Real time games have always been hard to come by here, even harder to find one in which nobody gets booted for inactivity, but it seems like they've gone away entirely now.

When I first joined it seemed like there might have been hope for real time games but now I can't get any real time matches going, not a single player has joined the past few real time games I created. And I keep seeing maybe one real time game or two at the most on the list to join, and even those don't have enough people and the creator has usually logged out already.

So I'm wondering if anyone plays them at all anymore or if they might as well be considered gone at this point?

I never played them - they require a bit more commitment online than I can normally muster throughout the day.

I will play them when I can and if it is on a decent map but I don't want to play any world map games so that takes away most of them and also if I join the games they always seem to start at the worst times. I am online almost all the time during the day and I am still frightened of being booted.
I would like to get through a game in one day but not have the 10 minute crush just in case I have to go to lunch or do actual work (haha)

I don't play them because most maps need at least 3 players to be reasonably fair, and I can't afford the luxury (or boredom) of ~15 minute wait-times. Once the SimulGear crowd gets active and more maps are created that use %dice, that may be a good alternative for some. The creator of this site has a long to-do list, but somewhere down there, I'm hoping that he'll create SimulGear with Standard Dice, which if he goes with the M-Engine, will be non-turn based, and make most any map fair for any number of players right out the blocks.

I can understand why real time games can be difficult for people to do, I've already posted about them before anyway.
I was just wondering if they still even happen anymore. I wouldn't even get to do them that often as the computer I use is shared by two other people so my time on here is limited lately, but I did try to get a few started and not a single person joined.
Two of them were around midnight-1 AM though, so that could explain it.

Wait, what's SimulGear? Is it just simultaneous play or is it something else?

Valentorg wrote: Wait, what's SimulGear? Is it just simultaneous play or is it something else?

It's simultaneous play, but with a few different characteristics as well.

I'm with you Valentorg we should schedule some realtime games and announce them on the forum. That's the only way I ever had any 3 player or more realtime games happening I am only a real time player and it would be great to make a list of us realtimers so when we check online we know who plays.If people knew it was ever week at a certain time and certain day maybe we could get it to grow a bit. If you need any help let me know Realtime 4 Ever! Cheers!

I love real time games. I did a lot of them in the past, but I almost stopped. For 2 reasons.

1- They are too long to commit yourself to do nothing else. The turn should be 2 or 3 minutes so everyone is staying online all the time, using the 'refresh' button.

2- I almost stopped to play 2 players game, because of the unfair point calculation system. And because of point 1 and of the small number of players, it's hard to get 3 or 4 players at the same time that wish to play the same game, without having to wait hours.

I would love to play real time again...

More explainations on my point 2

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1078/Unjust_Ranking_Calculation

I'll be adding a realtime game notification system shortly - hopefully this will help.

I agree with Toto 2-3 min turns is the way to go thanks for the update Tom Cheers!

You can't put 2-3 min per turn this is nonsense. nobody or very few people stay on wargear pressing the refresh button. Wargear is this kind of site that you keep in a browser checking from time to time if a new turn is to be played, while doing something on the side. Waiting in front of an empty page for game status to change is so depressing.

10mins is short anyway. and when i play those real time games most of the time we don't use our whole time and it goes faster.

Honestly, there are tons of other resources that do 2-3 minute realtime games far better than WarGear ever could (Lux, for example), precisely for the reasons ecko spelled out. I'll also note that, at least in my experience, 2-3 minutes is nowhere NEAR as long as you think it is, especially on a larger board that requires a bit of thought before you take your turn.

I hear both your points I am a member of other risk style sigts I just thought if it doesn;t use any more site energy why  not have the 2-3- min game option. And yes I am one of the few realtimers that hits the refreash button and there are more of us yhan you think when i have rt games some with even 3 people they can be fiished in just over a hour mind you we only use a couple of maps. It would bring in more rt players and I think that is good. Just my 2 cents Cheers.

Angusjustice wrote:

I hear both your points I am a member of other risk style sigts I just thought if it doesn;t use any more site energy why  not have the 2-3- min game option. And yes I am one of the few realtimers that hits the refreash button and there are more of us yhan you think when i have rt games some with even 3 people they can be fiished in just over a hour mind you we only use a couple of maps. It would bring in more rt players and I think that is good. Just my 2 cents Cheers.

Hey Angus, one solution that might be of interest to you is the M-Engine design.  It's essentially a SimulGear approach (in that everyone makes their moves at the same time), but it uses standard dice, not percentage dice and can be played on most any existing board.  Tom has intimated that he would consider creating variants other than the current SimulGear design (which I think is not very Risk-like).

With everyone moving at once, you could play a 5 minute per turn game where, no matter how many people are playing, you would take an entire turn every 5 minutes or less.  Another advantage of M-Engine design is that playing with 2 people on  ..say, a standard Risk board gives no advantage to either player ..because there is no turn order.

Oatworm wrote:

Honestly, there are tons of other resources that do 2-3 minute realtime games far better than WarGear ever could (Lux, for example), precisely for the reasons ecko spelled out. I'll also note that, at least in my experience, 2-3 minutes is nowhere NEAR as long as you think it is, especially on a larger board that requires a bit of thought before you take your turn.

I've been looking and I can't seem to find any free ones apart from Risk on Pogo, which is a lot more limited than Wargear. Though you just mentioned Lux so I suppose I could look into that one.

EDIT: Well I just checked out Lux but it looks like it not only costs money, but is a downloadable game rather than browser-based. Neither of those suits what I need so Lux isn't a good alternative to Wargear for me. I'll still have to hope that Wargear attracts a more active real time community.

2nd edit: lol I guess a one-time fee of $14 isn't much of an issue but it being not browser-based is still an issue for me.

VAl try LandGrab free realtime games

We are just talking about an extra option. A 2 or 3 minutes turn would not mean stopping the 10 minutes option. My only worry is about the server and network problems, as it happened to me to be booted in a 10 minutes game because I could not connect to the site... 

I think I tried Landgrab before and didn't like it but I don't remember why I didn't like it so I might try it again.

And I'm not against a 2-3 minute turn option but I really don't think that's a good turn limit for this game.