experilous What would proper multiplayer look like?

[Andy Gainey 6]

As described my I'm in the early stages of designing a city builder and seeking community input on a variety of topics.  The first topic I want to tackle:  Multiplayer.

Some people have no interest in multiplayer, and I similarly feel that a city builder should be single player at its core.  But there's clearly a large demand to share in-game experiences with one's friends even within the city builder genre, and I'd love to develop a game that is designed to optionally accommodate that shared experience as fully as possible.

 

Or at least as fully as is relevant, which raises the question:  How much multiplayer are people interested in?  The "MMO route" taken by Cities XL and SimCity 2013 isolate each city, and thus each player, quite a bit.  The system is easier to implement on top of an otherwise single player experience, but does it do a good job of capturing the social aspect that people seek?

 

How much more satisfying would it be if multiple players could be actively working within a single city at once?  Greatly?  Marginally?  Would it matter if, for technical reasons, only one player at a time could be modifying a specific area in the city?  Or more severely, only one player at a time modifying anything in the whole city at all?  Would it actually be a welcome feature to be able to limit certain players to certain areas or activities, especially if hosting a public server with strangers joining cities?

 

In short, what, if anything, excites you about the possibility of multiplayer?  What type of experience would you most want to share with your friends?  Is a save file and/or screenshots enough (e.g., city journals)?  Or having multiple cities interact with a shared regional economy?  Or do you want to collaboratively build a city together?  What activities, what details, would be the most engaging in a multiplayer city builder?  If you want to let your imagination run free for a moment, by all means, be my guest; I'm fascinated with the untold possibilities of where everyone's imaginations might end up. 

[Darth Apple 54]

Honestly, I think that the approach taken by Cities XL was more or less the right approach. Cities XL's main problem was in the details. The game wasn't really complete at the time of release, which hurt sales, and the planet offer was expensive enough to prevent many would-be players from giving it a chance. 

 

If Monte Cristo had taken an extra year or so to really nail down the elements of the gameplay and to make the game more polished, and if they had a good solution to the monthly fee problem, I have a strong feeling that it would have been a stronger multiplayer option than it was at the time of release.

 

Of course city builder games, in my opinion, are always better in single-player. I don't think that any city builder should focus so much on the multiplayer aspect that the singleplayer aspect is neglected. That was another problem that Cities XL had at the time of release that most likely affected the decisions of many would-be players, in my opinion. Multiplayer would ideally be added as an optional feature for an already solid singleplayer city builder, ensuring that not only the multiplayer concept itself works well, but that the city simulation as a whole is solid. 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I think a good way to have multiplayer is for players to be given large initial funds but have to purchase land. This could be like SC2000 Network Edition (buy individual 10-40 m blocks (not sure what scale they used) or it could be sort of like SimCity 4, where players could claim entire city tiles. However, I recommend they make the city tiles into a 1x1 km grid and let borders span accross multiple kilometers so that players could build international airports (which could take up over 2x2km), sprawling suburbs, expansive wilderness/wildlife preserves/national parks. I also think that there should be regional tiles/property that every player can benefit from. Also, individual neighborhoods, bureaus, or cities could exist within a player's area. I also think that a region should be able to get as big as 100x100 km (10x10 Cities XL cities) or even bigger. In multiplayer, people should be able to join at any time after founding, which means that some players might already own 500 km city tiles, possibly even contiguous (but more likely to be jagged/blobby than rectangles). Once international airports are built or international seaports (must have a path from seaport to edge of region), then inter-regional trade could be established and players could trade on the Global Market instead of spending an arm and a leg importing from OmniCorp (which for all intents and purposes beams things down to your city).

--Ocram

[Andy Gainey 6]

So you two would be pleased with the large, persistent worlds of the MMO model, as long as it were implemented well?  I can definitely see how the context of a larger world could really help make each city feel relevant.  It wouldn't just exist in a vacuum, but actually fits into a larger system.  Is that one of the major qualities that you would hope to get out of multiplayer?

