Absent Multiple Player Feature A Game Killer?

Well, it's been discussed quite a few times already. While I agree that a multiplayer option would have been great, Brad Wardell, has clearly stated that the devteam wanted to give full focus to the singleplayer part. And I'm positive they won't disappoint us. If they would have done multiplayer it would have cost us quite a bit of features that are now in the game.

For singleplayer to work you need good AI and I'm very sure the GCII AI WILL be very good. Already the GCI AI give me a good run for my money. And it will only get better as patches come out. If the AI poses a real challenge, and I believe it will, for me there's no real need for a multiplayer option.

I do like to play PBEM games (CIV4 and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic) so that's something I'll miss, but I can live with it.

Brad also said that a multiplayer expansion could still be possible. It's not a given but it might happen after all in an expansion. I'd love to see it as an extra, but the game like it is when is comes out, is worth every penny IMO!

BTW I'm playing CIV4 games playing the same scenario (same race, settings, map, etc.) simultaneously with a friend. We send eachother updates (along with screenshots) every 50 turns and it's great fun to see how both games turn out completely different. It's fun to learn more about the game and adds some competition too. I think the same would be possible with GalCivII.

I played Civ2 for years after buying it even though it had no multiplayer, so no, multiplayer isn't terribly important to the replayability of a TBS game.

https://www.galciv2.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=162&AID=98074#766903

This is a thread where multiplayer is being talked about. Hopefully both sides of the argument make sense, but I tend to side with the "No-Multiplayer" side, since I know what a pain developing a proper MP client can be. I would prefer to make a GC2 type game that's sreamlined for the MP experience...there's just too much time between turns to make GC2:MP fun for me (though I could see Play by Email as an interesting alternative)...but even that would take some streamlining.

*pokes the dead horse with his foot, checking for signs of life*

hehe  The issue will come up more and more as new gamers come to the forum, so at least we have a thread to point them to that reasonably spells out the reason for not including such a "necessary" feature.

I can understand...there are times where I'll be having a really fun game where I go "I wish i could be playing against someone, to test my strategies on." But then I think about diplomacy, and the simutanious turns issue, and random events, and the time most games take to play, and dropped games, and skill matching, and simply finding people to play with, and I realize that I'd MUCH rather have another major feature (Ship Design, for instance) than a multiplayer mode that forces us to make the sigle-player mode less fun.

I would sticky that thread on the forums so it's readily apparant to anyone who comes by.

"Absent Multiple Player Feature A Game Killer?"

For me, no. I don't play multiplayer at all unless I'm playing a MMORPG. I actually like the focus on strong single player. It annoys me when a dev's excuse for weak AI and weak single player in a game is that you should play against other people for a real challenge.

There are tons of games out there that either feature MP or have strong MP, and I don't think every game needs to have MP support, because I think there are a lot of players, like me, who never even consider MP (along with a lot who prefer MP over anything else, of course).

I love multiplayer, but have never felt any desire to play a strategy game (especially a turn based one) online, so I really couldn't care less as long as the AI is good enough (and I'm pretty confident of that). I can think of a billion and one other things I'd rather have. It would only really be fun if you had a local area network and a lot of time to kill, and not many people have that.

I love multiplayer, but have never felt any desire to play a strategy game (especially a turn based one) online

I second this. Multiplayer is great fun for RTS games, FPS's, and whatnot; but TBS games have always been far more about the singleplayer experience. I can understand the appeal of the occasional LAN game with a couple of my friends (the majority of whom also enjoy TBS games), but even then most of don't have the time or inclination to play against each other online.

If it was a choice between this and terror stars, more indepth race creation etc, new random events and stellar phenomeni, i know what i'd choose

My answer is no way. I'll be playing GC2 single player, loving every minute of it. As you can see in the other thread, both sides of the debate.. I have to agree with a game of GC2 takes way too long to MP.. especially since I dont play on tiny maps. hehe. I thought once that having MP would be good for GC2 but I've soon come to realize Brad's conclusions are true. Even if I didn't agree with them at first. However, you will be playing the 2006 GOTY and possibly one of the greatest of all time ('cept for when GC 3 comes out )

GOTY ...Game of the year... that's got to be one of the most akward abbreviations I've ever seen.

