Slitherine

I'm playing for some time in Warhammer 40k: Armageddon (as well as in Da Orks). My first attempt was rather unfortunate, but I gave this game a second chance.. And it was a great decision, I really like this game.

But there is one thing, which is in my opinion very controversial and its solution is a bit prepasterous - hot-seat mode. You see, I never imagined that someone would made game, which requires to log in to some online service to play in hot-seat mode. It's like total opposite of what hot-seat is supposed to be. Alas, this is the case with Armageddon, but also present in such games as Sanctus Reach. The only way to play in hot seat mode is to log into Slitherine's service, create the game and join to your own game (of course you must be online to do so)... It's illogical. I've installeed Armageddon on my GPD Win, but I can't play with someone else "outside" my home, because it requires to be online, even for hot-seat mode.

It's even more illogical, because Panzer Corps (which seems to be made on the similar engine) HAD normal hot-seat mode... Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if creating the game and joining to your own game wouldn't require to log in (or log into "offline" version), but there is no such option... Seriously guys, nobody consider this as creating the game mode, which is in fact bereft of it's most important feature? And I can't believe that it's some missed "by accident" aspect, because there is exactly the same situation with Sanctus Reach. Is it possible to repair this feature? I know that nowadays it's not very popular type of multiplayer, but I still appreciate if someone is implementing it into their game (I'm playing from time to time with my siblings in hot-seat/split screen mode in various games). And it's weird for me, that on the one hand developer has decided to implement hot-seat into game, but on the other hand - made it useless (in terms of hot-seat/split screen features).

For what it's worth I agree with you.

It seems that Slitherine prefers to push their service as a form of hot seat.

That's fine - but advertise it / promote it on its merits rather than forcing players down a path when they could have easily been given a choice (traditional local hot seat or the service).

It's apparent that there is a subset of the customer base that would appreciate such a choice and enjoy the game more because of it.


Whether or not there will be significant development on Armageddon going forward seems to be uncertain at this point:

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 35&t=77403

Again there is obvious interest in more development for the 1st War. Could the feature be implemented if that gets off the ground?

Remains to be seen.

I'm glad that you're sharing my opinion about this case

It's a bit annoying though, that despite the fact, that almost exactly the same question as mine, was formulated in the past a couple of times (by various users, on steam forum and not only), nobody from developer's crew has never answered on those questions. To be honest - even answer "because we don't feel like to fix this issue" would be better than no response at all. I always believed that smaller developers are much more "sociable" and eager to interact with gamers than big companies, but sadly, I can't say that I see such attitude in this particular case (not only regarding my question in this topic, because it was asked many times earlier).

I think it has a lot to do with lack of competition.

Where else can you find a quality 40k operational level game in recent years?

No where.

If there were perhaps 2 or 3 other gaming companies out there producing similar products, I believe the vendor would show greater interest in showing their relative attentiveness to the requests of the users. (that includes being active to such customer queries as you have raised)

But this is not the case – so we need to make the choice as to whether we purchase such (exclusive) products (with significant deficiencies) in the future or reject them.

A practical example for me is Sanctus Reach. I simply can’t take another “Dese Dems and Dose Hummies” enemy and expressed this on the Steam forums when it was released. Although all other aspects of the game I find very appealing, I’ll not be spending any money on that game series until they get an agreement with GW to include a more interesting adversary.

But in the end, Slitherine won’t really care about my lack of purchase and I can always look to other venues for entertainment.

This is the way of business.