(@Mods: Yes i posted this here and not in the Multiplayer section cause in the end its a question in terms of the Game Design and not a disscusion about a strategie etc)

also i explicity want to involve also offline gamers which most likely never look in the Multiplayer subforum)



Since a couple of days i was aksing myself (again) what might be the future of the MP and its community. (Including current and future vanilla versions aswell as upcoming Expansion)





Well lets take a look at the current situation.



The Multiplayer community is instabil and fragile out of my point of view.

We lost MANY players during the time of the heavy Desyncs which were after some previous attempts to fix them extremly bad making the MP unplayable.

This Desync Ages of the MP are thank the endless gone and even if i say that there is still room for improvments regarding desyncs and MP issues the game is now im MP realy playable and you can enjoy most of the MP Partys.



But this cold and Dark Ages damaged the MP community very hard.

If i look at the number of games which are hosted and played they are only a fraction number of the amount we got pre 2013 (in a state were the Desyncs were killing every game at about turn 50-75) but sadly many players got so frustrated after the Desyncs became even worse and quited the MP forever.



Also i have to say that the MP community only have a few very stabel members. There are only about 5 or 6 People which are a stable factor and are seen frequently in the MP which is also a problem cause it shows us that many players quit after trying the MP cause there is a lack of long time motivation.



So why do i post this?

I think that ES has a great potential in MP terms (which TBS 4X Games even have a MP?!)

and this potential has to be unleashed and i think that the time after the expansion release (cause the improved battle mechanics will revolutionate the possible strategies in the MP)



maybe this could be the right time for the devs to give the MP a strong pack of love and attention.



So what could be possible solution for a reformation of the MP?

I know that not that much of MPs are also registered in the Forum (sadly)

But i hope to hear all your ideas and suggestions



doesnt matter if you do not play often in MP, does not matter if u only played 1 time in the MP, and doesnt matter if u never played yet in the MP.



i hope we can get starten a disscusion and gather many suggestion as possible so we can maybe start kind a "Save the MP" movement one day after the Expansion release cause i know that before the release the Devs will have no time left on their scedule but it is always better to start early and because well elaborated suggestion and with many people participating in it are more likely to be heared.



i would realy wish we could get here a disscusion started with offline and online player aswell and maybe one day if we do not vanish into oblivion

we can help Endless Space and its Community.



Thank you for your attention

Sovereign



appendix:



In Terms of long time motivation and to bound more Players to the MP i think a statistic or ladder is one of the important thinks we need. It was often suggested over the past year and that with good reason.



1.Ladder



-1.1 A ladder gives a player a goal...you want to achiev a specific ranc...maybe u just want to be the Number One or you just want to be higher in the ladder then your beloved and hated Archenemy.



Also it gives you a reward, you can see your progress in your skills and you can proud of it.



-1.2 A ladder makes it possible to host games with maybe just players with a certain ranc.

This would help the MP by alot cause atm we got the problem that highly skilled Multiplayer Veterans meets often some completely new or yet inexperienced players.

This results in a great demotivation by the new Players cause they get utterly overhelmed and not knowing exactly why,

leaving the game very often at a certain point where they see that the game is leading to nowhere for them just with a look at the points.

(the point display should also be a on and of switchable game setting option btw as also often suggested)



So with a ladder it could be more prevented that new players encounters at their very first games some old dinosaurs , they could decide by theirselfes if they want to play with a high ranc player and learn from him (with the chance of get utterly overhelmed) or play and learn the game under their kind of low rancs players.



-1.3 A ladder would people encourage to communicate more, player would challange other players they want to beat to take their place on the ladder.

Duels would be possible and maybe this would even encourage clans to rise which are atm just not existent.



2.Teams



Well this suggestion was also made a couple of times over the last year and its much self explaining.

Teams would encourage Clans and Clans are always a great win for every community cause Clans learn other players how to play they are like schools in the first way.

Clans would encourage also the activity and communication between players, Here, Ingame and on Steam cause one clan would challange another to fight.

This would revive all the dead Multiplayer Groups here in on the Endless Space Community Board.



3. Lobby



As i mentioned before i think communcation is very important for an community but in the MP we are limited to communicate amongst each other.



A Lobby (in combination with a Ladder) is (imo) the importest thing we need to save the MP.



Just imagine you got a lobby where you see all the open games and other players which are idling arround searching for new games.



-3.1 You could chat with them, you could disscuss strategies, game changes , storys and much more with them, make new friendships and join together a new game.



