Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 - Getting Multiplayer Right

[@BosieYouTube]

Good points, well said.

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

Bosie thanks mate. Hopefully they'll be watching and taking this kind of feedback on board. I've got high hopes for the next game. No reason it shouldn't have a thriving playerbase.

[@BosieYouTube]

The first game set the bar for 40K games. It had so much potential. I'm the same hopes as you!

[@foobar201]

There were two modes of multiplayer: Persistent and Ranked. Persistent was the grindy one, Ranked had a fixed amount of points and best of 3 with the possibility to refit in between. However, Ranked was very quickly abandoned by the playerbase, probably because a match took too long.

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

foobar201 yeah, also ranked didn't come out at release but much longer after so the multiplayer community had mostly burned out. In order to grow a good community you have to capitalise on all the marketing and hype at the launch of the game when the player base is at its largest and make sure that what you provide them is good enough to keep them coming back regularly and to form a competitive scene. Another example of a studio fucking this up was homeworks deserts of kharak which launched without a replay system and the multiplayer died soon after as a result.

[@foobar201]

Good point, BFGA was missing a replay system as well.

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

I really believe that any strategy game that doesn't have a replay system cannot have a multiplayer community, so i really hope they fix that in the sequel.

[@Corusame]

Good points brought up. I really hope BFGA 2 is improved a lot of over the first.

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

Thanks man! I really liked the first game's singleplayer and their respect for the lore etc was brilliant. They just need to have a better multiplayer experience and promote it. It's such a niche game and fan base I think it could be really popular for years.

[@laryyan1358]

"KOUGH" Nova cannon spam "KOUGH"

[@demoulius1529]

Some valid points :) I personally dident have a problem with the multiplayer but I was playing it from the start. I think the online multiplayer could be easily fixed though. Make each upgrade and ability have an associated pointcost attached to it. That way they can bring their lvl 10 cruiser or whatever but it costs way more then a lvl 1 ship does. As it stood both players could have identical fleets but the higher lvl player had a huge advantage which I think is where the problem lies. The player already had experience on his side and his ships were flat out better as well. For the same price this was just unfair. Mind you the low lvl player did get more points but the difference this gave was also very low so maybe raise that as well? I also dident have to much problems with micromanaging all the abilities honestly. The biggest games you had...maybe 3 to 4 capital ships? Reminding yourself to use an ability every now and again and manouvring them doesent strike me as beeing 'moba-ish' in its intensity... You could also just tell the AI to autofire abilities when they were off cooldown so I feel the game gave you enough tools to work with to make it managable. I think bigger fleets are only going to make the moba feeling bigger for you I feel. The previous game wasent perfect but in my opinion easily fixable. Im looking forawrd to see what they make of the 2nd one :)

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

Demoulius Don't get me wrong, I loved the first game! I think associating a points cost with upgrades would be a good fix, or maybe having set veteran levels that have upgrades with them so it's easy to see if an enemy has X ship at X level veterancy you know what abilities it has without having to check in each individual case? I agree aswell for a veteran player that managing all the abilities was possible. I just don't think it read very well in terms of making it clear what was actually going on. I also don't think it was the most fun way to spend player time. I think positioning the fleet and microing a larger number of ships would have been more cinematic and fun.

[@demoulius1529]

Oh I loved the first game as well, but it defenitly had some issues. Sometimes the abilities did have way to much of an impact compared what they should have. Some were flat out better then others and stripping shields of all ships in a certain area to name just a thing was super powerfull. And if you manage to trap something in a statis trap first (which had a HUGE aoe) you could just drop them as you pleased and the player could do nothing to avoid that. So I would agree that some of the abilities were just abit much, but I dont think that itself was such a major issue with the multiplayer. Rather the new player experience was terrible which caused alot of new players who did try to quickly shy away from it. The lvling system was probably a big reason for that I feel, even though I liked it personally... I think the system they had in place could have worked, if they would just have had enough players, and when the new players experience sucks you arent going to be getting those new players :(

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

Demoulius you're right, designing a smooth, easy and thoughtful learning experience for new players and making it an easy game to watch so a community builds around it is the most important thing for success in a multiplayer I think. That and the game being actually good XD

[@BS-fg7lf]

They are reworking the whole costumization in the game which is a good thing. Less ability spam. Less Variables for things to become grossly OP. Another thing that will also help leveling out the playing field are the bigger fleets will help considerably in giving people enough options to deal with enemy fleets. They also need to trim the fat from critical damage. It was brutal in the first game. RNG is cool for single player but excessive RNG has always hurt multiplayer games. Not gonna say remove it all but it should get toned down. I could make a longer list with problems that BFGA 1 had but i dont got the time. Pretty good vid though. Its good that we have somebody post a video so we can compose a pile of ideas and crituc for the tindalos team to get insperation

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

Bruce Sweeney Thanks bud! Yeah, from what I heard in Valraks interview it sounds like they are going in the right direction. I think bigger fleets and ships that are simpler to use because they have less abilities and behave more like RTS units would be great. Also starting off playing with the whole roster unlocked means that they aren't forced to make even frigates and cruisers into very complex units in multiplayer. I really hope they do pay attention to the community and do some better and more transparent testing. What do you think of the idea of them creating fixed maps rather than auto generated ones?

[@BS-fg7lf]

The Discerning Gamer I agree. Uh i like the idea of auto generated maps because every game will play different. Maybe have them program it so cloud do,t spawn in corneres to prevent unfair scenarios like corner camping from happening. But they could also make fixed maps for competetive games as well.

[@TheDiscerningGamer]

I think fixed maps for competitive are a must, the random generated maps didn't seem to take too much effort in the first game either.