Should X be Multiplayer? (Poll) I wan't to make egosoft see how many people want this

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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Should X be multiplayer?

Yes
94
39%
No
146
61%
 
Total votes: 240

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow »

Sixhitter wrote:Why would the profits be halved by producing two games? I would have thought the more good products you have to offer the stonger your business becomes, that would be why you build more than one type of factory
i think you was missing the point.

he wasn't talking about make seperate games. But making one game with both single player and multiplayer in.

so theres only 1 game, but took twice as long to make as the single player and multiple will be quite different.

the longer it takes to make, the less profits the game has.
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Post by Nanook »

Sixhitter wrote:well I stand corrected then (possibly). I brought X2 and X3 at release and the blame for their early and buggy release states was implied to be the fault of the publishers as was the responsabilty of the problems encountered by starforce protection which seemed to me to indicate alot of investment from outside and not a game maker that had full control of its product.

Copy protection is added on after the fact by the publishers and has nothing to do with the game's development. X2 was actually 3+ years in development and most likely rushed out because Egosoft was running out of money (and perhaps the new-found publishers wanted it NOW). X3 was released in its condition per the reasons already given.
I still find this no reason not to have a discussion on how a multiplayer version may work.

It seems the discussion on Elite 4 and wether it will be made or remain vapour ware is ok on a forum for X sp but disscusion of what a multiplayer version of X may be or what it would add is not...
And who's saying we shouldn't have the discussion? Just because the majority don't agree with your multiplayer stance, doesn't equate to saying you can't discuss it at all! :roll: I'd say the many pages of this thread show just the opposite, wouldn't you? :P
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Post by Sixhitter »

cycrow

I think he missed my point. I have no misconception that my post was no more than a discussion prompter on how good an X online game could be.

I am not a producer, coder just a fan and not misguided enough to think Ego will even read the post let alone shout eureka sixhitter has got it but to be told that it would be the end of everything X and how it just cant be done by people no more skilled than I will always bring out the debater in me lol

If only more peeps had joined I could have been a mass debater which I admit I enjoy too.

anyhoo time for bed have fun

added
No nanook this thread is originally a poll, my post had nothing to do with polls as I said it was just a base for discussion as is the one on Elite 4 but my post was moved within 2 minutes which really negated any chance of a meaningfull debate. Seeing as tho I had taken the time to think about and post a fairly long idea by no means fleshed out I do get the impression that talk about multiplayer is frowned upon.
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Post by Nanook »

Cycrow wrote:
Sixhitter wrote:Why would the profits be halved by producing two games? I would have thought the more good products you have to offer the stonger your business becomes, that would be why you build more than one type of factory
i think you was missing the point....
Boy, was he ever! :roll:

It's simple economics. Say you have a game development company with 10 employees. And say they can create a quality SP or MP game in 3 years.** And say they have enough funds to do it. Just how are they going to produce TWO quality games, both SP and MP, in that same period? Hire 10 more people? Gonna cost twice as much. Cut the quality? Probably sell a lot less. Take six years for both? Not enough funds. Forego ALL sleep? Nah, probably not enough left to make a difference. :mrgreen: So they concentrate on one type of game and forget the other.

The poll results show that the vast majority want a single player X game, not a multiplayer version. Of course, all this is moot anyway, since Egosoft has said time and again that the only multiplayer game they'll ever produce will be X-Online, if and when they ever get enough funding for it.


**Note that it doesn't matter whether the games are separate or combined, they're still two different animals, and thus need the same amount of development time either way, give or take.
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Post by silentWitness »

fiksal wrote: Are you against anything 'multiplayer'?

Never played anything with your friends?
My friends don't even play computer games... This is my vice...
giskard wrote: Besides, theres a large group of traders here that have formed or once formed an alliance for protective reasons (in case XOU ever appeared) that are also better than most in a fighter too.
Hehe... you know I joked about that way back when... I never expected it to actually come to anything... and then it did... :roll:
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Post by esd »

I do get the impression that talk about multiplayer is frowned upon.
Not by Egosoft or the moderators. There's probably an air of "again?" amongst some users, but it's certainly not frowned on. If you're referring to threads being merged, locked or whatever, this is simply keeping the forums tidy. Issues about that should be directed to the moderator in question, or an administrator, by PM.

While it's not frowned on, it's obviously not exactly popular amongst the players - look at the poll results.
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Post by Merroc »

May i remind you that most of you are looking at an X multiplayer the way X3 is now. Of course that wont work, the gameplay isnt suited for that. However the basis is, there would just need to change some (ok, maybe a bit more) things.
And im sure that half of those who said "No" will play it anyway if its done properly... (MMOG then).
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Post by Tuxu »

Cycrow wrote:
Sixhitter wrote:
the longer it takes to make, the less profits the game has.
But if the game is free the impact it has would be greater in the online community and it circulation would grow to a proportion that the problem will not be how to gain money, the problem would now be how to maintain it servers.

