No Multiplayer

And the point of your post is?

I wonder how long a 9-man Gigantic multiplayer match would take.

"multipost"

*sniffs* Hey, who exhumed the dead horse?

I wonder how long a 9-man Gigantic multiplayer match would take.

Some of us don't care and would still like the option to at least try.

The sad fact of the matter is that this game is perfect, with the except that it is not multiplayer.

No, that's an opinion.
Let me show you what a fact looks like.

FACT: The game wouldn't have been "perfect" if Stardock would have spent a third of their resources on multiplayer.

Considering how well the game is selling, I dont think them not including MP is hurting them at all. Sure, they may have lost a few sales but thier dedicating all thier resources to a VERY strong SP game seems to have worked out for the best.

The game is getting near perfect reviews, its selling VERY well and we get a DARN strong AI to play against... so why do we need MP?

FACT: The game wouldn't have been "perfect" if Stardock would have spent a third of their resources on multiplayer.

Hit the nail on the head.

Just to clarify there are ways of measuring how many actually play LAN games. Polls, market research, etc (which like everything has a margin of error)

If there was a huge majority that played turn based strategy games over LAN or the internet then resources wouldve been devoted to this. However then we wouldnt be seeing posts like this, for two reasons. 1) Multiplayer would be an included feature, rendering this post obsolete. 2) Some that made posts like this wouldnt be playing the game in the first place because by adding multiplayer other features would have suffered, creating a different sub standard singleplayer and multiplayer (if there was one) experience.

Developers dont have infinite resources, just like the spending sliders in Gal Civ, you cant push them all to 100%. (the sliders in this case being resources spent on singleplayer and multiplayer).

No, that's an opinion. Let me show you what a fact looks like. FACT: The game wouldn't have been "perfect" if Stardock would have spent a third of their resources on multiplayer.

I always found that to be a bullshit argument on their part.
There is no way adding in a network compent to exchange a set of turns could consume a third of their man power.
Give any decent programer the source code and we could have a preliminary way to exchange orders done within a week and most of that time would be just figureing out how the game processes orders rather then programing.

I mean just think about it all you need to basiclly do to play multiplayer is you make your moves, save the game, and email to your friend. He makes his moves saves the game, emails it back. And so on.
Making turn based games mutliplayer is very simple.

Still my question stands, what is the point of the post?

there is no way to justify the statement that not many people would not play this game in a multiplayer mode

A case of one opening their mouth without knowing jack. But to enlighten YET AGAIN, it was stated that there is possiblity of a Multiplayer Expension depending if the preorders for the expension sell well. That will show you if there is an interest in "multiplayer mode." And if those preorders only sell at a rate of 10% compared to the retail,w ill that cause you to be satisfied as to why there was no multiplayer? I woudl think atleast 50% of the retail players woudl have to preorder multiplayer expension for it to be even taken seriously. Stardock is a tiny software developer. They didnt have resources to add multiplayer jsut so they could say their game has it. Nor did they have the people to work on it ad still meet the game release date. And the games they make don't support them wholeheartedly, probably most of their cash coems from the desktop software they develop.

I always found that to be a bullshit argument on their part. There is no way adding in a network compent to exchange a set of turns could consume a third of their man power. Give any decent programer the source code and we could have a preliminary way to exchange orders done within a week and most of that time would be just figureing out how the game processes orders rather then programing.

Perhaps not, but balacing everything so that you don't have people screaming OMG, WTF unbalanced, NERF IT!!!! would take a third, hell maybe a lot more. What you don't realize is that while things play well in the single player game, it will almost never go well in multiplayer. Take Moo3, assuming you don't totally hate it, and play it multiplayer online macroing, why do you think that all Ethereans were banned from playing multiplayer when the game came out? Because they were considered overpowered. It took the fan community several months and many mods to come up with a decent mod to allow people just to play Ethereans. Now, shift to GalCiv2, how many times have you seen people crying that the Yor are overpowered, and it's unfair? Now imagine what happens if they are being totally uberly owned by a real player instead of the AI... yeah, exactly. See, in a single player game it's perfectly okay to give other players advantages because in the end, what you want is a challenge. The game is fun when it's challenging. But with multiplayer a fundamental change occurs, that is, everyone wants to win and nothing else. They want to be better than the other guy, and that means even if things really are fair, they will go out of there way to claim that the guy who beat them silly had an unfair advantage. If you don't understand this, just try any MMORPG, and see how much work they have to do the balancing dance. Frankly, I'm sick of it, I'd much rather new contents and features.

