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zygus

Join Date 04/2006

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Not happy

No Multiplayer Sucks

2 things i'm extremely unhappy about.
1) Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it. Whatever happened to buying a game and being able to just play it with your friends ? Which brings me to point 2:
2) No Multiplayer, but it may be added at additional cost later ? Forget it ! I bought this game on the strength of having played version 1, which had Multiplayer. I didn't surf the boards looking for info etc, trusting in the integrity of the producers - bad mistake as it turns out. I can't see myself paying even more to then be able to play it with friends later - ALL my experiences with games that add multiplayer on later have been very very bad - the multiplayer in those instances has ALWAYS been deficient in one or more very important aspects. And I suppose everyone that I want to play the game with would also need to buy the multiplayer expansion ? Forget it even more !
Shame, could have been a good game. My entire circle of friends would most likely have bought a copy each - certainly not going to happen now.

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which had Multiplayer

You are mistaken. GCI did not have multiplayer.

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Stardock and the having to sign on business.

Only once. And if you installed from the cd you don't. Except when you install a patch, then you need to sign on. But only once.

Really, doesn't sound that bad.

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Unlike you I am V-E-R-Y glad that Stardock decided to emphasise the single player aspect of this game as they have, imo, excelled themselves in doing that.
I suppose if they had tried to build in a multiplayer part then that could have only taken away development time, as well as future patching and improving the SP (single player) aspect, which countless reviews have judged them to have done a fantastic job in achieving a formidable set of AI opponents.

Who knows what the future will bring but I'm very happy with the continued refining of this game

Sadly I have had some pretty bad experiences with games that have had MP built in from the start, either the SP has been under developed, hoping that the MP campaign will make up for it, or the MP aspect is buggy and doesn't work properly.

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2 things i'm extremely unhappy about.
1) Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it. Whatever happened to buying a game and being able to just play it with your friends ? Which brings me to point 2:

Well, if you have the retail CD, you can install without the serial key. I can think of precisely two other commericial games that do that Introversions Uplink and Darwinia . Maybe there are a few others.

If you have the online version - you cannot reasonably expect to install an online version without, at some point, logging into something.

If you want to see what bad copy protections are about, install a game protected by StarForce - you need the key to install it, you need to let it install drivers into your ring0, it has been known to damage optical burners and SCSI/SATA hard drives. I dont know about you, but given a choice between damaged hardware, or having to provide a serial number on occasion, I'll stick with the serials. Or theres steam, far more intrusive than anything StarDock has done.

2) No Multiplayer, but it may be added at additional cost later ? Forget it ! I bought this game on the strength of having played version 1, which had Multiplayer. I didn't surf the boards looking for info etc, trusting in the integrity of the producers - bad mistake as it turns out. I can't see myself paying even more to then be able to play it with friends later - ALL my experiences with games that add multiplayer on later have been very very bad - the multiplayer in those instances has ALWAYS been deficient in one or more very important aspects. And I suppose everyone that I want to play the game with would also need to buy the multiplayer expansion ? Forget it even more !
Shame, could have been a good game. My entire circle of friends would most likely have bought a copy each - certainly not going to happen now.

The back of the box says nothing about multiplayer. The system specifications do not mention an internet connection or network. Multiplayer is a selling point, its almost always on the back of the box if its in the game, but you didnt bother to check. As for the integrity of the producers - they arent under any obligation to make the game you want to play. If theyd told you that it has multiplayer to get you to buy it, that is if theyd lied to you, then you would have a point. But they never did.

Anyway. Theres a sticky thread somewhere where Frogboy gives his reasons for not including multiplayer. As for multiplayer added later always being poor, thats probably to do with the motivation behind it. Most game designs these days are driven by the beancounters - games with multiplayer sell more. Beancounters dont care about quality, they dont care about consumer satisfaction, they only look at the short term gains. StarDock, on the other hand, is driven by Frogboy. If multiplayer is added, it will be added because the developer has decided that adding it to the game can be done well enough for it to be worth doing.

