Believe Me! Multiplayer is the Key to Success

[EG0611]

I know that you guys wrote "No MP at the moment" in your FAQ page but lets be serious. OpenTTD, American Truck Sim, Euro Truck Sim 2, Spintires, Farming Simulator 15, FSX, Simcity [well this one was horrible]... They all are successful because they have Multiplayer options. If TrainFever does not want to be the next Locomotion or a forgotten tycoon game catastroph, you developers need to work on Multiplayer. Even decent MP is enough cause you can upgrade it later on.

[Hauptbahnhof Alex]

Simcity 5 is not really a multiplayer game. It's a single player game where you can visit the other players cities and have extremly small impact on eachother. You don't build in the same shared space, and you don't compete with eachother for limited resources.

"So MP is not such a good idea because one day you build a city the next day you come back its destroyed or changed some how by some one els wile you were taking a knap."
Did you even play Simcity 5 multiplayer with comments like the above? I really doubt it.

And Simcity being bad has almost nothing to do with the multiplayer part of it, except that being online was forced on everyone which is obviously a bad idea and not relevant at all for TF.


You are right that random multiplayer seldom works for games that take 10+ hours to finish, which is why all that's needed is a multiplayer option where you can play with some friends that you know are reliable and will continue playing with you the next day. No lobby is needed or tracking of stats or player wealth is needed really.

For playing with your friends workshop is not an issue either since you easilly can agree what set of mods to use if any. Some popular similar MP games that take dozens of hours to play ( like Space Engineers ) also automatically download the clients missing mods when they join the host/server games which is a "nice to have" but not mandatory.

[Shrooms of Doom]

Hauptbahnhof Alex původně napsal:

Simcity 5 is not really a multiplayer game. It's a single player game where you can visit the other players cities and have extremly small impact on eachother. You don't build in the same shared space, and you don't compete with eachother for limited resources.

"So MP is not such a good idea because one day you build a city the next day you come back its destroyed or changed some how by some one els wile you were taking a knap."
Did you even play Simcity 5 multiplayer with comments like the above? I really doubt it.

And Simcity being bad has almost nothing to do with the multiplayer part of it, except that being online was forced on everyone which is obviously a bad idea and not relevant at all for TF.


You are right that random multiplayer seldom works for games that take 10+ hours to finish, which is why all that's needed is a multiplayer option where you can play with some friends that you know are reliable and will continue playing with you the next day. No lobby is needed or tracking of stats or player wealth is needed really.

For playing with your friends workshop is not an issue either since you easilly can agree what set of mods to use if any. Some popular similar MP games that take dozens of hours to play ( like Space Engineers ) also automatically download the clients missing mods when they join the host/server games which is a "nice to have" but not mandatory.

OK OK, I do play SimCity 5 but my memory of it I guess is not what it actually is. I havnt touched the game in a while, sorry if my rant on it is misleading. Sorry Im not used to writeing comments that often. I just beleive Cities Skylines is a much better game thats all.

You are right my last 2 paragraphs do make some really good points but, I just hope They alow you to build Freeways because you can put tolls on them and they make a lot of money if done right. and I hope they add Subways and Metros too.

[❆🎄Douglas 🎁 🎂]

Is not. Cities Skylines has no multiplayer and its 1000x more game than SimCity and the silly multiplayer.

[meraco]

Skyrim...

1.4 billion in sales
top 20 best seller of all time
singleplayer

A game does not need to be MP to be a hit. In fact not many MP games make the top 20 list. and over 40,000 still play Skyrim today, even though it was released in 2011...

I used to like MP games.. now I avoid them if there is no singleplay option. And why? because no matter what the game is, there is always that one kid that is bent on cheating, hacking, griefing.

I mean seriously.. Flight Simulator is supposed to be about commercial air travel and airport operations.. how many times you see that one kid bent on ramming into everyone on the runway.

[LightMonk]

Why are everyone thinking that it needs some super serious MP mode when some mention Multiplayer?
It just needs a Option so that other players who are 99,99% of the time friends with each other to play a long scenario of building transportation networks with & against each other on a huge scenario map.
Nothing else.
No Join in whatever.
Give us a Option to connect to a Game via IP input so that friends can play together with friends.
Save the Progress after 3 hours and meet again the next day to continue.

[meraco]

Wow.. times sure have changed..

"can I use a controler?"
"does it support VR?"
"will it be multiplayer?"
"why cant I get 4k resolution "
"the frame rate is too low"
"will this work on my 32 bit system?"

What ever happened to just buying a game and playing it?

[LightMonk]

I will buy it with and without MP.
Its just sad that I can't play it with friends (yet).
It would profit greatly and add a lot of more hours/days of playtime if it had one.

