, so I can understand if MP-specific features like Wizard Duels or X-COM meets Myth or whatever aren't in the game at release. What surprises me is when the functionality already exists in the game, why it isn't an option for MP at least, such as:
Tactical Battles: There is already a great control scheme in place, that being the threshold slider. Let the game creator set this value at the start of the game, that way people can play MP without tactical battles if they like, or if they do like them they can set them up precisely the way they want. Full SP Game: Other features like questing for powerful items which were removed, this again should have been a game option. This one would have required some additional work to the game setup, but a simple checkbox between a "Balanced" game with no quests or an "Epic" game with all SP features would have been very much appreciated.
Tactical Battles: There is already a great control scheme in place, that being the threshold slider. Let the game creator set this value at the start of the game, that way people can play MP without tactical battles if they like, or if they do like them they can set them up precisely the way they want.
Full SP Game: Other features like questing for powerful items which were removed, this again should have been a game option. This one would have required some additional work to the game setup, but a simple checkbox between a "Balanced" game with no quests or an "Epic" game with all SP features would have been very much appreciated.
Honestly I think the thing that surprises me most is that for a game that has been touting moddability and customization, how few options exist (at release anyway) for how people want to play the game.
I hope to see some control over how MP plays, and LAN servers, soon. Until then, I'll certainly play around a little bit with the SP game and I'm sure enjoy it, but really my heart was in playing this coop MP with my friends.
Still, I want to say thanks for writing this post, Brad. I wish this had been written several months ago, but maybe these were more last minute decisions. Anyway, I still do trust Stardock, I do believe Elemental MP will get where it's supposed to be, but after waiting over a year for this game I just want it to be there now.
(STFU by Tridus)
Yeah, "wizard duel" would be an awesome MP mode.
Well, it would be good to have an option to turn the tact. battles on/off at least....
Does point 1 mean we cant even play modded games online??
Honestly, some of these changes do smack of telling us what is best for us instead of letting us decide for ourselves. (then again, it may have been impractical to make it an option, or the resources were spent on better things)
While I think he's right, I think the option should be there, since it's obvious there is at least a vocal minority who disagrees, if not a vocal majority.
Ultimately, people are going to want a game with all the bells and whistles though, if only for derping. Not every MP game is ranked match on PSN style serious. That said, I am glad the streamline mode for fairness is in- as it will be nice for that style of play.
as for the turn a day feature- I'd suggest this for making it work:
You start the game as standard MP, so everyone can do the early game. At some point, you quit, and then the host sets is as 1 turn/day.
This way you don't spend two months building up your cities.
At the moment, yes. Keep in mind custom servers are probably going to end up pretty high on the priority list, but at release the dedicated servers will only be able to run unmodded games.
What about a time limit on tactical battles like Sword of the Stars? I know SotS was designed with a time limit in mind so it may not be feasible in Elemental, but any battle that ran over the time limit was fought in the next turn. Players who had the technology could watch allied or nearby battles, too. It kept the turns moving quickly and yet never forced anyone to go with the somewhat questionable auto-resolve unless the outcome was clear.
If this has been mentioned, please ignore, I haven't read this whole thread...
Having a time-based tactical battle, where the battle would "hold over" until the next turn, would require game and game engine changes I would imagine, so would probably be out of scope for the near future. To be honest, in MP I'd be completely satisfied with the existing mechanism of saying "All battles under this size are automatically resolved, the other battles we'll present you with a choice".
In the future, for an expansion pack or something, I'd love to see allies be able to join tactical battles like Age of Wonders or Sword of the Stars. That was a lot of fun.
But, again, in the meantime... I'd be so happy with just enabling the existing game content for MP (quests & tactical). Honest. It'd be like my birthday.
Well..I'm in the for TB in multi camp
I think it should be the exact same as SP with just some human players and or AI , if we choose so
Have the nerfed modes as optional.
What I am concerned about regarding the removal of tactical battles from multiplayer is the design implications. If tactical battles can simply be surgically removed then what is the point of having them in the game at all? What is the difference between participating in a tactical battle and, say, just watching a clip where two armies fight it out without player interaction? I was under the impression that tactical battles would, to some extent, measure how good a player was at playing the game...With their removal from MP, it seems like tactical battles just aren't part of the core of the game.
I think a game like this without tactical battles is not really a full game, its like playing X-Com without the tactical battles. Its like reading a book or watching a film and skipping all the action scenes. It removes a significant context from the game. If multiplayer isn't fun WITH tactical battles, I don't see how removing them makes it MORE fun. When its an 'hosting' option I don't see the problem.
Yeah for random people but I always thought the biggest multiplayer audiance (as small as it is) for X4 was coop and then against your friends or a gaming community where the rules are accepted before hand.
Now if its simply a lack of time then just say that: "No time for real multiplayer, play Civ instead". Thats fair and thats basically what Brad said but it sounded a bit strange with the "we took them out" and "implemented at reasonable cost" statements. EDIT: This wasn't too clear. What I mean is you seem to want to implement so strange duel systems that has NO context like the old multiplayer battles in total war at extra cost but don't want to have the OPTION of TB in standard mode (which sounds like it woulnd't be hard to 'renable').
Maybe we, as a community, can bribe the Stardock devs to enable the option. We can order them pizza or something. Everyone loves pizza... and Raymond, I suppose, but mostly pizza.
What do you say, Stardock? Eh? Eh?? How can you resist this flaky crust, these delicious toppings?
Thought I would offer some suggestions on keeping the Turn Based part working in Multi-player games. I'm trying to make it so that MP gets their turn based combat...while not causing those in combat for that turn to sit doing nothing.
1. Keeping the battles to a certain timeframe in turns. So we have Game Turns (GT) and Combat Turns (CT). For each 5 or 10 CT you have one GT. So if you get into a battle your armies are locked into that square, the two combatents could then have their combat for 10 turns at which point it goes back to the normal GT. This might even open up stratergies where you could stall enough in combat to get reenforcements to join upto the initial battle.
2. As per above but set a time limit on how long each combat can last. I could see this as being abused if someone really wanted to be an asshat.
3. Allow simultaneous turns w time limit per turn during Combat phase where all units are given orders and then once the time limit expires they complete their turn to the best of their ability. Again you could use the GT vs. CT in section 1 above.
If not in any combat, nor if you do not have troops close enough to the battle, and therefore can not see the battles taking place you can go about setting up your build queues for your cities and spellbooks.
Segallion
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