People are stupid. If one race/ship design/tech is overpowered. Then build that tech.
It's a no brainier if both sides are using the same overpowered strategy then logically they cancel out. Sure it would be nice if mass drivers/lasers/missiles all had the same level of usefulness. But not being balanced doesn't mean you can't put out a multiplayer version.
Maybe there would be more people complaining about missiles vs. beam weapons but we can just call them stupid and move on
Besides with multiplayer there would be less people complaining about the AI being stupid


P.S.
MMORPGs are different, they have be balance because you obviously can't switch from priest to warrior at the drop of a hat if you discover that one is better then the other.

Alright, time for me to chime in on this. I see two types of multiplayer that could be possible with GalCiv2:

1. LAN-only multiplayer (aka old school multiplayer). Everyone would get their own race and have at it.
2. Internet multiplayer. Again, everyone gets their own race and off you go.

In my opinion, #1 would be pretty easy to implement. Since you're all on the same LAN, you likely know everyone and it would be easy to set-up a time, place, etc. #2 just doesn't fit GalCiv2. I just don't see the alure of hooking up a game between myself and people I don't know. Yes, multiplayer is great for some games. But with this one, it is an investment in time. To properly handle multiplayer, there would have to be time limits on how long you could take for your turn. Blech.

I can't imagine being forced (yes, forced) to sit down and play the game for 3 hours straight because I don't want to lose. No bathroom breaks (without everyone agreeing), basically just being forced to play the game. Besides, if I want to get schooled by some punk 14-year-old (sorry, I'm using stereo-types here), I'll go online with Age of Empires III.

I think that the typical multiplayer would just not work with this game and I'm cool with that. There may be some elegant want to handle multiplayer but I'm just not seeing them. I also don't see why anyone can honestly complain that the game is lacking because of multiplayer. I'll take a solid game over multiplayer any day.

Its ever so easy to say in retrospect "Oh all they have to do is such and such" when your not the one going to actually doing it.

There are so many other multiplayer games out there, the market is saturated with them, singleplayer games have taken a huge hit with the rise of broadband. Shifting deman and developer focus into this expanding market. Hate to say this but im sure that those that actually want multiplayer or something to play over LAN can find one of the 100's of games that have been released over the past few years that not only support it with a vengeance but are orientated and focused on it.

If you want a singleplayer experince but Gal Civ II, if you want a multiplayer experience buy a different game. Its been made abundantly clear that this is a singleplayer game from every possible angle. To reference another game, its like being outraged over The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion being a singleplayer game and not an MMO. Some types of games or particular games are best suited to being singleplayer.

This is why I say there should be two expansion packs

1) An expansion pack that gives all the expansion content

2) An expansion pack that gives all the expansion content+ adds multiplayer functionality, for $10 more.

See which one sells more...

Perhaps not, but balacing everything so that you don't have people screaming OMG, WTF unbalanced, NERF IT!!!! would take a third, hell maybe a lot more. What you don't realize is that while things play well in the single player game, it will almost never go well in multiplayer.

Another nail hit on the head. I remember how much of the conversation in the Warcraft forums was about balance issues, largely driven by multiplayer concerns. Most of that didn't mean squat to someone like me, who only played it as a singleplayer game. So it's not just as simple as adding a subroutine that sends data over the network.

A single player game can afford to have different balance issues (see the earlier thread on the Yor being "unbalanced"), which can make the game more interesting and challenging to play.

Maybe Stardock could do it in the expansion and therefore change A LOT of the gameplay elements. It would attract a lot of person to buy the game, would make it more than just a big update and it would be cool. So in an expansion you could have multiplayer. Right now though, it's impossible. And online play would have to be done by e-mail or via Stardock.net acounts (but the same way as e-mail play works) because otherwise it would be just too long.

Iam crossing my fingers that Stardock will add multiplayer with an expansion.

I enjoy GC2 the way it is, but would really love multiplayer too

This is why I say there should be two expansion packs 1) An expansion pack that gives all the expansion content 2) An expansion pack that gives all the expansion content+ adds multiplayer functionality, for $10 more. See which one sells more...

