The Next Expansion

[superking]

I know AI War development is on standby, but if and when it does restart I was wondering about the next expansion pack- specifically, I was wondering if there is any possibility a PvP mode will be the subject of an upcoming expansion 

[x4000]

We honestly haven't decided yet; we're always having various things rattling around in our minds, though.  PvP is one of them, but honestly I'm not sure that would be too successful since neither Keith nor I play that sort of gameplay mode, and thus we're unlikely to make a version of it that really meets the needs and desires of players. 

And putting in PvP as a non-standalone expansion seems like kind of an iffy idea, honestly, because then anyone who wants PvP AI War has to buy both the base game and the expansion, which would be a pricey thing for someone who is on the fence to do.

So it's certainly possible, I guess, but it's not really my top pick there.  I'm not sure if a PvP mode will ever happen for AI War; pretty much the only way I could see that happening is if we had a lot of really involved player-testers who knew what they wanted and could help us from design on up.  Because when it's something I don't play personally, what have I got to design by, know what I mean?

[Vinraith]

Considering that AI War's uniqueness derives at a fundamental level from its asymmetric nature, PvP doesn't seem like a sensible addition to the franchise. It's one of the few things I can imagine Arcen putting out that I probably wouldn't purchase.

[x4000]

It's one of the few things I can imagine Arcen putting out that I wouldn't purchase, if I was a customer.  I think that is a pretty clear reason not to do PvP, honestly.

[Echo35]

Friends don't let friends suggest AI War should be PVP

Besides, if you want to be competitive, play survival and beat your friend's high score

[Wingflier]

I think one of the most obvious features of AI War is Chris' passion for the game.  He doesn't do it as a job, he does it as a hobby, that he just happens to get paid for.  To ask him to change the game in a way that he doesn't enjoy would be (in my opinion) removing the very aspect of development that makes the game so great

[chemical_art]

PvP for my game of AI War? No thanks!

[Arcain_One]

I always imagined pvp to be in a new game: AI War 2. I imagined this game to show the 800 year civil war and any other wars (and potential ones) between any or all of the races that had (or had not) occurred before the AI took over and ran a muck. (I know its a ways off but one can still think on it)

But enough of pvp. As I see it many of us are disinclined to it.

What other ideas do you have in mind for the next expansion?

[x4000]

We've had a variety of ideas in mind for a while.  The most obvious one is to do another story-type campaign like the Fallen Spire campaign.  That was really popular, and we now have a great framework for doing that sort of thing. 

Another thing that is pretty definite is that this will be the first expansion that is NOT introducing a new alien race; we're done with that for a while, we have plenty to work with.  Instead I'd like to see a variety of new Zenith and Neinzul ships, and probably a few Spire ones, too.  It would be great to see some new golems, for instance.

Other possibilities that have been rattling around for a while:

1. It might be cool to have some sort of minor factions with a diplomacy sub-component, providing yet another way to win.

2. It might be cool to get into more space phenomena -- black holes, nebulae, asteroid fields, etc.  Though how exactly that would manifest, and whether it would really be feasible, are something I keep going back and forth on.

3. I'd really like to have some other really-different-feeling minor factions, something like the Dyson Sphere but way more involved, that players could interact with.  But I don't have any specific designs in hand at the moment.

4. We've been talking for a long time about possibly doing a map editor, so that players can make and share scenarios of various sorts.  Could be interesting, if there is interest.

5. It could also be fun to do some completely other campaign type, kind of like how Defender Mode is a completely new campaign type.  It might be fun to have something like an Insurgent Mode, where you have just a finite group of ships, and your goal is to impact the AI as much as possible before you die (and thus play for score on that, using a mode-specific scoring system). 

6. Or another variant of #5 would be to have to achieve some goal with a fixed set of forces, which could be sort of like procedurally-generated tactical scenarios, which could be interesting.


And... there's various other stuff that might come up as being interesting, but those are probably my top picks for the moment.  There's no way we could do all of that in one expansion, so we'll wind up going (as usual) with whatever seems the most interesting at the time.  A lot of times I really think that we could just keep doing expansions indefinitely, because there's just never a shortage of ideas -- here we are on version 5 with three released expansions, and we still have so incredibly much stuff sitting around that there's no way it could even fit in another two expansions.  Crazy!

[NickAragua]

I would not be investing in a PvP version of AI War. I rarely enough get to play it multiplayer, and the little time I do get I would much rather spend playing coop. Also, PvP would necessarily eliminate the the ability to pause, which I use on a regular basis.

[Wingflier]

In many ways, I feel that AI War is everything a PvP game should be, and can't.

For one thing, the RTS genre is one of the smallest genres of all computer games, so finding one you enjoy with an active PvP community is a chore in itself.  Assuming you do find an RTS with an active PvP community, you have to face the very real possibility that there aren't enough players for a proper matchmaking system, and therefore the games will often be very one-sided, boring, frustrating, not to mention take forever to even start.  Without having played Shogun 2, the only RTS game with enough players to support a proper matchmaking system that I have found is Starcraft 2.  Starcraft 2 is good and all, if you like to keep your APM above 400, but honestly a lot of people just aren't into that frantic, fast-paced style of game. 

So really, unless you enjoy one of the few RTS games with a large enough online community to support matchmaking, and with a good matchmaking system, finding a good PvP game can be almost impossible.

