God bless cranky old men!

Actually the whiners in the forums are a very vocal minority of hardcore gamers, the majority of which are busy actually PLAYING the game and if they do post it's often constructive and not inflammatory, with the best interests of the game at heart. In the end if a game is not balanced and the developers don't show an interest in making it so then most of the competitive gamers will just leave for another game instead of whining about it, again it's a very small percentage that will actively post if they're not happy with something. Most developers don't really care if they do leave anyway because they've already got their money and unless it's an MMO they don't think they have any reason to keep them interested - who cares about balancing the game when it only affects 5% of users right?

Forward thinking companies however realise that listening to competitive players and balancing the game for multiplayer keeps people playing and talking about the game years after it's released, and then when the company releases a new game suddenly it has all this hype and publicity before a single dollar is even spent on marketing. Why do you think every game that Blizzard releases is an instant success? it's because people are still playing their previous games 5 years after they're released, and it's not the single player campaigns they're playing over and over. Blizzard balances the living crap out of their games, and as soon as an exploit is found, it's fixed. Heck, Blizzard even hires top players to help design and balance their games for them.

I agree that the forum whiners are more than annoying, but I don't think that's a reason to completely neglect multiplayer game balance like some people here are suggesting.

just my 2c

Personally, I hope for multiplayer support in my 4x strategy games not because I enjoy them competitvely, but because I have friends that I like to play them with cooperatively. I bought Sins for that reason alone, to play team games with my friends against teams of AI players. Heh, funny thing is we talk about our GC2 games while we play Sins.

I'm not under any illusions that people like me comprise a large market, but personally I very much enjoy co-op multiplayer support and am not at all hung up about balance issues, as they aren't any different in that sense from the single-player experience. Unfortunately I doubt there's much of a chance that the competitive balance screaming can be avoided once multiplayer support exists in a game.

Reminds me of a recent comment from a DEV of the new TBS LEI. When told that the AI is so imperfect that it makes the game almost unplayable he replied, "Well, that doesn't matter in MP, does it?"

delete dupe

Classy! What's LEI? I want to know to avoid it, and anything else the developer makes.

DOS attacks ... it feels like epidemic lately, on many popular sites you recently open them and see "sorry we were down due DOS attack..." or something like that.


Regarding MP and GalCiv2 - I believe it's a good thing that MP was not implemented because no MP user would agree to "live with" that amount of bugs GalCiv2 has.
We single user players might be a bit surprised or upset when some building does not do what it supposed to do or income calculations behave strangely or even "next turn" button disappears ... but imagine that in MP game !!!

Lost Empire: Immortals

I tend to agree with you that a comment like that warrants a complete boycott of the developer in question. Developers that only care about MP players don't deserve money from SP players. I tend to think that if we voted with our wallets a bit more carefully, there might be more games like GC2 out there.

Lost Empires Imortals

Ugh. I was potentially interested in that game, but I guess I'll be scratching it off the list. Ah well, guess I just saved some money.

A wise decision.

As a remorseful buyer, I will be watching the patches and hoping. If they fix it, (and I think it could be fixed) it could be a nice diversion for the price but it is badly flawed for SP at this point.

OK, So I don't post very often on anything, BUT this thread is the reason I don't play multiplayer. I started playing Everquest about 5 years ago with no real knowlege of what a MMORPG was or is. Anyways after 3 years of EQ and 1 year World of Warcraft I was done with online play. You have a core of good people playing the game, and a few people with no online social grace. I have never seen so many people throw so many temper tantrums.

I am happy for the fact that this business that I enjoy doing business with can, in fact, say no to multiplayer.

I am talking about Sins here:

My 2 cents.... give the balance people their version of what they want. 3 races with the exact same stats. Then beef up the single player like you do currently. Then you can give the option to play balanced races or normal races.

This way the balancing act guys can play exactly what they want! hehe

I have no idea if that would work, but when I am desiging a new product for my job my main criteria is does it apease over half of the people involed if it does and it is functionable? I know trying to get one thing to work for all cases is impossible, so make more than one case as long as it is cost effective.

BTW I bought Sins a month or so ago and I loved it (no multipayer). Then I did some research on Stardock and galciv 2 I played the demo, and then purchased the game. I believe you guys as a company can come up with exellent solutions for difficult problems. My hat is off to you! P.S. I can't find spell checker... sorry >.<

For Balance, Stardock go to Sirlin.net and read some of his articles on balance. Will be a good read for you guys.

The key is ti have diversity and reasonable balance, or at least counterpicking.

A lot depends on how you make the system though.

I don't believe that a game should ignore balance issues though, but 80-90% of balance issues are "risk/reward" issues or things experts can do that intermediate players cannot (aka micro)

So why are you guys calling it not-MoM? Looking forward to seeing a proper name, at least for discussion's sake. Anyway, putting the two modes of play in their own camp sounds like the elegant solution. That way, you can appease all the multi-player guys without screwing up the single player experience.

