Slitherine

I love Slitherine games...I really do, especially those of the World War 2 genre.

That said, what holds me back on purchasing so many of the excellent games pushed out by Slitherine is the absolutely ancient..........toss back to the 90's........long in the tooth..........PBEM feature
that Slitherine and others like Matrix absolutely insist on still using.

It's 2020 and one would think with all the tech that is out there that some sort of cost effective Multiplayer program could be included in all their games like the program
used in paradox games such as HOI IV, etc with it's hot join feature. Granted, that itself is a little clucky but for the most part but still works fairly decent for 4 or so friends, and if they drop
for whatever reason, well, it's an easy re-join with hot join.

It's just time Slitherine. Please, for all that is good and holy, starting adding live person to person multiplayer support to more of your games and come out with a stand alone program
to turn what you already have out, into live multiplayer for up to 4 players.

Thank you,

Where it makes sense we are tending to have new games include live MP (see, PzC2) without discarding the async MP approach. Our numbers, across dozens of games since we introduced PBEM++, show that it is vastly more conducive to MP play than live MP only. It's often hard for players to carve out chunks of time to play, whereas with async you can play a turn whenever you have a chance. Live-only also requires players to meet up in a lobby to start games, etc. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that PBEM++ is the most successful feature we have ever come up with.

That said, we do try and include optional live play (which is indeed drop in/drop out) for new games, though it does add considerable complexity to the implementation.

Cheers

Pip

I like both. But definitely value the asynchronous nature and flexibility of PBEM++. I also think it helps folks in different time zones that might not ever play one another in a live person to person only MP setup game together (which is awesome from a community perspective IMO). There are certainly games that benefit from live MP though.......however, ever try to get a group together for longer form grand strategy stuff that is real time only? It can be challenging to get folks with different schedules to all commit to one or two specific times to do a gaming session.