Internet play requires improvement

[Quitch]

As I said in my last post, this game reminds me of Massive Assault, and it could do with borrowing the multiplayer method of that game.

Basically, the details of every online user were registered on a challenge list, and you could arrange it by rank or name and filter for only those players who had been active in the last seven days.

To get a game you would select a player, issue a challenge with your choice of map and side and then take your first turn. The next time that player logged on your challenge would appear in their list of on-going games, and they would then choose to accept or reject. If accepted they would see a record of your moves and then make theirs, sending the game back in a PBEM way, but via the central server.

In later releases you could issue a public challenge with your settings, which would then go onto the challenges board for acceptance by anyone who wished to take up the gauntlet.

You had the option of receiving e-mail notifications of any challenges (received or accepted).

To me, this method would seem ideal for this game. The lobby simply isn't busy enough to justify the existing format of challenging someone in the lobby, then sitting there while they take their turn, you would be much better off with a PBEM style, which takes advantage of your centralised server for challenges, viewing of stats etc.

I would urge you to download the multiplayer demo for one of the Massive Assault games just to poke around the online facilities. From Massive Assault Network onwards, I think they got it pretty spot on.

I would like to play this game online, but if it relies on the chance of bumping into someone in the lobby, then I'd say it's a pretty slim hope. The above method would work much better IMO, and you could still keep the option for a direct challenge in the lobby played in real-time.

I suspect it's not practical for this version, but should a sequel come about I would definately like to see multiplayer in this fashion.