Will multiplayer be integrated this time?

[CivCube]

Civ 5 was a step backward from Soren Johnson's multiplayer-first design. Do you think MP will be integrated this time around?

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The announcement and all the articles make a point to say that MP will be designed towards shorter games. So my guess is that, yes, the MP will be better integrated on release.

 

[Talcove]

As much as I would like better multiplayer games, Civ is and has always been a primarily single-player game. Options for shorter multiplayer matches would be nice, but not if it detracts from the single-player experience. Part of the fun, for me, is spending hundreds of turns building up my empire and slowly plotting against my foes.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Ed Beach is much more like Soren Johnson was, so I have hope that MP was not a last minute addition. And good MP and good SP are not mutuality exclusive, both can easily exist in a well made game.

CS

 

[UltimateB]

To be honest i really hope multiplayer modding is a thing this time. I play civ pretty much only with a friend of mine, and the multiplayer experience was decent, but the lack of mods made it go stale at some point. The other point the the lack of interaction with the AI opponents in multiplayer. It was quite the letdown.

I really really hope they get this right this time, and tend to the multiplayer in a good way.

 

[Gucumatz]

I am going to post this here as well, since I think multiplayer is one of the most forgotten parts of civilization. Once a thriving community [the multi community], it is nothing but a shadow of what it once was.

Posted on what I want in Civ 6

A multiplayer that isn't utterly ignored. Civ 4 multiplayer once was an incredibly well organized portion of the game and groups like civ4players used to keep massive detailed leaderboards. Civ 5 multi had so many bugs, lack of focus by developers, etc. even though it should have been a great game for multiplayer. Outside of small dedicated groups like Civilization No Quitters that kept a competitive multiplayer scene going, Civ 5 multiplayer largely died due to a lack of attention/unaddressed issues.

I don't have any aspirations that Civ 6's multiplayer will reach the heights of Civ 4's multiplayer (back when it was a massive scene and with proper nurturing could have grown into an actual competitive scene with civ 5, which it didn't due to a lack of focus) - but at the least I hope there isn't an absolute neglect. I hope the devs listen to the players, particularly people who stuck around and kept civ 5 multiplayer going despite all of its issues.

Steam link of the no quitters chat: http://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791435127848 [It has around 6,600 members who at one point at least dabbled in competitive civ. Nowadays there may only be around 30-50 people trying to play "competitive civ 5"]

 

[SemperFi2382]

Really hoping for Hotseat at release, as that's a make or break purchase point for me. Until it was added, I didn't buy Civ 5 when it first came out from lack of Hotseat, and it will be no different this time around.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I am going to post this here as well, since I think multiplayer is one of the most forgotten parts of civilization. Once a thriving community [the multi community], it is nothing but a shadow of what it once was.

Posted on what I want in Civ 6

I certainly agree and for my part I will create a Civ6players in the hopes that we can recreate what we had for Civ3players and Civ4players. But Firaxis has to do their part and create a stable and well balanced MP experience first. Competitive MP requires a base of a larger stable casual MP community. And as we seen with Civ5 it doesn't matter how good the gameplay is, if the MP code is crappy and no one can finish an MP game, MP dies in general, let alone Competitive MP...

I do hope these new faster game modes work good, though in my experience players don't mind a game in the range of 3-4 hours.

CS

 

[Gucumatz]

Yea at the very minimum (and thats the bare minimum hope I have) I agree with you Canuck, stability should be the first thing they prioritize with multiplayer. Good luck with rebooting the site once the new game comes out Canuck!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Civ 5 was a step backward from Soren Johnson's multiplayer-first design. Do you think MP will be integrated this time around?

Soren claimed the AI should not act like players, but rather at set pieces in the game. That is a divergence from any "multiplayer first" design with integrated multiplayer...and it showed in Civ IV (it was IMO his most noticeable mistake in IV).

I echo the case that MP needs to work at all first and foremost, and be stable.

 

[AriochIV]

Do you think MP will be integrated this time around?

I hope not. The surest way to ruin a single-player game is to integrate multiplayer features (see: Endless series).

 

[ddd123]

To be honest i really hope multiplayer modding is a thing this time. I play civ pretty much only with a friend of mine, and the multiplayer experience was decent, but the lack of mods made it go stale at some point. The other point the the lack of interaction with the AI opponents in multiplayer. It was quite the letdown.

I really really hope they get this right this time, and tend to the multiplayer in a good way.

I really hope they dont, ill give my right hand for them to NOT implement mod, civ has already so many options, scenarios, stuff to choose from and mp never ever working in 20 years

Lets make a working MP without the steam servers maybe for ONCE and then focus on adding content...

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I really hope they dont, ill give my right hand for them to NOT implement mod, civ has already so many options, scenarios, stuff to choose from and mp never ever working in 20 years

Lets make a working MP without the steam servers maybe for ONCE and then focus on adding content...

I'm pretty sure we are stuck with steam, but I agree that MP just needs to work well. But after that I do hope MP mods will work well, be secure, but be simple to use. There are still a small but strong Civ3 MP community, why? Because Civ3 scenarios made the game replayable and therefore interesting years after it's peak. Civ5 not only had crappy MP code but had limited mod support, so it got stale even if it had been working.....

