Multiplayer?

[BootyBattalion]

I sent some copies to help plant trees and can't help but wonder how great it would be to play with friends. Should we ever hope to see it?

[Jens]

Thanks so much for your support and thoughts!

We made the whole competition / endless mode and the victory point system to be almost out of the box multiplayable and also think the challenge of climate crisis should be played with against humans. But of course setting up the server sync structure in code and all the technical changes are a hugh challenge. Also people say that multiplayer is much requested in the citybuilder / strategy genre but rarely played.

I'd love to get many more oppinions on this!

[Roderick]

Originally posted by Jens:

Thanks so much for your support and thoughts!

We made the whole competition / endless mode and the victory point system to be almost out of the box multiplayable and also think the challenge of climate crisis should be played with against humans. But of course setting up the server sync structure in code and all the technical changes are a hugh challenge. Also people say that multiplayer is much requested in the citybuilder / strategy genre but rarely played.

I'd love to get many more oppinions on this!

Would you have the manpower to do that? Not only implementing but maintaining multiplayer might be harder than expected. Competetive players often do find and (ab)use unbalanced content and you might have to tweak and twitch here and there to keep a multiplayer running.
I wouldn't want to see a multiplayer as long as you have enough Open Space on your plate. ^^'

Otherwise I can confirm your statement. I hardly have seen a full lobby in multiplayer games like this... and if, then it was mostly disappointing. I remember playing Terraforming Mars, a game to terraform the Mars and whoever gets more Victory Points wins.
After a while I only found people who... didn't terraform the Mars. Too many cards provided a never ending source of Victory Points without contributing anything towards the goal of a green Mars. In one game I just didn't do anything and played another game on my second screen. It was just test... because the other player built up his Victory Point generating machine and even after two hours, the other didn't even seem to notice that I was faaaar off from being able to win.
And I can smell that happaning in Imagine Earth, too. Instead of building anything like a sustainable colony, the planet gets wrecked because two players want to drive the others from the surface. Getting the higher ground and flood away all others would be a winning strategy, too. That wouldn't be anything I want to play. ^^'

[BootyBattalion]

Originally posted by Jens:

Thanks so much for your support and thoughts!

We made the whole competition / endless mode and the victory point system to be almost out of the box multiplayable and also think the challenge of climate crisis should be played with against humans. But of course setting up the server sync structure in code and all the technical changes are a hugh challenge. Also people say that multiplayer is much requested in the citybuilder / strategy genre but rarely played.

I'd love to get many more oppinions on this!

Thanks for your response! In my experience, anything that gamers have a common interest in will be played together for the better. Moreover, players who enjoy the game in its single player state will invite their friends who may not know of Imagine Earth to play with them - perhaps even causing the game to go a bit viral upon a multiplayer release. If there's any game I want to see get more recognition and appreciation, this is it.

I understand multiplayer is a huge challenge, but its the best form of marketing you can do - let people sell it for you to play with their friends. The gaming community is highly interconnected thanks to discord, and this would be especially effective for Imagine Earth which seems so perfectly suited for a multiplayer experience.

Public lobby multiplayer isn't widely played in the genre, I agree - but that's not the target audience - private lobby multiplayer between friends is how this genre is primarily played. I've never once played a public session of Sid's Civilization, Anno, Stellaris, etc. but I've played countless hours in private games with my friends and have invited many more people to purchase and play them together as a result.

I highly encourage you to consider tackling the challenge - I think it would be a great development for the game not just in terms of copies sold, but replayability and shared experiences which is what players crave.

[Ungrosch]

(coop) multiplayer is always welcome in our 5 people gaming group. Some of us jus`t don`t like playing against each other. So a modus where you can help out each other with trading etc. would be fun to our group and definitevely a selling point to us.

[SanctifiedDevil]

Originally posted by Jens:

Thanks so much for your support and thoughts!

people say that multiplayer is much requested in the citybuilder / strategy genre but rarely played.

I don't know who these people are but they don't speak for me and my group! We love city builders but there are nearly none that offer multiplayer. Anno? A fantastic game that we regularly play together. We would love to add this one to our list!

[andmann]

Originally posted by Jens:

Thanks so much for your support and thoughts!

We made the whole competition / endless mode and the victory point system to be almost out of the box multiplayable and also think the challenge of climate crisis should be played with against humans. But of course setting up the server sync structure in code and all the technical changes are a hugh challenge. Also people say that multiplayer is much requested in the citybuilder / strategy genre but rarely played.

I'd love to get many more oppinions on this!

I don't know how involved you are in this topic. I am an avid RTS and 4x player. Multiplayer really is a desired feature at least when I look at my peer-group. What really is keeping us from playing is poor implementation. And I don't mean balancing problems or anything of the sort. Be it endless legend, Civ ||| - VI, humankind, stellaris - they all suffer from two major problem:
1) frequent Desynchs make the games unplayable halfway through the game.
2) Finishing One session requires 6~10 hours of game time.
while an occasional desynch would be ok. They just happen too frequently to be ignored and when you combine 1) and 2) you just get a very frustrating and nerve-grinding experience.
That is why people can't play these games.

with imagine earth I believe you have a good recipe for success. Sessions can be finished in a reasonable amount of time. Just don't use a UTP protocol for broadcasting data from the server/ host... and you will already be better than 99% of other comparable games out there(hint: I work in consulting and in modern applications we use message brokers to distribute data between clients, some of them can be embedded, what you are looking for is an "at least once" capable broker).

Balancing and flavoring is a secondary concern. Personally I would add some innate differences between the companies other than just having different starting tech and items eventually(e.g. imagine earth corp gets an income bonus if their emissions are positive).