Feedback on simultaneous turns requested

[SnotlinG]

Lets say we have a game with simultaneous turns, this raises a few questions/considerations I would like some community feedback on

1.
Im thinking we probably need to set different endtimes for the same turn for different players in the game, to make sure we still have a reason to end your turn asap so you can save some extratime to your next turn. Any thought on this? (I guess it might get a bit more unclear when looking in your gamelist though )

2.
Also, lets say you are the last player to make endturn, is it better to directly start the next turn then?
The advantages is it would speed up the game, but I guess its not so good that you then could make a strategy by waiting to be the last player to move, and then you swiftly makes your new turn, i.e. pretty much moving twice in a row. One idea is to randomize a time of countdown to the next turn starts (say between 1-4 hours), to give all players more or less equal chance to see what is happening and try to be the first player if desired. The downside to this idea is it just adds extra time to wait when you could actually be playing
Im thinking this might be the better idea though, since we plan to have the "realtime-speedgame" for those who wants to play intensively for a few hours.

3.
Any other feedback on this topic?

[Chazar]

2. How about that: Each player gets a fixed delay by the order in which they clicked end turn: the guy who clicked end-turn first gets no delay, the second one gets 1 minute delay, the third gets 2 minutes forced delay in observer mode, etc.? That should speed up the whole game considerably.

Another method could be to check whether everyone was online within the past 5 minutes. If so, the next turn begins immediately. Otherwise a random wait time applies?

Another alternative, but probably horribly to code, could be to enforce a delay on movement. So once you click, a stack moves and one square per 5s or so - but then people might miss battles or chase each other around in circles, also, it would more be RTS than turn based.

Are you really trying to go down the same path as some certain Australian developer, who moved from excellent turn-based strategy to being enitrely devoted to not-so-outstanding real time strategy games only?


Otherwise, why don't you just speed up the normal separate turn-based game play? Allowing players to set and adjust unit paths while in observer mode should help enormously. Adding waypoints would improve this even further. Even more better would be a simple mechanism to mark a waypoint then as "everyone waits here and stacks until the last unit has arrived that reaches this waypoint in this turn, and then the entire stack continues together to the next waypoint" (in order to gather stacks with movement bonuses).

[KGB]

SnotlinG,

Just to be clear here, you are talking about what is currently known as a 'speed game' right? Only with longer times to move than the current 5-10 minutes or so per turn.

Simultaneous turns means both players moving at the same time, not one player does his turn, then another player does his turn. It looks like you called this 'realtime-speedgame'.

So you are going to offer 3 types of games, the current long turn game, a speed game and then true simultaneous turns?

Chazar,

Are you really trying to go down the same path as some certain Australian developer, who moved from excellent turn-based strategy to being enitrely devoted to not-so-outstanding real time strategy games only?

Actually DLR offered simultaneous turn games in online play. It was fantastic and a made the DLR game experience WAY more fun that pure turn based. This is what Snotling/Piranha want to offer.

The RTS games that Steve eventually made were fun in their own right but entirely different than the turn based Warlords series.

KGB

[LPhillips]

Snotling,
For real-time games the turns should end, and begin, simultaneously. They should end when the last player hits "End Turn" or when the timer runs out. The only way to play simultaneous turns is to require all players to be online during the entire length of the game. Breaks can be agreed upon by players in some system.

Options:
1) Preset options are available at game creation, such as "10 turns per day, turns begin at 22:00GMT" or something.

2) Players agree on automated breaks before the game begins.

3) The game is only paused when the majority of players request/agree to a pause. The game is resumed when all players are present; this requires cooperative effort by a friendly community. It's also my favored option.

The final option is that the game runs nonstop until it ends. Either way, it ends when the winning conditions are met, or when the majority of players agree to end it (the majority of all teams in team games, so 3 of 4 in a 2v2v2v2, or 2 of 2 in a 1v1 team match). At that time the winner is calculated by the standard procedure you have in place now for ladder games at season end.

LP

[KGB]

For real-time games the turns should end, and begin, simultaneously. They should end when the last player hits "End Turn" or when the timer runs out. The only way to play simultaneous turns is to require all players to be online during the entire length of the game.

Agree 100%.

As far as breaks/time between turns goes, I think the DLR system worked really well:

When a turn ends, all players got a pop-up message that said 'click to begin turn'. The next turn didn't start until ALL players had clicked. I prefer this method because believe it or not, there are times when you get interrupted by a spouse, kids, pizza guy at the door, need to run to the fridge to get a beer break etc and don't want to get all players to agree to a break because it's hard during timed turns to spend time in the chat window trying to organize an 'official' break when players are busy moving men. So being able to just pause the game before hitting the 'click to begin turn' is very very handy. Like DLR, the game has a chat window where you can politely tell players you will be taking a short break at the end of the turn. If someone decides to never click because they are losing it's easy for the game to record which player that was and give them a loss (See save game feature below).

