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

ANd you would be flat out wrong because you have no clue what you're talking about.

Am I wrong?

Yes

p22, we'd have to make several changes to the interface in order to handle true hotseat mode including changes to the main menu, options screen, setup screens, diplomacy screens, end game screens, etc.  We'd have to re-write the turn handling code.  We'd have to re-write the ship moving code.  We've have to re-write the message handling code.  There would be several hundred (if not thousands of places) where we would have to change the code to account for the fact that there are multiple human (non-AI) players instead of just one.  And that's just the stuff that I can think of off the top of my head. 

It's not just a patch's worth of work. 

Hehe, I bet the developers will do it just to stop seeing threads about it the forum. They're pretty sick of reading about it, obviously. It doesn't really matter *what* the poles indicate. It simply boils down to whether Stardock feels the investment is worthwhile. They may do it, they may not. We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, we should probably quit making posts about. Don't want to piss off the cook you know. Of course, making this post isn't helping

If anything, the polls OVER represented people who want multiplayer.

So true, so incredibly inelibly true.

You go Brad, keep on fighting the good fight, don't let these pests slow you down

There are seemingly scads of new space4x games coming out with MP, if not focused on MP.

I don't really understand the issues people have with it and GalCiv since the point about focusing on SP has been crystal clear since before day 1.

Kryo locked it, Brad evidently deleted Kryo's post and reopened it.

I like the free form style of this forum that allows for the flow of ideas from new posters to forum vets. As a poster on many sites, I find the attitude of "search the forum and read the stickey" is sometimes too limiting. Many thanks to Brad and Cari for thier attention to ALL the players who post here.

GalCiv2 is NOT chess.

That's probably the most apt thing I've ever read on this forum, bravo.

Well, I wholeheartedly agree with Frogboy on the concepts of multiplayer. You cater to a very different audience when you develop a game with multiplayer in mind. Just look at the differences between Unreal Tournament and F.E.A.R. Pretty big, eh?

I've never developped a full-on game such as GalCiv II or anything remotely similar in size or effort. I do, whoever, work in instances where multiplayer is needed, such as forum games; I've also worked on the design phase of many multiplayer games (though, as I said, nothing as big). So I've found out firsthand what the difference in approach is, and it is huge!

Singleplayer is about depth. It needs to have an atmosphere, a feel. Final Fantasy always had a feel: it had a background, it had a world, it had characters. Balance issues are very different; you need to make the game challenging and 'fair', but the important thing is to have that single player enjoy him-/herself. They won't care that their character is stronger than your average John Doe out there, and that you have special characteristics you can exploit (Max Payne's bullet time, for instance).

Multiplayer is about balance and fairness. Depth takes a backseat, as does atmosphere. It's all about replayability on a multiplayer level. Exploits and cheese ruin the game. You can't make the game challenging simply by cranking a few levers. It's a whole different approach. You can't add special singleplayer effects anymore, and you rely on the players themselves to keep the game flowing.

Like I said, I have only an inkling of the "costs" (not only monetary) incurred by adding multiplayer options. It's not just flipping a switch; it's rewriting your game. Better to make a good game with good singleplayer options than try to balance out over both single- and multiplayer and end up with a project that's wanting in both approaches, thus appealing to noone.

It's not wrong to want multiplayer. But it's also not wrong for a game not to have it.

I, as I said, would never be interested in internet MP too much, since it's just too quick for my taste

How do you know? You've never played GC2 MP. And all MP games are different, I personally see a GC2 game lasting up to 2 days in MP, if it ever gets made.

I did unlock the post. I feel pretty strongly that as long as people aren't actually personally attacking other people that we should try to be hands off and encourage people to talk about what they want to talk about.

I commend you for keeping the discussion open and democratic for all, something on other forums that has not happend, i.e. mods don't like discussion that they have already read bits and parts of elsewhere. LOL.

If we (Stardock) can't adequately defend a position we've taken then we should review that position. I think in the case of multiplayer, our position is pretty solid.

Also good.

IMO, Space Empires V, which is now available, is the ultimate multiplayer 4X strategy game. It has everything a multiplayer user would want. So I heartily recommend that to people who are really interested in such a game and can't wait for us to add it to some future version of GalCiv.

I was unaware that Empires V was MP, not aware of any other space strategy games for that matter, of recent release, thanks for the heads up.

Dan you can quote stuff from other people's replies by highlighting it and hitting the quote button.  It's less confusing.