Multiplayer Quitting in VI

[Atlas627]

I highly doubt there's a reasonable way to make public "Full play-through"-multiplayer with random people work. There's no penalty you can invent that makes people sit through another hour of a game that is already lost anyway, have them click the end turn button as a force that has no real influence on anything anymore... except for maybe locking them out of multiplayer for days, which is ridiculous in itself.

I'd much rather have them make sure the new, shorter gamemode is fun for public multiplayer with randoms and leave full play-through-mode for organized groups.

I agree. The only way to make the Multiplayer people want to stick around if losing is to change the game mechanics (or time length of a game) so that losing isn't such a waste of time. They suggested they would make shorter game length multiplayer scenarios and mechanics, though I would just prefer if the game was retooled a bit so it required less snowball to work.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

It's approximatively 15% MP and 85% SP but the MP community is more ''dynamic''(team speak, NQ group with large field of players) there is more activity ''per player'' than SP(average of hours played is probably higher and streaming is much popular among MP games).

It's certainly not insignifiant and all good MP games should at least have a good mp support imho.

Oh I agree I think I would enjoy playing it in MP if it works well and all!

I agree. The only way to make the Multiplayer people want to stick around if losing is to change the game mechanics (or time length of a game) so that losing isn't such a waste of time. They suggested they would make shorter game length multiplayer scenarios and mechanics, though I would just prefer if the game was retooled a bit so it required less snowball to work.

How does it work now, AI takes over if a player leaves no? Doesn't that do okay?
Doesn't sound good to place penalties for leaving.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That's what I said as well. "by being ahead in some other category" is literally what you're describing.

1) I never said remove 100% of snowballing. I said create some catchup. Together, there is ebb and flow.

2) If winning early is worth victory points of some sort, then it has value without HAVING to translate into winning late. You're still thinking in terms of only checking who is winning at the end of the game. If you only check who is winning at the end, then yes you NEED snowballing or there is no reason to be winning at any other point. That is literally what I said.

Yes, it's matter of scale. What I'm saying is - optimal amount of snowballing for single-player could be way too much for multiplayer. So, targeting multiplayer here could hurt single-player experience.

I highly doubt there's a reasonable way to make public "Full play-through"-multiplayer with random people work. There's no penalty you can invent that makes people sit through another hour of a game that is already lost anyway, have them click the end turn button as a force that has no real influence on anything anymore... except for maybe locking them out of multiplayer for days, which is ridiculous in itself.

I'd much rather have them make sure the new, shorter gamemode is fun for public multiplayer with randoms and leave full play-through-mode for organized groups.

Yes, additional game modes look like the best solution for competitive MP.

 

[VainApocalypse]

The issue arises from Civ being a game about snowball. Because the only victory condition is a check to see who is winning at the end of the game, the only point of winning at any other time is if it helps you win at the end of the game. This means snowballing, which means that if you aren't close to winning you stand no chance of catching up.

Change the way victory is calculated to care about various moments in the game, and you can add in catchup mechanics without completely removing all incentive to be winning earlier in the game.

I already have a mod in mind to do this for Civ6 when it is released. If anyone wants to help brainstorm ideas, I have a thread over in the Mod subforum called "Stand the Test of Time". Come on over!

I have to say, that is an insightful solution. I can't wait to see what ideas you might have in mind.

But how would you implement it? Would you award one victory per era and then tally up whoever was dominant through the greatest number of eras?

Or maybe, instead of checking the end state of the game, you could score based on average performance normalized per era. Someone might lose their major cities in the industrial era, but if they were way ahead of the (science/culture/religion, etc.) curve up until that point, they might still win.

I'm really curious as to how this'd look.

 

[Suho1004]

I think the solution to this problem is an external one rather than an internal one. Civ 5 already has the No Quitters Steam group, which is a group of players who agree to play by a certain set of rules, one of the most important being that you cannot quit a game unless/until your capital is lost, or unless your fellow players vote you irrelevant to the outcome of the game. I've watched a number of NQ games on YouTube, and the system seems to work pretty well.