So let's say you do find an RTS you enjoy with everything you need for balanced PvP with others of your skill level, you run into yet another problem:  The PvP system is going to keep your Win/Loss ratio as close to 50% as possible, which means that unless you want to lose, A LOT, you have to try really hard every game.  The player on the other end doesn't care about you, he just wants to win.  Sometimes the thrill of the competition is nice and all, but what if you want competition without having to mentally exert yourself to the maximum every time?  Sometimes it's nice to have a challenge, but not feel completely exhausted at the end of it.  A good PvP system doesn't care about your desire to relax or play casually, it's always going to face you against people that are just as good as you (and it would be right to do so).

"Oh", you say, "Well I'll just play against the AI when I'm just wanting to relax and have fun".  But you run into another problem, the AI of most RTS games (that I've ever played) is boring and predictable.  The only way to even make them a challenge is to crank up their bonuses until they're blatantly cheating, and even then it's just a war of you trying to fend off way too many guys at once, there's very little strategy involved.

AI War is unique in that it is the only RTS game, to date (prove me wrong), that you can set your opponent's skill level to be whatever you would like, and still have a deep, strategical experience every time.  You feel like trying your best?  Okay, difficulty 8.3.  You feel like playing casually?  Okay difficulty 7.6.  Why do people even want PvP, I don't understand?  If the point of a competitive RTS is to out-think your opponent, then I dare say you already have your work cut out for you.

[Buttons840]

You originally wanted the Player and Computer to play by the same rules, but then you say you realized they didn't have to for the game to still be enjoyable, so the AI plays by a very different set of rules.  What if you allowed a player to control the AI, but have similar restrictions?  They player could chose where to send waves, and control "freed" ships.

I dunno, it's probably a bad idea in all forms.  This is a very long game and PvP can be frustrating.  It would really suck to play for several hours and then be "LOL stomped" by a much superior human opponent.

[x4000]

I do really enjoy systems where one player gets to be the "game master," but that really only works when it's not a PvP situation.  That GM really has to be acting in such a way to provide the most interesting experience; trying to push the players to the brink of destruction but not over, only letting the players topple over the edge if the players themselves make the mistake. 

I usually play the GM when I'm playing board games or similar with friends and family, and that's something I really enjoy (as you might expect, given that it shares a lot of attributes with being an effective game designer in general).  But I'm not really sure how many people enjoy that sort of thing, and if they wouldn't just more often take the opportunity to roflstomp the player.

But... in terms of a PvP-like experience, that actually has the most promising potential, I think.  And that is something that I would be interested in playing for myself.  Like I said, I love being the GM.  What I'm envisioning is a system sort of like this:

1. One or more players somehow get designated as "AI sympathizers," and don't get any units of their own.

2. They can see everything that both AI players can see.

3. The higher-level functions of the AI thread are completely turned off.  All the autotargeting and such that is present for the human players would remain for human and AI alike, of course, so ships would function at a tactical, just not a strategic, level.

4. Reinforcement and waves would happen every so often just like they normally do in the game, on the same schedule; however, the AI sympathizers could predefine where waves and reinforcements will happen, with the same restrictions on clumping that the AIs share.  The players would not get to select what reinforcement or wave composition actually is, because the AI also doesn't really get to select that, either.

5. Ships that are guards, or which have the special forces stance or similar, would not be controllable by the AI sympathizers, in the same sense that they are not controllable by the higher-level AI functions.

6. Ships that are free/threat/attack would be able to be controlled by the AI sympathizers to do whatever they want, as this is essentially taking over the role of the combat AI.

A design like that would be pretty straightforward to code, overall, and I think it could really be fun.  It is actually more of a PvP situation than I'd been thinking, thanks to the above restrictions (as opposed to a purely GM-based situation).  The player(s) in control of the AI side of things would actually be free to play their hardest, because they'd only have a small subset of their total might available to harass the humans with, same as now.  And, same as now, the human side would still be mostly having the tempo, etc.

That's actually... pretty fascinating.  I could definitely see myself adding that in a future expansion.

[zoutzakje]

I don't see many ideas of making a good pvp mode in AI war I'm afraid, though I would enjoy it a lot if it is well done.
Maybe, If you want to compete against another human player, just play co-op and compare eachothers score in the end. start as far away from eachother as possible, don't communicate about strategies at all and just see who contributes most. In this scenario, winning doesn't really matter. all that matters is who ends up with the highest score.
Or you could try irritating the other player by intentionally triggering Raid engines near the other player and such. and maybe make it so that you can't see what the other player has scouted / is doing untill you scouted those planets yourself.... and then maybe don't pick a starting planet so that your location is random, that way you never know where the other player is and might start irritating you... wow, guess I got a few ideas after all lol. Not seeing eachothers scouted planets and activities wouldn't be to hard to do I think? Irritating instead of co-oping could prove to be fun.

and hmm... being able to "control" the AI... I like that idea a lot. Could really be fun. Of course if the difficulty is set to 1, the AI "controller" has almost no hope of winning. But at 7 for example, it could be a really fun challenge. I do believe the AI controller should be able to decide the ship type of it's waves to some degree. Depending on what is unlocked of course. for example, if the AI has fighters, bombers and frigates, the controller could chose bombers. But he wouldn't be able to chose bombers again for a wave until he has used fighters and frigates as well. I can imagine some fun scenario's with that.

[Vinraith]

The danger there is getting into a situation where you're balancing the AI side because of the way humans play it, rather than balancing it so that the AI is most effective and entertaining. One of the major ways that PvP modes can actually harm the single player and co-op game is through driving balance decisions, there's a general tendency to homogenize the sides for example.