ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

This would destroy the balance in the normal game, but maybe it's worth consiering in that upcoming orc game that Darkgod has talked about?

Imagine that there was a place where the player could hire a bodyguard, that could perhaps work like the pet in Torchlight. Let's call this place "Hire-A-Squire". The squire would be a follower that can be knocked unconcious but not killed. It would always stay close to the player so that kiting with a semi-invulnerable helper wouldn't be too easy.

When going to Hire-A-Squire without being connected to the net, there would be randomised NPC squires for hire, but when online, the player could hire other players, or put themselves up for hire! Why would you do that? Well, maybe you just made it out of an incredibly dangerous Far Portal clinging on to life by the skin of your teeth and want to take a break from risking your life, maybe you want to show off your character. Either way, as a squire, the player's character is controlled by the computer while the player gets to watch his or her character helping another player out. The squire is not totally passive, however; though unable to micromange, he or she can issue tactical commands like regarding use of sustained abilities, the balance between offence defence. These commands are given in realtime, if player hiring the squire waits, it is possible to chat with him or her and ask if the Archer squire should activate aim, but if the hiring player acts before the squire sustains aim, the squire's move that turn is decided by the computer.

That's how I imagine cooperative multiplayer could work TOME4: Orcish Standalone Game, without disrupting the turn based gameplay! As it's always fun to show off your characters and equipment and watch them in different situations (without having to worry about permanently losing them), I don't believe it's boring to play a squire. even though one's control is limited. I also think this could be a great social feature in TOME4.

That said, I do see a couple of problems with this kind of gameplay:

Problem 1: How much should the squire get paid? TOME4's "non-respawning gameworld anti-grinding mechanism" could of thrown off balace by squiring as an unlimited source of income.

Solution A: Make squiring non-profit charity & social interaction
Solution B: Add some kind of limit how many times one could get paid for squiring, before the activity turns into non-profit charity & social interaction
Solution C: Let grinding be an unlimited source of income and allow players to grind if they feel like doing it. Those who want challenge could choose some option at Hire-A-Squire to work for free. It's not like TOME4 hinders players from grinding anyway, even though the monsters don't respawn you have a shared stash, and nothing hinders you from filling it with loot from endless Far Portal adventures done with the infinite life-Exploration Mode on. I personally don't like anti-grinding mechanisms and would like to see them done away with in the upcoming Orc campaign. In a game with permadeath, I think the player should have the choice to play it safe, as a death that is one's own fault feels better than one depending on the RNG. Also, you feel more brave when choosing not to grind and enter the dangerous areas at low level when you actually had the choice.
Solution D: Reward the squire with something that won't matter in the end, like xp (if every winner reaches max level either way) or gold (if there is nothing to spend your money on in the endgame).


Problem 2: By having a squire who only gets knocked unconcious instead of dying, a player could kite away a lot of threats.

Solution A: Make sure the squire stays near the player to make it very hard to have him or her battle monsters without risking your own life.
Solution B: Make the player share some damage with the squire. Thus, it would be possible to die from throwing your squire into a nest of elite skeleton archers.
Solution C: Do nothing. Players have long been able to throw expendible summonings into danger while staying at a safe distance themselves. The pet in Torchlight 1 & 2 works the same way and I have never heard anyone complain about "pet kiting" (there is a permadeath option in Torchlight too).
Solution D: Program monsters to come after the player after knocking out his or her squire.


Problem 3: Won't players without internet connections suffer a disadvantage?

Solution: Having computer controlled squires for hire removes part of the disadvantage, but being able to be a computer controlled player's squire would be boring. But maybe there are other ways to grind for unlimited resources, or maybe you don't earn anything by being someone's squire, depending on how problem 2 is solved,


Problem 4: Players could just hire an über-character to help them beat the game!

Solution A: Don't let player hire squires above their own level.
Solution B: Design the Orcish campaign with squire-supported players in mind.

I think the biggest problem ( difficulty wise or just the time required) is implementing multiplayer into the engine, not balancing the features that make use of it.

I'm sure we would find a lot of uses for it. Why not just a regular cooperative campaign with increased difficulty for example? Or the classic player vs. player arena with ranking.

But any live multiplayer with turnbased play would present inordinate problems to coordinate. Which is why it will never happen. IIRC, this was sort of the bane of Tomenet.

Best we'll be able to come, is a Player vs player character controlled by computer (but set up by player 2) arena. Rankings optional.

What is the problem with each player making their move on their turn? (I never tried tomenet)

How do you manage to sync up multiple computers running on different speeds, for all kinds of different people, doing different things, on different OS's, with different net providers... Besides the obvious server complications something like this would provide to Darkgod, it doesn't seem like it would work rather well either. Picture trying to actually explore the entire game with another player, 1 turn at a time, + the lag as the computers communicate with each other. First of all, this means no autoexplore. Second, every turn is going to take a few seconds, even just a simple step down a hall. While this might sound like reasonable speed in combat, the entire concept would fall apart in execution. Plus, what happens when the other player has to leave? This is just looking at 2 players, directly connected. If you went a more MMO route with LOTS of multiple players all connected to several other players via some sort of server, the problem only intensifies.

The only solution (and the one in tomenet) is realtime.

The biggest problem is actually implementing multiplayer in T-Engine yes; due to the way the engine works (which allows all the incredible flexibility & malleability we all love) sychronising states between computers would be a terribly huge task

I was not thinking about doing the whole campaign with other people, but maybe some sort of arena where campaign winners can fight multi player against other winners would be pretty awesome, and totally doable turn by turn, like chess.

It would be like chess, up until the point where somebody's speed is no longer 100%.
Ghoul Stone Warden vs Shalore Rampage Cursed, as an example.

Could still be doable, but it's more complicated than letting each other take one action after each other.

So someone with speed bonus gets to play twice sometimes. It's in the game, it's not the end of the world.