I'm just wondering why you would want to mess with mechanics that will not matter for a majority of players when there is already a framework in place for an effective social (rather than technical) solution. In fact, I'm pretty sure the NQ group will transition into Civ 6 once the game comes out.

 

[Metecury]

Play with friends or join the no quitters community on steam.

 

[dturtle1]

I haven't played much Civilisation Multiplayer, just a few random games in Civ5 before G&K expansion. None of them were from the beginning. Most were 2/8, 3/8 games where i jumped into someones abandoned empire. In some ways it was quite cool to take a broken down Civ and restore it to some kind of credibility. At no point did i ever consider winning. Hell, the guys that were winning weren't really bothered with winning, One game i jumped into was 6/8 and that was pretty cool, i think it lasted 2 whole Era's before it started to breakup(somebody got there butt kicked ) but it was the only game i played with any Player Vs Player competition. One of the games i played i did not see or interact with any other player outside of Chat. I asked if they wanted to go to war against an A.I Civ that was between us and he declined, preferring to just work on his Civ. It was surreal.

You want people to not quit. My experience in multiplayer is that "quitting" was the core part of the experience. You just bounced around multiplayer matches looking for interesting Civs to play, almost like browsing the internet. No one really cared about winning and none of the games i played had a player stay for the whole game.

Civilisation Lobby Multiplayer is a strange beast, I mean how many other games out there needs a 7hr commitment just to see who wins, at that is on quick(I absolutely abhor quick ). Asking people to sit through 7hrs straight and being penalised if you leave would make Multiplayer even more niche then what it already is. Civilisation from Ancient-Information is not really made for random competitive multiplayer. Lockouts might work for Dota, but those games last 90mins, not 7hrs. Asking people to sit through game for 7hrs, when they are losing or not enjoying themselves is just sadistic, good luck getting people to actually play. The solution to this not really developer side, outside of giving us shorter ways to play, such as scenarios, Era Games etc.

Your best bet is to join those communities such as no quitters community. Or maybe you want a community that encourages "quitting" where members take turns in guiding a Civ against the A.I (or Team-based-multiplayer). I'd enjoy that as a Random game of Civ. You pick a couple of Civ's you like and you go into a queue where you get 50 Turns on Epic or something where you share control of the Civ with other players, who can also watch as you play. I read a PC gaming Magazine article where the writers did this for Civ 5, sounded really cool and i think it would work for Casual Civ.

The only thing i have heard about Civ6 Multiplayer is that they are revamping it with a focus on shorter scenarios. I think it has to go bit that way in regards to competitive multiplayer. 7 hours is just too long. Think Dota, Battlefield, Counterstrike et all. They all last 30-90 mins tops. You can log in and get a result in smaller timeframe. By all means still have the full game experience with lobby, hotseat and pitboss etc, but give the competitive multiplayer's an option that doesn't demand a 6-7hr commitment.

I like to think Civilisation Multiplayer is similar to Test Cricket Vs One-day Vs 20/20 Cricket. Test Cricket might be the purist form of cricket, but not everybody has got 5 days to wait around for a draw Hell, even 1-Day cricket is too much of a time commitment. Hence the birth of 20/20 Cricket whose timeframe now is the same as most sports. You can have tense competitive battles or epic long saga's. I am not sure if you can have both at the same time and appeal to the majority of players.

 

[Xur]

I dont mind if people quit when the outcome of a battle is fairly obvious - I DO mind that the AI left behind is atrocious, meaning that the remaining player gets to take over the rest of the cities without much of a fight - or even ask for peace in exchange for 3 cities or something stupid like that.

I would like to have a system that could help the AI "recover" from a human disconnect - maybe the AI cities goes into a state of immunity and disable diplomacy for 20 turns.

