(I’d be amazed if this has never been suggested before, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so here goes…)
So I’m going to preface this idea by disclaiming that the quality of this idea is directly proportional to how feasible it is. I have been trying to consider ways to get a bit more multiplayer involvement out of our MMO here, and if adding this is as difficult as adding true multiplayer, then it’s futile. But given the impressively smooth client/server architecture, I thought it would at least be worth suggesting.
The idea is that you would click on a player (possibly limited to contacts list, or maybe anyone) - and, if they’re flying a mission, it would pop up with a “watch” button next to the other options. Clicking it would allow you to basically see them in-mission, at whatever stage of the mission they’re currently in. Once they finish, it would return you to the galaxy map automatically - although there would be a way to stop viewing at any stage by using the GUI (just like surrendering a mission, for example).
Depending on what the server/client relationship looks like under the hood, there may be some cosmetic things (like quips) that wouldn’t be shown, or maybe even minor inconsistencies here or there - but if it’s a more realistic alternative to actual multiplayer, I think it could be really cool and get a bit more community spirit involved in the game.
Because something - I don’t know what, but something - needs to be done about that. It is an MMO, after all - and right now having other players in the galaxy is kind of just an in-app version of the online leaderboards that games right back to CI2 have had.
But there is also the possibility that this is just as complex as multiplayer and not worth the effort as a result, so there’s that to consider.
Something like this occurred to me a while back, but I don’t think I ever got around to typing it up.
I alſo thought that it would be cool if there were a way to join a miſſion that was already ſtarted, but this would require multiplayer to actuälly work.
Actuälly I think there was an argument about how much bandwidth would be required for ſomething like this to work, but it would’ve been a looong time ago. Good luck digging up the evidence.
Anyway, I think is ſhould be deſigned ſo that you can only view the miſſions of contacts or people who are on the ſame planet as you.
It might be ſlightly eaſiër as it’s only one-way and lag iſn’t a problem, but yeah Δeffort is ſmall enough that at that point you might as well go the whole way.
Also, what is different? This livefeed and replay system are the same things. The game doesn’t just record your screen, but collects game info. And yes, you can later watch your own replay because it also gets saved as a replay file.
I’d argue that on some systems, a livefeed would be much simpler to implement than having to record data - with the right setup, you could just stream the “server-side” info to both clients.
If the game actually collects the info of the playthrough, then replays could also be a thing, but at that stage it bears asking why we don’t just have multiplayer.
Off the top of my head, replay would be easiest, then live feed, then multiplayer. Multiplayer also has latency/ping constraints that livefeed/replay don’t.
But all three are way inside the “too hard right now” territory
In any case, multiplayer is broken right now. In order to speed up development, I’ve been taking shortcuts and making decisions that harm or flat out don’t work in multiplayer. The most recent one I can remember are the bandwidth requirements for guiding the Photon Swarm around, but there are many others.
Slightly different