 

Also, is it a dealbreaker if an individual player can observe the full details of only one city at a time, and must exit one city to load up the full simulation of another?  Because city builders involve so much data and number crunching in the simulation, it's hard for me to think of a way to seamlessly transition from one city to the next unless the simulation itself were severly simplified.  That also means that interactions between cities would exist on a much more abstract level than the details within the simulation.  Economic interactions would need to work with summarized quantities (e.g., demand for workers, available students, sewage capaciy, et cetera), and running a full traffic sim across city boundaries would be infeasible.  (That's probably the major reason that SimCity 2013 limits the number of intercity connections.)

[Ocram's Razr 964]

City Building and Simulating games are primarily single-player games. However, a multi-player mode could enhance the experience as long as it is optional. I think that the deep simulation should be limited to the focus to the center 1-5 km of a city and farther out, turn to less deep. I think that the intelligent and persistent Tropicans are too resource intensive while Statistics only are rather shallow. When you have a multi-player environment, something sort of like Glass Box should be the limit to how detailed and complex it should get. I think that 1 worker, 1 student, 1 shopper, and 2-4 shut-ins (let's call them agoraphobia children and retirees, and their proprtions should be based off average age and health, not sure if fertility should be simulated) per household should be about right. That way, there would be twice (or so) the population than what is visible (on the streets).

--Ocram

[MatlockMan 370]

As with any multiplayer experience, there have to be measures in place to ensure griefing does not occur. Your version of multiplayer looks very easily abused if a random person can stroll into a city and rework it completely.

 

Therefore, three options:

 

1. Offline single player mode. Everyone hated 'always online' SimCity 2013.

2. A 'revert' button, which can only reverse changes made by another player by the person who started the game/game in the first place.

3. People can only multiplayer with friends. No randoms.

 

Those are my suggestions. A global economy like what was attempted in Cities XL and SimCity 2013 could work.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

My version means that only unowned land can be bought.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I have always felt that ideally in multiplayer land should be bought as in Simcity 2000 Network Edition. Either that or a more seamless form of 2013's system, with more organic borders such as defined by purchases of land. Then again IRl city council borders are as organic as curvy roads and streams and so forth and rarely blocks. 

 

The Cities XL system of a SimWorld of disconnected cities is also fine.

 

I am not averse to MP as an option but like everyone else SP is the primary use of the game for me.

[Andy Gainey 6]

What about a more traditional form of multiplayer, rather than the MMO style that is all the rage these days?  That is, there is no central server, no large persistent world with numerous players (mostly strangers).  A player simply starts a new city or loads one of their existing cities from a local save file and then sends their friends the connection info.  The friends play together for a while, building on the same city as a group (maybe with a shared budget, maybe separately somehow).  When they're done for the day, the city is saved on the original player's local machine just like any normal single player city.  If one friend wants to keep the city running in the background for friends to join and leave as they wish, that's cool (maybe it can auto-pause if no one is connected).  If someone wants to publicize a server on a forum and get an ad-hoc group together, that'd be an option too.  By letting the players operate the smaller-scale servers, they get a lot more power to determine exactly how they want to play with others.

 

To my knowledge, this style of multiplayer hasn't been tried for city builders.  (At least not modern/large city variants; there might be a few that focus on smaller fantasy villages or sci-fi colonies.)  But judging from the multiplayer activity of other construction sandbox games like Minecraft or Terraria, it seems like it could be quite popular, especially if the city builder provided numerous avenues for aesthetic customization.

 

Does that kind of experience happen to intrigue anyone?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Well, Anno 2070 multi-player (not sure about domination mode) operates like that. One player hosts a game, sends codes out to friends, friends connect and the islands and trading is updated asynchronously. Anno is sort of like a cross between a City Builder and an RTS.

--Ocram

[Andy Gainey 6]

Well, Anno 2070 multi-player (not sure about domination mode) operates like that. One player hosts a game, sends codes out to friends, friends connect and the islands and trading is updated asynchronously. Anno is sort of like a cross between a City Builder and an RTS.

 

Gotcha.  I played one of the earlier Anno games briefly (1404 I think), but couldn't really get into the RTS side of it.  I prefer collaborative games over competetive, and RTS elements tend to be competetive, even if only subtly.  But I might give it another try, or acquire 2070, just to better familiarize myself with the system.  I almost got 2070 during a recent sale, but a review said the game was always-online, so I passed.  But now that I look into it more, it looks like the always-online stuff is optional?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Half the features are not available offline but it is still completely playable offline. Anno 2070's multi-player is more prone to griefers and trollers. Any player can plop a warehouse on any island in an unowned space.

