Multiplayer Manifesto

#1

Multiplayer is one of the key features for many of the games we play. Sure we can play against the AI, but there is something about playing against another person that is so much more satisfying. (Insert your own allusion about playing with yourself and playing with others.) A person will try different strategies and can be unpredictable in ways that the AI just cannot replicate.

Yet, multiplayer seems to be overlooked by some developers. And when games are reviewed, often times the reviewer just says it does or doesn’t have online play. I’ve been thinking about what makes a great online multiplayer game. Here are the major features and a few nice to have features; some are more important than others depending on the game. Rating a game for online play is mostly objective because the app will ether have the feature or it will not. This is different from reviewing a game.

Nine Major Features:
Asynchronous – You take your turn non-realtime.
Notifications – The app notifies you when it is your turn.
App badge – The app badge shows you that it is your turn. I think this is more important than notifications which can be missed.
Buddy list – You can have a list of buddies you like to play.
Replay/ log – There is some way to see what other players have done or there is a log of play.
Game end – You see how the game ended.
Unfinished game – How the app handles a player dropping out: you win, AI replacement, the game fails.
Stability of servers – How well the online player system works: poor, fair, good. Poor is when games get dropped early or you cannot connect to games. Good is when everything works as it should. Fair is in between.
Ease of switching between games/ getting online – How easy is it to switch between several online games. Good, fair, poor.

Other nice features:
Player ranking – ELO and/ or overall ranking.
Player rating – The game somehow rates players that drop out of games.
Game filtering – Allows the player to filer the various expansions.
Size of online community – How many other players are out there?
Online and local play – Can you have two players on one device playing against others online?
Online and AI play – Can you play online and with AI?
Chat – Can you chat while playing?

Please rate some of the games you like so others can be aware of games that have a great online experience. Just copy and paste this part of the post. I must admit there are more features than I originally thought.

Game Name:
Number of players:
Asynchronous:
Notifications:
App badge:
Buddy list:
Replay/ log:
Game end:
Unfinished game:
Stability of servers:
Ease of switching:
Player ranking:
Player rating:
Game filtering:
Size of online community:
Online and local play:
Online and AI play:
Chat:
Comments/ additional features:

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Multiplayer Manifesto
#2

Game Name: Ascension
Number of players: 2-4
Asynchronous: yes
Notifications: yes
App badge: yes
Buddy list: yes
Replay/ log: replay
Game end: yes
Unfinished game: win
Stability of servers: good
Ease of switching: good
Player ranking: yes
Player rating: no
Game filtering: time and players
Size of online community: huge – see https://ascensiongame.com/board/viewforum.php?f=9
Online and local play: no
Online and AI play: no
Chat: no
Comments/ additional features: Great online experience

#3

Game Name: Patchwork
Number of players: 2
Asynchronous: 2
Notifications: yes
App badge: yes
Buddy list: yes
Replay/ log: replay/ no log
Game end: yes
Unfinished game: win
Stability of servers: good
Ease of switching: good
Player ranking: yes
Player rating: no
Game filtering: N/A
Size of online community: huge
Online and local play: N/A
Online and AI play: N/A
Chat: yes
Comments/ additional features: The app attempts to match you with another player of similar ranking.

#4

Game Name: Cthulhu Realms
Number of players: 2
Asynchronous: yes
Notifications: yes
App badge: yes
Buddy list: no
Replay/ log: replay/ log
Game end: yes
Unfinished game: win
Stability of servers: good
Ease of switching: good
Player ranking: sort of – number of wins
Player rating: no
Game filtering: N/A
Size of online community: good
Online and local play: N/A
Online and AI play: N/A
Chat: no
Comments/ additional features: The replay is a bit fast, but there is a log. Overall a great multiplayer experience.

#5

Game Name: Potion Explosion
Number of players: 2-4
Asynchronous: yes
Notifications: yes
App badge: yes
Buddy list: yes
Replay/ log: no
Game end: yes
Unfinished game: ? I think it just fails
Stability of servers: good
Ease of switching: good
Player ranking: no
Player rating: no
Game filtering: N/A
Size of online community: small
Online and local play: no
Online and AI play: yes
Chat: no
Comments/ additional features: Most of the time you cannot see the other player’s moves, only under certain conditions can you see them. The buddy list is the same one from other Asmodee/ DOW games, so that is great. When creating an open online game, other players must join before closing the app, otherwise the game disappears.