CS

 

[ddd123]

Man i played LOTS of indie games without any funding released on steam that still managed to put out their own servers, afaik there are a lot of internet solution these days, amazon, google and many others offer super cheap servers.

TBH im not even sure its a limitation of steam servers and not the lazyness of who uses them, but lets assume steam servers offer just that much... well if a HUGE company like 2k cant setup a better solution while indie teams made of 3 guys can well its really shameful.

 

[Hail]

Lets make a working MP without the snippy steam servers maybe for ONCE and then focus on adding content...

how do you envision this working?
who will host the game?

more so, is civ5's MP p2p or not?

anyway, someone must host the game. who will it be?
how those behind NATs will able to connect?

Civ 5 was a step backward from Soren Johnson's multiplayer-first design. Do you think MP will be integrated this time around?

I do not think that MP will get the attention it requires to properly function.

Soren claimed the AI should not act like players, but rather at set pieces in the game. That is a divergence from any "multiplayer first" design with integrated multiplayer...and it showed in Civ IV (it was IMO his most noticeable mistake in IV).

I echo the case that MP needs to work at all first and foremost, and be stable.

the idea behind MP-first design is to have a working build asap and regularly play it to catch balance issues and unfun features. such approach will actually help design an AI too.

his most noticable mistake?
by that logic, the cutthoart player-like civ5's AI must have been on the right path.

the AI's shortcomings is a minor problem compared to inflation, slavery & chopping MM.

 

[bite]

look I found Civ 5's multiplayer serviceable if not a bit rough around the edges, I would say that given it is one of the things they listed in the first release was multiplayer then there will have been a bit of a focus on it

 

[Jon Shafer]

It's not really a design or architectural challenge - it merely comes down to what programmers are assigned to the project, when. And networking programmers are notoriously hard to find (and retain) in the game business (same with tools and mod support).

- Jon

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Man i played LOTS of indie games without any funding released on steam that still managed to put out their own servers, afaik there are a lot of internet solution these days, amazon, google and many others offer super cheap servers.

TBH im not even sure its a limitation of steam servers and not the lazyness of who uses them, but lets assume steam servers offer just that much... well if a HUGE company like 2k cant setup a better solution while indie teams made of 3 guys can well its really shameful.

Civ has never used servers, its always been a P2P game. And I doubt that will change with Civ6. Steam or Gamespy for that matter are just systems to connect players together, the real make it or break it is in the games MP code. Being P2P means data transfers became the large bottleneck in performance, so you have to be ensure that only data that needs to be transferred every turn is, and that it is done securely with data integrity checks. The likely problem with Civ5 is that the very basic code was added to make it work with Steam P2P protocols and that is all. No thought on the game side as to what should be transferred or not and when you simply transmit everything that happens well, you get all sorts of issues like in Civ5, and in P2P networks, data send increases exponentially with every player added.....

CS

 

[TheMeInTeam]

the idea behind MP-first design is to have a working build asap and regularly play it to catch balance issues and unfun features. such approach will actually help design an AI too.

his most noticable mistake?
by that logic, the cutthoart player-like civ5's AI must have been on the right path.

Civ V AI was closer on the right path than IV's. The AI is, according to the game's rules, treated as another player with identical win conditions. They're given some cheats/bonuses so the player has to try in order to win, but that's their design role. That is different from say a megaman boss or a random enemy soldier in Call of Duty. Those have AIs too, but they are not representing the same thing as the player...they're not set as a competitor with identical in-game goals.

If you want a "MP first" game, this is an important step, because the design for the rest of the game influences it and vice versa. Sure, you can toss in solid network code and let people connect, but to have MP actually play well from a strategy standpoint requires some design integration (imbalanced starts, generic tech path, wildly variant civ quality, mechanics that take a lot of time to use all have different standards and potential extra pitfalls).

As for "most noticeable mistake", I meant from a design perspective. Despite that Civ IV's UI is better than V's (measured by #inputs to accomplish something/information presented + #inputs to access), it was the most noticeable due to bugs. But from design it was that some AIs just routinely threw the game, immortal AIs expanding to 3 cities or becoming peaceful vassals without going for culture and giving their overlord technologies etc.

how do you envision this working?
who will host the game?

When Civ IV was released on steam, they dropped support for direct IP connection in-game. This received tremendous negative feedback so they made a "beta" version where you can use it.

To date, Civ IV connecting via direct IP has been the most consistently useful connection method I've used for mainline civ titles, though it's only really useful for playing with people you know (so you can communicate it + password).

Regardless, as CanuckSoldier says it's more a question of not constantly sending superfluous information over the connection; this is not a genre with a big connection burden, nor is it one that is especially damaged by poor latency.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I agree on top of simply having good MP baseline code, we do need support for all modes of MP. Including Direct IP, PBEM, and a good and well engineered Pitboss system, something that was well enjoyed by Civ4 players.

CS