Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,287
Multiplayer or Single Player?
- Thread starter Macadami
- Start date
By the way Balance is everything but balanced.
Akka
Moody old mage.
The only "dumb" thing I see here is the laughable pretention you have of determining what is the "true" or "correct" setting for MP. Who do you think you are ?
And for the record, I find it much more "dumb" to play some kind of Starcraft-rush in a game like Civ, than to play a REAL long game of Civ.
Moderator Action: please keep it civil
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Gamemaster77
PC > Mac
I love the ability to go to the chat servers and stuff through gamespy arcade. I'm not sure if you could do that in Civ4 but am hoping Steam does something similar.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
You mean aside from the spamming which we can no longer mute? ;O
But seriously, there should have been an auto kick for spamming and open access to multiple lobbies. Not that the lobby is a particularly important aspect of the game, but it is just another example of how the Civ IV online hosting is all about being barely good enough to function and not about going above and beyond to really convenience online players.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Oh I agree we need a moderated lobby and I"ve told Firaxis many times this, but I don't expect the Civ5 lobby to be moderated either. And unfortunately the mute issue was a lesser evil than having Linde imposter players via a hack prior to the 3.19 patch that caused the mute to break. But C4F is still able to mute anyone.
Not sure what you mean by multiple lobbies, Civ only uses one lobby for the game.
And anyway I was more interested the OP thoughts that chat was somehow technically broken or something like that.... or what ever "normal chat" is supposed to mean
CS
both the lobby and in game chat
in game chat wasnt really user friendly
lobby was flood spammed by politic, history and philosophy argues
also could use some static friend list and istant message , online status in game etc etc
but ofc with steam its np
in game chat wasnt really user friendly
lobby was flood spammed by politic, history and philosophy argues
also could use some static friend list and istant message , online status in game etc etc
but ofc with steam its np
Disgustipated
Deity
I never played a multiplayer game of civ4. I did play a game of civ3 multiplayer after PTW came out. It was fun and exhilarating, but it didn't feel like civ. Basically I developed my civ enough to get horsemen in production. So did my opponent. But I was able to produce more, so I won (he actually quit before I overran him). As I said it was exhilarating, but not very satisfying. It feels like you are playing a game, rather than trying to simulate/recreate history.
Drakarska
Epic Dadness
Actually, "we" are not looking forward to Steam. Although I understand the generalization though.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Well every games interface is different, that is UI design, but I didn't have any issues with hitting Tab to chat in game, mind you most dedicated MPers use Teamspeak to voice chat as it is quicker to talk about what is going on.
And like I've already said yes the lobby needs moderating but it is other wise quite functional and the kids in the lobby is a social issue not a code one. I'm not sure how other game lobbies handle this, but I imagine it is not something limited to civ.
And sure it could be easier to have more info in the buddy list etc, but as a general chat tool the lobby works for the basics.
CS
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Well we could discuss what we both think Civ is forever and have different ideas, but civ is a game and most would agree that while it has historical elements it was never designed as a history simulation. And having been a beta tester I can say for sure that gameplay always is more important than historical accuracy.
And that rush of the kill is exactly why MP players love to play MP, not that we don't like the entire game, we play all eras generally and you can't goto war if you ignored your infrastructure and economy. But we do design the settings to give us that game in 2-4 hours.
CS
Gamemaster77
PC > Mac
Just some basic things I think multiplayer should have.
- Mabye an ability to create sub-chat rooms. So that people wanting to play a specific mod or something could go in there.
- Chat should be quick, easy, and there needs to be a mute button.
- There should be an auto mute button that mutes people who the game things is "spamming" on everyone's computer unless you unmute them.
- Everyone should be able to host with minimal port forwarding and make a guide for how to do it for the people that need to.
Everything I can think of right now, feel free to add as I will definitly add more when I think of them
- Mabye an ability to create sub-chat rooms. So that people wanting to play a specific mod or something could go in there.
- Chat should be quick, easy, and there needs to be a mute button.
- There should be an auto mute button that mutes people who the game things is "spamming" on everyone's computer unless you unmute them.
- Everyone should be able to host with minimal port forwarding and make a guide for how to do it for the people that need to.
Everything I can think of right now, feel free to add as I will definitly add more when I think of them
Shiggs713
Immortal
I love both the multiplayer arena and single player games. You simply can't get the kind of intensity in a single player game that you can in multiplayer. I've been playing online and noticed I could hear my heart beating sometimes when monumental battles were about to occur. Its just very exciting.
