Should Sins 2 be single-player designed only?

It's an interesting question, and I think Sins could easily benefit from a truncated multiplayer experience as an option because I know there's no way I'd ever be able to finish a three-hour game, let alone a longer one, and picking it back up after a save would be just as difficult.

One thing that concentrating on Sins single-player would do is allow StarDock to contrive a better near-end-game variety and challenge, possibly through some of the "ideas" you mention. To avoid distracting the thread, I will list only one of them here: a pirate invasion (not just a raid) through a new mobile class of base creating a brand new phase lane to backwater undefended planets and that might penalize a player badly behind their lines if they neglect their own defenses. This would work in SP but not MP because you can be a little more unfair to one human player in an SP-vs-AI game than you can in an MP-vs-MP game. I'm sure there's all sorts of other ideas that would improve SP but would not be useful in an MP context.

I'd be curious to see these numbers.
- Number of people that bought Sins exclusively for SP play (I'm one)
- Number of people that bought Sins to play MP
- Number of people that bought Sins for a mix of both SP and MP

(Note: slimeballs that stole Sins without paying for it don't count. For really good games to get made, the publisher and authors have to make money at it, so they're just noise in this statistic.)

If it's something like 70/10/20, IronClad might benefit greatly from changing the amount of energy they spend testing and testing and testing MP, and devote that energy instead to making an incredible SP-only game.

If it's something like 50/30/20, I think an SP component coupled with an MP bit that is optionally long or short would be a win.

-- Retro

No way sins 2 should be singleplayer only, they should just put in a different multiplayer system.

In multiplayer the diplomacy is so much cooler.
spying on people, sharin ur info with ur ally or his enemy and havin em think ur HIS ally and backstabbin him in the end is just the best
especially in 8-10 player games where aliances tend to change allot and ur trying to stay credibel after backstabbin 2 players, and finaly win with 1 ally
also u can talk with people and plan strategies and shit wich is also impossible in single player, ye u can ping, ask for defence or ask the ai to attack but thats not the same.

so in my oppinion takin out the multiplayer completely -even though it kinda sucks right now- would be herrecy.
Just fix a different system.

a campaing would be nice though....... :NOTSURE:

The thing with having multiplayer is it takes alot of money and time to get right. And based on the amount of people who play online VS the people who have bought the game, it doesn't seem like it was worth it.

Online is cool, but a well developed AI can seem like the real thing.

The thing with having multiplayer is it takes alot of money and time to get right. Problem is that if you don't get it right, people will not play online and you might think it's not worth it. But that certainly is very, very wrong. StarCraft anyone? That proves what you can get with great multiplayer. But it really takes perfect balance and dedication to the multiplayer part. It is in no way easy.

If it's single-player only, I probably won't be buying it.

I personally don't care about online multiplayer at all, as long as my friends and I can play together on LAN or similar.

Problem is, a lot of players wont even buy the game if it does not have multiplayer. Even if they wont be playing online that much.




You would still need a multiplayer feature to play on LAN.


Funny enough. On the Galciv2 Forum (far more)people are demanding multiplayer, and you are demanding a singleplayer only game?
If you want a more indepth singleplayer expierience you should stick with other games. Sins was never intended to be that way.

Agreed. But it didn't stop BioShock from being enormously successful.
But that doesn't necessarily correlate to a high percentage of SALES, which is what really and truly counts. I find that generally people who post on forums are more inclined to do more things online than people who don't, including multiplayer online. That means that the "visible demand" for MP in games is a lot higher than the "invisible demand", and that's why the statistics I posted in Reply #1 are so important.

These are made-up figures, but if it costs you 30% of the game creation budget to produce elements that only appeal to 10% of its sales audience, it makes sense to devote that money to other features - unless, as you theorize, you have to have that feature to make the game popular in the first place.

-- Retro

Until they come up with an AI that is capable of using all of the tools available to it without being cheap, I won't be buying a single-player RTS.

I think development could probably benefit from a decision of what kind of multiplayer crowd is going to be catered to (rather than trying to cater to everyone who shows up on the forums to complain). Are you going to support the more casual LAN players friendly online gamers by adding more features with a limited regard for balance-related minutia or are you really going to support competitive ladder play and focus more of your energy on balance issues for gametypes that much of your audience probably doesn't take advantage of?

I don't think it needs to be single-player only but it could stand a bit more focus. Deciding whether the game, going forward, is just going to continue being a glorified RTS or a more fleshed-out RT Empire-builder would probably help, too.

There are succesfull single player games. But RTS Players expect RTS games to have multiplayer or just ignore it.
So in this case, it will correlate in higher sales, because the question "is there multiplayer?" is easier to answer to(yes/no) than "how deep is the singleplayer mode?" (pure perception).

Also getting more depth in a game requires the whole game concept to be reworked(which can even go wrong, see MoO3). While a multiplayer feature is far easier to add on top of a already designed game.

The original idea was to essentially have a singleplayer designed game that includes multiplayer. Multiplayer is limited to LAN and online with organised friends since it will probably take several sessions to complete a "deep" game.

So the game can still say "yes" to having a multiplayer , but it will probably not be a medium for getting skilled in a rts style community with clans , ladders and stuff .

Sorry, but this is far from assured, if not altogether probably incorrect. Multiplayer brings the whole science of synchronizations, networking, multiple-thread-input-processing from various users, dodgy connection detection, framerate synchronization between machines that have different performance levels, lag, hacking, and a lot of other considerations that don't have to be dealt with at all in single-player. A lot of the "detailed" nuts-and-greebles design really changes context when two humans are involved.

-- Retro

But the topic said "single player only". Like GalCiv2.
Obviously, he wanted to game to be so deep that there was no time for multiplayer.



Please read the whole post. I did not say its "easy". I said its just easier compared to reworking (and recoding) the game.

Frankly, I can't really see sins working out to ever be much more than a multiplayer/SP with AIs for people kind of game, there just isn't much more that could be done without, at least, enlarging gravity wells and adding in some significant space feature [well, I really mean terrain ;)], because it could never be more than Take X system so you can have Y and then kill Z.

Compared with, say, HW2 where the single player campaign was beautiful, and tactically quite varied (although hardcore attrition was possible, it was not nescessary).

Personally I don't care about online, but I do care about LAN.

It really depends whether you play Sins as an RTS player that likes the 4X additions or as a 4X player that likes the more dynamic strategy. Online players are generally the former and single player advocates the latter (i'd put myself in that camp, I'd love more detail to just sit and expand my empire.)

It's a hard bridge to cross and perhaps GalCiv II and in the future III (with some borrowed combat systems from Sins, perhaps?) are better bets for those that want large expansive and detailed empire building, with Sins and eventually Sins 2 more of a quicker RTS multiplayer game.