Of course, I'm still young and ignorant.

This is getting so old.

I am getting so tired of buying games and having features and content stripped out of what it could have been because the developers wanted to cater to the 'l33t" 1% that play these games multiplayer.

"But I wanna play by email". I doubt outside the hard core that most people even know what play by email means. It's a tiny niche of vocal people. Find, your loudness and allies in the press have gotten plenty of potentially great strategy games crippled so that you can have multiplayer.

GalCiv is ours. Leave it alone.

GOTY ...Game of the year... that's got to be one of the most akward abbreviations I've ever seen.

Got ya!

And for the on-topic portion of this post, I'll just say that I would probably play a multiplayer game of GalCiv once or twice, but I doubt I would play it more than that. If it takes more than a couple days to implement (and it does), then that's time that could be better spent doing something else.

"Must have" ? For an RTS game, I can understand that. Most RTS games stay fun through the MP challenges and experiences. But TBS games? Most TBS games just cannot give the same experience being MP as SP. Except through PBEM. "Must have" in a TBS game is a great SP experience.

Humm... is there anything like hotseat? That seems like it'd be a lot easier to develop, since it's basically just adding another player turn for a second player race.

Hotseat Age of Wonders is probably among my most fondly-remembered gaming experiences, thinking back.

I would like hotseat a lot, i could show somebody the game without making it very very boring for them

No hotseat at this time. But any TBS MP game that can hotseat should be able to PBEM. PBEM is just hotseating with an additional load/save wrapper on the hotseat process.

Multiplayer, while nice, is not a given for me in a game like this. Because of how flexible the developers have the made the game as-is (playing any race, etc), I half expect a multiplayer add-on a year or so down the road. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll spend hundreds of hours conquering the galaxy again and again. Think of this period as time to get in some practice, so you don't humiliate yourself should a multiplayer expansion ever appear.

Multiplayer is totally unneeded in the base game. The random single player games have tons of replay value. I played GC1, off and on, all the way through most of 2005. Now that is what I call replay value.

I love TBS games but never cared to play a TBS multiplayer game. For me, the only game that compares to the replay value of GC1 are Civ3 & 4 (never played 1 or 2). Therefore, I refute your statement that MP is the most important feature of a TBS game.

Now, if you are talking about roleplaying games, we can talk about the importance of multiplayer. But even in the roleplaying case, I love a great single player experience as well. Morrowind is a good example of this kind of game.

Me, I'm looking forward to getting the scrap kicked out of me by the AI. Hopefully, I can learn to beat it but it'll take some doing because "the man" has said that the AI is light years ahead of the GC1 AI.

Personally I find a solid singleplayer experience to be the make or break of any game, in any genre (aside from MMOGs). Most of the time when I'm able to game, I don't feel like dealing with all the uncertainty of human opponents, and I'd rather take my time and goof around if I want.

That said, even if I might never play it on the net I think it's good that they're pondering putting multiplayer in an expansion. It'll be good to see this initial release to the best singleplayer game it can be, and maybe it'll turn out to be well suited to multiplayer in the end. Personally I found all my attempts at MoO3 multiplayer to be very meh, but GalCiv isn't MoO.

if you want the feel of multiplayer, just load up galciv 2 single player, play about an hour, and then suddenly turn off all the opponents to simulate them disconnecting.

I am getting so tired of buying games and having features and content stripped out of what it could have been because the developers wanted to cater to the 'l33t" 1% that play these games multiplayer. .... GalCiv is ours. Leave it alone.

Exactly!

Games marketed by other online publishers have in the past, and are to this day, being dulled for SP by pushy MP'ers. Breaks my heart and my pocketbook when a highly anticipated sequel is streamlined (dumbed down) for MP. Of course, by the time I figure this out I've already purchased.

Especially annoying are developers who write patches to add MP "for free" when those patches were needed to fix many other bugs.

"Galciv is ours. Leave it alone".

From my experience, there's usually a trade-off between the game's AI and multiplayer. It's ok if the game's AI is crap so long as you can still play against other people. Conversely, if you don't have multiplayer, then a good AI is essential, unless you take the lazy route of letting the AI cheat.

No multiplayer is a game killer? What a load of utter bollocks.