That won't work. Many people will just buy the one with more features.

I'd buy the multiplayer one because what if I do one day decide to play multiplayer? Would I want to rebuy the multiplayer expansion?

Just an interesting statistic for someone to consider:

If GalCiv II had shipped with any sort of LAN or Internet multiplayer, how much time would have been spent "fixing" exploits, cheats, cheese that only affects multiplayer players as opposed to doing things like tweaking the economy, enhancing the computer AI, putting in the fleet manager, creating new start up options, putting in the modding UI, etc.?

There's only so many people available to code.  Something else would have had to be dropped.

Meow?

its hammer time oh oh oh oh oh, here comes the hammer... lol ty frogboy

The way Gal Civ 2 plays to make it multiplayer doesn't require just slapping in some LAN functionality. It requires a major rewrite of the game. For instance the Drengin are really powerful, but generally isolated off by their neighbors and their late game economy crash. A Human playing them wouldn't ahve to be evil.. so Dipolmacy, a major aspect of the SP game, is gone in the multiplayer. Another instance would be the ship designer. If you turn it off for multiplayer, people will complain. If you leave it in, others will complain it takes some people too much time in the ship designer. It's a no win situation.

Now a simplified Gal Civ 2 - multiplayer edition that has a similar but changed rule set as a completly seperate game would make more sense then turning Gal Civ 2 into multiplayer by just adding that ability.

If there was multiplayer how would the following things be handled?

- Diplomacy techs. There would be almost entirely useless in multiplayer, aside from researching the ability to make alliances.

- What do you do about mid game scenarios where everything you need to do is queued up and you just need to click the turn button a few times? I can see that being annoying when you've got even a few turns to wait and the other players are spending 10+ minutes per turn.

- For that matter how do you handle the "downtime" when it's not your turn in any case? I mean it's bad enough to play RISK or Axis and Allies with a bunch of people, I can't imagine how long a game would drag out with the added complexity of GCII.

The only way I could see multiplayer working is if the game was moved more towards a real-time model, maybe with a set time for a turn, within which a ship can move it's set number of spaces, etc. Or, a real-time model where each day is a turn like the old Tradewars 2002 BBS game.

Alright, time for me to chime in on this. I see two types of multiplayer that could be possible with GalCiv2:

1. LAN-only multiplayer (aka old school multiplayer). Everyone would get their own race and have at it.
2. Internet multiplayer. Again, everyone gets their own race and off you go.

In my opinion, #1 would be pretty easy to implement. Since you're all on the same LAN, you likely know everyone and it would be easy to set-up a time, place, etc. #2 just doesn't fit GalCiv2.

I think LAN is for 99% percent of the MP fans enough. Take into account that there are LAN emulating tools like:
a) Kali http://www.kali.net/
Hamachi http://www.hamachi.cc/

I use these tools for several old games, especially moo2, which has only LAN.

No bathroom breaks (without everyone agreeing), basically just being forced to play the game.

You can do that in a TBS. At least those without prostate issues.

Besides, if I want to get schooled by some punk 14-year-old (sorry, I'm using stereo-types here), I'll go online with Age of Empires III.

14-year-olds may have some advantage in a RTS. But surely not in TBS. I played several TBS online. 14-year-olds get mastered there by the ole farts.

Just an interesting statistic for someone to consider:

If GalCiv II had shipped with any sort of LAN or Internet multiplayer, how much time would have been spent "fixing" exploits,

Just an interesting statistic for someone to consider:

If GalCiv II had any sort of LAN in their betas, how many exploits would have been fixed before GalCiv II was released,...

There are also positive external effects caused by MP but anyway: who really wants to discuss about decisions we can’t alter??? That’s useless, right? These justifications just mobilize the anti-MP fanboy dogpile. And this pisses off MP interested players. I think most of them accepted to pay an extra fee for an expansion. But where can they sign up? And a part of a forum where just those can post who signed up for this expansion would be nice.

It is a bit boring when a SP freak repeats 20 times that he dislikes MP. And when each MP thread is like this I doubt that there are many MP interested guys left here. The stardock marketing with respect to MP is a self-fulfilling prophecy.