SP and MP Poll

[tromper]

While I agree with Stryke11 and Lingchih completely, I also very much enjoy playing MP despite some folks blessing to kingdom come and/or rushing new people, drunk people, and those with crapster starting positions. Being knocked out early isn't an intellectual insult or anything as far as I'm concerned - it's a chance for you to go out in, say, role playing flames. Or your element of choice. I also think it's great fun to try 'different' strategies in MP, because often the lack of cookie-cutter actions you may do confound others. Usually for ill, but hey. Sometimes it works out. SP games don't cause me to particularly laugh, cry, or defenestrate myself while wearing an upside down apron and tinfoil shoes.

MP games do.

[Saulot]

You must live on the first floor.

I play mostly SP, though I do occasionally enjoy a nice hotseat game. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is also good for hotseat games.
Even though I've been rather curious about trying more serious mp, I'm somewhat anxious about normal pbem because it essentially forces you to play once a day or once every other day. By having such a necessary schedule, I feel like it might take the fun out of it for me. (Sometimes I feel like playing for 6 hours straight, sometimes not at all for the whole week.) Perhaps one day my curiousity will overcome my trepidation.

[llamabeast]

Mostly I actually like the fixed schedule of MP, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, if I really want to play lots, I can't. This stops me using up huge amounts of time on Dominions when I get addicted. Recently unfortunately I have got around this by first working on my server, and now organising games and modding. But still the principle is there, and also I think it kind of prevents burnout (I tend to play SP games to death by playing them too much then suddenly getting sick of them).

Secondly, I find that whenever I play Dominions SP I end up rushing my turns, then I get annoyed at playing well, then I give up. In MP I may also rush my turn depending on my mood, but the 'End turn' button isn't half so alluring so it's less of a problem. Even if I do submit my turn quickly, I then often have a genius idea while walking somewhere/cleaning my teeth or something, then will come back and change my orders. I find this very pleasing. Obviously this whole point is all because of a lack of SP discipline on my part, but anyway that's what I find.

By the way, I never really feel there's any 'cookie cutter' stuff going on. Maybe there is, but it's not obvious. I feel like I make up my strategies from scratch, and often adapt as I go along. I guess the trouble is that vicious cookie cutter strategies like F9W9 Vans or E9N9 Niefel Giants (aaargh!) get more mention on the forums than the countless more interesting things going on, because they are so very annoying (I've never faced Vans, but boy do those giants annoy me).

[Saxon]

Interesting results. I think they make a compelling argument that single player is pretty important to the community and, to be blunt, deserves a bit more respect.

At the time of this posting, 52% of players are predominantly single player. That is a big piece of the community. Only 11% do not touch single player at all, so I think it is fair to say the single player part of the game is important.

What else do we see? Fully 76% of people have a go at multiplayer, even if it is not their main form of play. That is also interesting and shows that multiplayer is also a critical part of the game. As I said in a separate post, this is a game of two halves and both need respect.

Could these results be skewed? Of course, this is not a random sample by any means. On poster has suggested that single players tend to lurk more and would be under-represented. On the other hand, I did not include Hot Seat play in the poll, so perhaps we don’t have a full picture of play patterns. I would guess that Hot Seat players would consider that play as multiplayer and vote appropriately, but perhaps they abstained.

To summarize, both SP and MP are important to the game and the community. To get on my soapbox, the community has many levels of skill and knowledge. Respect for a person posting needs to be earned through demonstrated knowledge and quality debating of points. Respect for SP, and MP, as a form of play, should be automatic.

[quantum_mechani]

Saulot said:
You must live on the first floor.

I play mostly SP, though I do occasionally enjoy a nice hotseat game. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is also good for hotseat games.
Even though I've been rather curious about trying more serious mp, I'm somewhat anxious about normal pbem because it essentially forces you to play once a day or once every other day. By having such a necessary schedule, I feel like it might take the fun out of it for me. (Sometimes I feel like playing for 6 hours straight, sometimes not at all for the whole week.) Perhaps one day my curiousity will overcome my trepidation.

Committing to a long term can be a pain, you might want to give single session or 'blitz' MP games a try if you can find the players. Formerly I would have recommended the dominions IRC channel to find them but the pool of players has mostly dried up at least for now.

[Sombre]

Even without playing a blitz, if you play with a small number of other players who have enough free time, you can get turns done pretty quick. You can also play on quite small maps like Silent Seas.

[Gandalf Parker]

Real blitzes can be great but you might have to arrange them where you are. Get friends hooked on Dominions. Then you can get games that process every 5 minutes for a whole day worth of gaming.

On here the closest you can get to that is to pre-arrange to host a game and declare that the players need to commit ahead of time to being available something like 5am to 9pm on Saturday (be sure to say WHOSE 5am you are referring to, what location on earth or time zone you mean). Setting the game to host every XX minutes even if the turns arent all in can be fun also.

If you use SoloPlay for only testing purposes then you might want to look at the mini-map battle simulator example. There are many threads about it. Here is one link...
Units on the Battle Simulator

[Saxon]

Bump.

There are a number of new folks on the forum and I thought it would be interesting to see if their input would have an impact on the results.

[vfb]

Well, I need to revise my answer. How do I undo my response to the poll? I played more MP at first. And got killed fast. Then I played more SP. Now I play mostly MP again. And still get killed, but slower .

[capnq]

vfb said:How do I undo my response to the poll?

AFAIK, you don't. There isn't any way to change a vote here once it's cast.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a Web poll anywhere that allowed you to change your vote after submitting it.