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Spiderweb games into multiplayer?


WLDD

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The turn-based nature of the games means they'd have to be heavily altered to make multiplayer even remotely workable. Turn-based, even with strict limits on turn length, becomes clunky and unfun very quickly when other people's turns can put a pause in your gameplay.

 

There are a lot of college graduates, some college students, and a few hopefuls around.

 

—Alorael, who has finally put his student days behind him. Not exams, though. Exams never really go away.

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No idea how that would work. OTOH, it'd be interesting if, for example, unspecified services had more than one surface team active at the same time, or Romans and Celts racing each other to complete quests in Nethergate.

 

The really old Spelljammer game, like the Avernum ones, would remember what stuff you'd sold to stores and you could buy them back later. Only, it remembered one set for each store, not one set for each game. So start a new game, and the stuff from last time will be there. Almost certainly not intentional, but gave the impression that the game was more than just you. Now, of course that doesn't take time into account, just when it was last updated, but maybe something like that could be put in place.

 

Now, whether this would be worthwhile, and if it would fit any given story, is another issue.

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  • 2 months later...

Found this forum last night...

And had this idea:

Avernum World, Small:

This is one that has the party broken up into single players.

And the game is hosted on one payer's PC and played over his network.

The game scale would be like Avernum 4 and 5.

It would need to be a fast round robin type of play, hit a key, your turn is over, next player plays...

 

You could adventure together or go you own way...

 

Second:

Avernum World Large:

Same as above, but the game would be hosted on a website and have many new features:

Loyalty: are you a rebel against the Empire, or are you a Loyalist?

New players start out at 0: general citizen, and your actions determine your Loyalty...

You could be born on the surface or in the underworld...

It would need a mega sized world map so that it does not get over crowded...

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  • 2 months later...

I used to love Warcraft 2. After a school day spent with crude-minded, shallow children, I'd come home and immerse myself in an epic with a masterful, charismatic score by Glenn Stafford.

 

I liked Warcraft 3. I didn't love it. Something of the charisma of Warcraft was sapped out of it as it became glossier and lost a grasp of the simple things.

 

Then World of Warcraft came out. And the crude-minded, shallow children had followed me home. The epic stories were gone forever, replaced with shallow quest-grinding and a stark disrespect for my time. The simple things had disappeared without a trace.

 

Twelve years passed. Of course there was no Warcraft 4. Of course it got no better. Now I read things like "The Warcraft series started as a real-time strategy game. Hard to believe, I know". And a part of me dies inside all over again.

 

Don't. Make. Multiplayer. Spiderweb. Games. Jeff Vogel is one of the few game developers whose head is still in the golden era of gaming. Don't take that away.

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  • 3 years later...

Multiplayer helps games by more than just allowing multiple people to play together.  Multiplayer greatly increases custom content made for the games.  Games which have multiplayer also have forums which are more active and survive longer.  These are benefits which single player gamers have for many games they love.

 

The spiderweb games lack replay value, thus once you win the game... you know all the major events, bosses and puzzles. If he wanted his games to grow in popularity then he needs a game which randomly generates the map, the quests, the bosses, the items, the NPCs, and the events AND/OR provide the game with an editor.  He did a small editor once a long time ago, but never evolved it.  The randomly generated world which generates the map, the quests, the bosses, the items, the NPCs, and the events is probably too complex for the two developers, but the editor is definitely possible for us.

 

*The end result:*

    Eventually Jeff Vogel will die from an illness or old age or disease where his gamers won't have anything new from him and will migrate to other games. While a few new gamers might enjoy his games they will become less and less popular over time since the number of game options keep growing.  If Jeff Vogel wanted to keep his gamers playing his games and have his games literally evolve then he would be focused on providing an editor so the community could create new fun challenges.  Based on the current age of Jeff Vogel and pattern of games being released we might see another 15 games, but without a game editor all the gamers here will move elsewhere and these forums will go silent.

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On 11/13/2015 at 6:14 PM, Seriously Small said:

The turn-based nature of the games means they'd have to be heavily altered to make multiplayer even remotely workable. Turn-based, even with strict limits on turn length, becomes clunky and unfun very quickly when other people's turns can put a pause in your gameplay.

 

 

Many games have done turn based multiplayer such as Age of Wonders 2, Battle for Wesnoth, Baldurs Gate 2, etc., etc., etc., etc., .  With technology skyrocketing and evolving there's never a question regarding if this can be done correctly... only a question regarding if the developers are smart enough to implement the feature correctly.  The age of wonders 2 was perfectly done allowing gamers to change the turn length each time they continue the session from a saved game allowing the beginning to move super fast and allowing major end game players time to manage all cities. Yes your movement might be paused during a turn based game, but there's plenty of multiplayer features which should still be available in the game when it's not your turn such as reading lore, organizing inventory which is not equipped, reviewing your skill tree, reviewing your spell books, game messages to other players and that's just off the top of my head.

The main reason I have seen developers not include multiplayer is because it's beyond their technical skills.  Further evidence is where you see plenty of single player games add the multiplayer feature in future sequels yet you rarely see the multiplayer feature removed from future sequels.

Edited by NTJedi
listed options when it's not your turn
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1 hour ago, NTJedi said:

If Jeff Vogel wanted to keep his gamers playing his games and have his games literally evolve then he would be focused on providing an editor so the community could create new fun challenges.