[Name Lips]

Given a choice between a mediocre single player game that supports multiplayer perfectly, and a perfect single player game that supports multiplayer medocrely, I'll go with the later.

[Hauptbahnhof Alex]

meraco původně napsal:

What ever happened to just buying a game and playing it?

The market became 100 times bigger, so instead of there just being 5 games to choose form there are now 500, and the amount of features people demands and even expect from games also increased.

It's called progress I think :)

meraco původně napsal:

Skyrim...

1.4 billion in sales

Stopped reading at 1.4 billion sales...

Douglas ︻╦╤---- původně napsal:

Is not. Cities Skylines has no multiplayer and its 1000x more game than SimCity and the silly multiplayer.

But can you imagine how many MORE sales games like Skyrim and CS would have had if you ALSO could play it multiplayer with your friends? (optional multiplayer/online, not forced like sim city).

It's not like the addition of multiplayer removes something from the single player experience, or?


First step for sure is make a good single player game, without a good basis and fun game multiplayer would not be fun either.

[Xardonius]

Name Lips původně napsal:

Given a choice between a mediocre single player game that supports multiplayer perfectly, and a perfect single player game that supports multiplayer medocrely, I'll go with the later.

I agree. If i use multiplayer in this game it will be in a lan game of with (steam)friends. Nobody will cheat in those kind of games.

And to be clear. Skyrim is nothing compared to Gothic 2. Skyrim just sold better due to good marketing. Everyone knew that game even without ever havind played it. Gothic was better, but there was no real marketing. Everyone that had played gothic 1 would buy gothic 2 because those games were just that good. It was gothic 3 that had good marketing but lost it's awesomeness by trying to hard and being to big and losing touch with what people really wanted. This was even worse with Gothic 4: Arcania.
This is in my opinion the same with the tycoon games. Everybody loved and still loves the original transport tycoon. We all wanted a transport tycoon 2. Then there was railroad tycoon (2). We liked that but it was nothing compared to transport tycoon. Railroad tycoon 3 was total **** to be honest. In my opinion railroad fever was similar to railroad tycoon 2. I now hope transport fever will be similar to the original transport tycoon. We all would pay for a game that is the same as the original transport tycoon but with better graphics. We do not need strange multiplayer options. We just want/need the same as in transport tycoon where in my experience most players knew eachother and/or useally played LAN games.

[M3Henry]

In my honest opinion, multiplayer is an important feature for this kind of game. It's not a required one, but I find it improves my game experience.

I don't tend to be interested in playing management games competitively, the RTS genre is where that shines. However, I am highly interested in playing management games co-operatively. No large business is handled by one person. But by working together, people can achieve more, which is rewarding. As any management games progress, the attention is diverted away from construction, towards maintenance. By sharing the load, menial tasks take less time to deal with, and the players are more free to play as they wish.

I personally would like to see a simple direct-connect steam-friends multiplayer option. There's no need to worry about hackers or griefers, I'm playing with people I trust. I don't need to find a good server. There's no "matchmaking". Just the ability to play the game with a friend, discuss what we're doing together and have a laugh.

[meraco]

M3Henry původně napsal:

In my honest opinion, multiplayer is an important feature for this kind of game. It's not a required one, but I find it improves my game experience.

What other game of this genre do you compare this to?

[Ranau]

Multiplayer isn't a necessity... Learn to love the Singleplayer. Especially if you are just searching for a SP game because you currently have no internet connection. And yes, that actually can happen lots of times.

Also games like RCT2 and even Cities in Motion did survive without a Multiplayer, so why wouldn't this game survive?

Again Multiplayer is only a feature. And in the case of Transport Fever I doubt that it will have a big impact on overall gameplay.

[Hauptbahnhof Alex]

In that case singleplayer is also "only a feature". Many online games today don't have singleplayer at all or extremly basic single player vs "bots" or with online DRM like Sim City.

I hope the goal isn't that the game should "just survive", but to be very successful. And to be very successful having multiplayer is one of the most powerful features that drives sales ( word of mouth ), and spreads the game to your friends you want to play with.

Is multiplayer required? No. But neither is many other complex features they spend time and money on implementing instead, which probably won't help the game sell as much as a good working multiplayer would.

[Xardonius]

In my opinion multiplayer or at least AI players are essential. Otherwise this is what happens.... You start the game. You lay down some tracks and buy a train and set up a connection between 2 cities, maybe even three. You have spent all your money and way for the money to come in. You can wait as long as you like and expend your railroad network. Since there is no compettitative player you can take as long as you like since eventually you will connect all cities. This becomes a bit boring.
I think that many players will agree with me that we need more challange than this. We need other players in the game to make the game more interesting and increase the replay value of the game. This can be real players, AI players or a combination of both. I vote for the last.