Too Much Multiplayer In Today's Games? 362
hornedrat writes "Gamepro discusses the idea that modern games put too much emphasis on multiplayer, and that players aren't as concerned about it as developers think. 'The current environment encourages developers to unnecessarily toss multiplayer into their games without caring about it — or even considering whether anyone will bother playing it. It’s like they're checking an invisible quota box that demands multiplayer's inclusion.' Personally I agree that too much emphasis is placed on competitive multiplayer. I play online, but only with my brother in games that allow co-operative modes, like Rainbow Six: Vegas and ARMA 2. 'My point isn't that developers shouldn't try and conquer Halo or Call of Duty. We'd never have any progress in this industry if developers didn't compete. Game companies, however, should think carefully about what they want their games to be, and more important, gamers should consider what they want. If a developer wants to eclipse Halo, then by all means, pour that effort into a multiplayer mode that's different.' I would be interested to know how many gamers really care about the multiplayer components of the games they buy."
Hardly (Score:2, Insightful)
I exclusively play multiplayer games, except on my phone when I want a quick game of Vexed or something to pass the time. Other than that, single player games are a little sad, and never as challenging as multiplayer. The way single player games are made challenging are to have bad guys with more strength/weapons/power than you, and/or cheating. Whereas QuakeLive is as good as the guys you're playing against, and given that it's full of clan players and people who've been playing quake for perhaps longer
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
I exclusively play multiplayer games, except on my phone when I want a quick game of Vexed or something to pass the time. Other than that, single player games are a little sad, and never as challenging as multiplayer. The way single player games are made challenging are to have bad guys with more strength/weapons/power than you, and/or cheating. Whereas QuakeLive is as good as the guys you're playing against, and given that it's full of clan players and people who've been playing quake for perhaps longer than they should have, it means that you're competing on level ground when it comes to player specs/weapons, but against people who know every last trick available (which you can learn should you be arsed). Who wants to play quakelive against bots? What would be the point?
You're only thinking of a very narrow subset of games.
Was Myst made more challenging by giving the bad guys more strength/weapons/power than the player? What about The Path? Or Braid? Or Portal?
Lots of games challenge players in different ways - challenge them to think through a situation, rather than relying on quick reflexes or memorizing a map's layout.
But I think you're missing the broader picture... A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun. It doesn't actually have to be hard to complete. A single-player game can present an interesting storyline in ways that a multi-player game cannot (or, at least, has not yet).
In a single-player game you can develop characters and settings. You can explore a world. You can show the consequences of your actions. You can have a whole story arc.
A multi-player game is generally about pure competition. Beat the other guy. Score more kills. Get more points.
It's kind of like comparing football to a novel.
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A single-player game does not need to be challenging to be fun. It doesn't actually have to be hard to complete. A single-player game can present an interesting storyline in ways that a multi-player game cannot (or, at least, has not yet).
In a single-player game you can develop characters and settings. You can explore a world. You can show the consequences of your actions. You can have a whole story arc.
My thoughts exactly. Pretty much every BioWare game ever (especially Dragon Age or the Mass Effect games) is about story and consequences; the gameplay is not terribly difficult, even on the highest difficulty settings. Same thing can be said for Bethesda games, like Fallout 3 or Oblivion; not 'impossible' to beat by any stretch, and far more about exploring interesting new worlds. All of these examples are games that did extremely well without ANY multiplayer 'tacked on', as it were
Multiplayer has its p
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. A lot of RPG's have had extremely successful single-player campaigns, but the graphics were not all that great, even when the game first came out ... and many continue replaying it. Why? Not graphics or challenge, but story. "Hey, what happens to the story if I do it this way instead" or "use this character" or "how does this class follow the story path" ... etc.
Or, say, Oblivion. Not a hard game. Not amazing graphics (at least, anymore), but generically nice. Not multiplayer at all. It was pretty successful. It had a more or less simple and somewhat interesting main storyline, but what made it fun was the rather free world it presented.
Your example of "Tom Clancy: Press A" with moving dialogues (basically, a book) is a bit oversimplified. When the GP was talking about "story," I'm pretty sure he's talking about story interaction, not just the flat linear telling of a story. It's the placing of the game player into the story that people like, not simply being told the story itself. It's BEING the protagonist - or someone in the story, anyways - that's fun.