It will have more users which can be the audiance of the adds for the next game egosoft or anybody launches, It can creates a new comunity from an existing one.
It will work, that's how steam is working. Every time I launch HL2 I get bunch of crapy adds, did I pay good money to see adds? NO.

That's part of the reason it angers me to see that EGOSOFT is selling X3 on steam. EGOSOFT is blindly giving away it's natural audiance to steam.

I hope it would not become a habbit and that it's just the way out of a cash deficit. It's not nice to see a lion on a leash when it should reign supreme...

don't get me wrong, Staem is a great copy protection and I ca live with it. I just dont think it is the best thing that can happen here in relation of managing a market share of potential buyers and comunity.

If there is a company with such content who can make a differance it's the holder of X-universe, Egosoft. they should realy light that torch.
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Post by euclid »

Playing HL2 myself I know what you mean. However there is the dvd version of X3 and AFAIK nobody is forced to buy the steam version.

Cheers Euclid
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Post by Tuxu »

I would gladly have my thumb chop off rather then have the "bonuses" that came with the original DVD, I'll see if i can import to israel the ENLIGHT edition with the Bala-gi pack ver 2.0 stuff...
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Post by efernal »

there would be a few ways around this.
one they make it an mmorpg and house the servers themselves makeing people pay a monthly fee.
second the pull a freelancer by letting players control the servers while they run the a server that all the player servers connect to makeing a gobal list in wich players then may choose a server thet best suits them.
third they use gamespy to do the second option at very little cost to them in terms of running a gobal server.

Im for it as long as there is a way to to still have a single player game.

thats why when you check out freelancer it is still thriving. there is a sp game and the players dont have to pay anything to play mp.
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Post by Computertech »

It would be interesting having muliplayers, but there would be a few issues. One would be having players wiping out other just for the heck if it. Or cheats that destroys the other guys "fun". Setting one up to minimize cheating and possibly games users cannot "harm each other" or a game set just for player vs player. Not really an easy task. How complex the game is, better to keep it as a single player.
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Post by AdmiralTigerclaw »

A whole lot of developement would have to be done and considered in the 'from scratch' department.

First of all:

1: What happens when you 'DIE' because whether you are a pirate, an argon trader, a boron pacifist, or a Khaak aggressor... someone, somewhere, is going to drop a missile up your exhaust and blow you to pieces. Does your ship respawn? Is it gone for good? Do you come back in a cheapo space version of a tow-truck?

2: How are player assets handled? I don't mean, control, that can be worked with through the existing commands. What I mean is, what happens when a player logs out? Can it be considered fair to leave the game to go out of town for three days, not knowing if, while you're out, some pirate raiding convoy may come along and nuke your factories/ships? Or do player assets exist in isolated special 'player ownly' mini-sectors dedicated to be their home base? (Which would remove the growing living feel of the game universe...) Or do they all just vanish when the player leaves?

3: This brings us to the Universe itself. Asside from being unquestionably larger than the X3 game map... How would such a universe be set up? You'll have any number between five and five thousand players logged in plus NPCs. Obviously, it's going to be a mess if you don't work on it.

4: Economics... the game incorporating hundreds to thousands of real people making intelligent decisions on what to do, where to do it, etc... You're going to have to greatly expand the economic pool to include HUNDREDS of wares of all types. Starting with more diversified resources ranging from different forms of energy, to raw minerals, and ending with greater more complex end products that utilize far more than just. The use of nebulae and asteroid fields would be a little more complex then 'fly up-scan-mine'... Collecting resources would be paramount to so well scattered as not to run out in three weeks of server run time.

5: And then there's factories. Stations that in themselves, are entire cities. (Anyone who's flown into the pleasure complex gets my drift.) They way they are now, would end up in player disgruntlement... First with how easy they are to get. A factory should be more than 'oh good spot! Plenty of dough, BUILD!' If you build a factory, there should be a process that takes time and effort. Perhaps, depending on location, you have to get permits, and in case of weapons, liscenses to manufacture... Construction time, resource collecting, perhaps even actually hauling 'modules' around and building the factory yourself. Then on TOP of that, once you have built it, you don't just produce... you actually have to RUN your factory. That would be sim in itself. Gathering an NPC/Player workforce, factory system performance require vast quantities of the greatly increased wares out there. Policing your docks, or hiring other Players onto your team to police your docks themselves. Monitoring trade between players on your station. Prevention of theft, shipjacking, or even smuggling when two players decide to dock and trade illegal wares on your 'perfectly legal' solar power plant. Perhaps stations would be so complex to the point that no SINGLE player can successfully operate one efficiently. And that's just the amount of thinking that has to go in for ONE factory.

