Not seeing much hope for single-player.

By Bloodlyshiva on February 24, 2009 9:56:59 AM from

Stardock's games have always had a strong single-player element. True of Galciv, not so true of Sins. A very nice thing to find. As much as the multiplayer aspect is good and all, I'm not seeing that the single-player will hold up well at all. Looking at all the heroes, looking at what's possible, looking at the massive focus even in the hype concerning primarily multiplayer play...

Seems to me it's going to suck other than for Internet play.

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I personally like how the singleplayer aspect of SoaSE has gone and where Demigod's is going. Very much like multiplayer matches, but with AI instead of humans. Of course I purchased these under the idea that that was how singleplayer was going to be. A campaign was not expected.

Now if you want to see a piss poor excuse for singleplayer with a massive multiplayer focus, see Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Campaign was very easy, and the expansion packs just made the pathing and AI opponents mcuh, much worse. If it werent for AI mods, I'd never even play them; now I've heard it's gotten even worse in DoW2, but I'm not touching that (reasons off topic).

Now, if you are expecting a singleplayer experience like that in say... Mass Effect and GalCiv2, then run away! But if you are looking for what is essentially an incredably well done and organized (tournament) skirmish mode, then look no further.

This comming from someone who hates online play.... see following link for details, and a cool suggestion from me!

https://forums.demigodthegame.com/341129

We're not afraid of MP, we just don't care for it. The adolescent behavior alone is reason to avoid most MP centric games. I'm fine with the trashtalk; what bothers me more than anything else are the disconnects. I can put considerable time and effort into a game, and just when the tide turns in my favor, my opponent quits. This is especially true in any game with any sort of ranking system.

You mention a "skill jump". This is not a jump in skill, so much as technique. In any game, if you choose a certain character, and research a particular skillset, and equip your character with certain items, and play in such a way, you can win. This isn't learning a skillset, this is following a recipe. Boring. Many thousands of players have spent many thousands of hours playing this game in order to figure these things out.

Figure it out for yourself. Fly by the seat of your pants. You may not win, but I can pretty much guarentee that you will have more fun.

The two RTS games I have played the most multiplayer wise have been through third party ladders (clanwars for zh, iccup for starcraft) so i never really dealt with those issues at all (always a couple bad apples but that's when admins just ban em ). The length of a game is more a problem within just that game itself. I'm just not a fan of a game style like that where I need such a large time constraint, I like jumping on playing a few games and heading out. But that's pretty subjective since it's based on taste :/

I was more mentioning that to the genre of RTS sorry for the misconception . (Most team based games run through multiplayer have been quite terrible experiences for me like Left 4 Dead) There are many basic skills that you have to know to play RTS games well. Hotkeys, basic micro idealism, harrasment, economy management etc. For the genre of RTS single player is just a terrible medium of storytelling and gameplay. There are "fun" RTS campaigns but it's a very mediocre experience in comparison to the intensity of a game online when you are face to face playing someone else. And AI's are horribly predictable and can't micro lol So you are correct that in other genres there isn't really a skill jump. In an online FPS you can jump on and shoot shit and be fine.

To be honest the only reason I bought this game was because of Stardock name. It's not really my type of game yet I will still play it some if it has a descent AI. With a descent AI it will still be worth the cash as a single player game alone (especially compared to FPS). I lost count how many strategy games I played though the years where the AI was pretty much nonexistance.

Years ago I bought any game that has Micro Prose name on it even if the game doesn't seem interesting at first. I remember getting the first Pirates thinking it looked boring yet ended up playing the game for years. Stardock has more or less become my new Micro Prose. I just hope Stardock stay around longer than MP.

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Not seeing much hope for single-player.