Just like actually controlling the exploration of a world is a lot different than having a guided tour of the world. Who would want a guided tour of Oblivion, a hands-off experience? That'd be boring.
Many non-RPG games appear to be putting RPG elements in, as well. FPS's with a lot of storyline (e.g., Half-Life). FPS's with characters gaining levels/experience ("Action-RPG"). Heavy story RTS games with small "experience"-based leveling type things, such as World in Conflict.
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Tom Clancy: Press A is a pretty popular games genre in Japan, they call them Visual Novels.
Not sure where you got that idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure where you got any of those ideas actually.
1. While graphics are a big selling point and much talked about, if it were the only one, there'd be no need to get an RPG instead of, dunno, just about anything else. Like an old-school mindless FPS where the whole plot is "kill everyone on the map."
Even for non-RPGs, ever heard of a game called Half Life? Yeah, that's around where having a story started to matter even in FPS.
That the graphics get the most hype is also an issue of it being the easiest to talk about without playing for more than an hour or two, which is what the average reviewer seems to do. Plus you can put a lot of screenshots on a review site, while discussing plot elements is actually frowned upon.
2. Speaking of which: if the story didn't matter, then why are spoilers frowned upon?
3. I'm pretty sure that the expansion of the games market in the last two decades straight was mainly due to making games increasingly _less_ challenging. From such stuff as Max Payne's decreasing the difficulty ever more without even asking if you die too much, to WoW basically increasing the MMO market size by an order of magnitude by being less challenging than any other MMO out there, to RPGs with scaled enemies so you don't end up with challenges above your level, to racing games with rubberband mechanics where essentially everyone drives around your position so you can still win even if you bounce in all the walls, etc, the history of the last decade can be summed up as basically "how can we make our games accessible to everyone short of a paraplegic and not challenge them much?"
The age of the die-hard nerds playing just to prove they can win against stupid odds in a game, has come and gone. It was an age where markets were measured in thousands of units sold, and selling 10,000 copies would make you a cult classic. The mass market just isn't there and never was.
But, heck, even way back, Lucas Arts was more popular than Sierra because their adventures didn't kill your character and make you reload for every mistake, nor let you do something that will make it impossible to win the game later. Lucas adventures literally let you try everything everywhere, with _zero_ repercussions for doing something wrong. So, why did people buy those if everyone wants a challenge?
4. As someone who dabbled into modding, I'm pretty sure that there's a huge number of people out there who'll explicitly look for basically god-mode items. That's not people playing for a challenge, that's people who basically just want to bonk that big-ass dragon on the head _once_ and move on to the next bit of the story. Basically, yes, they just want a "Press A to continue" instead of the whole challenge.
Plus, in the same vein, there's the issue of the thousands of sites dedicated to cheats, or the fact that on consoles there's actually money to be made by selling cheat programs like GameShark, Exploder, and whatever it is they use these days. Or save games that include every item in the game and a hacked character with all skills and 1,000,000 health. Roll that around in your head. There are people willing to actually pay extra money to remove the challenge, and there always were enough to support several vendors on any given console.
5. But to get back to story, funnily enough, your argument sounds to me like a rehash of Nintendo's arguments back in the N64 vs Playstation days. Nintendo was still The Big N, and when everyone who wanted to pack elaborate stories and FMV scenes (not to mention Nintendo's asshole attitude and delusions of being some kind of dictator back in those days) fled to Playstation and it's cheap CDs, Nintendo basically went on to give lots of speeches saying the same: story doesn't matter, people don't want RPGs, some kind of platformer is what everyone plays because gameplay is the only thing that matters. It even went for insulting statements like that those who play RPGs are just a handful of depressed people playing in a dark basement. Yeah, ask them how
WarioWare (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're describing is QuickTimeEvents and they are one of the worst things about games but still seem to be getting more common.
Fans of WarioWare, a whole franchise built around sequences of four-second QTEs, would disagree with that.
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Insightful)
If it were anything like the coop Alien Swarm or Left 4 Dead, you'd have lots of fun once you found a core group to play with, and lots of misery till then as you got stuck with asshole after asshole who found it more fun to fuck the team over than actually play the game. Can you imagine the sort of pain you'd get into when griefers can make portals?