I've got to disagree with you here, as I'm currently playing through the Warcraft 3 campaigns (yet again) as we speak. Generally about once I year I load them up (yaay for the last patch removing the need to keep finding my CDs) and play through the storyline. Not once have I ever logged onto Battle.net or played any other variant of multiplayer with the game. Not with Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 or Starcraft. In fact, the only Blizzard game I have played online is World of Warcraft, and well, that's kinda part of the package *grin* Many of the folks I know in my raiding community in WoW have played through most of Blizzard's games, and still do occasionally. I can count on one hand the number of them that play online in any fashion. They play them for the gameplay and the campaigns. Blizzard games are instant successes because they've established a very long and polished reputation of releasing extremely solid, well designed, easy to play and enjoyable games. The massive success of their products has much more to do with the very large single player audience and much less to do with the considerably smaller multiplayer crowd.

Take Starcraft, often lauded as the champion of competitive multiplayer RTS. If you look at the total sales numbers of the game, and then look at the population of folks playing it online, even when at its zenith, whether competitively or not, I'd bet euros to dollars that the multiplayer crowd is dwarfed heavily by the single player crowd, and that's for the game that boasts some of the highest multiplayer saturation out there for a strategy game.



Not once has Frogboy or any of the IC folks (on any posts I've been able to get in and read through the forum DOS) said they have no intention of balancing game issues. They have said that they won't be catering to the hardcore multiplayer crowd (specifically in response to a few vocal whiners), or prioritizing their issues beyond what the issues themselves call for. There are a very large number of things they want to do with the game, and anyone who's been with Stardock for a long time will know that they really do add so much to a game as it progresses. The balance issues are somewhere on that slate to be addressed, but they are prioritized appropriately given the number of things they want to do with Sins, and the size and distribution of their customer base.

Yes, single player issues are going to have a heavier weight, because there really are that many more people that utilize it as a game mode. But again, if you've seen Stardock (and Ironclad as well from what I've seen of them so far) at work, they have a way of squeezing a WHOLE lot of adjustments into their updates, and I've no doubt that as soon as they have the available time and man-power, they'll address balance issues and anything else they can to make their games better. It's what they do, not only making some damn fine software, but constantly improving it. People are just going to need to have patience and realize that their issues are not ZOMGENDOFTHEWORLDALLGOINGTODIEEEE!!!1!1! and enjoy the game for what it is while they wait for the inevitable update.

I think to make a game balance for multiplayer, you have to turn the game into some kind of RTS chess like in starcraft. You guys can correct me if i am wrong, but around 8/9 years ago, when i was told about starcraft's AI being balanced because Blizzard patched it like 14 times, well...i was told that was for the purpose of mulitplayer. Because in single player, regardless of which patch you applied, it would still be too easy for any experienced player. I think Sins is going to be end up in that direction, i mean in the direction of where the original starcraft is heading. I am not saying that for single player for sins, it would never be balanced for single player, i think it will get to a point where when it is all said and done and after so many patches, the single player experience will just be too easy in the sense that any experienced player will figure out a way to beat it, so the only challenge they get is through mulitplayer.

For Galciv 2, it is a bit different because the differences in the races and abilities plus differences in tech in the new expansions. So there is different strategies demanded for any individual player. It is not something that can easily be balanced in a mulitplayer, unless you turn Galciv2 into Civ 4, which in all honestly, it is kind of not interesting. Civ 4 can justified it becuase there is a historical context, and all nations can have similar or even the same tech tree. But in a scifi based game, people expect differences which is what distinguishes itself from other 4x turn based game.

Heh - they always forget they can mod SD games with Notepad...

One of these days stardock, when you make a TBS game w/MP capabilities, I would request you put some thought into PBEM, maybe even PBEM only. The softer side of MP. (I don't think its inherently 'softer', but those w/the patience to play a very long PBEM game are also those that I would think would have a smaller percentage of the screaming/rude/melodramatic amongst them.)

Integrated into your new Impulse network, w/some civIV PitBoss type features (persistent game server players can 'log in to' to play their turn, ai automatically taking over a side who doesn't do its turn by the time limit, being able to jump into an abandoned side in an ongoing game, email notification of when its your turn, etc...) would be a really nice combo. CivIV ain't the best game out there, but I love their PitBoss, for PBEM matches, that alone makes it the game of choice for me some times, would like to see more of that out there. (I love TBS MP, but I work off hours, so can only play friends in games that don't require us both to be on at the same time, like PBEM games)

Balance can be a good thing where you need a level playing field. However, making all classes or races balanced can also make them less interesting to play - advantages that can win you a game if you leverage them right make playing worthwhile.

One of my favourite classes in NWN is Arcane Archer, and while they're not great at taking physical punishment they can be remarkably good at dishing up a steady barrage of damage if they're in a good party where the melee fighters forge ahead and keep the enemy occupied. At later levels they can become mage-killers with their ability to penetrate damage reduction. Balancing this sort of advantage (assuming it needs to be balanced) is largely at the discretion of whomever runs mutliplayer servers for NWN, or in other words wherever you go you may encounter house rules that have evolved to keep some classes from becoming too powerful.

In a turn-based game where an invasion of several thousand legions is just a click or two away, whomever is boldest and presses their advantage is likely to win. That isn't exactly fair but it's a lesson you have to learn if you want to prevail against aliens who are hell-bent on wiping you out with electric death.

I don't give a fig about GC multiplayer.

Now get back on the workbench and give me decent tactical combat engine, dammit!