Usually games end because enough people quit and they rest call it because they signed up for 8player, not 4.

FireStorm wrote:
In this case I'd put my money on "I'm ragequitting not because my system is putting me at a disadvantage, but because it's not putting me at an extreme advantage."





Well in case of our games he is right , i saw you systems .

In first game you had best starting location. In second as good as rest.

You see, I don't just care about my starting location, but that of others as well. In the first game, one guy was completely and utterly screwed. Not only that, but the systems were generally SO BAD that the game would have moved at an absolute snails pace forever. Second game, my freaking menus wouldn't work! I couldn't click or exit the chat window at all! At that point, I'm not even going to bother, I'm going to go do something else that doesn't piss me off.

davea wrote:
Please do visit the thread of the modder who is doing this work, to see what you think of his approach:



/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15815-balanced-galaxy-generator

From glancing through his proposals, I can say it's about 100% better than what we currently have.



Now, get it play tested and refined and put it into the game, not a mod.

Kyu wrote:
Usually games end because enough people quit and they rest call it because they signed up for 8player, not 4.

This is a symptom of a broken game IMO. Of course, there's plenty of player bashing/blame to go around to keep the pressure off the devs to actually fix anything, so...

Most players dont even know how to play the game. No wonder they quit at the begining =). If u have no skillz, u have no chanse of winning, thats it =)/

I have to agree with the OP. As a MP game this one is pretty damn poor. The map generator is simply the worst aspect of the problem. The second is that really only one affinity matters. If they are going to allow mods in MP then there needs to be a means for the mods to be distributed for that MP session and kept separate from the local install. As in, the save game will need to keep the mods either within its layout or tied to it. I stopped with MP weeks ago because it was a joke.

OK, let's list the top five problems which the dev team could fix. Here's my list, and I don't even play MP.

1. One big lobby instead of many small regional ones

2. Out of sync is too frequent

3. Unbalanced maps leading to early ragequit

4. If host quits, game cannot be continued

5. Your opinion?



I am curious what is the "only one affinity that matters"? I have tried to implement some rebalancing in a mod, such as preventing Endless War and Blockade Breakers together, decreasing the science from trade by 4x (so amoeba doesn't get ahead on science), and decreasing Hissho bushido percentages. If there are other glaring balance problems, we can possibly fix them via modding also.

I really don't understand why the regional barriers exist. Was it easier that way? Or did the devs expect higher numbers of people playing online?

I mentioned in another thread that it may have been due to language barriers, but there are better ways of solving that issue, and if this is a solution to that, then it seems to me like solving one problem by creating another.

I have been told the regional lobbies are to reduce ping time, the assumption being that if you are playing with somebody on another continent, the lag will be too large. But perhaps this was not the right choice, or it would only be the right choice if the volume of players was a lot more.

Quite frankly, ping times shouldn't be that big of a deal in a turn-based game.

Please remember ES is not a "pure" turn based game. Ping matters due to simultaneous movement. I agree the lobbies should be merged.

davea wrote:
Please remember ES is not a "pure" turn based game. Ping matters due to simultaneous movement. I agree the lobbies should be merged.

Ping still doesn't matter, because unlike trying to get headshots in an FPS game, everyone in ES can bloody well wait the extra half a second for the freaking ships to move. It's not that critical.

davea wrote:
Please remember ES is not a "pure" turn based game. Ping matters due to simultaneous movement. I agree the lobbies should be merged.

Well many people have already voiced complaints about the simultaneous movement, so I don't think it was a good compromise. Hopefully they'll change the system somewhat (like discussed in the G2G forum) and that will nullify the need for region barriers.

have been playing on the Euro server region the last couple weeks. A lot of hosts like to suddenly quit. It's not really rage, it seems more that they realized something and want to retry. It is bothersome for everyone else tho, they don't even say anything, they just up and quit.



A host quitting the game, and thus ending the game for everyone abruptly, is BY FAR the most annoying thing to me. I've only seen a few games actually end because somebody won (out of around 25 games).



Usually games end because enough people quit and they rest call it because they signed up for 8player, not 4.





All of the above are so true.



I see a mutliplayer game as entering an agreement between players. We all take part in something that requires a lot of time, and is , atm , luck based.

So if i get abit unlucky i wont quit and ruin the game for others, if you get abit unlucky you dont do the same.And believe me poeple that get tottaly screwed arent that many in a game, watched it with amoeba past few days.

Quitting a game becuase i got little less chances, besides being silly casue you dont know how the game will develop, is for me not giving a shit about others.

Synaptic_AI wrote:
Ping still doesn't matter, because unlike trying to get headshots in an FPS game, everyone in ES can bloody well wait the extra half a second for the freaking ships to move. It's not that critical.

