Mike Breitkreutz, now you're here, can you please say something about MP ?

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by UberKruX
yes. i understand the pile of work dan has. and i understand that mark isn't allowed to release info. i just want a or a . i dont need any more than that.

Krux, it is crystal-clear that MP is *not* in. Do you honestly think developers would say "no comment" or "we haven't decided yet" at this point in time when they in fact had working MP code?
They also did confess they are now just playing and 'smoothing' things out. I don't think the major decision about MP is in the 'smoothing out' category.

It's high time the feeble hopes are abandoned. It will not be there, despite the fact that civ2 eventually got it a few years ago.

The only bright side to this is that the designers may have made the decision to exclude MP from a gameplay perspective: perhaps they wanted to really improve the online experience of civ2. Perhaps this goal is worth another wait and another handful of cash.
It might also be that Infogrames just didn't want to bother to set up some Civ3 servers, though.

[Inverse Icarus]

Grim: there's still hope.

i understand that if there no MP yet then there won't be. and i understand it's very odd that no one commented on it yet, but Firaxis' employees could be on a GAG-ORDER about several topics.

could Firaxis have a multiplayer system to revolutionize the industry?

erm... maybe.

[TCO]

Originally posted by UberKruX


could Firaxis have a multiplayer system to revolutionize the industry?

erm... maybe.

If so, they should charge a lot for it! (Maybe by splitting the product.) Revolutionary insights are worth cash. Especially when combined with super-popular content like civ2.

[tniem]

Wiglaf-

it's perfect

Thanks.

Personally I am extremely confused as to how they manage to post here. It's something rarely done with any degree of consistancy as far as game companies are concerned, so maybe I'm reacting with a 'confrontational' approach is because this is a relatively new thing going on.

Most gaming companies don't post on any boards or if they do it is on ones that they control themselves. They normally do not go to fan boards and post on them. They doing so is a great contribution to the community in my opinion. At this time in developement I don't think they need to say much on the boards. In fact simply putting things up on their website would be fine with me. But I would like the issue of MP dealt with.

starmouse-

The biggest problem with multiplayer?

Cheaters.

Yes I agree this can be a problem. But it normally can be solved with patches. That is not the reason that MP is not ready. It appears the reason is because they did not start on it until August. So then any code they have done is not tested or ready. That is the problem with MP in this game.

Dan-


AH-
I thought Dan was talking about your emails.

tuckson-

I've asked a question twice and did not even get an automated response back. Only absolute silence...

Yeah that is really really bad. There should have been an automated answer saying something to this effect,

"We thank you for your time for submitting a question to Civ3's Ask the Team feature. We appreciate your interest in the game and we are going to deliver you the best Civ experience ever. As you surely know, we get tons of questions every day asking many of the same questions that you probably have. We will try to answer your and other questions on a future edition of the Ask the Team feature but due to the amount of emails we get we cannot promise anything. Again thank you for your submission and your interest in the game. - The Civ Team."

Dan, I will let you use this free of charge if you don't have time to write your own


TechWins-

Firaxis is NOT ready to release info on MP at this time. Even if Dan didn't have any work and could go on a long, extended vacation he wouldn't be able to release info on MP. We all tried our hardest to retrieve the answer on MP but we had no luck. Now it is time to just let Firaxis take their time (they are going to do so either way) on releasing MP info and have MP release talks die down for now.

But doesn't this scare you to death. We are a month and a week from release. To not have any idea on what is going ot happen with MP is scaring me to death. What else is Firaxis and Infogrames unsure on? Come on do the right thing and delay the game.


Aco-

I have read almost all responses to this thread now, and it keeps amazing me (no offense to anyone meant!) how much time we all have to occupy ourselves with these forums

Well I have been reading this thread for a week and so the reading has been limited. I use the forums between classes with the television on primarily so for me it something to do when I am not studying or hanging out with my friends.

So when they need more time to get it 'right', I can only applaud them for making the decision to hold it off the initial release. No one wants buggy software, and by using the extra time (and revenues that are brought in by the initial soft will provide) they can do it 'perfectly'. This never is a fun compromise, but often unavoidable. I'm sure no-one at Firaxis is happy that things turned out like this, but I have faith in them that they will fix this at a later stage.

