Limited co-op multiplayer

Moncada · Post by **Moncada** » Tue, 12. Sep 17, 10:11

Adding multiplayer is one of the few things that would make me reconsider buying the game. Implementing multiplayer in some way is going to change the game and I dont want that.

I loathe the way that so many single-player games tacks on multiplayer in some form and change the game to accomodate it and dilute the single-player experience.

If they are going to make a multiplayer game I would rather like it to be a stand alone title that is built with that intent. I think that could be a fantastic experience to have in the X universe. I think the people asking for multiplayer has a pretty good idea of how it could make the game better.

I support the idea of multiplayer in the X universe I just don't want it in the same game.

trioxane4321 · Post by **trioxane4321** » Sat, 16. Sep 17, 03:48

this game would be one of the greatest ever sold if they could make it local host or wan multiplayer with free add drop for players to join with host for friends

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Sat, 16. Sep 17, 04:36

See this thread for an extensive discussion

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=396105

Edit: Thanks, Falcrack! Threads merged - Sparky

999jefro · Post by **999jefro** » Sun, 24. Sep 17, 00:16

Earth Ultimatum IV. wrote:I'd love to see this. At least some P2P co-op where a player joins your game on invite (or you join his) and you act as one of his crew members.

This has been my dream since X2, I don't think the X games should ever go massively multiplayer bias, but it would be awesome to have a feature to allow a friend to 'visit' my universe & inhabit one or more of my owned ships instead of an AI.

Although I think this may well remain a dream for the foreseeable future.

Vandragorax · Post by **Vandragorax** » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 16:37

Don't worry RAVEN.myst I, (and others) totally get what your point is here haha

Would absolutely love to see 'drop-in co-op' for 2 players (or more if possible, why not) but on the wishlist I fear it is too low in priority to ever happen. Perhaps if someone from Egosoft were to pick it up as a side-project in their own time and then it was integrated officially (with a little resource time from the rest of the company) it would happen but otherwise we might be waiting a while crossing our fingers

Who knows though, never say never!

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Tue, 26. Sep 17, 19:16

BlackDemon wrote: Would absolutely love to see 'drop-in co-op' for 2 players (or more if possible, why not) but on the wishlist I fear it is too low in priority to ever happen.

Yes, I am realistic enough to realize that it's not a very likely development, but I still dare to hope and even (without holding my breath or cramping up crossed fingers

) hope a little - as you say, "never say never"

(Incidentally, it occurred to me that the feature could additionally and optionally enable some parallel processing of CPU-intensive simulation aspects, with the host delegating some of the CPU load to the guest, so long as sharing the resulting data can be accomplished across network bandwidth - this aspect could be limited to LAN play only, perhaps, while the co-op without parallel coprocessing could be LAN/online. Of course, this would dramatically increase the complexity of implementation, but were it to be adopted could result in significant performance advantages for housemates/couples/whatever playing together under one roof.)

photoncody · Post by **photoncody** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 06:04

I not sure if anyone else has caught this yet.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png

Does this mean that Egosoft is testing Multiplayer for X4?

I'm kinda conflicted. I honestly don't know how Multiplayer would/will be handled in X4.

One things for sure. This sure isn't helping my hype for the game

I also put a poll for multiplayer or no. Answer it if you want

Lc4Hunter · Post by **Lc4Hunter** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 07:24

Yes, it was already noticed at the german forum but havn´t got any answer from ES-side

I also posted a screenshot of the menu into the Twitch-Stream-Feedback-Thread but people prefer discussing about jumpdrives

We already discussed that this is maybe just an useless option that was implemented while creating the menu and it wasn´t removed yet.
Or maybe multiplayer means something different like uploading statistics and so on.

I don´t think (and also hope) there will be a multiplayer. I can´t imagine the engine is ready for that (Netcode and other things).
There were some points that Bernd said in the past like "if a publisher would finance this, they would make a multiplayer".

I also think the current type of game is not suitable for muliplayer in many cases. The Universe has been designed for one player and to small for more then 1 (or maybe 2) players.

How could people play together? Like in an MMO? Coop? Classic Multiplayer? Coop and classic multiplayer seem not practicable because of the average playtime people have. And MMO is also not possible because the game had to be designed completely different then it is.

Sandalpocalypse · Post by **Sandalpocalypse** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 08:44

co-op would be very practical, mechanically. Players cooperate as members of the same faction with the same permissions. It would allow i.e. one player to manage a battle in RTS while the other flies a fighter against priority targets. In the Xcon stream they mentioned a system where if you give a ship an order and then hop into it that order will show up as a mission for you. So a player could even assign another player a mission in that fashion.

Even if one person devotes a lot more time to the game than another, it would still be easy for a friend to just hop in and adventure or help out with a task for a dedicated X-player.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 08:48

God, please, NO! If people want multiplayer space sims there's already Elite Dangerous, and who knows, by the time X4 comes out Star Citizen might be somewhere playable. (I'm joking, of course, we all know Star Citizen's never coming out

). Can't we have just one space sim that's single player only and hasn't had time wasted developing the multiplayer component?

Kitty · Post by **Kitty** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 08:55

This had a purpose: start one more thread on multiplayer.

Reprisal · Post by **Reprisal** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 09:39

Sandalpocalypse wrote:co-op would be very practical, mechanically. Players cooperate as members of the same faction with the same permissions. It would allow i.e. one player to manage a battle in RTS while the other flies a fighter against priority targets. In the Xcon stream they mentioned a system where if you give a ship an order and then hop into it that order will show up as a mission for you. So a player could even assign another player a mission in that fashion.

Even if one person devotes a lot more time to the game than another, it would still be easy for a friend to just hop in and adventure or help out with a task for a dedicated X-player.