On the other hand, it takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or 2 these days to get a decent game going. You have to deal with bad connections, gamespy, and trolls. That said, if you play long enough, you will eventually find a decent group of "buddy's" to game with that are not trolls and at a similar skill level to you, this is when it really gets fun. I love my random ffa's and mirrored map teamers and what not, but where I really fell in love was with the multiplayer earth map games. I'm sort of a history buff so the historical mods and maps were always more appealing, combined with a map full of human players, it is truly awesome when it goes well.
Still, I have probably spent 80% of my time on civ4, and civ3 on single player; probably by now thousands of hours played total. Sometimes I just don't have the time or patience to deal with other people. Multiplayer is really something you have to commit a couple hours to or its not even worth trying. Single player is much more comfortable for the casual gamer... thats one of the benefits of the turn based game, I can get up and go to the store in the middle of my turn, come back an hour later, and I'm right where I left it. Also single player is basically the sandbox of creating solid strategy. I love learning new methods to dominate in single player, then bust some peoples heads with it in a multiplayer game.. I've even had a couple MP games where literally everybody gave up within a 100 turns, because it was hopeless, I was 2-300 points ahead already. Of course I will admit, some of these were in random games, presumably with a bunch of newbs, but still, good fun.
edit:
and to the "rush of the kill part", yes that occurs quite often, though I have been involved in a few mp games that made it to the modern era with tanks, battleships and whatnot. Not ever a team game though, those barely make it to the renaissance.
On the other hand, it takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or 2 these days to get a decent game going. You have to deal with bad connections, gamespy, and trolls. That said, if you play long enough, you will eventually find a decent group of "buddy's" to game with that are not trolls and at a similar skill level to you, this is when it really gets fun. I love my random ffa's and mirrored map teamers and what not, but where I really fell in love was with the multiplayer earth map games. I'm sort of a history buff so the historical mods and maps were always more appealing, combined with a map full of human players, it is truly awesome when it goes well.
Still, I have probably spent 80% of my time on civ4, and civ3 on single player; probably by now thousands of hours played total. Sometimes I just don't have the time or patience to deal with other people. Multiplayer is really something you have to commit a couple hours to or its not even worth trying. Single player is much more comfortable for the casual gamer... thats one of the benefits of the turn based game, I can get up and go to the store in the middle of my turn, come back an hour later, and I'm right where I left it. Also single player is basically the sandbox of creating solid strategy. I love learning new methods to dominate in single player, then bust some peoples heads with it in a multiplayer game.. I've even had a couple MP games where literally everybody gave up within a 100 turns, because it was hopeless, I was 2-300 points ahead already. Of course I will admit, some of these were in random games, presumably with a bunch of newbs, but still, good fun.
edit:
and to the "rush of the kill part", yes that occurs quite often, though I have been involved in a few mp games that made it to the modern era with tanks, battleships and whatnot. Not ever a team game though, those barely make it to the renaissance.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Well I'm not sure that separate chat rooms is a good idea, the way mods worked in Civ4 with rebooting into a separate games list was very bad for mods in MP, anything that takes the visability of Modded games from all new players is a bad thing imho.
Mute worked in Civ4 the entire time except when the 3.19 patch came out, but that was a neccesary evil to stop the login imposter hack that one guy was using. I'm sure that Firaxis will have a mute function in Civ5 that works.
The only problem with auto muting is what triggers it? The only thing that can work is a limit on the ammount of post in a 5 sec period from the same person.
And I don't think there is any way to hand hold players on port/firewall issues. Everyones router is different and players just have learn to read thier manuals. Civ4 did make it easier by just needing one port to forward not a whole list like Civ3.
CS
Gamemaster77
PC > Mac
They should still all be on one screen, but the chatrooms would be separate from the games list. I assume Civ5 will have a lot of players early on and it will be hard to chat with a specific person without their message getting almost instantaneously bounced off the screen. For the auto-mute thats about what I was thinking. It wouldn't ban them as some people might actually be looking at everything. Mabye they would only be auto-muted for a limited time too. About the firewall/router stuff, they can't eliminate it completely, but they could make at as easy as possible with good coding. And most port-forwarding stuff is very similar from router to router so a basic guide would do.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Yes it might be a bit busy at first but that is really what private message windows and your buddy lists would be for as well.
And different fan sites will no doubt create steam group chat rooms, Civplayers and WPC has for sure already, and that will create "lobbies" with less spam as they will be moderated.
CS
And different fan sites will no doubt create steam group chat rooms, Civplayers and WPC has for sure already, and that will create "lobbies" with less spam as they will be moderated.
CS