The app has been updated to improve the online play. A few more improvements and this will be great.

#6

Ascension does have App badges.

Only issue is that it doesn’t sync between devices.

If you have game on phone & tablet, badge on your phone but you do your turns on your tablet, the badge won’t go away without re-entering the game.

#7

great compendium.
one suggestion for another category:
private games with friends
not at all? :-1::-1::-1: (:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:)
only by GC friendslist :-1::-1: (bad bad choice. outdated friendslists. no way to add new friends)
only by ingame buddy list :crossed_fingers: (depends totally on how easy/hard it is to add new friends. Playdek= super! other games= meeh)
iMessage invites :wave: (shaky. not everyone’s taste. THE new standard apple is aiming at? did anybody at apple think about ANYTHING AT ALL when breaking GC?? apple’s way of “this is for the players!”)
password protected :+1::+1::+1: (simple and elegant universal crossplatform solution. totally independent from whatever apple/android systems)

#8

Private games should be on the list.

I’ll have to add it. I think the ingame buddy list is the best because you can invite the players but it really does depend upon how easy it is to add new friends. This is one of main reasons I’ve not upgraded to iOS 10. (Not seeing a compelling reason to upgrade, and I don’t like losing GC).

You make a good point about password protected games though. You just have to post the password somewhere and interested players can join.

#9

and for games with friends that won’t be a problem :blush:
very well suited for SP/website tournaments too.

btw really any difference for GC functionality on iOS 8 or 9?
can you still add new friends to the GC friendslist?
GC friendslist is not gone on 10, but we can’t open GC nor add new friends.
so pretty useless sooner or later.
the Stone Age tournament had to be cancelled because of this mess.

#10

I can try to add new friends to the GC friend list, but I don’t recall if any have accepted. I thought in iOS 10 in the Settings you could add/ accept new GC friends. I’m not sure since I haven’t upgraded.

It is dissappointing that the GC functionality was cut. It seemed like a promising way to enable multiplayer.

#11

Fluxx and Penny Arcade still use GameCenter for online play.

They also support inviting a GameCenter friend from within the app. So if you meet someone to play a game, and click on their profile, you can invite them to join your friend list. I’m not sure how they would accept the invite, but maybe there’s a workaround here.

#12

This is an interesting topic, and one that is obviously near and dear to a lot of hearts here. After all, as a group, we have a lot more interest in the ins and outs of multiplayer than, say, a forum of match-3 fanatics.

I don’t have a ton of interest in copying and pasting stuff, but I’ll add some thoughts on the categories. First, I think notifications and app badge should just be combined; they are essentially the same thing. As long as a game can communicate the fact that it is your turn, does it really matter how the information gets there? Plus, the Notifications Center in iOS really is pretty good and improves with every major update (especially considering how bad it used to be).

Next, I have two more categories that are pretty important to me … honestly, I’m kind of surprised they aren’t mentioned. First is starting a game. You’d think it would always be easy, but that’s not the case. The poster child for this in Neuroshima Hex — a game that should have about 10 active threads here, yet has none. Why? Because no one has half an hour to try to get a game started.

A couple of years ago, over at That Site That Used To Be Good, I posted the results of a casual experiment comparing how easy it was to start a game in two popular strategy-game apps. The results:

Lost Cities: one step to send an invite
N. Hex: THIRTEEN steps to send an invite.

I’m still shocked by that. Putting up such a barrier to online multiplayer games is a huge designer fail — and, of course, the No. 1 reason that N. Hex has just withered away and become irrelevant. It’s a great game and an otherwise solid app … but only the truly hardcore have the patience to attempt a multiplayer game.

A second missing category is player base. Is anyone actually playing the game in question, or does the matchmaking lobby have tumbleweeds blowing through it? Is even trying to get a game going an exercise in heartache?