DLR also provided 'free' time at the start of the turn for the hero offer screen and to level heroes (DLR only allowed leveling at start of turn). So that while a hero offer screen is up for ANY player at the start of the turn, the game pauses until that player closes the screen (if they later re-open it during the turn the game does not pause, just initially so you aren't getting killed because the hero offer screen appeared causing you to lose a few precious seconds). I would suggest Warbarons do something like this as well for hero offers.

Also every 10 turns DLR provided the option to change the turn time. This is very handy feature. Obviously on turns 1-10 you have few men to move so 3 minute turns are probably plenty. But by turn 20 or 30 you might have 100+ men and 20+ cities to manage so you legitimately need more time (typically 5 minutes in DLR). You could adjust the turn time by 30 second increments up to a max of 10 minutes. In DLR the host player was the only one who could adjust the time and the honor system worked fine as most players increased the time if asked by their opponent (again game paused at 10 turn intervals when the timer adjustment screen appeared). Anyone who wouldn't change when asked, got a poor reputation quickly and found themselves not able to play against anyone.

You'll need a 'save game' feature. This is because long games might not finish in 1 sitting. So the ability for the host (or all players) to click a 'save game' feature which would just save the game so it can be resumed later when all players are back online. This should also be the default if someone never clicks 'start turn' because they are losing, their internet / power goes down, they fall asleep (happens more than you think due to timezone differences) etc. The game should simply 'save game'. Players can then attempt to resume the game later if there is a legit reason a player never continued vs they are a poor loser (again, reputation gets around fast in a small community).

KGB

[piranha]

To clearify.

We plan to update our two current options normal and speed game to simultaneous turns.

Normal game will be just like now, you have a few days (set when hosting) to make your turn, but all players are making it at the same time so for FFA games for example that can take a while moves will be more frequent with simultaneous turns.
Its in this mode that we wonder how to do it. When the last player press end turn we could either start the next turn right away making it potentially good to wait to be the last player since you get to move first next time. The other players might not be by their computer at all. If we randomly add 1-4 hours countdown and send a email to all players when the last player end his turn it will give other players a chance to be ready when the turn starts. But of course some will be sleeping since we are all in different timezones.
If you can still save your turn time in this mode that would mean that I might see 28 hours left of my turn while someone else se 24 hour left. So when his turn time is 0 I will still have 4 hours before I run out of time.

For the simultaneous speedmode game where players are sitting by their computer turn by turn we have thought that you can stop the speed mode in the game. For me one of the reasons I never play speedmode is because I don't know if I'll have time to sit by the comp for 2-3 hours with no distractions. But if I can cancel the speed option in the game it would make it something I'd try now and then. Reading your answers here is sounds like you want to be able to pause the game and continue in speed mode another day. Isn't the risk quite high that all players wont be online at the same time again for a long time (especially the one who is going bad for or the ones that decided to stop playing warbarons)?
Our thought was that you cancel speedmode when you can't continue and the game will just swith to normal mode (still simultaneous turns)

Another question, our plan is to update our current system so there wont be a possiblity to play like now, where each player is taking a turn. There will only be simultaneous turns. (No risk of turning it into a RTS).

[Chazar]

Another question, our plan is to update our current system so there wont be a possiblity to play like now, where each player is taking a turn. There will only be simultaneous turns.

I regret buying a 365 days gold membership now. Simultaneous turns killed Warlords for me, and it will kill Warbarons as well. I can see that some desire this option, but why do you want to enforce an option like this?

Currently, I can neatly separate my life and the game by only playing games with more than 2.5 days turn limit, since I cannot play on most weekends. So simultaneous turns give an edge to players that can be only at any time, causing me to loose if a critical turn just happens on the weekend, for example. Also, if everyone is online at the same time, players with good reactions times have an edge over me, since my reactions times are very slow. So why I am reordering my stacks, the enemy can kill my lone catapult/pegasus awaiting its new protectors. Restacking outside of cities near the frontline thus become a nuisance. What a pity, I just started to like warbarons.

[SnotlinG]

Another question, our plan is to update our current system so there wont be a possiblity to play like now, where each player is taking a turn. There will only be simultaneous turns.

I regret buying a 365 days gold membership now. Simultaneous turns killed Warlords for me, and it will kill Warbarons as well. I can see that some desire this option, but why do you want to enforce an option like this?

I think piranhas post was a bit too quick
I have just had a quick communication with him, and our plan is to have following 3 gamemodes:
1. Standard game with sequential turns like now, with turntime 1-5 days or so.
2. Simultaneous game, All players can make their turn at the same time, turntime 1-5 days or so.
3. Realtime game (replaces current speedgame), All players can make their turn at the same time, turntime ~5 minutes.

My questions that started this thread is actually for gamemode 2, i.e. how to handle the endturn/newturn of such a game, where players could be in different timezones etc. Im currently thinking that a 1-4h countdown (based on the games turntime) to next turn is the best solution.

[Moonknight]

Don't get rid of the 5-day turn possibilities, I don't want to lose my friend Kenc80!

[SnotlinG]

Don't get rid of the 5-day turn possibilities, I don't want to lose my friend Kenc80!

Sorry, I meant 1-5 days ofcourse. I just didnt remember our exact options
Edited my previous post to make it more clear.