-3.2 also with a ladder you can check out the rancs of the player, you could challange them to a duel compete your skills, organisate high skill games with the best players arround to bring you the ultimate online challange your u can invite low ranc players to a game were u can give them tipps and tricks and show them some hints.



In conclusion all this would provide many people to stay active members in the MP Community--> which leads to more registration here in the Forum ---> which leads to more active Members in the overall Endless Space community , a greater participation in the development of the Game and finally to a better game at all, cause a good MP community would be a great winn for Endless Space and and its community as a whole.





Thank you again for reading.

I would love all of these ideas to be implemented for multiplayer.



The ideas of clans and such would self build a community if there was rankings, endless space video channels and such.



Though I guess anti cheat measures would definitely have to be considered prior to any substantial development in some of these areas. When competition heats up, some humans cannot handle loosing and so resort to petty cheating through hacks and what not.



It might be nice for Amp to focus 1000% on getting the xpac just right and then maybe if they do free add ons after the xpac then there could be a MP add on or even if it was substantial enough a paid DLC xpac for MP.... I only suggest this because I was shocked to see the xpac is only going to be 9.99.... I thought AMplitude were underselling themselves @ 9.99 for a xpac

Given that most people are playing single player, I'm really not sure the amount of developer attention required to build this stuff would ever be worth it. 4X games are rarely ever played seriously in MP by more than a small subset of the total players, and that's even when the MP works well (though Coop Civ 4 is quite a lot of fun).



A ladder also does nothing for anybody who doesn't want to play competitively, and so it ignores the people who are playing coop.

If they were to focus on any of these, I would think a chat room would be 1st, team play would be 2nd, and ladder would be last. A simple chat room should be simple enough to implement, and it would add a TON to being able to set up games, etc.



Team play is something that I personally would love to see as my friends and I would use it. I only do private multiplayer as we tend to play slower games which we save and reload later on. It would be nice for our group of 4 to be able to do a 2v2 set up. Or, even 4v4 AIs with the computers teamed up and set on Endless difficulty (or easier depending on how well the computer handles teams).



Ladder would only be used by those who play this competitively. I'm sure many people do, but it's not me.

I only think of team-play and lobby as legitimate complains; I don't see the use of a ladder.

Yeah i agree that the lobby is clearly the importanst thing we need and teams is the easiest thing to implement.



in terms of ladder there are many possibilitys



a simple profile with a history (what u can watch through the strongly needed lobby) could do the job.



the thing is simple to prevent low skilled players to running in an open knife if they met old MP Dinosaurs.

I simply find MP far inferior to SP that I stopped playing MP for the time being. Support

Sovereign wrote:
in terms of ladder there are many possibilitys



a simple profile with a history (what u can watch through the strongly needed lobby) could do the job.



the thing is simple to prevent low skilled players to running in an open knife if they met old MP Dinosaurs.

It might be a nice feature; but I'd love to see the devs attention go to more pressing things then a ladder. the game works perfectly without one.

When they have the time, why not, any improvement is welcome ofcourse..

The major point about ladder is it causes people not to quit because that will be recorded. Other option is no quit community. Both works exellent in civ 4 and 5. Teams would be great. Starting position together on map awesome.

1. neither for or against, would like a rating system based on a number of stats, to being No.1 on one way might leave you as being a lower rank in another, like "The HISSHO league" or "The SCIENCE VICTORY league". (Will admit, too afraid to play mp).



2. Yep.



3. Yep.

Eysteinh wrote:
The major point about ladder is it causes people not to quit because that will be recorded. Other option is no quit community. Both works exellent in civ 4 and 5. Teams would be great. Starting position together on map awesome.

That wasent my first thought but now were u said it, thats realy a point when quiting is more punished then every other scenario of loosing this would decrease the number of rage quiters.

man i hate this rage quiters...u gather about 20+ minutes to get 8ppl sometimes and then they leave if someone settle in their constellation, or attack them under turn 50!( -.-...) or they just look at the score table and are thinking *meh pointless to play any further*...god i hate rage quiters so much. Its like you play a game of chess and your opponent stands up throw the chess plate against the wall and then run away.

Igncom1 wrote:
1. neither for or against, would like a rating system based on a number of stats, to being No.1 on one way might leave you as being a lower rank in another, like "The HISSHO league" or "The SCIENCE VICTORY league". (Will admit, too afraid to play mp).



2. Yep.



3. Yep.

1.This is just brilliant, i didnt sayed a word about leagues cause i got no idea how they could look like but this seperations sounds pretty handy.

