Why Bother With AI's

[Flatlander Fox]

Originally posted by DrSpike


This is flat wrong. For the vast majority of games the SP market is much bigger than the MP market....sure many games come with MP, but ultimately most games are designed with the SP market in mind. Civ 3 is a good example.

There are games where MP is as important as SP......things like AOM, or Warcraft 3, various FPS, but most games just don't have the MP interest to make the developers pay that much attention to MP.

So why then does EVERYGAME that comes out have MP support?

Or website devoted to MP play?

Even the monstrous EU was marketed quite a bit with the idea that MP was a big part of the deal. I think that SP is important, but by no means dwarfs what the MP fans of the game get either.

I guess we are looking at it from two different ends of the spectrum. Sure, having good SP play is vital to having a good MP game. But I think alot of resources go into MP support, which is sometimes damning for the game itself at the end of the day.

[DrSpike]

Most games have MP, as I said. It is expected. That doesn't change the fact that the amount of people that will play MP is often not yet sufficient for companies to think that much about MP when designing a game. Sometimes they may not conflict, and all is well, but other times they undeniably do.

My statement was that SP is the main market....this is overwhelmingly true, with the few notable exceptions I mentioned. For instance I play Medieval Total War a bit......this game is relatively popular MP, but still only has players registering in the 100s worldwide, compared with many thousands playing SP worldwide. Do you think the unit stats were more suitable for SP or MP? And did the first patch focus on SP or MP bugs? I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

As more people get broadband things will undoubtedly change.....but the SP market still dominates designer's thinking for the moment.

[War4ever]

DEPENDING ON THE GAME, I WOULD SAY ITS A GENRE BASED THING, IE STARCRAFT IS BETTER ONLINE, CIV2 IS BETTER FOR SP MODE...THOUGH I PREFER MP...

FPS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE..WAY BETTER IN MP....

I THINK SP MODE MAY HAVE BEEN THE RAGE AT ONE TIME, BUT I THINK INTERACTING WITH HUMANS IS THE THE PRESENT AND FUTURE, MANY GAMES ARE LEANING TOWARDS THIS..

THE PROBLEM IS THE GAMING CO'S WANT TO CASH IN TWICE

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by War4ever
DEPENDING ON THE GAME, I WOULD SAY ITS A GENRE BASED THING, IE STARCRAFT IS BETTER ONLINE, CIV2 IS BETTER FOR SP MODE...THOUGH I PREFER MP...

FPS LIKE COUNTERSTRIKE..WAY BETTER IN MP....

I THINK SP MODE MAY HAVE BEEN THE RAGE AT ONE TIME, BUT I THINK INTERACTING WITH HUMANS IS THE THE PRESENT AND FUTURE, MANY GAMES ARE LEANING TOWARDS THIS..

THE PROBLEM IS THE GAMING CO'S WANT TO CASH IN TWICE

Well, they're not forcing you to buy it now are they?

[rah]

For civ, if you read the threads in the CIVIII forums, you'd have seen that the majority of players could have given a rat's ass about MP. We were definately in the minority. Bastards

[DrSpike]

Quite, Rah

And it shows with all games outside of a few genres, such as FPS and some RTS.

But never fear, our time will come.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by rah
For civ, if you read the threads in the CIVIII forums, you'd have seen that the majority of players could have given a rat's ass about MP. We were definately in the minority. Bastards

Yup, despite the problems in MP the majority don't seem to give a hoot.

Democracy just doesn't work

[DrSpike]

Democracy works fine in theory. We just need to make everyone agree with me on all issues.

[War4ever]

civ wasnt' really built for mp, and the games that sell the most these days, and a likely trend to continue are the fps and rts genre.....

MP is here to stay, but it should come stock and barrel with any game that plans to be played in MP forml.

charging twice just so i can play online isn't fair, and they wonder why i pirate haha.....

not that pirating is fair for anyone...lets not open that can of worms

[DrSpike]

Aye aye, cap'n.

[War4ever]

you forgot to make the parrot sound afterward forget again and its the plank for you

[DrSpike]

Shut it, or tis a lick o' the cat for ya.

[War4ever]

HEHE.... THAT CHRISTMAS SMILEY LOOKS GOOD WITH THE CAP.... ...

HEY CAPTVK...HOW IS FREE CIV COMING, I PLAYED WITH 32 CIVS AND RAN INTO FOUR SETTLERS IN THREE TURNS HAVE THINGS IMPROVED SINCE THEN?

[CapTVK]

War,

Inching it's way towards 1.14 as we speak. I was expecting january but.... IT MIGHT EVEN BE IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!!! (LOOK I'M SHOUTING NOW, JUST LIKE WAR DOES BUT THAT'S BECAUSE HE FORGOT THE CAPS LOCK KEY)

As for playing with 32 civs and running into four settlers, what did you expect? On normal map settings with the standard gen map things tend to be very tight (with 32 civs moving about that is). That's because civs will start out on the main landmasses and not islands. No wonder you bump into them. Try increasing the map size, the landmass and experiment with the map gen for better results. Or try playing with a lower number of civs

[CapTVK]

And because we're dealing with MP afficiados here's a nice feature in 1.14 that hasn't gotten much attention yet: the new TEAM function.

A team is a group of players that start out allied, with shared vision and embassies, and fight together to achieve team victory with averaged individual scores. Team are controlled via the new server command "team". Teams can't change after the game has started.

Yes, in theory you can also do this with AI civs.