Im just assuming that your game will have a multiplayer support and knowing you it will probably be an important part of the game. We all know the downsides of multiplayer, its hard to find good and balanced games. If you are not organized via clan or on a forum you will have a hard time to find good teammates, especially when you start with a new game. Stardock works on an interesting concept: You make a profile of your skills and preferences and it will suggest other players with a similar profile for you. It also features the usual friends list and chat. I think this is a very nice tool for new and casual players and maybe the nerds who dont make friends easily: http://www.stardock.com/products/readytoplay/ Rady to Play can basically support every game by design but maybe you can come up with something special for your game. Plus if you were to distribute your game with Ready to Play and Stardocks online platform Impulse, who knows, there might be something in it for you guys. (Players will need to make an account on Impulse to use Ready to Play.) So far Ready to play is still in development but the beta will begin next Tuesday (says Frogboy). Here is a short video of how it is supposed to work: http://www.stardock.com/products/readyt ... nshots.asp
Demigod or any other game wouldn't really need that feature if there was a CHAT LOBBY everyone gets put in automatically (no that overlay doesn't count as maybe 5% of players even use it) and some other basic community features (clan management , a friendlist which show your friends and their real status (online, away, in game, offline) instead stardocks overlay which shows everyone who has demigod started as "in game", add a status "searching for team mates" which everyone of your friends and if you set it maybe all of the channel can see" and you are fine). All in all it once again shows that stardock is a singleplayer centric company which can't really differenciate between important features and gimmicks.
Honestly, I don't know, I never needed a tool like that to find other players to team up with. My preferred medium to meet new people are forums anyway. (Now heres a shocker for ya!) Player skill should be at the top of that list but that wouldnt work for Demigod, the stats are totally broken. Grzi TBO! You have a good point there, Stardock had no experience with online games and if it hadn't been for the beta testers there wouldn't be a chat or friends list at all. I guess you guys here at Uber know better but I like Frogboy's idea with the 'recommended friends'. Maybe you guys can use it and come up with even a better system yourself. Lets take SupCom as an example. It would be nice if you could get suggestions for additional stuff like: Do you prefer custom games or ranked? Internet speed and gaming rig (try getting a lag free 4v4 or 5v5 with p2p - doh!) Do you use TS or Ventrilo? Preferred language(s) PS: Something that I have seen in many online games so far is the lack of help for newbies. In most games you just get thrown into the pit and you either swim or drown. I think thats the reason why most players never go online or only play 3 matches and leave for good. I think it would help a lot if you could come up with something that helps you early on to keep the frustration down.
I think that isn't as bad in FPS as it is in RTS ; especially in Team Games. If you are a new player in a 5v5 you 1) still will get some frags which is a lot more rewarding than lets say killing a few tanks in a RTS before getting utterly destroyed 2) even have a realistic chance of winning the game - not because of you but your teammates I always considered this the 2 main reasons why shooters seem to be more popular in multiplayer than RTS, but its just my personal impression
True, its better with FPS in most cases. Is the game a FPS? *hypnotizing stare* Is it neutrino? You can tell me...
Heh. I just realized I've been sifting through a thread that's around four months old at this point. Still feel like adding my two cents. I'm pretty sure one of the major reasons the multiplayer in FPSs is so much more popular than in just about any other genre has a lot to do with the near-instant gratification of FPSs. The goal of a multiplayer session is very obvious (Shoot the other things), the reward structure is very easy to get into (Yay! You shot the other thing!), it's easy to tell when things are going wrong (Oh noes, you got shot by the other things!)... I could go on. Strategy games (real-time or turn-based) on the other hand, even - what are they calling them these days? Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (DotA, Demigod, etc.), are much more complicated beasts. Tiered units and tech trees, resource management and exploration, economy, military and hero development are all staples of the genre, and all add something more for a new player to figure out. On top of this, the pace of these games is on a geological scale compared to most other genres. Sure a pair of experienced players can decide who the winner's going to be in 5-10 minutes if they really want to, but the point is the new player isn't experienced. As TBO said, new players usually recieve reenforcement to keep playing the game in small and disparate doses (and that's not even raising the question of whether or not the Monopoly-like design philosophy of taking 20 minutes to find out who's going to win, and four hours to win is a good one. Completely different topic, there). A tangentially related grip I have with most RTSs is the lack of substantial cooperative play. Granted, from what I've seen the genre has never really been cut out for it, but if someone could figure out how to get the team-centric feel of the players vs the environment that Left 4 Dead captured so perfectly in an RTS, I would be very interested to try it. One of the reasons I have trouble getting into the multiplayer of most RTSs is that I'd rather get trounced a couple times with my friends, rather than by them. So, really at this point, automated matching for games like Demigod or Supreme Commander seems to me like a bit of a superfluous - even wrongheaded - task for developers to take on. If the player-base has the patience to learn the ins and outs of such complicated systems they probably have the time to do what Jessep does and build their own communities. Maybe Ready to Play is a step towards helping players find one another, but using as a method of matching players?.. I'm not sold. Maybe a better solution lies in the completely opposite direction? Maybe someone should start thinking about how to re-imagine the RTS genre to be more multiplayer friendly, if a healthily multiplayer community is what they're after... Then again, that does fly in the face of the success Starcraft and DotA still see... Upon re-reading this post: Sorry about this novel of a brain dump. I hope I've cut it down enough to be readable.... I think I just needed to write something....