For a city builder game with a good multi-player, I think that it would be best if relatively large blocks can be set to belong to either a player or the region. I don't care if an Industrialist buys a previously unclaimed enclave tile and builds up heavy industry or crime-ridden slums but I think that it becomes a problem when an eco-friendly player and a polluting industrious player compete over the same area (especially if you have a rezone war).

--Ocram

[AkemiAzula 280]

If each region has a master Mayor or creator Mayor then they can excersize the necessary powers to act against trolls. I like the 'buy land' system, because it is more realistic. (Unless you had an actual voting system where Sims rose you up the electoral ladder but that isn't very creative)

[Andy Gainey 6]

I have always felt that ideally in multiplayer land should be bought as in Simcity 2000 Network Edition...

I had forgotten all about that game, thanks for the reminder.  Never played it, so I didn't realize what the multiplayer was like, but found this YouTube review that summarized it well.  It's telling how in the review he notes that one can almost forget they're playing with someone else.  My guess is that this was in part due to a combination of weak competition (since the game isn't really competitive by nature) and weak collaboration (since you can't work together to build the same area, only adjacent areas).  Yeah, it wouldn't be worth the effort and design impact to implement multiplayer if it wasn't going to actually feel much like playing with others.

 

For those who've played with others on SimCity 2013 or CitiesXL, do they sometimes feel similar?  Or does it remain more obvious that you're playing with others?

 

(Sidenote:  I haven't played any SimCity 2013, and only a few hours of CitiesXL.  I feel like a bit of a fool trying to make my own city-builder without having experienced those two, but they just don't look fun enough to drop the money/time on them, given my personal interests and what I've extensively read about them.  But for research purposes, I should probably play them each for at least 10 or 20 hours.)

[APSMS 1,892]

I think you should look at this topic over at the forum boards at SC4Devotion to see a good example of ad-hoc multiplayer on a game that was not designed for it.

 

Also, though the simulation level isn't as deep, and the calculations decidedly less complicated, perhaps something close to OpenTTD multiplayer would work as well; I think (though I haven't actually played the game) that multiplayer is ad-hoc and hosted by a single computer, and players are able to interact and build on the same map and at the same time, so multiplayer really becomes multiplayer, instead of, log on, do some stuff, log off, let someone else log on, see your stuff, maybe change it if they have permission, log off, then you log back on to see what they did. It kind of destroys the cooperative aspect that is supposed to be reinforced in a sandbox building game, because it destroys the togetherness.

[Tysons4 68]

I always thought a cool idea for multiplayer for a city sim is where you can run for a particular board and then play through your role

 

say city x needs a revamped water system

 

they could put out a call looking for someone to elect and choose someone looking to fill the roll

 

that person then comes into your city and plans an area for water pumps/treatment ect and propose a plan.

 

if the mayor of city x likes the plan then they can commission the person to implement said plan in their city taking control of the cities water

 

this could be done with every tool, from roads, to power, to water, police, fire, zoning ect.. till you could just sit back and either approve or deny plans and just watch your city be grown by people you've elected to control whichever function they are elected into

 

of course you can always throw them out of office and take control of it yourself, but not without repercussions if before election time (lower mayor rating, less candidates running for office in your city, ect)

 

Edit: have the entire map be the size of the earth, $1 would get you one square mile to play on, and $1 to choose its location ($2 two square miles+2 for location ect) . large investors in your project would get nations, which they could then allow or disallow other players who have invested in the game to be a part of their nation (and since they are playing on their land they could dictate what federal land would be dedicated to) and of course if you want to play but don't want to invest you could still run for a particular board, and if someone elects you into your region you would only control what you ran for.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I think $1 per square mile is a bit low. I don't care if we have billion or trillion dollar budgets (if the regional map is the size of earth) but I think that $1 should buy you 25 square meters, the smallest unit I think would be appropriate. That way, the multiplayer could be made sort of like an improved version of SimCity 2000.

