Back in the day in my teenage years I used a software called Xfire which had a "gaming" profile showing the hours I poured into games. Back then I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Now I just feel old.

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So, Half Life 3 will be set in a a vast, eerie, solitary laboratory complex with Alyx on a radio? Sounds good.

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This looks good. Doesn't seem to have multiplayer, correct?

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This really gives off a Europa 1400: The Guild vibe. From what I've been able to find though, the developer doesn't put multiplayer as a priority (there will be none at launch). Which is a shame, the biggest reason I'm not playing The Guild right now is because of that game's horrible out of sync issues in multiplayer. Since this game isn't developed with MP from the ground up, it gives me little hope for a good MP experience.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: LungDrago

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: rkfgI think comeback mechanics are quite important in any more or less competitive game. Otherwise, why even play if you're clearly losing half into the round?

Exactly. You shouldn't.
If a game is lost, quit and try again in another match.
What point is there to artificially prolong the experience if there is no chance you could win anyway?

On the other hand, your approach leads to those kinds of games where an early advantage is unsurmountable, so one player gains the upper hand 10 minutes in and the other one just surrenders immediately. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and preferences. I, for one, don't care about games that keep ending at the start and no one gets to play the rest of the game ever, so I have to agree that comeback possibilities are an important part of a game.

Not really. Once you gain the upper hand, you also have to keep it. It is surprisingly easy to fall behind after a lead in a game like Civ. All you need to do is follow some good decisions with some bad ones. And if you are in the lead, the other players can and should start doing something about you - if they don't, it's all the more reason they deserve the loss.
And this is still Civ we're talking about. A lead early game doesn't mean too much. A lead by the end of the mid-game is pretty much a win, yeah. But by that time you already played a few hours, so I'd not call that missing out "the rest of the game".

All that a weak comeback mechanic would do in such a situation is to mask the reality of who will win this game. And if all you want to do is not to know who's in the lead to prevent quitting, well, just hide the scoreboard.

While a strong comeback mechanic would possibly change who will win, which as I wrote before would mean that the worse player could end up being the winner, which is just fully unacceptable on many levels.

Of course, all of that assumes roughly the same skill level among players.
If you want to play with some friends, and all are on entirely different skill levels, then

A) you shouldn't play against each other in the first place
B) you should play co-op
C) you can do setups so that it is 1vs2 or the best player has some handicap, etc.

All of those are based on player choices, not the game trying to enforce some kind of bad racing game rubber-banding.

You're not wrong and I agree on many of your points. Yes, it is easy to fall behind from a lead - all you have to do is to do some bad decisions. The problem is, it's still the lead player there who decides the outcome of the match. All he has to do is to not do those mistakes and play reasonably well to snowball his lead into a victory. That might sound easier than it is in reality for most of us, but let's not forget one thing here. Serious competitive players will put in the time and effort to absolutely minimize the instances where they do a mistake or set themselves back a few or several turns. These players will NOT give their opponent the opening they need to get back in the game. The other player realizes this and so he's faced with two options. Let the game continue and hope for a miracle or concede and try again. Most people will go with the second option. The first option is for serious super saiyan level competitive players who have the experience and confidence to lure their opponent into a mistake. Reason for that is very simple; fighting from behind is usually very difficult. It is balancing on a very slippery slope, to use the game design term.

If we're talking about a FFA situation where multiple players are in the game but only one can be a victor then this dynamic of course gets shaken up. Incidentally, I am also of the opinion that such a FFA game cannot really be considered competitive in any fair way. FFA games are chaotic fun curbstomps, but not a good competitive environment. If you're playing FFA, gaining an early lead is quite realistically the worst thing you could do, unless it's a really, really major lead. Even in a FFA game though, I think you want comeback mechanics so that players that fall too far behind have a chance of catching up during the game, if they can survive. Why? Once again because such an approach doesn't rely on external factors, on the neighbors of the player who fell behind, making a mistake. Diplomacy won't help most of the time, in FFA, there's absolutely zero reason for anyone to play friendly and altruistic and help a player who's behind through unfavorable trade deals and whatnot. So, even the worst player in a game needs to have some avenues, some plays he can make, to be relevant or regain relevancy in the match, otherwise he's just cattle, waiting for someone to finally pick him apart. That doesn't make for interesting gameplay, so he'll just GG out of the game.

And yes, as you've pointed out, since this is still Civ we're talking about, let's not forget the fact that the game involves some significant RNG elements, so the fact that a player gains a lead or falls behind can entirely be the product of an (un)favorable starting position or (un)lucky initial scouting. Therefore I think it wise to recognize that shit sometimes hits the fan like this and offer the "rubber-banding". Otherwise, a game really has strong potential to end up devolving into the situation where the first mistake decides the whole match, which I think is bad regardless when in the game it happens except if it happens in the very late game.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: rkfgI think comeback mechanics are quite important in any more or less competitive game. Otherwise, why even play if you're clearly losing half into the round?

Exactly. You shouldn't.
If a game is lost, quit and try again in another match.
What point is there to artificially prolong the experience if there is no chance you could win anyway?

On the other hand, your approach leads to those kinds of games where an early advantage is unsurmountable, so one player gains the upper hand 10 minutes in and the other one just surrenders immediately. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and preferences. I, for one, don't care about games that keep ending at the start and no one gets to play the rest of the game ever, so I have to agree that comeback possibilities are an important part of a game.

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This game seems fun, but as of now they poorly handle multiple-monitor setups. Even when playing fullscreen (although on the wrong monitor) I can and keep clicking away into the desktop :(

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