Don't get me wrong, I love the L4D series and so far have enjoyed my brief forays into Alien Swarm, but every time I launch the game and see none of my core group online to play with, I cringe a little over what the next pug I'll be stuck with will be like.
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That is a problem with current matchmaking tech, not an inherent flaw in coop gameplay.
There should be no problem creating a system where you can rank each player you try out. With time those rankings will create a social group of people who enjoy the same kind of coop play, and the assholes will remain outside. Enough friends in that group like a particular player then it's probably ok to invite him to your team.
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
A) Most random people on the internet who play games on Xbox live and the like are complete assholes. Consider the message I got last night while playing some TF2 "Why are you fucking hacking you fucking douchbag" and the reason that was given that I was "hacking" is because I managed to backstab him while he was sniping several times in the row when his back was turned... Enough people like that are out in the world to make playing online against random people a pain.
B) The difficulty. It takes a lot longer to learn how to efficiently play an online game than it is to learn to play a single player game. Even worse is if you are in a team-style game and have to endure abuse about how you aren't as great as they are despite the fact you bought the game yesterday... And difficulty can't be accurately chosen unlike a single player game, yes, there are systems like Halo's matchmaking, but even that doesn't always work.
C) Cheating/Lag, few things are more frustrating than trying to snipe on a laggy connection.
D) Badly managed servers. For example, on Team Fortress 2, you will have people who decide to make everyone be engineers, then suddenly allow for one spy, then make everyone be engineers once someone on their team is the spy...
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>>>A) Most random people on the internet who play games on Xbox live and the like are complete assholes
Precisely. Multiplayer was fun when it was just me and some friends with connected modems. 1-on-1 Populous or Firepower was a blast. Tradewars was a blast. And if some asshole showed up, the word quickly went out and the asshole was ganged-up on & exterminated. Then the "Eternal September" happened sometime around 2002, and a bunch of idiots showed up. Goodbye fun.
Another reason I don't
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Another reason I don't like multiplayer is there's no
Me too.
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...there's no fixed ending, and it just becomes a grindfest that chews up money from your credit card. I'd sooner buy a solo game like Final Fantasy 12 (fixed ending) or DDR (fixed cost).
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The trick with online multiplayer is to find a community of like-minded individuals of near your own age group, find their steam community(ies) and play largely inside that circle of people, which tends to be ~100-250 people. I can think of four large, healthy TF2 communities off the top of my head that are also involved in several other games as well. All of a sudden you're playing with people you know, and it becomes a lot more fun. If you play on a 32 player instant respawn server full of strangers who h
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Re:Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Informative)
D) Badly managed servers. For example, on Team Fortress 2, you will have people who decide to make everyone be engineers, then suddenly allow for one spy, then make everyone be engineers once someone on their team is the spy...
That's not a badly managed server. That's a server with a custom game mode that you don't happen to like. A few multiplayer games have had something of a "cooties" mode, where you either A) avoid getting killed by the cooties monster, B) become the cooties monster and have to kill someone else. As for me, I sometimes find that kind of game an interesting distraction. Sometimes the modder comes up with something *GOOD*, or at least something original.
Here's badly managed servers for you: every singular MW2 PC server. Due to the idiotic idea that is iwNET, you will be paired you will be paired with a given 'server' if they have an open slot and you have a decent ping. That 'server' is some other schmuck playing in your game. A good 50+% of connections are bad, very bad, or horrible, I'm sure due to any number of faults. Further, the server 'admin' either doesn't know how to correct issies, or is apathetic to the fact that some turd is running a wall-hack or aim-bot.
If that wasn't bad enough, the kids have found ways of creating servers with their own rules: and here's the rub: you're still connecting to them regardless of any want or desire on your behalf... And you have no idea that you're connecting to a hacked server before you're in it. Example: A few weeks ago, I joined up on a server that instantly leveled me to level 70, and gave me darn near *every* achievement. Every unlock for every gun, every logo...You know... it sucks royal.
Maybe I'm the only guy who likes playing to accomplish achievements. It forces me to break the mold, try guns and stuff that I might not have liked at first--and learn to dominate people with them. Now, I have every achievement, and can't get rid of them. Can't bring myself to play it anymore.
At least the modded servers in TF2 tend to advertise that fact--giving you the opportunity to decide if you want to join or not.
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants to play quakelive against bots? What would be the point?
I do, especially when I first start out.