Lol imagine if the game wasn't simultaneous turns, and a you have a game with like 4 people. At first everyone's playing, but then throughout the week you're busy finding time to be on together, so a guy goes on, plays his turn and goes off. The next guys comes on and does his turn. So on and so on until they have free time together.

stasik28 wrote:
Lol imagine if the game wasn't simultaneous turns, and a you have a game with like 4 people. At first everyone's playing, but then throughout the week you're busy finding time to be on together, so a guy goes on, plays his turn and goes off. The next guys comes on and does his turn. So on and so on until they have free time together.

as with Frozen Synapse ? Might be a good idea. But battle wold be difficult

These are all very great ideas and i hope that the devs will implement your ideas at some point. Because as much as i love this game i do find it lacking in reasons to play it some times other then the steam achievements (I'm getting close to having them all) and a ladder or ranking system would be a great motivation to play mp more often!

1.) Since ES is Steam-centralized, a basic form of a Ladder might be not that hard to implement : for instance Zero-K (and chess) use an Elo system and it seems to work pretty well : http://zero-k.info/Ladders



3.) Lobby : Kerberos had a streak of genius when they added an IRC lobby as the in-game chat for all players, even those that are playing SP : not only it brings people together (for potentially multiplayer), but veterans can explain the game to newbies : irc://kerberos-productions.com/sots2

(which TBS 4X Games even have a MP?!)

The overwhelming majority of them? GalCiv 2 is the only one I can think of that doesn't have MP.

4X games are rarely ever played seriously in MP by more than a small subset of the total players, and that's even when the MP works well

Which is a shame, since 4X games are actually the best in MP (assuming you are dedicated enough to finish a game), since the developers of these games never have the means to make a half a decent AI.

That wasent my first thought but now were u said it, thats realy a point when quiting is more punished then every other scenario of loosing this would decrease the number of rage quiters.

man i hate this rage quiters...u gather about 20+ minutes to get 8ppl sometimes and then they leave if someone settle in their constellation, or attack them under turn 50!( -.-...) or they just look at the score table and are thinking *meh pointless to play any further*...god i hate rage quiters so much. Its like you play a game of chess and your opponent stands up throw the chess plate against the wall and then run away.

Why do you even bother playing with them? I'm going to quote a relevant post I made on SotS2 forums :

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=47660&p=503315&hilit=multiplayer#p503315

There are some problems with suggesting multiplayer as an alternative solution to AI for someone who wants a good challenge for SotS 2. All last weekend I was trying to host a game online for SotS2. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get folks to join up for an online game of this? I had a 3 player FFA game being up and advertised for 5+ hours, and I was spamming chat trying to get people to join, and did it ever get started? Nope. I suppose people would say the solution is to play with friends who have the game, but as I know of nobody personally besides me who plays this, that doesn't work too well. Another issue is even when a game gets started, keeping everyone on board for a full game is next to impossible. Even getting to the stage where there is an obvious winner or loser before people drop out is incredibly difficult.



Even if I could find players to play with, though, there is a huge need for competent AI in this game, even more so than other games. Honestly, this game takes forever to play, even small maps. With my wife and child, I can afford to play a turn based game such as this against the AI, because I can pause it, save it, walk away from it and come back to it whenever a need around my house arises, so the issue of super long games is not an issue vs AI. But with multiplayer, there is a huge time commitment I have to take into consideration which means that if something comes up around the house, kid is crying, wife needs help with something or needs to talk, etc, I have the choice of either quitting the multiplayer game, or making her really angry with me, and as married folks can attest, if wife isn't happy, nobody is happy.

I think you're wasting your time trying to get players for MP that way. What you need is _motivated_ players that are also understanding that RL takes precedence. A SotS1/2 game is not done in one setting. Make a thread in the multiplayer forum. Look at what people are regulars in the in-game chat and ask them if they would be interested in a game. Get a way to be able to contact the people you're going to play with (skype/e-mail/phone number...). Do NOT play with people that won't give you a way to reliably contact them. Be upfront about how available you are to play, and ask them about that too. Be strict about players that drop out of a game without a good reason. Losing is _not_ a good reason.

Lol imagine if the game wasn't simultaneous turns, and a you have a game with like 4 people. At first everyone's playing, but then throughout the week you're busy finding time to be on together, so a guy goes on, plays his turn and goes off. The next guys comes on and does his turn. So on and so on until they have free time together.

as with Frozen Synapse ? Might be a good idea. But battle wold be difficult

Well, yes, that's how most TBS games are played in MP, in sequential turns (but usually you can't have both simultaneous and sequential together), but would it be even possible to retool ES to work that way?