This sounds all well and good from the perspective of the X player. But I can't see a person wanting to drop into a game of X and shoot some things. The combat has never been the best part of the series. If they want to drop in and just shoot something there are far better games suited to this kind of thing.

I just hope multiplayer doesn't detract from the single player experience, there's enough multiplayer games out there without turning every single player game into one.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 11:12

The photoncody thread merged with the other multiplayer in X4 poll.

Lc4Hunter · Post by **Lc4Hunter** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 11:15

Reprisal wrote:
Sandalpocalypse wrote:co-op would be very practical, mechanically. Players cooperate as members of the same faction with the same permissions. It would allow i.e. one player to manage a battle in RTS while the other flies a fighter against priority targets. In the Xcon stream they mentioned a system where if you give a ship an order and then hop into it that order will show up as a mission for you. So a player could even assign another player a mission in that fashion.

Even if one person devotes a lot more time to the game than another, it would still be easy for a friend to just hop in and adventure or help out with a task for a dedicated X-player.
This sounds all well and good from the perspective of the X player. But I can't see a person wanting to drop into a game of X and shoot some things. The combat has never been the best part of the series. If they want to drop in and just shoot something there are far better games suited to this kind of thing.

I just hope multiplayer doesn't detract from the single player experience, there's enough multiplayer games out there without turning every single player game into one.

Thats what i mean. Why should i join someones game and fly just a little fighter? Or a capship or a freighter or... When i play my own game i can handle whole fleets, build MY own empire and do whatever i want.
I don´t see the point how Coop should work or how it would make fun. Also the Multiplayer can´t work because peaple spend hundreds of hours into the game. If you play with one or more people together (maybe as concurrents?) you always have to be online at the same time. Sorry but this will not work for 95% of the players.

@Mod: it seems my reply to this was made while you merged the topics. Because i´m not able to find my post i replied here again. If you find the old one somewhere: Feel free to delete it. Thanks

Edit: Duplicate post deleted. X2-Illuminatus

Nikola515 · Post by **Nikola515** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 15:25

If it is multiplayer it will probably be like fighting arena or something like that. I don't think there would be any other way to play X games online because they are designed to be single player from the start...

g04tn4d0 · Post by **g04tn4d0** » Sun, 1. Oct 17, 17:05

P2P multiplayer would be great but it's not critical. So long as the single player mode is awesome, that's all I care about. Now, on with the EgoSoft method we've all known to love over the years:

1. New X game comes out! w00t!
2. Buy said game, ignore reviews.
3. Realize game is extremely buggy.
4. Wait 1.5 years from release and play something else.
5. Re-download patched game with extra DLCs and bonus material.
6. Enjoy final product for several years.

Mackan · Post by **Mackan** » Mon, 2. Oct 17, 05:46

I don't see a problem with basic drop-in/drop-out coop functionality with friends. There isn't much standing in the way of that in terms of gameplay, other than the "small" problem of sector/zone simulation. Coop would be "trivial" when all players inhabit the same zone, but with players splitting up it would be very taxing for the host suddenly having to simulate multiple game spaces in real time.

But with how coy egosoft have been on the subject and with the discovery of that menu option, it's an issue they seem to be looking to solve, like it or not. Though it doesn't seem to me that it's a functionality they are developing at the expense of the complexity of the simulation, otherwise I would think they would've officially revealed it from the get-go if the game was to be designed around it.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Mon, 2. Oct 17, 12:08

Mackan wrote:Coop would be "trivial" when all players inhabit the same zone, but with players splitting up it would be very taxing for the host suddenly having to simulate multiple game spaces in real time.

The host need not be a server - the system could be P2P with the host mediating and synchronizing. Furthermore, something I suggested somewhat upthread in one of my walls of text (

) if parallel processing can be harnessed, it could actually (theoretically - I imagine it could be quite tricky to implement) reduce load on the primary client.

Mackan · Post by **Mackan** » Tue, 3. Oct 17, 12:32

RAVEN.myst wrote:The host need not be a server - the system could be P2P with the host mediating and synchronizing. Furthermore, something I suggested somewhat upthread in one of my walls of text ( ) if parallel processing can be harnessed, it could actually (theoretically - I imagine it could be quite tricky to implement) reduce load on the primary client.

Ah I didn't even consider this option. Guess I'm just assuming it would be host based as that's somewhat easier to "hack" into an existing game.

It's tricky to solve either way I suppose. There's just so much going on at any given moment in the X games that a lot of stuff would have to be processed client-side regardless of solution.

Other physics-based multiplayer games with thousands of active actors and objects are often plagued by desync and poor performance but are designed in a way to accommodate this. Take ARMA for example, it allows piloting of aircraft at breakneck velocities, making it somewhat comparable to a spaceship setting, but the game rarely puts you in a situation where you have to precision navigate around other moving aircraft which mitigates the impact of desync somewhat. The X games are different stories.

It's an interesting subject but I can do nothing but speculate and conjecture how X4's engine would be able to handle a multiplayer setting. For all I know it might actually work pretty well. I mean, the fact that egosoft seem to seriously consider the feature and are showing clear interest might indicate that it's very much possible without too much work. If maybe not in X4 Foundations, we might actually see multiplayer be implemented in their future projects. I'm pretty excited about it.

HaradaTaro · Post by **HaradaTaro** » Sun, 29. Oct 17, 09:08

Old Topic but to me X game are SOLO game no multi. If you want multi go to Elite dangerous or Star Citizen

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Limited co-op multiplayer

Would You Like to see Multiplayer in some form in X4

X4 local multiplayer

Multiplayer Hinted in Livestream?