MP before SP

[vee4473]

Anyone planning to jump right into MP before playing the game in SP?

I'm a SP dude.

Just wondering how many think they know MOO well enough to say "screw getting familiar with the new game, let's get it on"

I still maintain that SP is the heart of TBS games, at least at this point in time.

This post is brought up by the story about the German LAN party being scheduled.

[leiavoia]

from what i'm hearing from the beta testers, playing MP with no previous experience is not only a serious mistake, but may be almost impossible. MOO3 has a very steep learning curve.

[MrBaggins]

MP is a bandaid for the fact that SP AI's generally suck... no one in their right mind would choose an MP game over a SP game for a TBS, if the AI were as skilled and adaptive as a human opponent, cos they could play when ever, how ever long, choose *how* skilled their opponent was and their opponent would never b1tch about losing... oh... and you could have any number of these opponents.

[Sarxis]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
MP is a bandaid for the fact that SP AI's generally suck... no one in their right mind would choose an MP game over a SP game for a TBS, if the AI were as skilled and adaptive as a human opponent, cos they could play when ever, how ever long, choose *how* skilled their opponent was and their opponent would never b1tch about losing... oh... and you could have any number of these opponents.

Well, this may apply to you, but not to everyone. Some people DO actually prefer to play against human players, because there is a thrill in it that doesn't come from playing a computer.

[MrBaggins]

That assumes that humans you face will always be more skillful than an AI.

An adaptive AI combining the best strategies of human play, could ultimately play better than a ever human could, since a human doesn't have the same ability for internal statistical analysis that a computer does (given appropriate data.) A human cannot perform several million calculations a second. Also no human intrinsicly 'knows' all the other strategies and game histories that an adaptive AI might use, gleaned from a large subset of humans, playing a large sample of games.

MrBaggins

[Alexander's Horse]

Comps never play as well as humans. I prefer MP.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Comps never play as well as humans. I prefer MP.

They haven't. Yet.

[Alexander's Horse]

Long yet.

[MrBaggins]

Who can say? Very difficult to know when it will... but its more a when than if; the improving financial modelling AI models will ultimately be leveraged for game intelligence.

[MrBaggins]

and computer games (and AI) haven't been around long in terms of human history... so its really quite a short yet.

[Alexander's Horse]

sp is just masturbation.

[MrBaggins]

and MP is mutual masturbation (generally with other males)

so whats your point?

[Arnelos]

Train up on SP first.... duh?

[Alexander's Horse]

All the challenge is in playing humans. Bliss.

[viciouscycle]

Back in the bad old days before computer games, or at least before anything other than arcade-style games, all you had for strategy games were board games. Board games were and still are great fun. The bigest problem with board games is that you have to have a buddy or three to play the game with. The second bigest problem is once you get started in some grand strategy, you invariably run out of time and have to set the game aside for a bit and you risk knocking the whole thing over and losing your place.

Computer gaming changed all that and gave you a computer opponent that you could play anytime you wanted. You no longer had to wait for your buddies to all find time to get together... you could play any old time you wanted to and it was good. You could also save the game at various points and come back to it later without the big mess.

It didn't take long however to realize that most of the AI programs in these games actually sucked and you could find ways to beat the machine consistantly. Modern computer games haven't progressed very much either and the AIs have still sucked for the most part. This combined with the wider availability of the internet has made MP so much more appealing to most gamers. Right now humans make better oppenents than computers when it comes to these types of games.

I am hopefull that more developers will put more effort into making better AIs. I like MP well enough but it still takes some effort to get a good game going and to find people you really want to play with.