Great Wargames without Multiplayer - Insanity?

[Captain Cruft]

I have recently become acquainted with two great new wargames:-

Steam & Iron from NWS (WW1 Naval Combat)

http://forums.navalwarfare.net/showthre ... DS-THREAD-******

Armored Brigade (Cold War Tactical Land Warfare)

http://www.armoredbrigade.com

Both are well worth a look. Armored Brigade is free since it is still in development and Steam & Iron has a demo. Both enginers are real-time pausable.

The only thing is that neither game has multiplayer, and from reading the forums both devs have basically said that they have no plans to add this.

I personally think this is a big mistake. While it's true that most wargame players only play the AI it is the "PBEM diehards" who tend to form the mainstay of the community and provide longevity.

For those who might think that multiplayer is not important commercially, I would refer them to the World of Tanks phenomenon. This is a game which has serious grog elements in it, albeit within an unrealistic framework, and yet has 100,000s of users who play it all the time. You could quite easily stretch that concept to a more comprehensive and realistic tactical engine.

[Veitikka]

Are there many people who use the multiplayer features of games like Harpoon or Command Ops?

(While typing this I'm watching somebody play World of Tanks in the adjacent room... hard to find similarities between it and the other games mentioned in this thread)

[TonyAAA]

Personally, I feel the opposite.

I play mostly singleplayer and hate it when a game is released with an "emphasis on multiplayer" or even worse, "exclusively multiplayer".

To me, that's just another way of saying "broken AI" and/or "freemium business model".

[Perturabo]

Taking in account that Armored Brigade is a borefest when played in real time (most of time I play after giving the initial orders is spent on fast to bypass the boring part and get to a moment when my decision will be needed), I can't imagine playing it in multi-player.

Also, there was a poll done on the Close Combat Series website and it turned out that majority of players play single-player only. And we're talking here about series which are the candidate for the worst wargame AI ever.

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

I personally think this is a big mistake. While it's true that most wargame players only play the AI it is the "PBEM diehards" who tend to form the mainstay of the community and provide longevity.

I don't recall anyone worth mentioning leaving the Armored Brigade forums because lack of multi-player.

[ilovestrategy]

I care nothing about multi player.

[doomtrader]

I don't play multi by myself, also nobody should compare World of Tanks with real wargames, completely different target.

Also creating multiplayer is a cost, so somebody has probably calculated its not worth it.