I have no problem with giving them more time. In fact I am a advocate of this. However I fail to see how giving more time for only MP will help the entire game. I think by postponning the game until it is finished in its entirity will help with reviews and sales. As well it will help give Firaxis more time to perfect the entire game. Both MP and SP will benefit from a delay in release time. I think this is common sense and wish that they would do it in this fashion.


tuckson-

What the heck is "hotseat"? And now I'm dealing with this stuff anyway, what's PBEM?
I've occasionally played games across the Internet, and played civ also across a lan. But hotseat and PBEM....?

PBEM = play by email. In this fashion of MP, you play your turn then you email it to me so that I can play my turn. We continue to do this until all players have played their turns and then go on to the next turn where we again send it to each other.

Hotseat is done much the same way except that everyone uses one computer. So we sit down at the same turn and one player plays their turn. Then the next plays his turn until everyone that is playing has played their turn at the same computer. Then the next turn starts.


UberKruX-
That is all I want as well. Just a simple answer. I don't think they know which scares me more than not including MP. But in the end I wish I could be treated with enough fairness to be told one way or the other.

[johndmuller]

I spent too much time reading this thread not to put in my own 2 cents.

-Imagine the entire thread quoted here, in keeping with the apparent style requirements-

Assuming there is no MP in the initial release, I see only one potential bummer for an MP fan:
--That they may never publish an MP version.

Surely we would need some time playing (and debugging) the SP version before being ready to seriously take on MP. So if they release an MP patch at some later time, as they did with SMAC, it will not be a really big deal. Hopefully, they will be using the intervening time to good effect perfecting the MP and fixing bugs.

If, on the other hand, they sell the MP version as an independent package as was done with Civ(1)/Civ-Net, it may lead to bruised feelings of being ripped-off, but I suspect that anyone of us dedicated enough to be reading and posting here will have gotten very much more than twice our money's worth out of the combined package by the time all is said and done.

Thus, I would only worry about the possibility of there never being an MP release, as the others are not really that bad.


One thing I wonder about though is why there is this separation between SP & MP in the first place, given that there has been MP in the previous Civ/SMAC familly members and especially if they promised integrated MP many months ago. Are they spending the extra few weeks figuring out how to remove the MP features from this monolithic integration? Note to Sid: You are not being taken for Bill Gates; Sun and AOL will not bring anti-trust cases against you for bundling MP with the game.

Surely they had some version of MP going right from the beginning with whatever code they started from, the SMAC code, most likely, so unless this is all a marketing song and dance, they must have radically redesigned the MP and are not yet satisfied with the way it works. That is good if they came up with some improvements, which will be welcomed, but bad if they come to discover that they can't afford to finish it off and just drop it altogether.

The other thing I wonder is whether PBEM/Hotseat, whose code needs to be only slightly removed from that of SP, is being held economic hostage to simultaneous MP, which introduces a whole lot of different design and technical issues and could easily be responsible for delays and dissatisfaction. From a programming standpoint, I am sure that the simultaneous MP is vastly cooler, but probably even more vastly expensive than the SP option in development costs. Said hostage/linkage might suggest itself for marketing reasons in that just one half of the MP community may not be sufficient to justify development costs.

The rub here is that PBEM TBS enthusiasts may be asked to finance the simultaneous MP version which would verge closely on (and no doubt be marketed as if it were indistinguishable from) an RTS format, which the PBEM crowd would not necessarily be interested in in the first place. The furthest rub would be that having forged this linkage, if it turns out that Firaxis abandons the effort to create the Perfect Integrated MP CIV III, the whole thing then gets dropped, leaving the essentially development cost free PBEM option out in the cold.

[TCO]

Originally posted by johndmuller
I spent too much time reading this thread not to put in my own 2 cents.

-Imagine the entire thread quoted here, in keeping with the apparent style requirements-

Assuming there is no MP in the initial release, I see only one potential bummer for an MP fan:
--That they may never publish an MP version.

