Can you move on? C'mon...please... don't you got a life, or do you enjoy flaming people who correct mistakes you have made?

You were the first to drag this off topic, you were the first to attack what I said. And now you're making personal attacks. Yay, another twelve year old

"It's really about the resources"
I completely agree.
"MP is never a bad thing to have."
I disagree, there are many cases where MP is bad, when it is implemented poorly, when it is thrown in at the last moment, when it does not drastically improve the gameplay exprience, if it doesn't generate more sales/buzz about the game, if it doesn't revolutionize and build upon the exprience of a SP exprience. These are all bad situations, pitfalls where going MP with a piece of gaming software doesn't work.

"It's just that's it's an expensive feature. The sales have to be there to justify it. I wouldn't expect Stardock to go into the red"

Nor would I. Nor would I expect any money making enterprise to do so, take a risk so deep and minimal in payoff at the end. But that's just it. The risk isn't near what the reward could be if the implementation was a great, revolutionary program, one that expanded out beyond what MOO and MOO2 were. Capitalized on the brand and offered something new, the long-deep, engrossing MP exprience. Something that is missing from the MP marketplace right now. (IMO)

"to satisfy what appears to be a minority of customers that want it over any other additions or improvements."

If you open up a page in a magazine, and cut out a 1/4" squared piece of paper and the only color in that segment is red, you'd think by only looking at that section, that the entire picture was red, but it's not, duh it's just the apple in a bowl of fruit. You guys staying stuff like, "to satisfy the minority" are trying to perpretrate the idea that it's a red brinck wall instead of the fruit bowl man.

Release MP, breed competition, set up a ladder, bring in community 3rd party add-ons take the game to a centralized server environment, do you seriously think you'd need more then a dial-up connection to even play this online? What are the boundries to success? Apparent lack of demand? Come on man the MP market is booming out there, consumers want expriences, rich, deep, customizable content, you can't afford to not take the risk if you can execute and implement. Charge a subscription if you want.

Try and fail. Learn what works in GALCIV2 and what not to do in GALCIV3. I would estimate just pulling a number out of thin air that of 300 million Americans, 50 million are in the demand market for gaming entertainment, maybe 1:100 so 500,000 are interested in this particular game, of those 1/2 are buying something else that's cheaper instead, 250,000, know about it, of those maybe 200,000 consider buying it, I would estimate that about 50,000 of those potential sales have been lost because there is no MP.

There I said it, I just presented to you a survey of my thoughts that has about as much weight as your survey. Mine is as accurate as yours, but the sample an probability of being reprsentitive of the entire group is impossible off. Still your measures of how many potential sales you are losing are way off, so far off you can't possibly know wihtout offering it.

That's the bottom line. If you could even try a demo of a MP exprience, with bugs and things that dont work right, I.E. a hotseat exprience, you would know wether or not there was something to be had righ there, wethere or not it's worth doing the extra development and building it.

Another point made which is silly is that it's perfectly good already, and I agree that it is good, but you have to mean good enought because there is no piece of software that satisfies everybody's desires, or performs exactly as you'd want it to. I've tried to objectively critique it as well as offer improvements in areas where it is weak. These would include the UP, the espionage/sabotage areas, ground battles, few other areas. You'll note that although some of these weren't in the original release SD does plan on offering some of them in the EXP pak. So asking for them/suggesting them seems to have some positive benefit on the game. Hopefully the implementation will be good and they'll be good for your game too.

That's all I got.

If its simple enough.......

It's not.

Kyro, quick question. I'm not an expert on game design and programming, but you might be.

How much harder would it be to implement a hotseat option compared to the upgrade we recieved that gave us more flexibility with ship design?

No forms of multiplayer are simple, and hotseat is NOT really available as a cheat.  The cheat key just changes which player you are controlling.  There's a whole bunch of stuff that we would have to change in the interface, etc to make it really be hot seat.

We're NOT going to add in multiplayer in a patch for free, not even hotseat, and not PBEM.

We're also not going to add any form of multiplayer in Dark Avatar.  Multiplayer will be in its own expansion IF we do it. 

That's not the same thing. Stardock go without copy protection, they gain marketshare for nothing. If the multiplayer poll was accurate, then they don't gain enough marketshare and profit for it to have been a viable use of time, thus they lose money.

I forget.. what was the survey number result?

Also, maybe I shouldn't have made the comment about "go code your own game" but we've replied to posts like this several times, and we made a sticky, and I'm really sick of people thinking that we can just throw in multiplayer.

Sorr

Also, maybe I shouldn't have made the comment about "go code your own game" but we've replied to posts like this several times, and we made a sticky, and I'm really sick of people thinking that we can just throw in multiplayer.

Sorry. But I'm not demanding for multiplayer? I'm just joining a discussion on the viability of multiplayer.. In particular, the hotseat options. Also, I know enough that throwing in multiplayer is not something you can just throw in. But since there is a way to hotseat already using the cheat code, I was wondering if that could be expanded to a true hotseat feature. I know a few programming language, but the extent goes only so far as to "Hello World." So with such an extensive knowledge of C++ programming, I ask questions. Sorry if that was a mistake.

I also reading others comment on their thought of that feature. We are not demanding... Just merely having a discussion on a subject we have no control over and would like to see. I thought the forums is where we could discuss such things and other things we wish to see. Maybe a MMO for Galciv, even though thats 99.99995 % that it will never happen.

And to clarify, I voted no on the multiplayer aspect on the poll because I don't like them that much. I've played MOO 2 on Ten.net and wasn't impress. After some thought, I would like a hotseat option if it was available, but i'm not holding my breath for it.


And as far as coding my own game. I doubt anyones gonna by a game where "hello world." is the only thing that they see over and over again. Might not even be that fun.

Maybe a MMO for Galciv

It's called EVE

It's called EVE

Bah.. You ever played mankind? Not face of mankind. Just mankind. Their address is mankind.net. Would be great to see something like it with Galciv story.

How much harder would it be to implement a hotseat option compared to the upgrade we recieved that gave us more flexibility with ship design?

was my original question. I was not being sarcastic. I was really asking if was harder. It would similar to asking a mechanic how much harder it is to change an engine compared to changing the transmission. The proper reply from the mechanic would have been to tell me that replacing the transmission is fairly straight forward, but to replace the engine might be more complicated since I also have to make sure the transmission will also fit into the new engine.

And i'm sorry if you took it as such that i was comparing. I was not.. I know better than to question the developers of the game in question. I was asking because I was curious.

That's true.. But when i get interested in something, I like to learn it. I do that by asking questions. And I am interested in learning programming, hench the my vast knowledge of making the "hellow world." program. I don't have time to go back to class, so i'm stuck with books. Problem is you can't ask books any questions. But yes, I understand how frustrating it can be. So no worries there.

Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Oh, if haven't noticed, i like to compare things. It gives me a better understanding. Like if I ask, how tall is the Eifel Tower. Sure they could give me a number which i wouldn't even grasp. But if I ask, how tall is the Eifel tower compared to the statue of liberty, i would have a better understanding.

Hotseat is tradition of TBS genre.
That's what made HOMM famous.

And is least time consuming Mp mode to make.
A real pity it didn't make it into "expanded" dark avatar feature list.

I mean, you can already through cheat swap the active players, only thing missing is diplo interface and a few tweaks.

I would be bold to say making this is more a patch material then expansion feature.