Sadly, there’s too many examples of this, and I’m sure we’ve all got some personal disappointments. For me, Kahuna will serve as an example. There’s a game that technically has online multiplayer … but I have not heard of anyone actually completing a game in at least a couple of years. The developers might as well have skipped it as a feature.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents, FWIW. Like I said earlier, this is a great idea for a topic. I’m hoping it gets lots more responses.

#13

NH’s notifications failed miserably, as well. I remember logging in just to check if it was my turn, since the app badge never appeared…

#14

and I don’t agree that app badges and notifications are fundamentally the same. I’ve had games where I get notifications, but the badge doesn’t appear.

If for some reason the notification gets erased or something, then I have to manually check.

For instance, Star Realms & Cthulhu Realms, I get the notifications. But for some reason, the badges don’t show up unless I’m already on my iPad.

It’s hit and miss.

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#15

I’d rather have the badge than notification, honestly. Twilight Struggle performs awfully at this - notifications that never leave my notification center even after I’ve played my moves, and app badges that correlate to… I have no idea.

#16

I still have the app badge for Twilight Struggle even after I have no games being played. :slight_smile:

Though it did disappear last night. Not sure if it’s permanently gone or not.

#17

I have a badge for TS, too. And I’ve never actually played a game … :confused:

And, yes, I didn’t even pile on all the scorn that’s possible for N. Hex. How about no reliable indication that it’s actually your turn? How about the arbitrary five-game limit?

Notifications will hopefully keep improving, in general. Apple seems serious about notifications being better across all of the iOS experience. Of course, then they contradict themselves by not giving a shit about GameCenter.

#18

LOL. I just got a badge for “first emoji.”

I’m actually kind of proud I held out for so long.

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#19

Gary, couldn’t you possibly take Stone Age under Playdek wings?
any kind of license deal or taking over from Campfire Creations would be so great.
this amazing game (and wonderfully designed app) has not deserved to wither away.

but then again…the money. i guess not much revenue any more :slight_frown:

#20

I really appreciate the feedback about what would be useful to know as a reader of reviews. Some of these won’t be reliably discoverable for reviewers, though. For games we get before the official release, especially, testing multiplayer is often hard, and the population on servers during that period is irrelevant to what end-user experiences will be like. You can’t know how a game handles unfinished games unless someone fails to finish a game with you, which you can’t control and which might well require waiting days, and different people often have quite different experiences with the reliability of notifications/badges. But most of this is knowable most of the time, and if it would be helpful, there’s no reason we couldn’t include it.

My inclination is to think that what this really means is that any game with online multiplayer needs a dedicated paragraph in the review for this information. So long as that’s clearly introduced in the first sentence, questions of brevity aren’t terrifically problematic (though I have some concerns about offering full information about stuff like player rating systems). Two other things I think merit mention: whether there’s an undo feature, and how well-suited the game is to multiplayer play. Partly that’s a function of AI quality–for many users, a good AI is a reasonable substitute for quality online play (though even a marvelous AI with various personalities and settings falls short of playing against humans for many players). But often it’s a combination of the importance of yomi, the granularity of turns, legibility of the game state, and duration. Games in which very little happens in a turn need to be pretty short or else games take forever.

Twilight Struggle seems to me like a superb test case. A human player adds a ton (even though the AI’s basically not bad) to the experience, so the fact that it’s a little laborious to read the game state, and games can take weeks, is still worth it. But I quite look forward to Dave Sirlin’s Codex, which was designed for asynchronous play by taking much of the structure of Magic and then dramatically reducing the number of opportunities to interrupt your opponent’s turn. Of existing games, I think Summoner Wars strikes perhaps my favorite balance: the AI is good, but humans are still worth playing. Games aren’t super long, but turns are usually fairly chunky, so the ratio of time spent making interesting decisions to time spent futzing about with getting to your game is quite high (without being so high that the game has few interactions).

I’m feeling like there’s enough interesting content in this thread that it might make sense to simply write a front-page post about what makes a good review of multiplayer content. Anyone object to me doing so, and calling out users by username for their contributions?

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