Very good insight.

One thing I wonder about though is why there is this separation between SP & MP in the first place, given that there has been MP in the previous Civ/SMAC familly members and especially if they promised integrated MP many months ago. Are they spending the extra few weeks figuring out how to remove the MP features from this monolithic integration? Note to Sid: You are not being taken for Bill Gates; Sun and AOL will not bring anti-trust cases against you for bundling MP with the game.

They have figured out they can make more money by "unbundling".

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by TechWins

----
Dan, I understand most of your position on the "ask the civ team". I just don't see why you can't answer maybe 8-10 questions at a time, instead of 4.

Plus, one question that you need to answer. When will you release info on whether or not MP will be included?
----

Tell you what, I'll do my best to get a couple more questions answered on the next edition..


Dan

emphasis on the unanswered... Plus, one question that you need to answer. When will you release info on whether or not MP will be included?

you can direct us to ATCT, you can say you still don't know, but at this point it's becoming a lot more clear that money is the primary reason for an early, MP-less release. I can only hope you guys at Firaxis come up with a solid statement for potential buyers as to exactly what a preordered civ3 would contain. And we still need an answer as to why there's an LE at all

quite frankly, some of you are incredibly inpatient...
Come on, give them a break!

But yeah, I'm just a settler, so what do I know...

impatient....maybe, but that's the way it is when our questions are avoided like this. I love Sid and his crew, but all this PR has no understanding for the consumer to back it. "We'll answer your question when appropriate" isn't good enough - I'm also pretty sure the only thing holding them back from a delay to put in MP is (our) money money money, and that's too bad. If you're on our level, and think and post like us, you'd be more concerned about releasing one solid game as opposed to two or three for the sake of the holidays. that inconsistancy leads me to question all of firaxis' posts and in some cases argue with them.

[TechWins]

Thanks oh noble techwins for your effords !

Oh you are very much so welcome. I'm just glad to see (I better see) that Dan is going to peform those tasks.

I'm still very optimistic about MP. Why, well I finally found that quote from Jeff that I've mentioned a few times before recently.

"Timed turns and simultaneous moves will be a part of multiplayer, but in reality it doesn't significantly reduce play time (at best ~15%). Often MP games take longer anyways because of having to coordinate multiple play sessions with multiple people, not to mention disconnects and restarts. For the average customer winning a solo civ3 game by space race, on default settings, can't really happen in one sitting. MP is the same way. We've got a pretty different approach to simul-move, and features like alliance simultaneous moves will reduce game time even more. The SMAC favorite of dynamically increasing turn timers will be present as well.

While these areas of MP aren't being ignored, most new stuff will be in turn based. Civ3 is a turn based game at it's heart, and we believe it can be a great internet game without ignoring or sidestepping that fact.

Jeff"

I guess not many people remember that thread, huh?

The only possibilities I can think of for why MP might not be included. Either Mister Pleasant is lying, Mister Pleasant was sent a false e-mail (whether that be false name from sender or false info on the e-mail), Firaxis decided that they could make a lot more money selling MP seperately, or Firaxis just ran out of time and/or money to finish MP.

This should really start some discussion.

[isaac brock]

I'll tell you the truth (in other words, my opinion). Mister Pleasant is a soulless agitator who would like nothing better then to destroy firaxis and everything it stands for. Send him a mail bomb to show him how you feel about it.

[Roland Ehnström]

Wiglaf:
"If you're on our level, and think and post like us"

Way to treat a newbe, eh?

Then the fact that I am not a newbe at all (I registered to this forum in 1999 - I just try to keep quiet and read your posts of divine excellence instead of making a fool out of myself as others do - and have been playing Civ since 1991) makes it all just more funny... For me, it feels that some of you are just very immature - even if you are a "Prince"...

Or is it just that I happen to use my real name and not some weird nick, that makes you think that I am not at your "level"? Or the fact that I don't have a cool avantar next to my name?

And believe me: I AM concerned about Civ3 being released as a "solid game", but lashing at the Firaxis people because they can't tell you anything about MP at this time isn't going to make it more of a "solid game", is it? You'll just have to wait and see!

