new to the community

[Sammas]

Apparently the game has a built in lobby for online play - so I'd imagine it won't be too hard to find opponents.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Yeah, we spent a lot of time on the online lobby, trying to make it as easy for our customers (and us!) to find and start games against online opponents.

The one thing I'm worried about is critical mass -- i.e. if we can't get to a point where at least a couple of people are hanging out in the lobby at pretty much all times, then people will log on, see nobody else is logged in, and then log off.

Especially right now when the game is relatively new, you might have to camp out in the lobby a little while to find an opponent, but if you play in windowed mode and alt-tab, you can be doing other things while waiting...

Hopefully we'll eventually get enough people that own the game and like playing online that finding opponents will be much easier.

-Hiro_Antagonist

[Hells_Kitchen_Gamer]

I'm in the lobby, but it's empty. Where are the people?

In the future, it would be better if people were ranked based on whether they win or lose they way it's done if you're playing Yahoo Chess for example. This would make every game important and also ensure that you play against people of your own skill level.

Of course, right now, I'd settle for there being just one person.

[Sammas]

Well, it only shipped recently. My copy was on order before release, and it hasn't arrived yet, so maybe give it a couple of days. I'll definitely be on there, although I'll familiarise myself with all the races first.

Also, Shrapnel isn't known for its huge marketing campaigns, so word of mouth and a few player reviews couldn't hurt.

[jeffr]

I plan on trying MultiPlayer after I get a little more experience with the game. I'm currently playing the campaign, where I'm up to the Gnomes.

[Hells_Kitchen_Gamer]

jeffr said:
I plan on trying MultiPlayer after I get a little more experience with the game. I'm currently playing the campaign, where I'm up to the Gnomes.

I would encourage people to not worry about not having experience and just dive into the internet play. The person you wind up playing against won't have much experience either.

It seems to me that the real point of this game is being able to play against human beings. That's the reason why the map is so small, so you can finish a game against a human in an hour.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Hells_Kitchen_Gamer said:
In the future, it would be better if people were ranked based on whether they win or lose they way it's done if you're playing Yahoo Chess for example. This would make every game important and also ensure that you play against people of your own skill level.

We had originally planned on doing a USCF-style rating/ranking system, but eventually realized that system has a number of shortcuts, especially where customers only have access to 1 purchased account.

In a rating/ranking system, half of the players will suddenly be at a ratings disadvantage (below the starting point) after one game. On average, half of the players will remain below that starting point. This is a major morale hit to many players, and many players will simply stop playing if they feel their rating is hosed.

It's not as big of a deal on Yahoo Chess, beacuse any player can recreate an account once they feel their skills have improved and want to start over.

So we have decided to follow the trend of other major/popular strategy games and use an experience system. People who usually win will advance much more quickly, but even a player who has trouble winning will feel a sense of advancement rather than punishment.

I understand that many players like rating/ranking systems, and we're among them. In fact, a few years ago we built a USCF-style rating/ranking web application for counter-strike clans.

But when it came down to it, we felt our customers would be best served, and want to play more games, with this system. And that's in everyone's best interest. =)

-Hiro_Antagonist

[Hells_Kitchen_Gamer]

On the one hand, I did give up on online chess once I realized how much I sucked at it. But on the other hand, I doubt that I would have been more likely to stick with it if it used an experience system like Land of Legends.

The rating system has several advantages:

(1) You get to play people of your own skill level. The game isn't as enjoyable for either player if there is a big mismatch in skill level.

(2) It makes every game important because you don't want your rating to go down. When you can just quit a game without losing anything, some people become disrepsectful and just log out because some real world concern comes up.

I think that the people who will find this game will be sophisticated enough to undertand the purpose of the USCF style rating sytem. It works very well for the games at Yahoo or Pogo. I would want to play more games with the USCF style rating system.

I'm not sure exactly how the Yahoo type ratings are calculate, but they seem to go up very fast if you start winning games. My chess rating was low not becuase I got hosed from the very beginning, but rather because I was only able to win against other really lousy players.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Hells_Kitchen_Gamer said:
(1) You get to play people of your own skill level. The game isn't as enjoyable for either player if there is a big mismatch in skill level.

Well, if/when we get to the point where we have enough people playing online that people can afford to be picky about who they play against, I'll be much more likely to implement this sytem.

The problem is that with any indie game, it's very hard to find people to play against people online with. We created a lobby to help grease those wheels, but if you look at a lot of CCG's and other smaller strategy games, it's not exactly Warcraft III or MSN or Yahoo. Those services have hundreds/thousdands of people in the lobby at a time. But games like LOL are very lucky to have even a dozen people online at a time, just because of the generally small number of sales.

I think it's also worth pointing out that the recent major strategy games (Warcraft III, Generals, etc.) using experience/level systems. Once you really start looking at it from a development/deployment perspective, they have a surprising amount going for them. =)

-Hiro_Antagonist

[Sammas]

Price point is a bit rough. Not so much for me because my currency is strong against the US dollar, but I still had to think twice.

If you offered digital downloads, you could cut out fixed overheads (CD printing, shipping etc), and then price better for the market, taking into account online player satisfaction (ie. half price, double sales may be equal revenue but the expanded player base would make it a better option).