Years back I was interested enough to take a look at "America's Army" to see what all the fuss was about and I quit and uninstalled before the first match was even over. It felt complicated, my mission was unknown, and the other players didn't know not to expect anything of a guy who not only just started playing but hasn't been an FPS guy since playing Doom2 over the network in high school.
I got a beta invite to Starcraft2 and ran into the exact same problem. Having never played the original I definitely wanted to give it a test run before purchasing. The beta doesn't include campaign mode, which is understandable, but doesn't have even the first mission of the tutorial where you learn to just move units around and what your resources are. I'm glad for serious players that Blizzard had the wisdom to tier their players so I never play someone who's been playing Starcraft for a decade, but I was still an annoying scrub to another beginning player who could have been just one not-so-god-awful-player- away from the next tier up. Given the awful zerging I got, I've very little interest in buying the game.
Multiplayer is great for going beyond the basics, but there are plenty of players who don't or won't. I've got a life and only play a game for a few dozen hours, so I do want the easy-to-medium level AI.
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I got a beta invite to Starcraft2 and ran into the exact same problem. Having never played the original I definitely wanted to give it a test run before purchasing. The beta doesn't include campaign mode, which is understandable, but doesn't have even the first mission of the tutorial where you learn to just move units around and what your resources are. I'm glad for serious players that Blizzard had the wisdom to tier their players so I never play someone who's been playing Starcraft for a decade, but I was still an annoying scrub to another beginning player who could have been just one not-so-god-awful-player- away from the next tier up. Given the awful zerging I got, I've very little interest in buying the game.
If it makes you feel any better, getting reamed on SC2 isn't just for total noobs like yourself. I last played a lot of SC about 8 years ago, and I got owned pretty seriously by all comers. What seems to be ignored is that, when the challenge of a game is too great, why even play. I mean, it took 5 games on the beta to get ranked, and even once ranked the system often couldn't find an appropriate match (beta was smaller after all).
I absolutely loved SC, but I'm a busy guy. Why should I play that 7th game if
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... I never play multiplayer, so I've just stopped playing all together!
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There's different kinds of multiplayer too. In an (RT)S like Civilization or Starcraft, you're pretty much bound to have a number of peers which can either be human or computer controlled, and this pretty much obviates multiplayer. In a lot of MMORPGs like Game! [wittyrpg.com] or WoW, you can arguably play them as "single player" games, without really interacting with other humans at all, but few people do that. On the other hand, the number of ways you can interact with other humans in an MMORPG is much broader than that
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How do you play World of Warcraft as a single player game?
At least according to the Wikipedia page:
So really, I'm guessing the people wanting a single player game are probably looking for the previous Warcraft games, since they are apparently single player.
I liked the PS2 "Bard's Tale" (it's not really directly related to the old games of the same name), being both humorous in making fun of D&D type games, but
Re:Hardly (Score:5, Funny)
Go play nethack and get back to me. Yeah, that horde of 'q' is stronger than you are. But who's smarter? (judging from your post, I'm betting on the 'q' actually)
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Whereas QuakeLive is as good as the guys you're playing against, and given that it's full of clan players and people who've been playing quake for perhaps longer than they should have, it means that you're competing on level ground when it comes to player specs/weapons, but against people who know every last trick available (which you can learn should you be arsed).
That's exactly why I very rarely play games in online multiplayer. Some games are better than others - Call of Duty has a somewhat decent system that tries to balance teams a bit. Halo, if I remember correctly, basically just throws you together with whoever. Personally, I can't spend more than a few hours a week playing a game, _especially_ if it's multiplayer (no pause button). I'm not a huge fan of getting killed 20 times with headshots by people I never even saw. As I said, Call of Duty is one of the be
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Work on both of them to make them great.
Considering that companies have finite resources and finite time, how exactly should this be divvied up?
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I would argue that the time should have been invested into the singer player aspects as I think you would have a hard time finding a mulitplayer game at all now. Unless the game has staying power, or is designed around co-op mode, then multiplayer should not be included. COD & Halo definitely have multiplayer modes, be
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What's really pissy is where it's a "multiplayer" mode that's completely limited to only one player per box.
If I can't do 4-player, head-to-head at home, then I can't gather friends and have it as a party game. And therefore it's pointless, because I don't want to spend that much time online with random people.
