It does feel lonely knowing that I will never be able to play this game with my friends.

If the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.

I do agree though

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I'd love to see a Play By Email mode.  No need to balance the game for MP, that'd take forever.  Just let me fight someone more competent than the AI ("those archers have taken my spearmen down to 1/4 health!  I'd better turn tail and run in the opposite direction this turn, rather than attack!").  

Now that's a rather crude opinion you want to shove down my throat, so because YOU don't want to play TBS I am not even allowed to talk about it?...
I have played TBS with my friends, and I have used a whole weekend on one bloody game of Age Of Wonders or Heroes of Might and Magic, since playing it with your friends increase the fun. Well for me anyways.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I actually really liked the concept of E:WoM, so much so that despite the reviews I decided to pick up a copy some time ago, and playing it with the patches found it very enjoyable. I then convinced a bunch of friends to try it, we eagerly loaded up the multiplayer, and were rather dumbfounded by the bizarre way it worked.

Now Fallen Enchantress is out, and I knew there was no multiplayer at launch, but with the steam sale figured I could at least see if it was being discussed as being patched in. I see a lot of talk about numbers, and percentages of people who bought the game that ultimately played multiplayer in other games.  (I guess I am super weird, because in Civ IV and Sins over half my play time is multiplayer with my friends.) Well, here is a little bit of a different take. I am in the mood for a TBS, steam sales are going, and a few options are presented, ultimately being narrowed down to Fallen Enchantress, and Heroes of Might and Magic VI.

Guess which one I bought? 

The one with multiplayer, even if I never get around to actually playing it so, at least the option is there. 

Now I am not posting this just to say "Ha Ha, pffft" and go running off, rather I am giving a different perspective on the whole multiplayer debate. I don't know what the numbers would be for those like me, but I can say that despite the fact that I actually really liked E:WoM, I cannot justify FE over the competitors because it offers a more limited feature set with the lack of multiplayer. Maybe those who when given the choice pass up a game for another over MP is a tiny minority, but there is my look at it anyway.

I hope if they continue the series they find a way to work multiplayer in eventually, it would be fun to play with my friends.

Also, just because your friends don't enjoy TBS, doesn't mean that is universally true. Of the friends I often play games with, over half enjoy TBS, we've had some fun games of Sins, and a lot of time wasted in various civilization games. 

I don't know how people find the time to blast away merrily at their chums in shooty games, never mind a turn-based strategy game.

The thing that kind of kills multiplayer for me is that once you've experienced the great heights and the great lows in a game, once you run out of things to do (and who wants to come running to see an underground canyon in Minecraft the sixteenth time?) and once your friends lose interest and stop logging in to play, you have this great void that you promptly fill by finding a different multiplayer game and desperately try to find someone to play it with.

I'm tired of that desperation, of constantly jumping on the bandwagon and then finding myself unceremoniously dumped a few weeks or months later.  Single-player games may not have the thrills that multiplayer offers, but they usually have solid replay value.

Hey, if you want multiplayer, knock yourself out.  I really don't care if it gets implemented or not.  Just don't start whining when you get your wish and it's not everything you wanted.

I sometimes wonder if having multiplayer capability is worthwhile not for the community gameplay, but to incorporate the multiplayer into the game so that players in the community can design and share their own AI to go with their custom factions.

What a nice sentiment... Oh wait.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Quite a selfish and introverted view I think, though I suppose that's fair enough I suppose since you say you don't care about what other people like. I could be selfish and say I hate it when developers waste time on a pointless single player game (like FE currently is for me because I find the game so dull without friends to play it with) But I don't. Because I wouldn't deliberately want to spoil things for other people.

I think the statistical data may not be being mined correctly though. Do people not play multiplayer, or do people not play multiplayer because of the way it is implemented in certain games? (Or marketed) For example, whenever I want to play a game which says it has multiplayer and then find out the multiplayer modes are different from the full campaign (e.g. A battle on a map rather than the full strategic experience.) it would immediately stop me buying that game. Plenty of people play multiplayer games and spend a lot of money on them across different genres. When multiplayer is tacked on a a half-baked extra it does nothing to encourage more people to buy it. (I know at least 6 more people I know would buy FE if it had working multiplayer.)

When companies say that people don't want multiplayer based on what they've previously provided, maybe they should review what they provided and what's available in the market, not just assume it's not profitable. There may be a large segment of the market they could target that isn't being catered for.

p.s. In the past, game like Master of Orion 2 etc. had wonderful multiplayer modes. I find it quite surprising that modern games fail to achieve what was done as standard nearly 20 years ago. It may be down to the number of resources and threads having to be controlled as games get more complex, but I still think that with the right planning at the design stage, it shouldn't be such a big problem.

Yeah yeah blah blah typical generalized statement just like I know 100 people who BOUGHT this game because of SOLO play being more important than multiplayer play. It has no value to me that you know 6 people that would buy to play multiplayer. There's also no real value in WASTING resources for a handful of people who would play multiplayer. MOST publishers tac on a multiplayer just for a few add COINS they get from those that do buy but you can bet your bottom dollar the majority of them make these games for SOLO single players cause THAT's where the real money is.

It's been PROVEN over the years (go do a websearch) that only around 2% of those that buy a particular game buy it for the multiplayer aspect. Hardly worth wasting prime resources adding it to the games. But, many publishers following the yellow brick road do. I'm glad to see STARDOCK isn't and putting ALL EFFORT into the single solo player game. Now, I'm not opposed when they have PERFECTED the single player game of them adding a multiplayer feature as long as they DONT BALANCE IT and ruin the single player experience like they did with the AGE of WONDERS series.

Impossible.

for what it's worth, me and my cousin care passionately about hotseat multiplayer, we want to be able to take our own faction each and conquer the world together

however he's expressed other more pressing concerns regarding a relative dearth of factions and leaders, lack of religions and civic/governmental controls, and terrain artwork. so multiplayer isn't the highest on our most desired list