Keep Multiplayer Alive

[13obo]

I don't know about the rest of the players that have been playing the game since beta/day 1, but I keep going at it because of multiplayer games. I'm not going to go into much detail why the multiplayer of the game is fantastic, but the basic reasons are that you get opponents that you can communicate with and plan, and also act in unpredictable ways, which is something the AI would never match.

As such, I'd like to voice my support for future improvements of the game to also cover multiplayer. Current issues of multiplayer include:

- Matches stall from time to time for longer than their turn limit.
- Email notification of next turn is not always sent.
- "Surrender" button does not permanently eject a player from the game, but instead often flags them as idle. This has two negative consequences- 1) the player that surrendered still gets to play their turn at the start of a new one, 2) other players now face a turn timer equal to the turn allowance, as the game waits for the "surrendered" player to make their move.
- A player that knows he can't play for a temporary period should be able to pass the game to the AI until his return. Game should recognize that that player is not available and at the beginning of each new turn, should immediately count that players turn as complete until the player returns and resumes control of their nation.
- An option to exclude players with mods from games. The system should be able to check the players configuration before allowing them to join.

If you are aware of other issues that are multiplayer specific, please post them here. If you also want to give your support to future improvements of multiplayer, also voice that here, so mighty Pocus can see that. This is not a bug thread though, so issues that are also observed in single player/AI should not clutter the thread.

[ledo]

+1

Multiplayer is where it's at.

Much respect to the current system as is for how easy it is to make and join a game.

[desertedfox]

- Players that remain "idle" are not booted after some time causing turns to stall again and last as long as their timer. For example, I gave up on several 36h/3 days turn timer games, because idle players in them meant the games were progressing excruciatingly slowly. There should be an option to setup the maximum allowable idle turns per player before they are booted.

My experience has been once all the non idle players have their turns in, the turn is atuomaticlly executed. It doesn't wait for the idle players.

[loki100]

agree with most of this - although I like vs AI too. But worth bearing in mind the MP server is Slitherine/Matrix's standard and used across a number of games. Now for most of those MP is 2 player due to game design, so Empires may be creating some issues that haven't come up before since most MP is >2 players.

so not sure how much can be solved purely in the context of Empires.

[Geffalrus]

The thing I find most annoying is that I've left some games.......and they're still on my to-be-played list. Like.......just let me leave permanently, please. I definitely used the surrender button. And for at least one of them, there's literally nothing I can do as the faction I played as is completely dead.

[Jagger2002]

A player that knows he can't play for a temporary period should be able to pass the game to the AI until his return. Game should recognize that that player is not available and at the beginning of each new turn, should immediately count that players turn as complete until the player returns and resumes control of their nation.

[13obo]

My experience has been once all the non idle players have their turns in, the turn is atuomaticlly executed. It doesn't wait for the idle players.

I think you may be right about this, actually!

A player that knows he can't play for a temporary period should be able to pass the game to the AI until his return. Game should recognize that that player is not available and at the beginning of each new turn, should immediately count that players turn as complete until the player returns and resumes control of their nation.

That's a great suggestion! This way you don't need to wait for the game to mark the player as "idle". Instead, the player can be immediately counted as "idle" for the duration of the chosen period and thus speed up the turns.

[Morbio]

I agree with all of the points made, but I'd also request an option to exclude players with mods from games. The system should be able to check the players configuration before allowing them to join. In this way games can be kept clean, e.g. players with mods can play players with (similar?) mods, players with no mods play players with no mods. In my experience the mod-script issue is the biggest reason why players leave a game.

[13obo]

Good point. Added to the list on top.

[Pocus]

I'm not in charge of MP debugging and server side issue, but I can tell you that the guys are working hard in fixing lot of the oddities you see.

[13obo]

Thank you! I may come back after the patch then.

[mst007]

Bugs such as lack of email notification of a turn are frustrating right now, but I find the multiplayer games highly addictive. I haven`t experienced trying to surrender out of one yet, but get the feeling I`ll be on the losing end of a game real soon and will report back with any issues. The replayability is simply outstanding, each game is very different.