BHG - Some suggestions on extremely neeeded game setup options

[Timeline]

Hey all,

I know you guys at BHG are probably very busy imporving mulitplayer and general gameplay, as well as engaging in your eternal fight against the evil hackers and cheaters . But I have played multiplayer for the last few days, and it seems a large part of the community agrees with me about some needed improvement in the flexibilty of the game setup.

It all boils down to four basic feature that are really needed.

(Guys, if you support these ideas please show your support and keep this post at the top. BHG should see this. )

Free Style Diplomacy: We need a game setup option which allows players to have as many allies as they want. This is in high demand from what I see of the Diplo game players.

No Victory: Yup, there shoud be an option to disable all victory conditions. Why? Because it's essential to diplomacy games so the game won't end prematurely. (This was an Empire Earth mistake). I've seen some support for this option, and I have played my fair share of games where us players get "cheated" out of a game because conquest victory sets in, it's annoying, and I really hope you will patch it.

Nuclear Free Zone: No nukes allowed, period. Conventional weapons are fine, but alot of players hate the nukes, shouldn't we give them a simple option to disable them?

No Armageddon: I was really suprised to see that armageddon can't be turned off except for modding. Please make a gameplay option allowing us nuke happy's to go crazy with destroying the world!

That's it, just four options. I hope these crucial setup options will be considered, and that you' all at BGH will save this post, so you can look at it when things are not so crazy at work .

Apolytoners, please show your support by posting, this post will be buried fast if you don't express your feelings on these suggestions.

[albiedamned]

No Nukes and No Aramgeddon certainly sound like reasonable requests to add as game setup options. I don't quite follow you on the No Victory one - how does the game end then?

[Timeline]

Quite frankly, It wouldn't.

In EE it was in the beta and they took it out for the final version. Oh the fun times we had in the beta, the whole world could be allied and build peacefully, and then world war would break out. The game could go on as long as the players wanted, while allying and unallying.

Game pretty much ends when your the last one standing or everyone els has left, and you quit. In this case, it's not about winning, but it's about fun and "role-playing", which is great fun indeed.

Not a good game for rated games though .

Again, it's just an OPTION, an option that I feel hundreds of players would use and love. Including me and my online, as well as real life friends.

[albiedamned]

Ok, given the way you describe it, I'd be in favor of that option too. Just to be clear however, there is still a "conquer everyone else" victory condition. Just no territory or wonder victory, right?

[Boris Godunov]

I think these are all very reasonable suggestions, especially the no nuke one. I HATE nukes in civ and always edit them out of the game. They just mess everything up!

[Bridger]

I think what you mean is a last man standing diplomacy. So when one team conqures the whole map, then that team suddenly becomes enemies with each other, and they have to fight each other now?

And by the way, this is the most flexible RTS game i've ever seen, so if they've left out a few options lets forgive them eh?

[Alex]

Interesting suggestions, indeed.

[Timeline]

Originally posted by Bridger
I think what you mean is a last man standing diplomacy. So when one team conqures the whole map, then that team suddenly becomes enemies with each other, and they have to fight each other now?

And by the way, this is the most flexible RTS game i've ever seen, so if they've left out a few options lets forgive them eh?

Thanks for the comments guys.

No Bridger, I don't mean a last man standing policy. I mean a No Victory option. Under the Victory tab you have several choices, the one most used is conquest. From what I've experianced Conquest will end the game when there are no more neutral/enemy nations left to oppose you.

I love RoN more than any other RTS, but it isn't the most flexible RTS I've ever seen, so I would guess you have never played Age of Empires.

In AoE (and AoK) under the diplomacy screen you could ally as many as you wanted.

In the diplomacy screen there was also an "Allied Victory" checkbox. When selected, and if your allies had it selected too, you and your allies would win the game. But if you didn't select it the game would go on until you either 1: Selected it, or 2: Turned on your allies and killed them.

The "Allied Victory" check box worked well, but a No Victory option (under the victory tab most likely) would work just as well.

After hearing how "flexible" the RoN setup was from beta testers, I was sure that players would be able to turn off victory conditions if they wanted, but we can't. We should be able to play a game with no victory conditions if we want to. It just seems like common sense that if the game allows you to play alone, then it should allow a game where you can play as long as you like, and however you like.

Think of all those games of civ2 you kept on playing even after "victory" was achieved, and scoring was no longer kept. It was fun to keep playing even though it wasn't about winning anymore.

BGH - This one feature (the no victory request) seems to me the most important feature to be included. It will allow players to take the game to new depths, and have the type of "unrestricted play" that we as gamers crave.

[Timeline]

Also, about RTS and flexibility...

Most games have an option to turn "Super Weapons" on or off. Nukes are deffinitely the RoN equivalent to super weapons.

It doesn't seem odd or strange that a player should be able to turn them off. At least not to me.

[Timeline]

I just tried setting Victory to "Territory", and then setting "Territory Goal" to "No Territory Victory".

I started a test game me vs 1 easiest computer.

I allied with the computer.

The game abruptly ended saying "Your Team Won".

I tried this test both on Custom Diplomacy and Diplomacy game type options.

Oh well....guess it really will take a patch to fix this.

[Mahdimael]

Here's my suggestion:

A "Random starting placement" feature for CTW. (If it's not there already. I would check the manual, but... ) It would be cool to have the option to start in a random place on the map. Also, are resources randomized on the map?

[vootguy]

All of these suggestions are good ones. I agree that nukes disrupt the flow of the game (though I love lobbing 6 at a time on my enemy sometimes). And I would love the ability to turn off victory conditions, or at least have an option to 'continue playing' once the condition is achieved. Maybe the AoE engine doesn't support this

These are the kinds of options though, that I'd be very suprised that BHG wouldn't add in a coming patch. I would imagine that things like this would be easy for them to achieve, giving them the most 'bang for the buck' as it were, when making patches.

[jcoleman]

All good points. Frankly, one of the biggest problems with additional, orthogonal options is the UI for 1024x768 in all languages. It's important that we have room for all the information and that it's clear to all players at a glance.

We definitely want to support mods and scripts via MP in a clean way. This is forcing us to think still harder about the setup screen. Perhaps we'll find ways to make significantly more room during this process. (BTW, MP saving is coming along and will hopefully be out before long.)

The "No Nukes" option was brought up not long before ship by internal MS testers. There, too, it was a question of limited screen real estate. The real call there is a Design team one but I think it's a probability if we can find the room.

Thanks for the thoughts,
J

BTW, AOE engine? That's painful stuff.

[One_Dead_Villy]

there appears to be one more row that can be added in the setup screen when choosing "custom" rules option, so maybe a "mod" option at the end can be added for which mod is being used. although if we want the game to support multiple mods simultaneously there would be another screen needed to control this like they have in other moddable games, in which case instead of having an extra row to which mod, one would simply add an option to the game rules option and add "mod rules". and maybe somehow a help caption can pop up that lists which mods are active.

[Timeline]

Originally posted by vootguy
Maybe the AoE engine doesn't support this

Ouch. What a blow...

Thanks for the respoonse J. I really hope to have some great diplomacy games in the future, provided I can actually ally with all my friends and build some, without the game ending that is.