You know, he tried that a couple of times. The second time, it was a complete commercial flop and nearly destroyed the company. He's said he's not likely to do it again.

 

1 hour ago, NTJedi said:

The main reason I have seen developers not include multiplayer is because it's beyond their technical skills.

That may very well be the reason that Jeff hasn't tried it. Jeff is a good writer. He's a passable coder, but he's not great. You don't play Spiderweb games for their advanced programming; you play them for their immersive storytelling.

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There's another consideration, the cost of producing the content and server(s) to run the MMRPG. You have a large up front cost because players will leave if they run out of things to do or can't get to play because the server is full or slowing down from too many players.

 

For a single player game it takes over a year to code the game and a budget of over $100,000 with recycled code and graphics. Hiring coders will push costs up before a product is even ready for testing. This is well outside what Jeff has and running a Kickstarter would need more than he's previously gotten.

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19 hours ago, Kelandon said:

You know, he tried that a couple of times. The second time, it was a complete commercial flop and nearly destroyed the company. He's said he's not likely to do it again.

 

That may very well be the reason that Jeff hasn't tried it. Jeff is a good writer. He's a passable coder, but he's not great. You don't play Spiderweb games for their advanced programming; you play them for their immersive storytelling.

Yes, this is why I was hoping to see multiplayer added first into one of his releases since features such as modding and editors are rarely used for creating new game content by players who only do single player.  The games where editors and modding have been most successful have been ones where multiplayer exists.  If multiplayer, modding and editors are not options Jeff is willing to attempt than perhaps he will consider developing a random world generator.  It would be easy to keep selling new versions of a random world generator simply by including new items, races, classes, terrain, monsters, events, quests, etc., etc., with each new version.  I have grown tired of playing most games which have you follow a specific path OR games where bosses literally do nothing inside the game except wait for you to reach their location and kill them.  

 

18 hours ago, Randomizer said:

There's another consideration, the cost of producing the content and server(s) to run the MMRPG. You have a large up front cost because players will leave if they run out of things to do or can't get to play because the server is full or slowing down from too many players.

 

For a single player game it takes over a year to code the game and a budget of over $100,000 with recycled code and graphics. Hiring coders will push costs up before a product is even ready for testing. This is well outside what Jeff has and running a Kickstarter would need more than he's previously gotten.

  There's no need for Jeff to host the servers since plenty of games have the gamers hosting the server whether it's Age of Wonders 2, Baldurs Gate 2, Demise and others.  Even the original Diablo game would be hosted by one of the gamers.  The biggest tough spot for bringing the multiplayer feature would be if the developers have technical skills.  Multiplayer with an editor and with modding would bring new life to these forums plus lots more replay value.   Currently the original NeverWinter Nights is my favorite since you not only have the multiplayer option and editor for creating your own world, but there's a Dungeon Master option so you can control the world as others are playing plus it can allow 64 players at the same time... and you can host the server yourself.

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Doesn't this forum have a rule or something about meaningless thread necromancy? On the topic of necromancy, I am currently re-reading The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by Lovecraft and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to have a look at what necromancy was before it was conflated with zombie horror with hordes of shambling corpses springing up willy nilly at the wave of a hand.

PS: To add something constructive, I wouldn't presume to speak for anyone else who plays Spiderweb Games, but I would have absolutely no interest in a multiplayer feature or endlessly running through randomly generated content. To me, that's simply not part of the Spiderweb experience, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more people who feel the same way. So aside from the obvious enormous technical and financial hurdles that adding an online multiplayer feature would entail, just as the case was with the Blades of Avernum editor, there is no real sign of there being sufficient demand among the playerbase to justify such an investment.

 

The end result, by the way? By the time Jeff kicks the bucket and his young, hip fans (like me, who only got into Spiderweb games with Nethergate back in '99) are hooked up to the virtual reality/life support systems that will take the place of elderly care in the far future, quantum computing will have rendered everything as we know it obsolete.

Edited by Minion
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Hello Minion,

 

While as a general rule we try to discourage posting in old threads here, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. It’s merely in place for the sake of practicality, in order to keep these boards clean and easily readable. Primarily, we want to encourage discussion on these boards!

 

If you consult the code of conduct, you’ll see that what’s actually stated is this (with the italics added here for emphasis):

 

‘Let old topics lie unless you wish to continue the discussion.

 

In this case, the newer poster has directly followed on from the older ideas posted in the thread, with a view to prompting some discussion. And interesting discussion has indeed arisen! This sort of posting is absolutely fine!

 

There is also nothing wrong with pointing out posting practices that you are concerned by. However, please do recall that the code of conduct still applies to you in these cases. While I appreciate this may not have been your intention, in pointing out an infraction you have casually dismissed another person’s posts as irrelevant, and then posted information yourself that does not directly contribute to the conversation.

 

This isn’t a warning, Minion, but merely an observation. However, perhaps it might just be worth just having a little refresher yourself about the forum guidelines. You can find the guidelines in the tabs at the top of the forums.

 

Also, if you wish to talk about what you’re reading at the moment, there’s an active thread in general that’s set up exactly for this purpose:

 

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/1-what-have-you-been-reading-recently/

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