Also, I am pretty sure that the deadline is set up by Infogrames, and not by Firaxis themselves. If Firaxis got to choose, I bet they'd wait to give a release date until they know that they indeed have a "solid game" ready. Inforgrames may be more interested in getting a release before x-mas however, which is why they have given Firaxis this deadline. So if you need to yell at someone, I guess you should yell at Infogrames. Of course, the Infogrames people don't read this forum, so perhaps you shouldn't yell at all after all...

Enough of

Peace!
-- Roland

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by UberKruX
Grim: there's still hope.

i understand that if there no MP yet then there won't be. and i understand it's very odd that no one commented on it yet, but Firaxis' employees could be on a GAG-ORDER about several topics.

could Firaxis have a multiplayer system to revolutionize the industry?

erm... maybe.

Haha, you sure are an optimist, UberKruX...yet I *did* note that you removed the reference to October 17 from your signature!

[Stromprophet]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy


Krux, it is crystal-clear that MP is *not* in. Do you honestly think developers would say "no comment" or "we haven't decided yet" at this point in time when they in fact had working MP code?
They also did confess they are now just playing and 'smoothing' things out. I don't think the major decision about MP is in the 'smoothing out' category.

It's high time the feeble hopes are abandoned. It will not be there, despite the fact that civ2 eventually got it a few years ago.

The only bright side to this is that the designers may have made the decision to exclude MP from a gameplay perspective: perhaps they wanted to really improve the online experience of civ2. Perhaps this goal is worth another wait and another handful of cash.
It might also be that Infogrames just didn't want to bother to set up some Civ3 servers, though.

Geez. I don't doubt they have the code done. Damn, they practically had a working format of the game months ago. It was actually finished a while back, then the polishing mode began.

But I have no doubt they have the code for MP. They of course have the old code from Civ II gold, and SMAC. SMAC would likely be a closer match.

But what they have said is that they are working on some new exciting concepts for turn-based multiplayer and trying to make it smoothe and a great gaming experience online. So to me that sounds like they have code for it done. They just want to tweak around with it. While there may be major tweaking to be done, I don't doubt they have the central code.

[Alexander's Horse]

Speak!

Originally posted by tniem

AH-
I thought Dan was talking about your emails.

They never answered my "Is Sid Meir Gay? What does the team think?" question for a start

[Swissy]

Civ3 will be released without MP. I searched the Infogrames site and looked at their other PC games. Any with MP have Internet access/Local Network listed under system requirements. I never recall seeing that as a Civ3 system requirement, NEVER.

So this basically means that Infogrames never really intended to release Civ3 with MP. Perhaps all that talk about MP from Firaxis was an attempt to get Infogrames to change their mind. Maybe they are saying MP will be available in the spring, as they figure it will take six months for Infogrames to figure out they screwed up and must correct their mistake of having no MP for Civ3. (They will actually find out sooner when every review calls lack of MP the only major flaw in the game).

All that is left unanswered is, will they charge us for it or not?

[Stromprophet]

Originally posted by Swissy
Civ3 will be released without MP. I searched the Infogrames site and looked at their other PC games. Any with MP have Internet access/Local Network listed under system requirements. I never recall seeing that as a Civ3 system requirement, NEVER.

So this basically means that Infogrames never really intended to release Civ3 with MP. Perhaps all that talk about MP from Firaxis was an attempt to get Infogrames to change their mind. Maybe they are saying MP will be available in the spring, as they figure it will take six months for Infogrames to figure out they screwed up and must correct their mistake of having no MP for Civ3. (They will actually find out sooner when every review calls lack of MP the only major flaw in the game).

All that is left unanswered is, will they charge us for it or not?

I don't care. ALl of the oldschool people should buy the game. And even new people are continually interested.

My thing is I would just like the HOTSEAT feature to tide me over. And I mean, comeon, it would not be the hard to add even right now.

Why is the swap file necessary for the game again? Curious. I don't think they will charge us this time. However, I suspect a 50% chance it will be released with a quality expansion(not the game gold edition) that would be worth 20 or 30 bucks.