My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!

[DominionsFan]

Thufir, a game lobby cant be bad, dont even try to tell me that.
Sure we cant compare and RTS to a TB game so what?! Just because Dominions is a TB game, does that means that its not worth to have an own lobby???? Trust me, a lobby would be a very good thing, and many players would like it. Who the hell wanna use a web-based server all the time and wait for the emails etc, when we could have an awesome lobby, host directly from there, chat with the others etc.
Do not tell me that this is bad! Since Dominions is very MP oriented this should be a must have.

[Thufir]

DominionsFAN said:
Thufir, a game lobby cant be bad, dont even try to tell me that.

I'm not saying that, at all! But I do question what priority it should be placed at. And a large part of my questioning is based not on the value it would provide to players, but rather on what it would cost Shrapnel/Illwinter to create.

Can I ask you - have you ever played an MP game using mosehansen as the server? Personally, I think MP games work on this very nicely. IMO, the biggest problem with mosehansen is not the lack of features, but rather it's limited availability. Since this server is provided by a private individual entirely free of charge, it's kinda hard to complain about that. Bottom line: I would personally place as a higher priority having Shrapnel (or a 3rd party - if such a deal could be done), providing/maintaing a small number of PBW servers running Esben Mosehansen's Dom II web front end. This would be relatively modest in cost, and would greatly improve our ability to conduct MP games.

Since Dominions is very MP oriented this should be a must have.

Well, clearly since there is a sizeable community already playing Dom II, it's not quite a must have. Perhaps, if Shrapnel found a way to make this happen for Dom III, and the interest in Dom III skyrocketed, and the sales therefore skyrocketed, and the investment in the game lobby were thus payed off - I would be proven wrong. I'm a bit skeptical about that prospect, but I sure would be happy to see such a thing occur

[Cainehill]

DominionsFAN said:
Trust me, a lobby would be a very good thing, and many players would like it. Who the hell wanna use a web-based server all the time and wait for the emails etc, when we could have an awesome lobby, host directly from there, chat with the others etc.
Do not tell me that this is bad! Since Dominions is very MP oriented this should be a must have.

I don't see what good a lobby would do, given that the great majority of the games don't run with all of the players playing at the same time, and the games that are done with all the players Online at once (blitzes) have serious issues in that some players take half an hour (or longer) to do a turn, while another player is finished in 5 minutes and has to wait on the sluggards who take 40 minutes for the 1st turn, and the ones whose empire is larger enough to require a lot of management.

For chatting with the other players, IRC works just fine - far better than the chat facility in most of the lobby software out there right now, even ones done by relatively huge companies like Blizzard (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc).

So - since the majority of the games run with 24 or 48 hour turns, how does a lobby do anything that benefits the game or the players?

The one thing that would be nice would be an official server that could be set up like Mosehansen, with a bit more dedicated resources so that more games could be hosted.

[DominionsFan]

Guys, I understand you all, sure maybe this is not a must have but a lobby with mp system would be lot better and easier and more user friendly, than the current Dom 2. MP system.
Perhaps the IW devs can do something about it.

Yes as it is now, 1 turn takes hella lot of time to play in MP, with a lobby/mp system this would speed up drastically. You have 1 hour to play? Hell you are logging in, and if a game is up you join. No games up? Others in the lobby? You can talk with the others in the same place about hosting a game etc. You wont have to wait for an email to do your turn. You won't have enough time to finish a game? There should be a save function for the host.
Seriously imho this would be an awesome addition for the MP. Hopefully IW will consider to add something like this.

[Gandalf Parker]

DominionsFAN said: Hell you are logging in, and if a game is up you join. No games up? Others in the lobby? You can talk with the others in the same place about hosting a game etc. You wont have to wait for an email to do your turn. You won't have enough time to finish a game? There should be a save function for the host.
Seriously imho this would be an awesome addition for the MP. Hopefully IW will consider to add something like this.

That sounds like the #Dominions IRC channel.