Completely agreed on Bioshock 2. All the time they wasted on multiplayer mode could have been spent making the single-player game that much stronger.
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"And therefore it's pointless, because I don't want to spend that much time online with random people."
Then do it with people you know.
A friend, my wife and myself play "Baldur's Gate 2:Throne of Bhaal" together using Hamachi2(free!) to create a virtual network. It "just fucking works", as advertised, and took the headache out of playing LAN/WAN enabled games over the Internet. Instant connection between 3 computers (two in the same room and one in Alaska, 3000 miles away). We could have 6 different people
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Insightful)
...Which is why Sim City, Civilization, X-COM, Master of Magic, Mass effect, and nearly any RPG have been such total flops.
I've been Computer Gaming since the 80's. The only games I've ever played multi-player are MOO2, Age of Empires, Earth and Beyond and Empire Earth.
As TFA points out, the problem is that very few studios are making adequate effort to make quality single player games these days.
Short lifespan (Score:4, Insightful)
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So what if you had great time playing them then? I mean, you probably aren't spending quality time with your old girlfriends anymore, and the pizza you ate yesterday is gone already. Other items and your car wears off too, and new interesting products come. Hell, when you die your life is gone. Nothing lasts forever, so why would games be different? The important thing is that you have or had great time.
It makes no sense not to enjoy about products (or girls) just because you might not be able to do so fore
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For me it's the opposite. I finish a SP game in 12-15 hours (if that much) and then it's useless because I've seen it all; Yes, I might replay it some years from now, but how many games (and books, and movies) are really worth replaying? A good multiplayer game has a constant source of new content (the players themselves) for the years the online community lasts.
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I finish a SP game in 12-15 hours (if that much) and then it's useless because I've seen it all
Not if you can restart with a different character class.
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And of course, most people aren't like you, so even with a technical solution you're still left without anyone to play the game. People kept Allegience going through incredibly heroic measures and yet there's still barely anyone playing. You're fighting lack of interest and all the new titles that have come out in the meantime - and often the "new version" of the same game, which all the hardcore players will have rushed out to buy anyways.
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Consider Super Mario Bros. a game made what? Nearly 30 years ago? It is still as playable today as is was in the 80s
It just requires a LOT of blowing on the cartridge. :)
Local multiplayer (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with multi-player is that it depends on an online server today which will shut down in time.
Not if it's local multiplayer with one machine and two to four gamepads, like Bomberman series or Smash Bros. series or Tetris Party. Not all multiplayer games have to be FPS or RTS. With the rise of HDTV, it's even practical for PC games to get in on this act.
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It seems (to me at least) that its getting difficult to find games that allow you to share a screen with someone. When Im looking at the PS3 games and most of them say Players: 1 Online Multiplayer: 2- 8. I dont particularly like it. I remember playing two player games at my friends house or with my brothers and sharing the screen. Im not going to buy a second PS3 and television just so I can play two player games with my friends. Split that screen up.
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Just an aside, but I found Duck Hunt on the original SMB cartridge to be unplayable on my HDTV, presumably due to the lag in video processing/display.
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Yeah, the light gun was a glorious hack that took advantage of knowing exactly what scan lines the ducks were flashing on to work... So any kind of delay will make it not work at all, I'm sure.
Wow, I'll be sad when Duck Hunt can no longer be played... Oh well, that's what emulation is for. :D
Re:Short lifespan (Score:4, Interesting)
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It has gotten to the point where if I see 'multiplayer' on a box, I will probably igno
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You're right that it is designed to solve a different problem, but you are wrong about the problem it is solving.
Today the real drive behind competitive multiplayer is maximizing pr
More decent gameplay, less multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
I virtually never play multiplayer online (I'll play multiplayer console games with friends, but virtually never with random people). Why? Two reasons. First, multiplayer is horribly repetitive and lacks originality. Secondly, when doing random matches online, the overwhelming majority of people are total asshats (see John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) that completely ruin any fun.
Companies need to focus on having original gameplay and an involving story that keeps you wanting to play, not just repetitive multiplayer.
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NI feel that playing multiplayer is actually teaching people useful social skills that will come in handy in real life, whereas soloing is the equivalent of computer-assisted masturbation.
Yep skills like.. when your better then other people your hacking/cheating
or.. when you dont like someone you can just kick/ban them
or.. when someone upsets you, you can curse them out with no repercussion.
