[RANT] MP* rulesets are BORING!
Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2019 3:31 pm
This is basically a personal rant, but it does contain strong elements of objective analysis. You have been warned. Also, it concerns the class of Longturn games, played online with many players and in a One Turn Per Day setting. I have no problems with this ruleset in single-player mode OR a RTS/shortturn mode because, this is what it was conceived for**.
So, as the title says: when playing one turn per day, the Multiplayer class of rulesets is BOH-RING! Why? Because in the first two months basically nothing happens (and if it does, then either you or whoever attacked you screwed up), and then, during the third month, things become hectic, all hell breaks loose and the game becomes borderline unmanageable.
This is the subjective part. Now for the objective: a Settler costs 40 shields. In the beginning, there is no way in hell a size 1 city can have more than 3 shields per turn, maybe, MAYBE 4 if you are extremely lucky AND slack on food. Once it grows to Size 2, it may get 5, again, IF you are lucky.
This means that it will take you approximately 10 turns to build your first settler. And usually another 10 to build the second one. You may shorten this by spending money which is usually a good strategy. Unless you need it for something else. Which is what usually happens.
And a longturn (Web or LT.net) game usually lasts an order of magnitude od 100 turns. 120 may be an optimum, if it's 150, people call it long-longturn.
So just to make sure you got every detail right: it takes 10% of the game to grow your first settler and another 10% to grow your second one. This means that for the first month you are basically doing nothing else but watching the grass grow and watching your borders for a surprise incursion. You may build a military unit or two to explore and, potentially, make a surprise incursion. But if you get yourself involved in an early war without very clear and definite gains, the game is lost for you. It's a one-shot, really.
In the central part of the game (which is roughly between 60% and 80% towards the end) accelerated growth begins and then the mad part is that it doesn't pay to build any military units because alliances have been formed and tech exchange procedures have been established so that the technological progress is so fast that a unit becomes obsolete the moment you build it, and by the time it reaches the front, it is hopelessly outdated.
And in the last part, which is basically the last 20% of the game, you have dozens of cities to manage, possibly a hundred units to run and, if you have the time and if you are inclined toward that kind of game, you are having great fun. If you were counting, you found two ifs. I don't and I ain't. That's, again, the private subjective part.
So, to summarise: a longturn game consists of more than half of the time watching the grass grow, then a short accelerated growth and technical advance and then you need to take days off work to move all the units you have and manage all the cities. And then it's over.
And now the objective analysis.
This kind of game is sometimes interesting, but only to a small niche of people. Firstly, those who have the patience to wait out the first two months and keep being interested and who have the drive and, secondly, those with a lot of time to spend it playing, planning and communicating, in the last third of the game. Those are two pretty separate categories of players and I think their intersection is quite small. I believe this is the main reason the online longturn community on all three servers is so small. Definitely less than 100 active players on all three combined. And this is not a way to move forward. New people may come to the Web version and most of the time become bored or simply forget there ever was a game. Simply, the game doesn't have much to offer for their time, unlike the Single Player that all it takes to progress is to press "End Turn".
What is also making the game unattractive is the type of strategy that is played. Zoltan was right in one thing: a MP* ruleset game is decided in the first 50 turns. The purpose of the other half is simply for everybody else to get the memo.
And if you were following this, you may connect the dots: the game is decided in the phase where nothing is happening. Yes, there are people who will come to a new (style of an old) game, play it, get a surprise overrun, get up, wipe the dust off and play again. But the problem is that in this first half there are not many indicators telling you if you are doing well or not. It's just... slow. Now, some of you may flatter yourselves with being Grand Masters and take pride in being able to plan two months ahead, but something tells me this isn't really good for the community.
Simply, people who like this kind of pace and learning curve prefer to play chess. And sorry to break your bubble, but you don't get to outgrandmaster chess.
Basically, this rant was motivated by having a series of private discussions that didn't lead anywhere, but also by the fact that, instead of Web versions being improved and adapting to one-turn-per-day multiplayer environment, now LT50 is going to take a step back and use the MP ruleset, succumbing to the notion that "new players wish to play something they are familiar with so let's offer them something bad so that they never return again".
For the record, LT rulesets are not perfect either as I feel they also suffer from the second weakness, too hectic in the last stage of the game, but to a much lesser degree than MP rulesets. That's why I created the Sim ruleset anyway (LT48 starting in a week! Advertisment! Advertisment!), but it definitely addresses some of the issues mentioned here.
Ok, rant over. But I dare you to reply and unleash the 2nd level über-rant!
** for the record, Multiplayer ruleset was probably concieved for the, well, multiplayer games. But as everything else in life, here, too, pacing is everything. The kind of games MP ruleset was designed for were quick, semi-real-time with increased timeout (I played a few long, long time ago): starting time for a turn was 30 seconds and increased to 2+ minutes by the end. See where this is going? Turn time increased, as in, adapted to game progress. In the beginning it wasn't boring because the turn took only 30 seconds. However, stretch this to a whole day and you get the action-packed adventure of watching the paint dry. The Multi in Multiplayer simply referred to the fact that now the game isn't human against computer, so basically 1 on 1 (ignore several nations, it's still 1 on 1, if it hand't occurred to you, think about it), but several equal players. In this situation, you need to redesign Wonders. but that is another topic.
