MultiPlayer

[Kalah]

What kind of Multiplayer modes would you like for Heroes 6? How should it work? Is there anything new you'd like to see?

Personally, I only really play regular MP for turn-based play. It should work equally well for hotseat and Internet play between two players (direct IP connection). Simple and bug-free, and without long AI turns.

I also thought it would be good to have some simple "on/off" buttons to be activated before the game starts - like in Civilization 4. There, you can simply check/uncheck some of the options. It lets the players decide what they want, which is nice.

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, having easily (un-)selectable options would be the best way to go...

And they should keep the duel thing from H5... for when you don't have time for a full game but want to play a bit anyway.

And Hotseat is a must...

[Kristo]

Have they talked about doing simultaneous turns for MP? If so, you could let the AI play by the same rules. It could take its turn while you're doing yours. After all, a single-player game is just a MP game where all opponents are AIs.

[Tress]

Certainly they should retain duel mode for people that wishes matches that last under 20-30 min. Due to huge time requirement I have never actually tried to play full games with people I dont know. Probably enhance it by offering easy to use custom army generator, also add offline duel mode so players can test various setups without need for editor.

[Kalah]

I thought about the duel mode; the thing for me was that it was way too standardized, so I never played it much. How about increasing the diversity a bit? Setting up different duel modes could be done like this:

1. Standard duel mode; all creatures available.
2. Choice duel mode; players choose which tiers should be available - for instance: battle with nothing but Elite units, or a mix between Elite and Core, or how about nothing but Champion?

That could all be done by checking boxes, so that the players can set up what sort of duels they want, increasing flexibility and increasing the game's longevity.

[Pitsu]

First, it must be clear that good multiplayers modes do not save a bad game. For multiplayer to be a success, the game itself may not suck. And when a good game comes to MP, the more modes the better.

Multiplayer would benefit from short enemy turns. Most time consuming things are battles and micromanaging. Battles with a lot of micromanaging are the worst time killers. Hence player vs AI battles should in a MP game be as fast as possible. A forced autobattle against AI option could be a choice (applies to all human players and requires everyone agreement). Micromanagment should be as little/automatic as possible and there should be access to info about all you know during opponents turn. Even if you do not have the rights to alter anything, by having access to the info you can plan future moves.

What MP could benefit from:
• Game itself is good
• Stable and bugless connection
• Fast turns. MP may (optionally) force some rules over PvE and micromanagment, which make little sense in SP, but which help to speed MP.
• Random map generator. I would not sacrifice potentially unbalanced single player features for generating balanced MP maps, but have the option to disallow certain spells/artifacts etc. During RM generation
• Scripted, story-oriented and co-operational maps possible to create by editor.
• H5 type battle duels. May be a possibility during enemy turns in an ordinary MP game have a simulation fight of your main army and random roughly equal army of chosen faction.

[Nelgirith]

A forced autobattle against AI option could be a choice (applies to all human players and requires everyone agreement).

Wow, that would be super terrible. You might as well play another game if you want the core of the game to be automated.

I don't mind skipping "some" fights (like killing 100 peasants), but an automatic auto-fight vs AI is an absolute no-go in my book. The only fight you'd play would be the final battle vs a player ? That would just be dull and kill the whole purpose of the game.

[Mirez]

3 words:

no ghost mode

[Pitsu]

@Nelgirith
So the battle tactics against AI is the core of a multiplayer strategy game? Or maybe with the emphasis on battle tactics in latest installments, HoMM cannot be counted as strategy game any more? In any case i, personally, would like there to be more than one interaction between players and i wish the better strategist win. Playing out all battles against AI, spends lot of time and gives the upper hand for the player who knows better how to exploit loopholes in AI programming. Again, since there are people who love to take zounds of zombies with a single pixie in a 2 hour battle, i'd leave the traditional way possible. Just an option to have all PvE battles be decided quickly for the sake of having less than 1 hour games with the strategy part still present. Alternatively they can find another way to limit the real time duration of battles.

[Nelgirith]

Battles are the core of HoMM, be it against the AI or against a player. If you just want to get automatic battles against the AI, then you'll just do like 1 or 2 battles in the whole game. Where's the point in playing Heroes then ? You might as well just play Sim City and build a city.

[ThunderTitan]

And yet auto-battles are a feature that's been with the game for a while already...

Making it an option to use in MP is both sides agree really has no disadvantage that i can see... you can still do it the other way...

[Humakt]

Hotseat is a must. Other forms of mp are neglectable.

[Kalah]

Agreed. If, many years from now, Ubi servers fail/shut down, Internet connection is weak, Internet MP is bugged, Ubi go bankrupt etc. etc. ... It will still be possible to play MP through the good ol' hotseat. It is a must.