Thanks to FIRAXIS: The Diaries Are Great!

[Hugo Rune]

Yeah, they're nice... I just wish they would be a bit more specific! I mean, they are just re-asking our questions rather than answering them, and leaving us hunting for scraps of subtle suggestions.

[Narck]

http://www.an.i-dentity.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/003764.html

[MarkG]

yes, yin, you're right yin about aok. i tried the demo, 3 hours passed like 1 minute! it was great, I was amazed byt the whole presentation, the tutorial, etc. 5 minutes later I realized that all I was doing to win was sending hordes of units agains other hordes of units, eventually winning. this wasnt strategy, it was a speed race

[MikeH]

Try playing against a human!

I understand Yin's attitude towards Firaxis I think and this thread is entirely consistent with it. Oh and Yin, Bossman wasn't entirely serious with his post.

At the moment however these diaries don't give me a feel for what the game's going to be about. I've said it before but I just don't get the concept at the moment. I can see how it might be like a cross between DinoCraft and something like Sim Earth (more one way or the other depending on the way it goess) but I don't really see how it's going to be fun. Not yet. I wait for more information with interest.

[yin26]

Thanks Mike. Apologies to Bossman, then. I've heard that kind of thing about me so many times that I guess I didn't see the joke.

And Markos:

That's my point. AoK is great in multiplayer. Sure, a lot of people still play the "mob rules" style, but they aren't considered good players. If you haven't already, play some multiplayer! I'd be happy to play against you and show you some neat strategies.
[This message has been edited by yin26 (edited January 17, 2000).]

[MarkG]

would I be extreme if I said that(perhaps a bit depending from the players) ANY game is great in multiplayer??

[Vanguard]

Any game? How about SMAC?

[yin26]

Markos,

Vanguard is right. A TBS game, even a good one, just doesn't translate well to mulitplayer. Have you ever tried a PBEM game of SMAC? Heck, even the LAN games run to 5, 6, 7 + hours. Most of the people who talk about MP SMAC say, "Well, we played for 6 hours and had fun, but we never finished the game."

Hmmm. I would think actually finishing a game is pretty important.

Now people point to chess as a TBS game with "good" MP. I suppose so, but the mechanics of the game are infinitely easy compared to SMAC, for example. So a person can actually finish a MP game of chess in a reasonable amount of time.

On the flip side, even a lot of RTS games suck in multiplayer because they weren't geared towards it. AoK is GREAT in MP because they had that in mind from day one. Not only that, the SP campaigns and the comp play (for a while) are quite excellent. Of course, the Zone has problems, but that's not the fault of ES. Anyway, IP games are VERY easy to start.

So even in Dinos is a great SP game, if it has limited or no MP, it will fade away much sooner than it has to. Even Sid has recently said that MP is exciting!
[This message has been edited by yin26 (edited January 17, 2000).]

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well, I think these are the questions Firaxis is asking themselves as well. I don't believe that they know what kind of game they will turn out with. They are simply experimenting and letting us in the fun. After all, we want CivIII first, then lets talk about Dinos .

[NoviceCEO]

Oh yes.

AoK is great multiplayer. If Mark think it's just hordes versus horders I can say Civ is just hordes versus hordes too.

Anyway, Starcraft is much better than AoK in multiplayer. It runs much better, gets better latency, Battle.net kicks The zone in the head and SC has much more varieties than AoK, thanks to its great scenario editor.

But enough of this. Why don't we get back to the topic:the diaries.

Not only because it help us learn something about the game neither because they give us a view back the scenes, but because they make me feel sure they're considering the options, that means I feel safer they're taking the best decisions.

In the diaries, Sid's shown he's got a good vision of what the should be, and what are the differences between his possible choices. That makes things easier for him to take the correct decisions.

novice

[MarkG]

I havent played AOk in multiplayer and I'm not discussing multiplayer. It seems to me that the human factor can cover many things that could be missing in a strategy game.
It's in single player where the game shows if it it(the game itself, not the enjoyment of competing with another human) can keep you in front of the computer for hours

And civ, with just the single player, has kept us in front of our computers for years

Back to the topic of Dino, Sid has been making games that you can come back to after a long time. I tried a demo of a pirates-like game called Cutthroats(or something like that). After 30 minutes I was looking for my old disks of Pirates!
(unfortunately it didnt work well with win98 and I gave it up )
I hope dino's will be such a game...
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited January 19, 2000).]

[Glak.]

yin26:

"A TBS game, even a good one, just doesn't translate well to mulitplayer"

Well I hope that isn't a universal thing, I'm trying to make a multiplayer only TBS (with a high level of detail) and I'm hoping it will work out. I'm also hoping blizzard won't sue me when I make my game work unofficially on battle.net (hee hee)

"Have you ever tried a PBEM game of SMAC? Heck, even the LAN games run to 5, 6, 7 + hours."

I tried a PBEM with three friends. We averaged at least ten turns a week for months. We also have maybe four hotseat sessions (of the PBEM game) that lasted around 8 hours each. So that is like six months of PBEM with 30 hours of hotseat play, all on a single game. We go nowhere.

