Multiplayer On N-Gage Sucks
Ok, honestly, I *really* want to love N-Gage. The application itself is pretty good, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the games (now that I’m comfortable buying them). I like the points feature, and regardless of the fact that I can’t use them on anything, I’m strangely driven to accumulate more and more of them. However, the points in N-Gage are split into 3 categories: Solo, Multiplayer, and Arena.
The Solo points are obvious, and I’m not real sure how you get Arena points, other than through things like the First Access survey and whatnot. The multiplayer points are also clear as to how you accumulate these – the problem is that they’re incredibly difficult to get. The multiplayer options on N-Gage are supposed to be what sets it apart from simply buying the JAVA version of the same game, but the current implementation….well, it sucks.
For starters, currently there is a lack of online players. I purchased Snakes Subsonic earlier today, and for the record, it’s REALLY good. The graphics won’t knock your socks off, the but the gameplay, in my opinion, completely makes up for it. One of the big reasons I bought the full version is so I could play the online multiplayer, which sounds like a ton of fun. There’s one problem, though – no one’s on. I spent a full hour tonite trying to find someone to play with me. I have a small friends list of 12 people, only one of whom was online. I haunted the N-Gage forums, and sat (alone) in the live chat that they offer. Nothing.
That’s not a very good initial Arena experience for me, or anyone else. What could Nokia do to fix this? Aside from paying people to sit in there all the time, why not implement a few bots pretending to be real players, at least for the few weeks following the game’s launch? I don’t have any dire need to know if they’re real or not, it would just be nice to be able to find a game in which to play the multiplayer. System Rush is the same way, currently. There should never, EVER be a time when I could go into the Arena and find *no one* in there. Period. If real people aren’t going, make up fake ones, just to get the party started.
Assuming they implement that, the entire multiplayer system is completely backwards. If you haven’t tried it, I’ll walk you through it. If you have tried it, skip down to read what I think it should look like.
Currently, let’s say I want to play Snakes Subsonic online. I need to first look through my friends list, and see if someone’s online. If they are, I can message them from here, and we can have a little chat, within the N-Gage app. Sadly, this is where it gets rocky. We’re expected to navigate through the application to setup a game, and simply hope the other person makes it.
Even MORE frustrating is that let’s say I message my friend and say that I’ll setup the game. I go through all the menus to setup the game, and sit waiting. If he messages back to say that someone just called, he’s going to be late (or not make it), I get a friendly little popup notification in the middle of the bottom of the screen – that I can’t do anything with. It just pops up and then flutters away, leaving me to wonder what it said. Should curiosity get the best of me, I now have to back out of the game I’ve setup, all the way back to the menu screen of the game, where I can switch back to the N-Gage app and go read the message. Sure hope it doesn’t say ‘I’m on my way’, cause now he’s in there looking for a game that no longer exists, and it’s just – ugh.
So how to fix this incredibly sloppy way of setting up games? Easy – when I go online through a particular game, present me with 3 options:
1. Players Online – Allow me to browse through the list of N-Gage members who are online AND have purchased the full game (which is usually a prerequisite for them to be able to play me online).
2. Friends Online – Allow me to browse my friends list of who’s currently online, AND who have purchased the full version of the game.
3. Friends Offline – Allow me to see which of my friends have purchased the game, even if they’re currently offline – and let me send them an SMS! I’m often up for a bit of N-Gage, but I don’t want to leave the application running constantly in the background, and if I did, there’s no notification if I’m using the phone for another purpose and someone wants to contact me within N-Gage. So bridge the offline world with the online, and let me send my friend James an SMS. Afterall, I know he owns the game, so he’s likely at least partially interested in playing. Why not offer the ability for me to nudge him into playing.
Clearly with this last suggestion, there needs to be user control. Allow me to set ‘Gaming availability’, so that I don’t get SMS requests (through the app) from 12m-6a, or whatever other time. I should also, as the user, have the ability to opt-out of ever getting an SMS invite to play – but I would imagine most users wouldn’t mind it.
These are but a few ideas to make multiplayer on N-Gage a much less frustrating experience. I *still* have yet to find an online game, and I’ve owned the game for nearly 18 hours now. That simply shouldn’t be. Future releases of the N-Gage application should make it much easier to connect with other players for online play.
I totally agree on the part of setting up a game.
It is troublesome to go in and out of the game to see whether the person got access to the game I sat up or not or vice versa.
The thing about sms could be harder to get into place, as people live in different parts of the world. The sms will therefore never arrive in “right” time if you have restrictions on when to send. Provided that you live in a totally different time zone.
The status of game purchase is in my opinion not the most crucial one. If you have played the demo and uploaded the score you will see that people’s score stops.
(Due to restrictions on the gameplay)
So if someone tops the score of the trial version then you know for sure that the person have purchased the game.
But it would of course not hurt if there were some kind of icon to represent that.
So, now as the games are cracked, do you find multiplayer opponents easier? I think with the release of cracked versions of the games, the platform is already dead. Sad to see that nokia didn´t find a way to prevent this. :(
@None of your business – I’m not aware of any N-Gage games being cracked.
They are all around the net. binpda did the job. not a good thing i guess.
@None of your business – Yes, I did some googling last night and stumbled across them. It appears, however, that the online features and points accumulation are removed/disabled. To me, that’s the whole draw of N-Gage; the community. Without that, you might as well just buy Java versions of most of these games.
For me, the $10 is worth it. However, to each his own, some people could likely care less.
Btw – thanks for not linking to it here. :)
I dont link to things i dont like. :P and the online features arent disabled. To be true, i use the games (just installing the ones i didnt have time for last night) but that is just because Nokia doesn´t officially support my phone model. If they would, i would buy. Though not all of the games work well on my e65 they are still a big thing over the java games. When i get my new mobile (well, they won´t support e66 either) and it is a n-series, i will buy those for sure as i like the idea of n-gage too much to destroy it by not paying for the games development.
And i still hope Nokia gets this sorted. Maybe with an online check of imei/mobile number or whatever. They did put much into the whole platform thing and it would be too sad if they would drop it like n-gage 1 (what a great phone and what great games for the time they were released)