Civilization V » Forum Post by Tujax

Quoting louist,

Songhai, or however is spelled, was a Western African Civ. I suppose you might discount it because it was Muslim, but I think it counts.

I haven't tired multiplayer yet, but Civ 4 was TERRIBLE for people dropping the game whenever they had a bad few turns. I don't think I had a single game where someone didn't drop out.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Zulus, they were in every other one at least I think they were.

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting FadedC,

reply 97

I think it's just gotten to the point where the number of people who are willing to play a very long drawn out turn based multiplayer strategy game (particularly one that does not have simultaenous turns) is a very small niche. When most people want a game that they can play with their friends they usually want one where they don't spend much more time waiting around for their turn then playing. I must admit that while I used to quite happily play some games like that (with strict turn time limits) I no longer really want to either.

People on the other hand love to play cooperative or competitive games where they they can constantly be in the action, which is why there has been such a surge in MP shooters and the like. RTS is also a quite popular field for it. But even if a game like Civ or elemental managed to get the multiplayer working flawlessly, the number of people who actually were willing to play it would be a fairly small demographic compared to the number of people who buy something like modern warfare for the multiplayer. This is why companies don't spend a lot of resources on it.

Civ 4 had a pretty strong MP community. I doubt anybody but Firaxis knows the size of it relative to the SP one, but for a "niche" it was doing pretty well for itself.

Civ 5 didn't manage to reach the same level of support. It's not like people in this market are very demanding in MP: they want SP with some of the AIs replaced by humans. Somehow Firaxis messed that up, with the AI behaving differently in MP and being really dumb (in my last co-op game they were stuck in the renaissance due to building nothing but trading posts on every tile, and the city states were able to beat them). They were completely passive and just braindead. They don't behave the same way in SP. The map generator also doesn't put teammates near each other anymore, which it used to do. That affects competitive and coop play.

I mean hell, you can't even SAVE MANUALLY in Civ 5 MP. This isn't rocket science. It's basic stuff that games have been able to do for decades. Somehow they got it wrong, and in absolute terms MP support in Civ 5 is worse then in Civ 4.

Then you've got Elemental... where they actually put deliberate time and effort into making MP different from SP. Had they spent considerably less time on not doing that and instead just made it possible to have the AI in a MP game, it'd be better then it is. I'm not really sure who is playing competitive Elemental (looking at the Arena it seems to be a small number), but to have a TBS MP game where co-op is flat out impossible? That's pathetic, especially since all we want is the SP game with another human stuck in somewhere.

If you're going to support it at all, you should do it right. When games are coming out today that are worse then ones from four years ago at doing the exact same things? That's bad. That's the point here. FPS games are getting better at it, and TBS games are getting worse.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 102

If you're going to support it at all, you should do it right. When games are coming out today that are worse then ones from four years ago at doing the exact same things? That's bad. That's the point here. FPS games are getting better at it, and TBS games are getting worse.

Well said, and yet some people act as if the MP community is asking for the world when we're pretty much requesting features that have been found on 10 and 15 year old games. I would be surprised if we actually got something innovative and "better" at this point.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 102

Civ 4 had a pretty strong MP community. I doubt anybody but Firaxis knows the size of it relative to the SP one, but for a "niche" it was doing pretty well for itself.

Civ 5 didn't manage to reach the same level of support. It's not like people in this market are very demanding in MP: they want SP with some of the AIs replaced by humans. Somehow Firaxis messed that up, with the AI behaving differently in MP and being really dumb (in my last co-op game they were stuck in the renaissance due to building nothing but trading posts on every tile, and the city states were able to beat them). They were completely passive and just braindead. They don't behave the same way in SP. The map generator also doesn't put teammates near each other anymore, which it used to do. That affects competitive and coop play.

I mean hell, you can't even SAVE MANUALLY in Civ 5 MP. This isn't rocket science. It's basic stuff that games have been able to do for decades. Somehow they got it wrong, and in absolute terms MP support in Civ 5 is worse then in Civ 4.

Then you've got Elemental... where they actually put deliberate time and effort into making MP different from SP. Had they spent considerably less time on not doing that and instead just made it possible to have the AI in a MP game, it'd be better then it is. I'm not really sure who is playing competitive Elemental (looking at the Arena it seems to be a small number), but to have a TBS MP game where co-op is flat out impossible? That's pathetic, especially since all we want is the SP game with another human stuck in somewhere.

If you're going to support it at all, you should do it right. When games are coming out today that are worse then ones from four years ago at doing the exact same things? That's bad. That's the point here. FPS games are getting better at it, and TBS games are getting worse.

Wow ok, I didn't realize things were that bad on the Civ 5 MP front. So yeah even for a niche market I'd expect a little better support then that.

And like you said it is hard to know just how big a nice actually is. It only takes a couple hundred people to create an active and vibrant online community, but you'd probably needs 10s of thousands at least before games start targeting you as a demographic. I suspect the game companies have better guesstimates for actual numbers through surveys.

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louist

Join Date 09/2005

+15

That's a valid opinion, Aractain, but not all of us have a gaming coterie to draw upon. My wife isn't a gamer, and my old circle's combined schedules have become far too convoluted these last few years to really get something as serious as Civ V going. Heck, we all purchased Civ IV together and I'd be surprised if we managed more than 3 or 4 hours total.

So, if I'm in a multiplayer mood, it's random strangers for me.

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Quoting louist,

reply 105

That's a valid opinion, Aractain, but not all of us have a gaming coterie to draw upon. My wife isn't a gamer, and my old circle's combined schedules have become far too convoluted these last few years to really get something as serious as Civ V going. Heck, we all purchased Civ IV together and I'd be surprised if we managed more than 3 or 4 hours total.

So, if I'm in a multiplayer mood, it's random strangers for me.

My sister and I played for 5 years, buying the original game and each expansion pack on release. Neither method really trumps the other, but there are more people who play people they know than some seem to think there is.

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Wrong thread. Sorry.

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