"Of course, the Zone has problems, but that's not the fault of ES."

yeah it must be horrible to be stuck with that thing. The trouble is they can't leave MS because MS owns the AoE property.

Imran Siddiqui:

"Well, I think these are the questions Firaxis is asking themselves as well. I don't believe that they know what kind of game they will turn out with."

Has Sid ever been the main guy behind a sequel to any of his games? Brian took over the Civ series and some other people are doing that Antitem game and I don't know anything about those other games. What I am trying to say is Sid doesn't seem to like to do the same thing twice. I don't think this game is going to be like any traditional TBS or RTS at all. After dinos he'll probably design some turn based first person shooter.

MarkG:

"It's in single player where the game shows if it it(the game itself, not the enjoyment of competing with another human) can keep you in front of the computer for hours"

for you, and probably a few million other people. Not everyone is that way though. Sure I can play single player for maybe up to a hundred hours if the game has a great storyline but without that, then maybe ten. To play a thousand hours or more I need multiplayer and there are millions of others that need multiplayer too. I want to be able to log onto a two year old game and see that 50,000+ people are always online no matter what the hour, and then go to some of the old rooms and get a game with people I used to know, or perhaps I could drop by www.battlereports.com and read well written stories often illustrated with screenshots of key parts of the game. I think you are depriving yourself of enjoyment by ignoring multiplayer gaming. It isn't competitive either, the atmosphere is often quite friendly and receptive to new folks.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Glak. on 01-19-2000 09:39 PMI want to be able to log onto a two year old game and see that 50,000+ people are always online no matter what the hour, and then go to some of the old rooms and get a game with people I used to know, or perhaps I could drop by www.battlereports.com and read well written stories often illustrated with screenshots of key parts of the game.

you're talking about things that either exist in the "single player"(and of course the "multiplayer") forums as well as the various sections of our site and other sites. you're talking about an oline community. this has nothing to do with the game being single player or multiplayer

[Adm.Naismith]

Glak, writing:

To play a thousand hours or more I need multiplayer and there are millions of hours that need multiplayer too. I want to be able to log onto a two year old game and see that 50,000+ people are always online no matter what the hour, and then go to some of the old rooms and get a game with people I used to know

you are dreaming of a world of millions players who have
1) no connection (or low and fix) cost or a lot of money to throw away - neither common here in Europe
2) way too much spare time to put out of real life.

Play with other human is fine, but IMHO it's better don't forget how often game developers push multiplayer as a shortcut to achieve cheap (by players themselves) brain instead of expensive and difficult to program good AI single player opponent.

------------------
Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Glak.]

MarkG

"you're talking about things that either exist in the "single player"(and of course the "multiplayer") forums as well as the various sections of our site and other sites. you're talking about an oline community. this has nothing to do with the game being single player or multiplayer "

well sort of, but I don't think it is the same. Discussing strategy at say, shock's forum is different than discussing strategy here, because you play with and against the people you talk to. Yeah there is an online community for single player games but I think the experience is more so multiplayer.

Adm.Naismith

"you are dreaming of a world"

no actually I was describing quite clearly how battle.net is, such a place exists. SC has been out for two years now and its peak in popularity was this fall. Only lately has the bnet population starting dropping to 40K users, of course it is much higher during peak hours. I have seen 80K personally and I assume it has been much higher. The week after the mac release (plus all the PC players were playing) a record of something like 2.2 million games were played in 24 hours.

Oh actually I just saw an update, I was way off, here is a quote from blizz: "Total games over Battle.net reached 11,379,766 -- the first time more than 10 million Blizzard games have been played in the same day. The record for concurrent users was also broken with a peak of 106,608 users online at the same time"

"1) no connection (or low and fix) cost or a lot of money to throw away - neither common here in Europe"

yes you are correct, very few European players play and most of them that do play from dorms or internet cafes. However in America and Canada and probably some other countries access is cheap.

In Korea Starcraft is shockingly popular. It has almost taken over the culture. Its popularity has caused 10,000 PC game rooms (each with a large number of computers) to spring up, primarily dedicated to SC. These places run 24 hours a day and cost like a dollar an hour to use. Well this is kind of off topic but I think it is really strange. There are legal battles over using SC characters in commercials for soap and stuff, really strange. There are dozens of professional gamers that wander around Seoul and make their living from SC tournaments, some parents (according to the Korean Herald) have brought their children to game rooms asking the opperators to make them professional gamers. An american, 2 canadians and a swede have moved to korea to live the tournament life. Well I kind of thought that was strange that Korean SC players outnumber americans by 9.5 to 1 last time blizzard mentioned it.

"2) way too much spare time to put out of real life."

Everyone at every moment is doing exactly whatever he thinks is the best possible use of his time. Some people like video games more than others.

"Play with other human is fine, but IMHO it's better don't forget how often game developers push multiplayer as a shortcut to achieve cheap (by players themselves) brain instead of expensive and difficult to program good AI single player opponent."

I think I'd still take the human experience over fighting the AI. Well actually on bnet since most players are worse than the updated AI they like to play two or three humans players allied against the AI. So you get to play against the AI and cooperate with other humans.

[This message has been edited by Glak. (edited January 20, 2000).]