 

[plasmacannon]

In Civ4BTS with the Realism Invictus mod, they made the World Wonders not so game breaking and created many national wonders and new buildings.
This takes the focus off building say The Great Lighthouse for +1 Trade Route in all coastal cities and +1 Commerce to Lighthouse, when one could construct a building in a city on a river called a River dock for +1 Trade Route.
It's not a total loss and one can still compete fairly well with others even if one misses out on the important World Wonder one wanted.
The point, is game balance.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

One solution that hasn't been mentioned yet is to make 'house rules' that slow down snowballing. It's kind of like the inverse of the No Quitters' rules: instead of making you linger in the game after you've lost your chance at victory, it aims to slow down the top players in their expansion by conquest.

I made a thread about this idea a month ago, but there wasn't much interest (or the word 'casual' drove people away from it ): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=572754

Granted that this option is not without its downsides. It can easily feel gamey, and if you're a top-level warmonger, you will likely feel artificially hamstrung to the 'noobs'' benefit. That's why I was searching for more roleplay-minded players, to whom the game is really not about winning in the first place, but rather the journey through history. If op is among these, s/he's welcome to contribute. (I haven't abandoned the idea, but there hasn't been any news about multiplayer, and I've been too busy irl to try and flesh out the system.)

 

[Nikae]

The game itself is not suitable to be played with random players, it takes too much time, too much of that time is passive and as Ryika said, there is no point in sitting in a losing game.

I would like to see not even a second wasted on that aspect. Especially not ruining single player mode for a public game. Leaderboards in multiplayer are a terrible idea because of win trading, griefing, just to mention two, it would require a huge infrastructure just to make it work and more or less fair.

Working public multiplayer games are mostly fast paced and/or cooperative. Short cooperative scenarios could work where players would have to beat each other or an AI, but ultimately I would say civ mp is extreme fun with friends or fix players, focusing on making public viable is a dead end.

Look at some other games and see how viable public multiplayer is, Diablo is a prime example. In order to work well, the whole system has got be built around multiplayer, such as card games or mobas.

Sent from my Zanussi ZRG16610 using CoolType.

 

[Xur]

I noticed that people sometimes quit when they see themselves falling behind in points too. Religion got a unreasonable huge amount of points in civ5, and could be misleading a lot of the time. I could have less points as someone with religion and be a sort of dark horse at 4th place in points - but actually be ahead in many other areas. Anyway, disable that score in MP.

 

[dturtle1]

Public D3 games are alright... what are trying to say
I have spent my fair share of running pubs through T6 to Level Cap them .
OT-
last time was with a Generator EP Monk... Some would whinge because they didn't see the progress bar moving, next thing half the bar is Gone as i just detonated 5-6 elite packs at the same time

D3 is pretty much the epitome of random casual multiplayer.

 

[DukeAlmighty]

Play with friends or join the no quitters community on steam.

This.
The group is called "Civilization No Quitters" .
All games are played on Quick speed, and mandatory balance mod and maps, which is cool.

I played some games with them, had no quitters, and everyone even joins back after crash etc.

The only problem I have with that group is that, everybody is like Deity+++ level.
I can easily beat Immortal on SP, and I have even beaten Deity few times.
But in that community I can't even get close to victory, so some kind of ranking system and anti quitters system, would be very much appreciated in CIV 6.. so I can play with people with my skill level.

 

[VainApocalypse]

I think the solution to this problem is an external one rather than an internal one. Civ 5 already has the No Quitters Steam group, which is a group of players who agree to play by a certain set of rules, one of the most important being that you cannot quit a game unless/until your capital is lost, or unless your fellow players vote you irrelevant to the outcome of the game. I've watched a number of NQ games on YouTube, and the system seems to work pretty well.

I'm just wondering why you would want to mess with mechanics that will not matter for a majority of players when there is already a framework in place for an effective social (rather than technical) solution. In fact, I'm pretty sure the NQ group will transition into Civ 6 once the game comes out.

Simple. NQ doesn't work. I've played maybe over a hundred multiplayer matches, most with NQ people. They quit, they quit often, and they quit in game breaking fashion.

 

[Nikae]

Also, at any rate, fixing human attitude is not the game developers' task.

Let people who are interested in it solve it.

Sent from my Zanussi ZRG16610 using CoolType.

