PBW, First Impressions.. (Multiplayer discussion)

[David E. Gervais]

Ok, I did it, I fell victim to the perils (and joys) of PBW. And my first experience started out with a bang. (aka: a PBW-Athon) lots of fun to be had for sure but there were some bitter-sweet leftover feeling about this method of play.

BTW: Last night's PBW-Athon is now being continued as a 'regular' PBW game.

I can't help but feel that the way the game handles this PBW multi-player feature needs some work. (and I'm going to let Aaron know a few ideas I have concerning this.) Having the game 'Close' each time the player 'Ends-turn' forcing me to relaunch the game at every turn does not sit well with me.

I think there needs to be some work done here.

1) The game should not close at the end of each turn. (this way the player could overview his/her empire while waiting for the next PBW turn to be available.)
2) It would be nice to have a 'send PBW Info' button within the game. (of course the player would need to configure the required info like server name, email addresses etc.)
3) The player sould be notified in the game when the next turn is ready and have a 'Get next PBW turn' button/indicator.
4) A better method than feeding/compiling/distributing 'save games' is needed. (there must be a way to only send the 'changed' data and not the whole save game each time for processing.) If the 'packet' size was small enough, then many, many more turns could be played in a relitively short time.
5) It would also be very nice if 'encounters' were handled in real-time.

I'm sure I'll think of more stuff, but these points were IMHO the major issues I had with the PBW gaming system.

Now don't think that I would prefer that SE be real-time, because I don't, but when playing a PBW-Athon and it sometimes takes longer to send/recieve info than to actually play your turn, some speed improvements will go a long way to making this a more enjoyable game experience.

So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Have a few suggestions of your own? (Please keep your ideas/suggestions targeted on the PBW/Multiplayer aspect of the game. Who knows perhaps some stuff will make it's way into SE5.)

Cheers!

[ January 18, 2004, 18:59: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]