I've played plenty of games of Civ 5 (also turn based + simultaneous moves) where people from overseas were in the game, and it does slow it down quite a bit. Unless there is some way of restricting who can join your game based on ping, I'm totally against merging lobbies. When you would normally be on turn 50, you will be on turn 30 just because of high latency. I'm only speculating on this next statement, but I imagine it would be more of a networking headache to keep all the players in synch.

BriGuy wrote:
Unless there is some way of restricting who can join your game based on ping, I'm totally against merging lobbies.

Of course "sort by ping" is a good idea. But, suppose you have to choose between "no players available" or "play slowly"? For games with a huge player base, multiple lobbies may be a good idea; for a smaller base, the combined lobby may be necessary.

Priorities, in order, according to me:



1) desyncs, bugs, etc -- It just happens too often. I have yet to complete a game without something making turns hang, or games freeze or crash, or people being set behind by disconnects. losing any number of turns in MP can be devastating. When the AI pulls back ALL OF YOUR FLEETS and allows your target to regroup, and if your fleets took 3 turns to travel there from the nearest system, even if you come back in on the next turn you have lost 6 turns of time and pressure... When the AI throws all your admin heroes into small fleets... When the AI decides to make cease fire/peace agreements with everyone... a stable game would make for more stable players, its comforting knowing that i can play a game without it randomly ruining my 4 hour investment



2) Dedicated Servers --- Crushing a games host might as well be a death sentence to the entire game. Once they quit or die, your game is over. It's like pushing a reset button in some cases. Crap that guy is gonna kill me, but if i make the host quit i can save face and my fragile ego! New people don't know why the game is over, so they dont bother to look for a rehost of it. Even veterans, once they get that momentary break from the quit, feel released and think what else they do and take a break. Of course there is also just everyone decided that player X is going to win so they abandon any idea of rehost.



3) less random map generator --- all too often people ragequit in the first few turns. I just sat in a lobby for 30 minutes waiting to fill 8 players. 2 people quit in 10 turns, because of their starting areas. Granted, many many times the player is just too picky, and sees any slightly unequal start as reason to quit. However if they had 6 systems, garden of eden, and luxury resources on all jungle worlds to start, they would gladly see that as fair to your arid and 2 barrens and continue playing. None-the-less, the degree of randomness is too much. There needs to be some small range of starting systems with a fixed range of planets in total and a certain number easily colonizable, varied by map settings. If the host quits, see point #2.



4) larger regions --- it would be nice to see more games and not have to wait forever to get larger games. I don't know exactly how the data transfer load will slow things down given X number of people playing, so i won't say it can be done or not. But it would be nice to have. It is also possible that with bugs removed, balances addressed, and new things implemented, MP will become more popular and solve the problem in itself.



5) useless corporate heroes --- utterly useless hero type. their trade bonuses absolutely require larger maps, more players, specific traits to enhance them, and even then they are awful. Why? because they give a large sounding % that amounts to a very tiny single digit number on one system. WOW i can get +100% trade route bonuses!! yup. +100% of 9 per route, and you only need to be level 8 to do it. Too bad you level slow as dirt because xp is based on production! /golfclap



One game i had all 3 heroes identical. All corporate/adventurer. We could work on the starting hero generator too.



6) Starting hero generator! --- it was foretold. Ties in with people quitting because of junk heroes!

As for the ping issues, you could just display a game lobby's ping in the multiplayer menu so that you can decide for yourself to choose no game or slow game.



As for the priorities, try this: /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12409-draft-proposed-balanced-map-generator

@ kyu, that is very helpful feedback. I agree that the vanilla corp hero is only useful in certain situations, and probably not MP. A decent corp hero in a trade oriented game can rack up thousands of dust *per turn*; but that is unlikely in MP. If you haven't looked at it, you may be interested in my corp hero mod:



/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15801-released-community-bug-fix-balance-mod



If everybody in an MP game has the same mod and same version, it all works. The mod does several things, but for corp heroes, it gives an early game buyout bonus, and flat science plus science bonus (like "civil engineer for research"). Here is an analysis of trade income with a 5800 dust/turn system:



/#/endless-space/forum/33-strategy-guides/thread/14048-trade-routes

BriGuy wrote:
I've played plenty of games of Civ 5 (also turn based + simultaneous moves) where people from overseas were in the game, and it does slow it down quite a bit. Unless there is some way of restricting who can join your game based on ping, I'm totally against merging lobbies. When you would normally be on turn 50, you will be on turn 30 just because of high latency. I'm only speculating on this next statement, but I imagine it would be more of a networking headache to keep all the players in synch.

Thing is imho with todays tech, the problem isnt really distance but type of internet connection you have. With these region divided lobby i still run into people who slow down the game much , because of their poor connection wi-fi or other.

Me , being from Poland , i can hop through all regions and have alwys fast games unless poeple on other side have problematic internet, becuase i have 100mb/s broadband internet connection.



So if ping is really the issue only way is , as somebody suggested, sort by ping time, not divide by regions.