Yep its exactly like life.
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I virtually never play multiplayer online (I'll play multiplayer console games with friends, but virtually never with random people).
Would you play multiplayer home-theater-PC games with friends in the same manner that you play multiplayer console games with friends?
Re:More decent gameplay, less multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in the same boat. Online multiplayer against strangers is fun for the first month or two a game is out for me. After that, most of the regular people and average skilled gamers have left and all you've got are people that are some combination of so much better than me (and better than I have the time and patience or natural talent to be) that I might as well just set the controller down and let them kill me and assholes. If all it has going for it is multiplayer, I'll probably stop there and not buy any expansions or sequels.
Good single player game? I'll buy it, I'll probably buy most of the expansions that get released, and I'll buy the sequels. That's held true to Fable (I also re-bought the whole game just for the lost chapters version), Fable 2, Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Oblivion, Rock Band, and so on with a continually growing list of games that include, and are frequently solely based on, a solid single player experience
Re:More decent gameplay, less multiplayer (Score:4, Informative)
As I've grown older I've found I've become more of a social gamer, I don't really care about playing through games anymore unless someone I know is also playing through it. I probably play games more than most people, but if someone I know isn't playing so we can talk about it, then it's just not as interesting. Unless there is truly something special about the game, I won't play it alone.
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I ran into the same thing. I played the free online month that came with GTA4 quite a bit. Got owned a lot at first, but I adapted the gamer part of my game to face real humans rather than AI, and began to give as good as I got. Then after three weeks I was all, eh, is this it?
I really only had one time when I felt it surpassed single player when I was playing cat and mouse with some other player for half an hour. I was on foot in the Manhattan area and he had a helicopter. I took him out, but he managed to
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One of the last times I played multiplayer, online, was Command & Conquer (yes, the original, and yes, that long ago.) I spent a couple of hours gradually getting the upper hand, and just
Re:More decent gameplay, less multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
"My cousin (a total noob at any kind of gaming ... or PCs) was like one of those target dummies in Oblivion, and my brother and I chased him all over the map blowing him up, mowing him down and generally turning him into dog food. Fun!"
How much fun did your cousin have?
Publishers, publishers, publishers (Score:3, Interesting)
Developers? No. The checking-off box mentality is created by the execs who look at past performance, market research, and all that boring stuff to come up with very specific ideas about what they want in a game. The developers usually have to build what the publisher asks for if they want to get paid.
Of course if you as a developer think you know better you can always strike out on your own, but most that do don't end up making much money. Thems the breaks.
little kid brother modes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rock Band 2 has a similar mode for little kids and non-gaming adults to play. I agree that it would great as a way to get more non-dedicated gamers to play.
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"I almost never played COD4 multiplayer, but I almost always like playing puzzle/adventure games (like Monkey Island or Space Quest or what have you) with someone else."
Yep. Me and a friend went through the first three Monkey Island games and Grim Fandango together; way more fun to sit and bounce ideas off each other and argue what to do next than to sit and beat the game alone. Of course, that was at university, when I actually had time to sit and play a game all night long. Today, a game pretty much has t
I think gamer interest largely drove the shift (Score:4, Insightful)
Around the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were a number of games with both single-player and multiplayer components, where basically nobody cared about the single-player components, and companies increasingly decided that, as a result, it was hardly worth bothering with them. Starcraft wasn't a success because of its single-player missions, the new single-player missions weren't what sold most copies of the Starcraft: Brood War expansion. Counterstrike was a huge success despite not even having a single-player component. Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well.
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To be fair, Counter-Strike was a free, fan made Half-Life mod before Valve bought it and it became a pay to play game. There are a lot of games that simply use the single player as a sort of training mode for the online multiplayer portion. CoD4 and from what I've heard, Modern Warfare 2 both use this tactic quite a bit. SOCOM 3 for the Playstation 2 was the same way. I've run into very few games that have equally good single and multiplayer functions.
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Same with Quake 3 Arena: just ditched the single-player entirely, and did very well.
Not entirely true. Quake 3's single player was a very thin gloss over top of the multiplayer, but at least it did have a few aspects to differentiate it from multiplayer... There were multiple tiers, each with a couple levels in them that you had to beat all of before moving on to the next tier, plus it recorded some stats for you. Unfortunately, both of the people who played Quake 3 only for the single player were unavailable for comment.
