No Online Co-Op For Halo 3 At Launch 128
CVG has the disappointing news, originally reported in the pages of EGM, that online co-op play will not be available when Halo 3 launches this September. In the game the second player would play the part of the Arbiter character, but fans will only be able to complete the campaign cooperatively via LAN or split-screen. Bungie stated the possibility still exists online co-op could be patched in at a later date, but significant hurdles stand in the way of the feature: "'We're not dumb,' says Bungie's Frank O'Conner. 'We know that people want it and we're trying to make it happen. I think the biggest problem for us for online co-op is that we have a situation where you can be in a Warthog with five troops, almost a mile away from the other player. That's a significant challenge. And there's lots of design things you could do to prevent that from happening, but they would make it not feel like Halo anymore. If we can make it happen in a way that works well, we will - and if it works badly, we won't.'"
Re:Halo shouldn't have Co-op. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not to smart either? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really the only game I have ever played where you can be on the other side of the physical game world is crackdown. Then again considering how a game is able to recover from the "host" leaving it seems like 2 players could move apart and load separate areas and trade only data that is relevant to the other client. However something about the way the game could have change.
IN the last 2 you were usually confined along a path with some stuff. Most of the wide open areas were arenas almost with 1 way in and one way out. There was not set distance between both players, but when one hit a check
point, or a load point the player in the previous area was teleported up to the new point. Both things kept it so that only one area was loaded at any given time.
Now if the game is much more open and you have more room to run around it could be that the system of keeping the players together would be less effective, or possibly down right frustrating. Still this might not be as technical as it would be a gameplay related issue.
However the fact that it works over a lan would suggest to me that the issue is bandwidth and latency related. Possibly coordinating the in game AI could cause trouble, possibly the physics, ect ect.
Who knows. Feel free to correct me if I said anything too stupid.
Re:Teleport users together? LAN but not XBL??? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know I never really liked this option. It breaks immersion -- which isn't a problem in Halo 1 and 2, because there's only supposed to be one Chief and one Arbiter, and co-op simply ads another of whoever the main character is at the moment. But in Halo 3, when apparently the Chief and the Arbiter will be in the same place at the same time, and Co-Op will support that, it would be really nice if you didn't have the random teleporting.
Besides, it makes the game easier -- one player can draw all the fire and simply stay alive while the other charges ahead to the checkpoint.
Regardless, I guess I just don't see why this is a big deal. If the players get far enough apart that they're out of sight, why not simply split it into two simultaneous games at that point? Re-sync everything when they meet up again?
My guess is, it's probably a bandwidth issue.
What pisses me off is, like all other console games, they'd rather prevent you from trying to do something unusual than simply warn you that it might not work. For example, take a university -- all kinds of subnets, but huge amounts of bandwidth between them, especially considering between them and the Internet. If Halo 3 and the Xbox 360's Xbox Live work at all like Halo 2 and the original Xbox Live, it should be possbile to create a game with a specific group of friends, and if all of those friends share a network (if not a subnet), it should be as responsive as a LAN game, right?
I guess the answer, as with many things, is "not necessarily". It's always possible that the LAN game requires on broadcast packets, to reduce bandwidth used. Still, it would only have an effect with three players or more, so the above scenario is still valid for a two-player co-op game (since, as I understand it, three-player co-op isn't available).
Re:This is Halo (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you kidding me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Halo 2 sold over 6 million copies. When Halo 2 was released, there were less than 2 million subscriptions to X-Box Live... In fact, X-Box Live just reached 6 million subscriptions in March 2007. Obviously more than a few people weren't playing Halo online and I doubt that those who were ignored co-op.
Bungie has been known for doing co-op since Marathon. Co-op is an integral part of the Halo package, and it never would've become Microsoft's "Killer App" without it. Never. Halo is legendary not only for its versus play, but for the fact that it breathed new life into co-op (something that was being put on the back-burner due to developers' boners for online deathmatches). Without co-op, Halo would not be considered a classic game.
So before you lump "vast majority" in with yourself, take a step back and realize how integral co-op has been to Halo's (and the X-Box as a whole's) success.