Also, some players have had some success in playing in hotseat mode by the use of cheats. Its not perfect, the AI has to play player2s empire for long enough to make contact, but I suspect it wouldnt be too hard for SD to implement it properly, seeing as how the game can almost do it already. Maybe it'll happen. But for now, enjoy the single player. Its the second best 4X game ever written, though I suspect most people will rank it as 1st since Space Empires 4 is getting on in years now.

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My entire circle of friends would most likely have bought a copy each

No sales lost there then.

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1) Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it.

I don't see it as a problem. At least you know where to look for the updates!

And, you can rest easy in your bed, secure in the knowledge that your name, and email address, aren't being flogged off to the highest bidder. Some devs use sites like Gamespot to host their updates, and you can bet your nuts that they're selling your info on to Spam, Spam, Spam & Sons when you register for the downloads!

I would say, let's hear three enormous cheers for Stardock !!

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Your circle of friends won't buy it? No problem, trollboy. Just realize that you and your five fingers don't qualify as a "circle of friends."

What you're really upset about is that you can pirate the retail version but you can't get the updates.

Tough luck.

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Because they didn't put in multiplayer:
1) The game came out earler at its present quality. WIth multiplayer, it'd either come out later, or at a lower quality
2) It's $40. WIth multiplayer, it would most likely be $50.

Some hotseat woudl have nice though.

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Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it. Whatever happened to buying a game and being able to just play it with your friends ?

Actually, I find Stardock pretty convenient. Plus Frogboy and the game have had my e-mail since 2003, and I've never gotten an ounce of spam out of them. Given a choice between Stardock and dongle-style CD copy protection, I'll take Stardock every time.

No Multiplayer, but it may be added at additional cost later ? Forget it ! I bought this game on the strength of having played version 1, which had Multiplayer.

Sorry, what have you been smoking? It did not!

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Great game even without multiplayer which you did know before you bought the game so if you mad about it now,..*shrugs* who cares?
Does every game have to have a multiplayer function?Turn based strategy don't really go that well with that feature since they are very long games.Because it starts to become more of RTS,.which I like too,..or worse and action game,..which we could do with a whole lot less of.
Happy to see a game stick to the genre it's suppossed to be,...if more games did that instead of going to mainstream and dumbing it down to cater to everyone there were be alot more games,instead of mass mediocrity,..me too games,..and too many games that feel exactly like all the other ones you have played lately.

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Burn!

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1) Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it. Whatever happened to buying a game and being able to just play it with your friends ? Which brings me to point 2:

You don't have to sign on, you can install and play without ever going online. If you want to patch the game, then you need to activate it ONCE. You can play it straight out of the box, just like you wanted. You can even patch the game offline and activate later (apparently).

2) No Multiplayer, but it may be added at additional cost later ? Forget it ! I bought this game on the strength of having played version 1, which had Multiplayer. I didn't surf the boards looking for info etc, trusting in the integrity of the producers - bad mistake as it turns out. I can't see myself paying even more to then be able to play it with friends later - ALL my experiences with games that add multiplayer on later have been very very bad - the multiplayer in those instances has ALWAYS been deficient in one or more very important aspects. And I suppose everyone that I want to play the game with would also need to buy the multiplayer expansion ? Forget it even more !
Shame, could have been a good game. My entire circle of friends would most likely have bought a copy each - certainly not going to happen now.

So you trusted them to do... what? They never said there would be multiplayer, quite the opposite in fact. You didn't do your research and you got burned. Not really a lot of sympathy here.

There was a big developer journal on why there's no multiplayer, perhaps you should read it, not to mention the fact that the lack of multiplayer was passed on as a lower price..

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elder scrolls VI oblivion had no mulitplayer dont c too many ppl complaining bout that y? cause its single player is downright amazing now glaciv2s single palyer is downright amazing so it dosnt need a multiplayer so y r ppl still complaining?

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