Affinity wrote:
There is already a steam community for ES. *Hopefully* it will become more active as time goes on. If you ever want to do MP, you should join the group! And help make it active so more people will join

Well a link to the channel or even its name would be helpful for joining it :P

They need to release this patch as an update ASAP. People are getting tired of waiting for a fix to the desync issues, and its getting harder and harder to fill games. If they do not release it soon, there may not be a community left to revive...

That sounds very interesting. Do you use Skype? I'd sure like to have a conversation about everything, especially on how the community could be made better for the game. Maybe we could do something together. I got a very time consuming job, so I don't have all that much time either - and yes I know about law studies, I started a part-time law degree myself a while ago, but I barely have time to invest into it even though it really interests me.





Regards,

Sir Rogers

Sir rodgers exellent points. I am doing the ladder on my own and on my spare time so nothing out yet. Regarding your project, if you still feel like it perhaps we could work together on something?



Regarding civ ladder for me civ2 was unbalanced and not working in mp. Too easy to be strong too fast. I agree gamespy was horrible. We still survived it. (I played some civ3 ladder but never was active to a large degree. civ4 on the other hand. I think i spent half a year of my life in just PLAY time. ) Hope you like the beyond the swords expansion attleast for civ4 For me civ5 is terrible compared with civ4. I guess this is individual. Just let me be clear I totaly respect peoples oppinion and that we are different. For me i have most nostalgic memories of playing civ1 on the amiga with my friend and sharing a settler each in same nation a long time before there was multiplayer code (Civnet).



And about the more than one winner yes this is exactly the point. It is very simple for fight for all games. The one that is rank nr 1 gets a victory from each of the other players. the one thats nr 2 from all thats under him etc.

In teamers everyone on a team gets the win vs everyone on the other team. meaning score or expansion matters nothing..only that your team win..so it will heavily reward players for playing together.



In civ we had no replays but we did have many guides. It is not a requirement to make people better but it sure is a great tool. So i dont agree a community MUST have replays, but if the have it sure helps the learning curve of many players. In the end that makes games more fun and balanced. In teamers in civ we where a tight knit group of some 200 players who played activly and we knew each other and based on ranking we made draft for teamers. So the one who was lower ranked capterin gain 2 picks first vs the highest rank captein. This made us balance the game extremly much and made a lot of fun games. We also made sure to help newbies and usually picked one on each time and the team as a whole was responsible to guide them and help them with good strategic moves.



We also had something extremly fun that was the clan cup championship. This was a week long contests with lots of different playstyle and you scored points for your clan. We had broadcast and interviews etc and even live video feed so this was very exiting and very prestigious to be part of and win. I am considering if I have time to host some tournaments for endless space in the future also. But since I am doing a Law studies this is draining much of my time but I hope to also make time for this.



And just to be clear, I have no deal with the developers to make a ladder. I would just do this on my spare time.

Eysteinh wrote:
So yes to answer your question I belive a ladder for endless space would solve many problems, I know because I have experienced the same in civilzation and it is a totaly different world to play mp civ with our without ladder.

I reduced your quote to not fill up the whole page. Well let's just say that I have been playing the series since the Civ 2 mac version. Now as you know that is a very very long time, let's just say I am glad that gamespy eventually got better ... eventually, civ3 was horrible in that aspect. That being said I don't like the way development has been going recently, I feel like I've just been squeezed for my money with no real content to vouch for. Sure the religion part is a nice idea, but it's totally superficial as it is right now.



Okay enough about civ, I never got involved with the ladder, though I have seen it on a few occasions. I think I wanted to try it once, but got confused by just what I had to do to get a game going and then just dropped it :-)



Well I totally believe in the ladder stuff, I created a gaming platform that purely revolves around it. www.rankedgaming.com - take a look if you want, if you play DotA you might have heard about it. But basically it's an IRC-like chat (something people are familiar with) combined with all of the original battle.net commands, and you can play almost any Warcraft III map, it's primarily for DotA though. My emphasis was on making a really great platform for gamers, I'd like to eventually create my own games, and then I would use it as a basis for the MP. I'm all about MP, and from what I found in my gaming experience most MP platforms right out suck. I know developers are short on money and time, that's why I began the project, hoping I could use it as a middle-ware solution for game developers. But I'm a coder and have zero bizdev skills, so we'll see where that road will take me.



- Related to your last post, I was thinking on a similar line of what it would be like to have multiple "winners" inside the game. For example just because someone snatches a science victory doesn't mean the other people performed badly. Your ELO rating adjustements could be done based on your ingame performance. That being said I have always advocated against using ingame data for skill analysis, this however usually related to real-time strategy games, not turn-based games. In a turn-based game, the possibly important factors are small enough in numbers to make up an algorithm that could work - without too much effort and tweaking.



Well let me know how your discussion with the developers go, this could really improve the community and the user retention for the game. The other thing is it needs replays, if you want to add in a ladder, there have to be replays or there's simply no point. You cannot have a game with a ladder when there's no system to teach people how to get better.





Regards,

Sir Rogers

Sir-Rogers wrote:
How do you want to do that? With no access to ingame data?