 

[Ryika]

Also, at any rate, fixing human attitude is not the game developers' task.

Fixing? No. Making sure that others don't suffer needlessly under the attitude of others? Yes it is the developers task - if the devs want MP to be a serious alternative at least, and not just an afterthought.

Almost any game that offers proper multiplayer that is not 1v1 as a main feature will have rules against leaving, because it has an extremely negative impact on the experience of everybody if people leave once things don't quite work out the way they want them to work out.

The issue in Civ is that you just can't reasonably expect everybody in a random game to stay for hours, that's never going to happen, even with penalties - I just don't see that mode even having a remote chance of working out in random groups, even if the game was changed to have rubberbanding. People would still leave for all sorts of reasons. Because they realize they're outclassed, because they dislike their starting position, because the wonder they really wanted was snatched, etc. etc.

That mode will never be random-friendly.

The new, shorter mode(s) however should totally have a system that penalizes notorious leavers if it's meant to be a good multiplayer experience.

 

[Atlas627]

How does it work now, AI takes over if a player leaves no? Doesn't that do okay?
Doesn't sound good to place penalties for leaving.

Well the reason why people want to play Multiplayer is to play with other people, not AIs. So in terms of being a satisfactory experience, no it doesn't work.

Yes, it's matter of scale. What I'm saying is - optimal amount of snowballing for single-player could be way too much for multiplayer. So, targeting multiplayer here could hurt single-player experience.

I really don't see a difference. In multiplayer, every player must always have some sort of chance. Some sort of catchup mechanic, or lesser snowball. In singleplayer, the player must always have some sort of chance, or they'll just quit their own game. So all positions need to have a chance, or you'd never lose a game (because you'd always quit). That's a whole bunch of interactions and scenarios you miss out on!

I have to say, that is an insightful solution. I can't wait to see what ideas you might have in mind.

But how would you implement it? Would you award one victory per era and then tally up whoever was dominant through the greatest number of eras?

Or maybe, instead of checking the end state of the game, you could score based on average performance normalized per era. Someone might lose their major cities in the industrial era, but if they were way ahead of the (science/culture/religion, etc.) curve up until that point, they might still win.

I'm really curious as to how this'd look.

There's many ways to do it. What I have now is simply a scoring that gets triggered every so often, and at the end of the game you add up the points. Scoring cares about different things at different times of the game, so the player who is ahead in science all game isn't always better off than the player who is ahead in culture during the Renaissance or the player who is ahead in gold during the Industrial age.

I currently have the scoring triggers determined by player action to increase agency. So for example, the Renaissance ends when someone has discovered all other Civs, and that player gets a bunch of points. At that same time, each player who has produced Great People get points, get points for each Great Work, and players who control dominating religions get points.

I'm still brainstorming and am taking feedback over in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=573232

The OP has an example plan, if you're looking for one way this could work.

 

[rastak]

I highly doubt there's a reasonable way to make public "Full play-through"-multiplayer with random people work. There's no penalty you can invent that makes people sit through another hour of a game that is already lost anyway, have them click the end turn button as a force that has no real influence on anything anymore... except for maybe locking them out of multiplayer for days, which is ridiculous in itself.

I'd much rather have them make sure the new, shorter gamemode is fun for public multiplayer with randoms and leave full play-through-mode for organized groups.

Exactly. I'd NEVER play with random people. Ever.

Quick game mode for people that don't know anyone, full playthough with friends or relatives.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I would not expect the developers to provide a way to punish players for quitting. Im my experience in running leagues for Civ, the only way to discourage quitting is to get players to buy into the value of having a ranking number besides their name. Once they like being ranked they have to abide by the rules of the league and respect that if they break the rules they get suspended or kicked out etc.

This requires a lot of human intervention in running a league which is why very few game developers try to run built in leagues, they either are to complicated to deal with, or they make them so simple they become meaningless to the players..

But for anyone that wants to try Civ6 in a moderated league feel free to come to Civplayers and give it a try, I don't promise perfection, but I do promise that real civers will run the league with fairness.

http://www.myleague.com/civ6players/

CS