Having talked to many fellow online multiplayers, I thought it might be time to start a thread to request some new features for online multiplayer--things that would improve the game and it's fun factor. Some of these things would probably be easy to implement and some more difficult. I would hope we could at least have the easy-to-implement features:
1. Allow for games with more than 10 players. How hard would it be to modify the game so that up to 20 people could join a single game (with players understanding and assuming the risk of lag with larger numbers)? The list of players could scroll down to show who is in the game and on what teams and once 10 players are in, icon colors could be allowed to be used twice or new two-shade colors could be created. (Single players might also like this.)
2. Enable auto-downloading for custom maps or release bonus custom map packs. The move to have all Galaxy Forge-made maps go into a Galaxy Forge folder seems like a step in the right direction. Alternatively, please consider creating optional Impulse download-based custom map packs that would auto-install for people. (Single players might also like the idea of map packs.)
3. Improve Entrenchment so that Entrenchment players can at least see and preferably join regular Sins games flawlessly without having to reset their keybinds all the time.
4. Improve ICO so that it doesn't disconnect people as often.
5. Implement a feature that would allow dropped and/or miniduped players to rejoin their games.
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Now I know what you guys are thinking. "Who wants to spend 33% of the game's development costs on features that less than 1% of the player population would use. Why should we even care about online multiplayer for this game at all?" However, improving the online multiplayer game might encourage more people to come online and retain people online, and online multiplayers tend to be Internet saavy and outspoken about the games they like to play, advertising them to other gamers, increasing sales.
I would hope that allowing for games with more than 10 players wouldn't be too hard to implement and I have a difficult time believing that having quality custom map packs download and install via Impulse wouldn't be too hard to do. Those two features could also be used by single player gamers, too.