So, as the title says: when playing one turn per day, the Multiplayer class of rulesets is BOH-RING! Why? Because in the first two months basically nothing happens (and if it does, then either you or whoever attacked you screwed up), and then, during the third month, things become hectic, all hell breaks loose and the game becomes borderline unmanageable.
This is the subjective part. Now for the objective: a Settler costs 40 shields. In the beginning, there is no way in hell a size 1 city can have more than 3 shields per turn, maybe, MAYBE 4 if you are extremely lucky AND slack on food. Once it grows to Size 2, it may get 5, again, IF you are lucky.
This means that it will take you approximately 10 turns to build your first settler. And usually another 10 to build the second one. You may shorten this by spending money which is usually a good strategy. Unless you need it for something else. Which is what usually happens.
And a longturn (Web or LT.net) game usually lasts an order of magnitude od 100 turns. 120 may be an optimum, if it's 150, people call it long-longturn.
So just to make sure you got every detail right: it takes 10% of the game to grow your first settler and another 10% to grow your second one. This means that for the first month you are basically doing nothing else but watching the grass grow and watching your borders for a surprise incursion. You may build a military unit or two to explore and, potentially, make a surprise incursion. But if you get yourself involved in an early war without very clear and definite gains, the game is lost for you. It's a one-shot, really.
In the central part of the game (which is roughly between 60% and 80% towards the end) accelerated growth begins and then the mad part is that it doesn't pay to build any military units because alliances have been formed and tech exchange procedures have been established so that the technological progress is so fast that a unit becomes obsolete the moment you build it, and by the time it reaches the front, it is hopelessly outdated.
And in the last part, which is basically the last 20% of the game, you have dozens of cities to manage, possibly a hundred units to run and, if you have the time and if you are inclined toward that kind of game, you are having great fun. If you were counting, you found two ifs. I don't and I ain't. That's, again, the private subjective part.
So, to summarise: a longturn game consists of more than half of the time watching the grass grow, then a short accelerated growth and technical advance and then you need to take days off work to move all the units you have and manage all the cities. And then it's over.
And now the objective analysis.
This kind of game is sometimes interesting, but only to a small niche of people. Firstly, those who have the patience to wait out the first two months and keep being interested and who have the drive and, secondly, those with a lot of time to spend it playing, planning and communicating, in the last third of the game. Those are two pretty separate categories of players and I think their intersection is quite small. I believe this is the main reason the online longturn community on all three servers is so small. Definitely less than 100 active players on all three combined. And this is not a way to move forward. New people may come to the Web version and most of the time become bored or simply forget there ever was a game. Simply, the game doesn't have much to offer for their time, unlike the Single Player that all it takes to progress is to press "End Turn".
What is also making the game unattractive is the type of strategy that is played. Zoltan was right in one thing: a MP* ruleset game is decided in the first 50 turns. The purpose of the other half is simply for everybody else to get the memo.
And if you were following this, you may connect the dots: the game is decided in the phase where nothing is happening. Yes, there are people who will come to a new (style of an old) game, play it, get a surprise overrun, get up, wipe the dust off and play again. But the problem is that in this first half there are not many indicators telling you if you are doing well or not. It's just... slow. Now, some of you may flatter yourselves with being Grand Masters and take pride in being able to plan two months ahead, but something tells me this isn't really good for the community.
Simply, people who like this kind of pace and learning curve prefer to play chess. And sorry to break your bubble, but you don't get to outgrandmaster chess.
Basically, this rant was motivated by having a series of private discussions that didn't lead anywhere, but also by the fact that, instead of Web versions being improved and adapting to one-turn-per-day multiplayer environment, now LT50 is going to take a step back and use the MP ruleset, succumbing to the notion that "new players wish to play something they are familiar with so let's offer them something bad so that they never return again".
For the record, LT rulesets are not perfect either as I feel they also suffer from the second weakness, too hectic in the last stage of the game, but to a much lesser degree than MP rulesets. That's why I created the Sim ruleset anyway (LT48 starting in a week! Advertisment! Advertisment!), but it definitely addresses some of the issues mentioned here.
Ok, rant over. But I dare you to reply and unleash the 2nd level über-rant!
** for the record, Multiplayer ruleset was probably concieved for the, well, multiplayer games. But as everything else in life, here, too, pacing is everything. The kind of games MP ruleset was designed for were quick, semi-real-time with increased timeout (I played a few long, long time ago): starting time for a turn was 30 seconds and increased to 2+ minutes by the end. See where this is going? Turn time increased, as in, adapted to game progress. In the beginning it wasn't boring because the turn took only 30 seconds. However, stretch this to a whole day and you get the action-packed adventure of watching the paint dry. The Multi in Multiplayer simply referred to the fact that now the game isn't human against computer, so basically 1 on 1 (ignore several nations, it's still 1 on 1, if it hand't occurred to you, think about it), but several equal players. In this situation, you need to redesign Wonders. but that is another topic.