[DominionsFan]

Okay maybe it does Gandalf, but that is just an additional little part of the MP system. The key features here are the host a game, join to a game features, the saving in MP.
Also I am pretty sure, that almost all players will be able to host their own games. This game wont require a powerpc in MP, also it wont require a very fast connection at all.
Later on maybe even an Online ladder could be added as well, or some statistical features like in Kohan 2 for example.

[Cainehill]

The "lobby" won't do anything to help with hosting a game, as the only issue there is having a 24/7 Online connection and, preferably, a stable IP.

You keep going on and on about not having to wait for an email - what's the difference? You're not waiting for an email, you're waiting for all players to complete their turns and/or for the turn to be hosted. If the turns are hosted at a particular time - as a number are - then again, the lobby doesn't do a thing.

Saving in MP? It's already saved on the host, and once the player gets their turn, it's essentially saved on her or his computer as well - they can look at and tweak that turn all they want.

And the _next_ turn isn't going to host until the time limit, or until all players have finished their turns. So, what benefit would several months of programmer effort for a half baked lobby provide?

PBEM games are still going to ignore the lobby, and are still going to be popular, since it allows a game to be hosted and run by someone with a dialup network connection. (In case you didn't know, many Dominions players are outside of the USA, in places where their Online time is billed by the minute, sometimes at expensive rates.)

And people wanting to host a non-PBEM game, already can. I've done so, and a lobby wouldn't have done anything to eliminate the real problems of doing so, which include things like reconfiguring firewalls to allow the players to connect to the server without eliminating security.

[Cainehill]

DominionsFAN said:
Yes as it is now, 1 turn takes hella lot of time to play in MP, with a lobby/mp system this would speed up drastically.

I'm beginning to wonder what drugs you're on. How in Dog's name does a lobby speed up the process of taking turns in MP? If I have 30 provinces and 43 mages to manage and it takes me 45 minutes to do so, the other players have to wait 45 minutes.

You have 1 hour to play? Hell you are logging in, and if a game is up you join.

If a game is already up, there's no way to join in the middle of a game. If a game is starting and looking for players, it tends to take over an hour for people to get their pretenders, decide game settings, house rules, and nations. After going through all that, if a player joins and thinks to quit after 1 hour of play, that player probably isn't going to be welcomed back by the group of players.

When _ONE PLAYER_ decides they've played enough, that's it for the whole group of players, unless Player #1 goes AI. And with games often taking months to play, and often over 100 hours of player time, talking about "1 hour games" or 1 hour of playing time just doesn't make much sense.

[DominionsFan]

Cainehill, what about small map blitz games? 1 turn wont take more then 4-5 mins in late game. Have you ever played doms 2 blitz games for example? I doubt it! Also many players can just leave Dominions on, and leave the comp meanwhile if a turn takes too long in huge games...or just save! What the hell is your problem with the lobby/mp system?! I cant understand your points. This would be lot easier/user friendly then the current system. This is the key.
Yes, you can say that this isnt a must have, but would be a great addition IF IW would have time to code something like this.

[Chazar]

There are several shortcomings of Dom2, and only a limited time for the small developing crew to deal with them. A lobby system might be nice, a full-fledged in-game-message editor would be nice, better graphics would be nice, but all of these are not important. Dom2 lives from its rich gameplay, and this what should be further developed.

In addition, Dom2 network features are already impressive: PBEM, Lan & Hotseat - changeable on the fly; all cross-platform ! Now that's really great!

Other games may have a neat click-interface for Network, but how could you set up an interface like Mosehansen's with those? Dom2 offer all by the commandline, for a resource saving commandline host, which can be managed by all the commandline tools Linux-Users (mainly) are used to anyway. Sure Mosehansen's server might not be needed if the game brought along itself, but other people are able to do this pretty as we have seen, while other people are not able to add more to the gameplay itself!

And ok, to review/replay older turns you have to put your hands onto some files to manually copy them, but that's the least inconvenience I can imagine...