Peculiar. I always play Mercs on my 1 mbit 3G connection, and moves propagate extremely smoothly, even when I'm out in the wilderness and reduced to Edge. (I even async'd off my iPhone during 7 days of mountaneering, lost in the far northern swedish wilderness )
Any game with a dedicated multiplayer component that doesn't keep the game logic on the servers is asking to be hacked and the multiplayer experience ruined. The workaround is to segregate single and multiplayer progress (which this game doesn't), but that has its own disadvantages, not the least of which is needing to parallel-path your progression with two different profiles. In the end it's a subjective choice based on what a developer believes will benefit the majority of their player base, and that's what they chose. Rearchitecting an online game to support offline play is a giant undertaking, despite your perception that single-player shouldn't require it. As the dev stated, the app on your device is "dumb," all of the game logic is on the server. It's not simply a question of turning the online requirement off.
I bought and enjoyed $10 Scourge but skipped the free Mercenaries due to the network requirement. Although looking forward to this release, I'll take a pass on Romans also. If a network connection is going to be required for all your future efforts I may as well write you off now. Fortunately there is no shortage of good iOS strategy games. Regardless, good luck with this new title.
Hardly. It's simply a legacy issue from Mercs, where single player missions could affect multiplayer balance. Once the game logic is built on the server, it's a huge effort to put it into the client, as mentioned by Saucepolicy. I understand that the community is a bit burnt with online only for no good reason (<Cough> SimCity), but it's basically a bandwidth issue for us to duplicate the game logic on the client. We're a really small team and we're doing the best we can! All in all, cheers for the well wishes! And yes, there are lovely games out there! =)
I can live with the always on internet if it works well and keeps people from cheating and/or stealing it. What's holding me up is the presence of IAPs that are, as yet, undisclosed on the App Store.
I can help you there. There's only flag customisation for sale. We have no intention of nickel and diming you guys.
Shackles of online is the point of no-buying for me. Unique concept, adorable artwork, tactical gameplay all would have sold it but I hate feeling the "lines" of Online around my wrists any more. Good luck to you though, it definitely looks like a good game, 2 stars is a bit harsh.
It looks fun, but with so many other great new releases, the always online requirement is a borderline deal breaker... Is it there due to something essential for gameplay?
I understand, thank you for the well wishes! We'd do it differently were the option open. =D Happy gaming! It's mostly to combat cheating, and the fact that it uses an older engine where the game logic is on the server.
In any game where multiplayer and single player shares progression, online requirements are essential to combat cheating and maintain competitive balance. I don't know (yet) if this is the case in Romans, but it certainly was in Mercs. And a very good thing it was, since Mercs offers one of the most jovial and cheat-free competitive online communities of any game. If Romans work similarly, perhaps the real problem here is a misunderstanding of the nature of the game; perhaps Romans is an asynchronous multiplayer game with bonus single player content.
That would interest me as well? The biggest scrap of games gets five stars. Why this gets so few here? Perhaps because the developer has given itself five stars? I think this is the reason.
So does that mean that the gameplay is essentially identical to Mercenaries? What's the difference aside from cosmetics?