--Ocram

[Andy Gainey 6]

I think you should look at this topic over at the forum boards at SC4Devotion to see a good example of ad-hoc multiplayer on a game that was not designed for it.

 

Wow, that is some serious dedication and patience!  Maybe one day I can give them a more pleasant and natural experience.    The "togetherness" that you mentioned about true cooperative play is indeed one of my primary objectives in considering multiplayer.  A sense of togetherness is a very good way to put it, thanks!

 

I always thought a cool idea for multiplayer for a city sim is where you can run for a particular board and then play through your role

 

...

 

this could be done with every tool, from roads, to power, to water, police, fire, zoning ect.. till you could just sit back and either approve or deny plans and just watch your city be grown by people you've elected to control whichever function they are elected into

 

This ties in really well with a basic idea I had for projects.  To take a tangent, I've always been annoyed by the immediate build system of most builder games:  Spend your resources to make something, and if you mess up, spend more to destroy your first attempt and try again.  So I'm planning to have let a player design projects first, seeing how much they would cost, but not spending resources until the player finalizes the design.  I then realized that this could be extended to multiplayer with different players designing different projects.  From there, different systems could be employed for approving plans, such as designating one player the "mayor/dictator" who has sole ability to approve/deny, or having a "city council" that votes on projects.

 

I still imagined this just being among friends/acquaintances, but with care (such as perhaps with some of the nuances you mentioned), it could be opened up a little more widely to whomever wanted to submit projects for consideration.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Andy, your idea sounds wonderful! I love it! Have each city owned by an otherwise all-powerful mayor who defers some of the power of each tool to other players (ideally his friends). That would open up the multiplayer environment to far more players without too much chaos. I could see mayors claiming/buying land in huge swaths then building up a city with absolute control (with undeveloped areas outside the areas of effect of civic buildings being able to be sold automatically to neighboring cities) competing with teams that take up the roles of city council, advisors, and heads/directors of various departments.

A well-coordinated team could have at least one member always online and outcompete Mayor/Dictator "Gods" by constantly tweaking, researching, taking advantage of taxes, vying for power of regional governer (I imagine a city council could eventually set up a puppet regional government with members of some cities having control over the entire region through voting on legislation), and other such things.

However, the efficiency would be lost when the teams fight amongst themselves or when everyone is online and offline at roughly the same time.

--Ocram

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I wrote a long time ago in the Cities Unlimited Cities XL forums, I posted an idea. I love looking through city journals. I had a vision of a mayor who looked at data of visitors to their city. Some visitors would be repeat customers who payed simoleans (or whatever currency) per visit. Other mayors who visit can buy assets (buildings, landmarks, etc.) that would be the way custom content would spread. So if you wanted a BAT from "Mr. Maison", you would have to visit his city. In our profiles we would have stickers of cities we visited as well as lists of the things we acquired during our visits to various places. Imagine licensing to other mayors some content where a mayor can sell as an agent (for simoleans) the content right from their profile page and you get a cut giving you additional revenue. So mayors will not only be dealing with their own ingame economy, but will also get revenue from "Mayoral Tourism". That would push us to make the most interesting cities to get the most visitors or enough visitors to make enough simoleans to play comfortably without worrying about being in the black. The Mayor with the most visitors will be rewarded with ads all over the forums (or whatever form of website that hosts it).

 

So I see the famous city journals being given some kind of interaction. This keeps the play solo where the only interaction is comments from visitors and watching in real time as mayors from all over land at your airport and you can track what they are doing. Perhaps there can even be some interactive elements in the city for visitors to explore and they can have the option to comment or click on icon that show their appreciation or displeasure. Imagine having enough real mayors in your city due to being so popular to the point that they become like sims in your city and you can shape your city according to their feedback. Imagine hosting minigames in your city that gets broadcasted on the host website. So your city is all yours and you are host to others to experience your city journal like never before. No pressure to continue playing because others are depending on your playtime. No issues of dependencies because they are tracked by their original city builders.

 

That's my idea of a multiplayer city builder. I could write more but will stop here.

[counting 0]

I may share some insights and real experience of multiplayers working together to build cities in an economic simulation game. 