- Also the problem here is with reviving MP, as stated before in the topic, it's a vicious cycle. Just like with hype, the same mechanisms apply that can make a game grow virally and make it a huge success, the same way once it's in a downward spirale. People sort of lose confidence, and hope, and when they do check in and find themselves being disappointed, it will be a much longer time before they check again, until at some point they just don't come back to check.



I'll take myself as an example, I've told quite a few people to buy the game, because I absolutely love the game design, but I also find myself checking more rarely every time. I am waiting for an MP fix, but if they promise a fix, release it and there is either:



1) No games going

2) Still desync issues



then I would lose absolute faith and probably not bother to check again. And that would be a real shame. Okay I'll shut up now, waiting for an answer from Eysteinh





Regards,

Sir Rogers

Same way civ ladder do this for civilization. (www.civplayers.com) I was/am still part of that community but I dont have as much time to play as when i played and where number one in future teamers in civ4. (if I mention my name Willburn in that game or that i have a great spy named after me called Eysteinthewise some people from civ4 might recognize me, I am sure many civ players can vouche for how much more fun and better multiplayer games are with a ladder system) I am talking with the creators about making a script for endless space and trying to build up a community for that game also.



You can acess in game data by uploading a savegame, but much better is a system where you simply accept victories if 75% of the players wouch for it in a ladder script after the game. (for example loosers have to report the loss and verify it) With disputes you use screenshots as proof of the game happening.



The beauty of such a system is that everyone wants to finish a game because they will have reported a loss if they quit. Especially teamers where your whole team will have a loss if there is a quite give a lot of pressure to play properly or you will soon be out of the league.



I think that is the only way to make fun fair games, and it certanly worked for civ4 for some 4 years. We had a great community even when the mp code was slightly broken (had to reload games sometimes but not very often.)



I think biggest problem for endless space mp is two fold a) broken netcode and b) not fun because people quit.



for example the "ctons" we play (no tech trading or diplomacy) everyone can win. if you finish 2nd place you still get a win vs 3.rd place etc. So you have an incentive to play and feel you are trying to reach a goal the whole game. Not like endless space where if your not in the lead you are against the one in the lead.



So yes to answer your question I belive a ladder for endless space would solve many problems, I know because I have experienced the same in civilzation and it is a totaly different world to play mp civ with our without ladder.

When the Beta was only available to the VIP's here is what we did to get games going:



Announce them in advance on these very forums here.



Like: "I'm going to open a game tomorrow at 16 cet. It will be started at 16:30 cet."



And while that requires some planning and patience, it really worked wonders for getting games going.

IMO they should have just made the patch official and hotfixed it if necessary, it just splits the already small MP community.

I guess I could have been more specific. In steam click the community tab and search endless space multiplayer

Is it just me, is it a bug or has everyone already deserted ES?

stasik28 wrote:
Why not just make a steam page for everyone who has Endless space, and make posts or "events" so they show up as messages for everyone see.

There is already a steam community for ES. *Hopefully* it will become more active as time goes on. If you ever want to do MP, you should join the group! And help make it active so more people will join

Eysteinh wrote:
I am there sometimes. I hope to revive the multiplayer community in the future but it is still far off. I am writing a ladder in ph/mysql that will be used to make games fair and to give incentive not to quit in the middle of the game (Will be caunted as a loss in the ladder.) I hope to get it done by the summer 2013. (big project so I want to make it right.)

How do you want to do that? With no access to ingame data?



- Also the problem here is with reviving MP, as stated before in the topic, it's a vicious cycle. Just like with hype, the same mechanisms apply that can make a game grow virally and make it a huge success, the same way once it's in a downward spirale. People sort of lose confidence, and hope, and when they do check in and find themselves being disappointed, it will be a much longer time before they check again, until at some point they just don't come back to check.



I'll take myself as an example, I've told quite a few people to buy the game, because I absolutely love the game design, but I also find myself checking more rarely every time. I am waiting for an MP fix, but if they promise a fix, release it and there is either:



1) No games going

2) Still desync issues



then I would lose absolute faith and probably not bother to check again. And that would be a real shame. Okay I'll shut up now, waiting for an answer from Eysteinh





Regards,

Sir Rogers

Why not just make a steam page for everyone who has Endless space, and make posts or "events" so they show up as messages for everyone see.

Alright folks, the solution is obvious...make a stickied list of people on Steam interested in playing Beta MP so we can friend each other on steam and install the beta patch then play together. :P



So anyone who wants to play Beta MP, just add me on steam. Same username as here.

People who are intrested download the Beta Patch and recognize that there are no games...so they have to deinstall the beta patch to find at least some MP Games....its a vicious circle.

Just happened to me and i was actually really exited to test cause iam a MP only Player but i need my 6/6 Games iam not such a fan of smaller Games.

I never see any games.

I am there sometimes. I hope to revive the multiplayer community in the future but it is still far off. I am writing a ladder in ph/mysql that will be used to make games fair and to give incentive not to quit in the middle of the game (Will be caunted as a loss in the ladder.) I hope to get it done by the summer 2013. (big project so I want to make it right.)