6: What about the big-dogs of the game network with vast complexes and a veritable fortune at their disposal? What kind of details do you think would have to be applied to a player who's got the equivilant force of a two-week long X3 game in this far more complex online universe? How many real players would actually be operating a complex? How do you make it easy enough for players to realisticly start playing intent on creating a fab complex or a small empire, without dotting the entire universe with mini-empires?

There's a good six to eight months of full payed software developement that needs a budget with those six points alone. And we haven't even discussed the combat system, NPC behaviors, or physical model designs yet... Let alone music, sound effects, dialogue, visual effects, flight dynamics and a debugging crew.


If anyone of you who are voting yes in this little pole happen to read this in whole, I suggest you think about all that, then come back... and when you do.

1: Offer your entire life savings to egosoft to fund this venture you want to play so much.
2: Get a board going and discuss it IN DETAIL on the functionality and balance of how everything will function. An XOU would be like a Mod to the Tenth power.
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Post by Tracker001 »

No.
It's bad enough keeping my sand box in order without some body comming along and takeing out more frighters than the pirats and the Kha'ak do all ready.

Edit: Interesting results.
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Re: Should X be Multiplayer? (Poll) I wan't to make egosoft see how many people want

Post by blazer1121 »

it has never been a question of whether people want multiplayer or not. The issue has always been about about the time and cost of development, and finding a backer prepared to put that kind of money up front.

I just wanted to make it clear where the majority lies. If you go to the modding areas there is a lot of talk of wanting multiplayer, if you go to some of the X-Universe areas some of the threads have a lot of talk about making X multiplayer. But then other people say no they don't want multiplayer. So I just wanted it to be clear on what the numbers are.
It would be better if as many people as possible voted. That way we would get a better view. :)
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Post by fiksal »

Merroc wrote:May i remind you that most of you are looking at an X multiplayer the way X3 is now. Of course that wont work, the gameplay isnt suited for that. However the basis is, there would just need to change some (ok, maybe a bit more) things.
And im sure that half of those who said "No" will play it anyway if its done properly... (MMOG then).
exactly... if it'd be done properly - then it'd be a good game to play :)
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Post by Kurt Shur'Tugal »

online probly wouldnt work without a few thousand sectors and ships moving 10-20x the sped they do now because u would have literally millions of players in there, can u imagine how much bigger the universe would need to be to handle this, F*ck thousands of secotrs wed need probly 20-30k sectors to handle that many players, not to mention your empires probly wouldnt last the night as our player pirates would use your UT's for $$ and other players would gang up on you, can u imagine the carnage, there would be capital ship duel in every sector, stations blowing up everywhere (all of a sudden i suddenly want this to happen :D ) as ppl with no care about collateral dmg blow everything up in their path, not only that but we wouldnt be able to mod the games, as it would make u more powerful then the other players, newbies would find it almost impossible to play without falling prey to someone else


so heres my idea, make there be 3 game modes

1. single player (scriptable, moddable, plot line)
2. LAN (moddable, no scripts in game as ppl would just cheat using script editor)

3. for those of u who like massive online battles. a massive war between all races where u choose a side and get a ship for it, as u kill more ppl ur rank increases allowing u to get bigger and better ships and upgrade them too, with a log on and log off feature (not usable in battles) so that u dont get killed while u sleep. it would basically be a giant tournament play to c which race has won at the end of the year, game then resets and everyone starts at rank 1 again.

comments anyone??
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Post by Syndrome »

Should X be multiplayer? It's a good question. I voted yes but I think most newbis would hate it. You should be aware however that X will eventually be multiplayer. If you read up on it you will find that ever since X BTF, Ego have been working up to a massive online game.
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Post by nailz45 »

everyone is talking like an online multiplayer is the only option. why not make a LAN multiplayer mode. with that you wouldnt have to have a huge server system (well you could if you wanted). and you could play your normal game but with only a few extra players. you would load the same saved game.

it definitely wouldn't cost as much to develop as an online server.
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Post by CBJ »

nailz45 wrote:everyone is talking like an online multiplayer is the only option. why not make a LAN multiplayer mode.
No, they're not. People have mentioned this numerous times already.
nailz45 wrote:it definitely wouldn't cost as much to develop as an online server.
The difference in cost would not be sufficient to counter the fact that this would generate approximately zero additional income to cover the cost of development.

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