Well I finally was able to complete a 2 - Player Game against 2 AI and several minor races 18 hour game over several weeks. Overall it was a good game play experience, however, with that being said there are some things that still need to be worked out. I hope Stardock reviews this and fixes some of the larger issues (if not all) and takes some suggestions into consideration. I know there isn't a huge volume of players playing multiplayer but, some of that may have to do with the current state of the game in a multiplayer situation.
Starting
As mentioned in other posts, starting a game up can be problematic. This is especially true if each human players have many custom factions to potentially add to the game. Below is a list of a few problems and suggestions.
Issues (mentioned in other posts)
- Any time a new faction is added, the lobby defaults to the top of the list. This can be a pain when adding several factions and scrolling through 10's if not 100's of factions.
- Any time a human player changes their faction or status the list defaults to the top of the list. Same issue as above.
- Human players are unable to see many of the map settings either in lobby or prior to joining lobby. This is another pain to have to go through with each player as they join what type of game they are playing.
- Human players have problems selecting factions with 3 or more human players. They will appear to not have the correct faction for other players in game even though to them it appears correct.
- Some human players are unable to see other human players in the lobby with 3 or more players present.
Suggestions
- Have a pop-up box (text box) appear when hovering over the game in the lobby with the more detailed game description.
- Have more detailed information on the main game lobby.
- Allow map changes from lobby as other human players make suggestions on game type versus having to exit out and restart game lobby. (This would be similar to other multiplayer games out there.)
- (Most likely not possible) In Main lobby see active games and have an option to request to join game in progress. Maybe even be able to see mini-map of that game to know if it's something worth putting the request out.
Game Play
Game play in general is okay. There are several obvious issues with no awesome way to make them better but, once again here are several issues and suggestions on the multiplayer game play.
Issues
- Some games after playing for over 100 turns start taking a long time to load. This happens when even joining the lobby for the second or extra players. Can take up to 8 minutes.
- After exiting lobby to start game some times the map takes a while to load, especially for more than 2 players.
- In game text between players bleed over to previous players text.
- Human players can see other human players rally points.
- Stuck turn issues (happens frequently the longer the game goes on. This can be game breaking.
- Don't know if really an issue, however, there should be an option to avoid culture flipping planets of team players. Example if human player A and human player B are on the same team from game start, human A shouldn't be able to culture flip human B's planets.
- Teamed AI should be more aggressive sharing techs/resources when on a team with each other. There should be almost no value assigned between team mates techs. This gives huge advantage to the human team versus the AI team.
Suggestions
- Loading status bar in both the loading of the game into the lobby for other human players (so that way the player knows the game is not stuck.) That and when the game is actually loading. (I suggested this in past and, they said it was a good idea but, haven't heard anything.)
- Your turn sound is back, however, blends in with the rest of the game sounds. This would be nice if it was a little different similar to the beep beep from Alpha and if it was louder than the rest of the background noise/clicks.
- Have a pop-up notice to player when it's there turn and they are in any other screen other than the main map. (sometimes with the long turn times the human players are exploring other things in the game such as diplomacy/ship designer/Planet layout, Mercenaries, ect...) There is no clear indicator that it is now your turn when in those screens.
- Have a text to other human player in the diplomacy (trade) screen. This way the human players can request technology, resource, planet, ect... versus going to steam chat outside of game or exiting out all together and then going back in.
- Put in an option in multiplayer games for a turn timer. This would be set by the host when starting the game and, could be changed/adjusted either from restart of game or in game itself. Have this on top of any screen so the player knows how much time remaining in their turn.
- Have a spectator mode, where a human player can watch the game with FOW off. This way if another player wanted to watch the game they could, this would be especially nice after defeat.
I think that is it for now. Please feel free to discuss my suggestions, or add additional thoughts 