Suggestions to make multiplayer better at Gamespy

[SPQR300]

After having played a few days on Gamespy I have a few ideas on making the multiplayer part MUCH better, and I report some multiplayer bugs too. I hope I won't be severely punished that I am posting it here too
So:
1. In team games we actually see if the enemy team is pinging somewhere. It's good if your ping can be seen by everyone in other games, but if you are permanent allied with someone, then your pings should only be seen by him.

2. The game list in the lobby is jumping around, it's such an amateur mistake by Gamespy. Fix it plz! There should be a refresh button, and the gamelist shouldn't be refreshing all the time. If it's not fixed soon, it will be a bigger issue later, because when there are more games the list will move even faster, and it will be practically impossible to join a certain game.

3. In the lobby there should be a function to join a ceratin game by typing the game name.

3. There are problems if someone is joing a game in progress. WHY? Optimize the code, because these problems and waiting times are not necessary. I think joining is buggy: someone joined a game, he was in the game, could chat and manage his units, but the game still told that he was joining, and we couldnt play. When he quit and joined again the same problem occured. So we had to tell him to leave and we could continue playing.

4. In the game list in the lobby there should be MUCH more information about games. There should be columns like: how long ago the game started, the size of the map, the game speed(epic, normal, quick), the game turn time(none, snail, slow, medium, fast, blazing) and the year the game is in(1780AD for example)

5. When joining a game in progress and choosing an avaible civilization you should see the actual game scores, so you can choose the best civ avaible.

6. Passwording your CIV is useful if you leave the game for a few minutes, then later rejoin, and you don't want others to occupy it. So concerning this, I think passwording your civilization when you start the game is just not useful. You don't know if you will quit the game later, or you will want to rejoin. And if you password your civ, and you don't plan rejoining later, your CIV will be managed by the AI from then on. I think you should only be able to password you civ, when you are retiring from a game.

7. This feature is the most important: There should be an option to give the control over your civ temporary to the AI. You don't quit the game, the AI plays for you for a few minutes. It's very useful if you have something to do while playing, but only for a few minutes. After you are ready to play again you just take the control back from the AI. Because the game turns are often very fast, this would be an EXTREMELY useful feature.

If you have ideas/opinions about my suggestions plz post them . I really hope the last one will be implemented... I think the developers didn't think that multiplayer can be this good, and thought that it will be only some hardly useable, not really important element of the game, so they didn't work much on gameplay lobby. But eventually multiplayer became soo good, that it's the core compononet of the game now.

[SPQR300]

I would greatly appreciate some answers like: yes I like the ideas, or no, I don't like them...

[Evil_vamp]

My suggestion:

Fix it so that the rest of us can play online.

[Tboy]

Good points, especially number 2 (drives me crazy!) but I think that point 7 is already in the game in the form of PITBOSS.

[SPQR300]

Originally Posted by Tboy

Good points, especially number 2 (drives me crazy!) but I think that point 7 is already in the game in the form of PITBOSS.

Pitboss? How can I access it? I haven't seen it yet. Maybe I overlooked it

[SPQR300]

I just checked, there is no function like what I suggested in #7.

[Herandar IV]

I thought PitBoss was not set up yet but will be activated in the "near future"

[SPQR300]

What exactly this PITBOSS feature will be? I haven't heard about it yet.

[SPQR300]

Could anyone explain this Pitboss thing? I have never heard of it before. Is it some utility made by fans?

[Dragonlor]

1. No
2. Yes
3. Yes
3. Yes (two #3s?)
4. YES!
5. Sure, why not.
6. Not sure.
7. Sure, why not.

[HeroFromHyrule]

The biggest thing I want, is the ability to lock/unlock the game while playing. I have only played one game online, and near the end the game literally took forever because people would continuously attempt to join. You should be able to password lock the game when it is already in progress, and then take the password lock off if you so desire. Nothing is more annoying than having the last few turns of a game take hours when there isn't much movement going on (and the game I played was in simultaneous turn mode anyways). This is the big thing I want to see.

Your suggestions are pretty good. I can see number one being a problem, so I agree with you that only allies should be able to see it.

[OverloadUT]

Some good suggestions, but one think is bothering me:

None of this stuff is Gamespy's fault. Firaxis devloped the game and Firaxis introduced those bugs. Gamespy simply provides an API and a server for developers to use so they don't have to run their own. So these bugs are for Firaxis to fix and not Gamespy. Now, if the server list were constantly unavailable because the master server were down, that would be Gamespy's problem.

Note please that I am neither trying to praise Gamespy nor bash Firaxis. I just happen to know how game development works and I want to make sure you're complaining to the correct party.

[Herandar IV]

Originally Posted by SPQR300

Could anyone explain this Pitboss thing? I have never heard of it before. Is it some utility made by fans?

My understanding is that PitBoss will be a server that will handle PBEM style games. Instead of having to email a game to the next person, PitBoss will save the game until everyone else takes their turn. In theory, it will be much faster than a PBEM game, because each person does not have to go in turn.

[dob]

All fine suggestions. Also, it would be very nice to be able to tell the difference between non-started games and games in progress.

[rchddap]

Great suggestions...what's the chance they'll happen...

[Paalikles]

Originally Posted by OverloadUT

Some good suggestions, but one think is bothering me:

None of this stuff is Gamespy's fault. Firaxis devloped the game and Firaxis introduced those bugs. Gamespy simply provides an API and a server for developers to use so they don't have to run their own. So these bugs are for Firaxis to fix and not Gamespy. Now, if the server list were constantly unavailable because the master server were down, that would be Gamespy's problem.

Note please that I am neither trying to praise Gamespy nor bash Firaxis. I just happen to know how game development works and I want to make sure you're complaining to the correct party.

Gamespy provides the technology for the lobby, no?
Technology includes how the lobby works, not just the servers used to run it...

And it does not matter who is responsible - the thread title is "suggestions to make multiplayer better at Gamespy refers to the fact that multiplayer is being run through gamespy's service.

In some ways, the lobby works better than the civ3 lobby, but in most instances it does not.

just my 2cents

[SPQR300]

I played again after the new patch, so I have a bunch of suggestions again:

Try to fix the bug, which makes the players wait minutes for joining a new player, or the bug when someone is trying to join the game, but never succeeds. It slows the game down to some 10minutes/turn, which makes it unplayable. I just cannot finish my games!!
So the suggestions:

1. Make us able to finish multiplayer games in singleplayer vs AI.


2. The Load Game option is the multiplayer is bugged. If you load a saved multiplayer game, the turn timer won't work, thus you cannot play. MAKE US ABLE TO RECREATE MULTIPLAYER GAMES FROM SAVEDGAMES, WITH MANAGABLE CIVS(PASSWORDS)!! The benefits:

a) You can add passwords to any civs, so practically you close the civ, and prevent other people from joining it all the time, and quitting after 2minutes. b) You can remove the password from a civ, so a good and important civ can be played again by human players, and not the boring AI. It's so annoying that players password their CIVs, then leave, and you end up playing against AI
c) You could stop playing if you are tired, and could recreate the game later from a saved game, so you could always finish your game against human players, and you don't have to play 5+hours without stops.

Closing CIVs from joiners during the game would be very good too.

So if Firaxis does't make these gameplay enchancing features, could someone create a tool, which modifies the saved games? So they are playable in single, and open(unpassworded) civs are closeable(passworded) and vica-versa.