No Players Online

[Lone Wolf]

The only time I've ever really gotten an actual game in was my first time playing. Every single time I go back hoping for another fun game either nobody is playing or it just won't connect me to anybody. If you can call it a game just moments ago I played with ONE OTHER PERSON. I'm kind of disappointed because I had hoped when buying this game that I would get a lot of games in, I've heard people "On both ends" comparing Murder Miners to Downgate and honestly to me they're both great games but when I go to pic a voxel box shooter to play I usually choose MM because of the fact that I have no one to play with. If I was actually guaranteed a match with mkre than just one person every time I got on Downgate I would be playing it more than Murder Miners because honestly I like DownGate more. Just saying. I hope I can actually get another game in seeing as how none of my xbox friends have this game.

[jon22]

I know how you feel. All I get is either me alone in a lobby, or a bugged lobby. Hope they change the lobby to that of Xenominer so I can see active games in progress. I have noticed though that since Downgate came out alot more people appear to be playing Xenominer online.

[Lone Wolf]

Yeah I ended up waiting for 15-20 minutes to get in a 1v1 game it was fun but I wish it didn't auto start the match so we could've gotten more people in the game.

[Gristmill]

It autojoins new players into already playing games. Barring some kind of crash on join or other issue, any players who join for MP would have loaded into your game as you played until you had 8 players.

The primary issue is that there are no players, unfortunately.

[janx]

Here's a terrible idea, but it bears consideration.

DG needs 2 professional players to prime the pump and keep an active game going.

Otherwise, as LoneWolf discovers, nobody's playing, so he moves onto something else.

At least in the early time frame until DG's popularity improves.

Though, it should also be considered, like other older Arcade games, at some point, you can't find somebody to play Doom with you, unless you arrange a game with a friend.

DG might have to be looked at in that framework (which is why your upcoming improvements to game listing will help facilitate that so I can join Arc's game easily).

[BushKillFalls]

What about putting a varying difficulty AI that populates the MP world until it hits a certain number of players.

Like a minimum of 4 AI to 4 players and then each time a player joins they replace a AI until the 4 AI are replaced with 4 Players. That way you can still play against the AI while waiting on players to join.

The AI could be used to balance the game until there are 8 Players playing.

The key from what I have seen is getting players in the MP lobby to spur more players into playing. Unfortunately there just seems to be a low level of players in the lobby either due to people playing the single player, discouraged by low turnout in the lobby, or using the promo code for Xenominer.

[janx]

bots in MP mode is actually a pretty good idea. That way, a game is always going on. new player joins, let him spawn in when a bot dies...

Titanfall seems to have a lot of bots to back-fill head-count and add a layer of business to the fight. It also gives newbs somebody they can kill

I kill a lot of bots on that game...

the challenge for DG is that i already have a lot of FPS games. I don't even need the new CoD as the old one has plenty of people to play with. And once I forked over $450 for the Titanfall bundle, I'm kinda gonna put more time on that than DG.

Not that DG's price puts it down, as I put in buttloads of time on $1 Xenominer and $20 MC360 (more time than Skyrim even).

Now if I could build DG levels and play them online, that might be a good bridge from Voxel builder to Voxel shooter. DG's close to that.

[Lone Wolf]

I really like the idea of having bots in the game. It would definitely give me more of a reason to play Downgate other than single player, and I would love to forge some new maps to play on. The last couple times I've played multiplayer it's pretty much: One person on the enemy team and one team mate, team mate just tries to kill me the whole time whilst either the enemy roaming the map or trying to kill me aswell. Then I got called a fag by my team mate for defending myself..... this game definitely needs bots until more/better people join.

[jon22]

There is another Indie game called Avatar Dairansen that uses bots until somebody joins. You can also design your own levels too as it's voxel based. Nearly everytime I feel like playing it, there is (nearly) always at least 1 or 2 active games in the lobby screen. If an obscure poor man's dragonball z japanese indie game can attract players then surely Downgate can too with bots, an active game lobby and maybe a level designer.

[BriarFae]