 

About a decade ago, we use MUD (text based MMO) engine/library and create a semi-graphical city building / economy simulation MUD. We reach about hundreds of simultaneous player logins and thousands of continuous players. A player like any other MMO can login as a character and move around the simulated world. But instead of mostly killing monsters, players mainly participate economic activities, from raw material productions (fishing/mining/farming/etc), buy/sell lands (required permits from real player mayors), building facilities/infrastructures/factories with materials from raw materials, start companies/corporations and building commercial buildings as retail stores and sell products (to NPC/players alike). Even playing the financial market, stocks, foreign exchange, or auction houses for inter-city trade.

 

The interesting thing is that since it's using MUD engine, we can simply change the NPC/monsters script to make them act like economic agents. You can hire NPC as employees, and they in turn will use salaries to buy products they "need". And here is the fun part, you can also hire real players as well and so on. Players are essentially given same commands as NPC. So in the end, we have a hybrid society, where game wizards are policy makers and law enforcement agents who set up the rules for players to follow, mostly just for keeping trolls out (like constitution), and leave "civil laws" for players to decide and follow (we have cities essentially free to do anything, to cities tightly regulated to the teeth). Senior players (since running a city often require massive capital) are mayors and "local government" officers who keep their set of local laws within their boarders, cities/players can form alliances hence usually they are like a guild. Seasonal players who just like having fun, usually are corporate/institute owners and upper-class citizens who can join or leave a city (per request or at will depend on local laws). And last, new payers along with most NPCs are the middle class and labors who are hired by local governments or other corporations and gaining experiences/capitals.

 

Most works are done "automatically". Since it's easy to write bots to perform script acts, so the line between NPC/players are not that clear. In fact with good enough scripts, NPC can be governors or officers, corporate owners, and we can adapt an NPC profile to a player profile at will, since the only difference between them is executing scripts locally using server resources or remotely with player computers. We even compete bot scripts with each other to test if a good enough AI program can function well and find good locations, determine prices, etc. Most of the time, mayors are player bots, since tax related task, or accepting applications are just too boring and usually accepted automatically with scripts. In-game script system allow players to perform some predefined tasks on schedules, essentially make players semi-NPC during offline hours. but most seasonal players prefer their own complex bots and execute remotely, essentially become zombies when they are not in front of their computers. A player can even use their vehicles (we have automobile industry simulated), and go site seeing. Not because there are pretty ANSI graphics to see, but playing as if it's a normal MUD (dwarf fortress adventure mod so to speak), where you venture into "rooms/buildings" created by players. Most of the time it's fun to see people typing humorous descriptions, even join player-made quests for rewards (Mayors often use quests to attract new players). Although the fun parts are still planning your businesses and running cities, express your own presence in the world, scripts are just mechanisms to help with boring repetitive tasks due to the nature of MUD engine we adopted. 

 

About the simulation size, due to server resource constrain, the over-all city wide unique NPCs are around thousands (globally in the entire world close to a hundred thousands) load their script according to their current roles. They have a set of predefined scripts activated in difference situations/timing. While at work they don't calculate prices, just repeating tasks every so often required by system. Off work, they will go "shopping" and find potential shops and the rest 1/3 of the time they are idle in their home (if they can afforded the rent) like they are asleep. Also we "copied" NPC behavior and added noises to their final decision, thus create a group of similar NPCs who travel together, and lived nearby, hence multiplying thousands of NPC (with their own unique profiles) into millions represented in game without the need of much additional server resources. We even at one point consider open MUD protocols (like APIs) for players' clients background services and help executing NPC scripts remotely.

 

IMO, the key is to have enough details dwarf fortress style, thus able to create the emergent property that work organically, instead of by design. It's the modern equivalent to open-world games, and thankfully we don't focus on fancy graphics hence able to provide a fine multiplayer city building experience and detail agent-based simulation. Sadly it's also due to lack of graphics hence not able to attract enough new generation players.(we do have a project hope to update it with 3D graphic GUI, but it cost too much and still a work in progress). Although, the text based 2D MUD still have dozens of die-hard players online today. (Another factor is translation, we are stuck with Chinese contents generated mostly by locals, very small niche market). 

 

This bottom-up approach is quite interesting and a lot of fun when you build the foundation right.