Online ranking (Score:2)
[In Quake III Arena,] There were multiple tiers, each with a couple levels in them that you had to beat all of before moving on to the next tier
Which is different from online matchmaking systems using an Elo-style ranking how?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I think gamer interest largely drove the shift (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble aren't really the games that focus completly on multiplayer, but the games that do it as a lackluster sideshow. So instead of focusing all their development power on the singleplayer, they waste time on a second rate multiplayer mode that nobody is going to play anyway.
See Brütal Legend as a horrible example, instead of doing the proper singleplayer game that people wanted, they have created this hybrid of a ultra short singleplayer campaign combined with a lame multiplayer mode. It kind of boggles my mind how anybody could look at that concept and consider it a good idea. But there are of cause plenty of other games where the multilpayer mode is basically just there so that they can say "Hey, we have multiplayer to!".
If developers don't care enough about multiplayer to make it really good, they just should give up on it and focus on singleplayer, as a multiplayer that nobody plays is basically less then worthless. It is kind of the same with MMORPGs, you have to be really really good if you want to compete against WoW, if that is to much, then there is little point in even trying.
both are good (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I like both qualities, depending on the game. A game that I can pick up any time and play solo is probably going to get more attention from me in general, but having the option of multiplayer is good, too. It really depends on the game - it definitely shouldn't be shoehorned in, but at the same time, it can be a fun bonus feature in an otherwise solo game.
Prototype comes to mind - a primarily solo game that game would've been a riot if i could bring in a buddy or two with all that superpowered and disembowel-ly fun to spread some chaos on the unsuspecting city, but it did hold up well as single player only - all the focus was on the solo campaign with no distractions of deathmatches or arenas or any junk like that shoehorned in. It just comes down to making a decision on the type of game you want to produce and to make sure that you do it right all around. I play Borderlands solo pretty regularly, for example, but I could be playing with friends any time and it would be a relatively seamless experience. Putting multiplayer into Bioshock 2, however, I thought was a horrific waste - it just doesn't "fit" the game, the environment, the atmosphere. It seems like it cheapens the experience. Gamers aren't right about what they want all the time, and this was one of those times. (I don't know what invisible horde it was that was clamoring for multi in bioshock 2, but thanks a lot guys. that's time and money they could've put into making the single player game actually better than the first.)
What more can be said? Multiplayer and single player both have their places. I played Fallout 3 and loved it, very much a solo game. On the other hand I play Team Fortress 2 like a maniac, and conceptually it's the very core of multiplayer.
Re: (Score:2)
Bioshock was a phenomenal game, that had absolutely no multiplayer (if memory serves) and it was wonderful. Sure, I would have loved a kick ass multiplayer component, but not at the expense of the rest of the game. Bioshock 2 has a bolt on multiplayer component and I haven't once even thought to load it up. I know it's bad. I know it's an uninspired waste because it doesn't "fit the game, the environment, the atmosphere" as the parent says.
Co-op. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
that's true, and cooperative multiplayer is something I particularly like to see. I don't always want to play against people - sometimes it's just way more fun to be non competitive and help each other out.
Deathspank, a recent XBLA game, is mainly single player but someone else can pick up a second controller and run around killing stuff as a generic dopey wizard. No character choice, no inventory, you can't complete quests or interact with items, just use various attacks and healing spells. Just a helpin
Demon's Souls is very well balanced (Score:4, Informative)
This game rocks BTW. On one level if you attempt to get multi-player coop help you are abducted by the level end boss and become his unwitting proxy. You must fight another person playing the game. This makes that level very hard as equipment, tactics, and skill are all essentially random. This is really just the cream on the top of the almost transparent but pervasive and enticing multi-player world. Demon's Souls is the shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just play offline if you are trying to control world tendency. I am always in soul mode as I am trying to stay pure white for my first game, if you want to be black then dying is great for your black progression. If you are in coop three guys should whoop ass on any invader. But yeah the OCD draw of this game is creepy. The illusion of a perfectly played game is there but wholly evilly unattainable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you ever go to some of the message boards for the game? Cripes, if you dared suggest maybe the box art could have been better you are verbally drawn and quartered and called a coward in life and, geez, all sorts of non sequiturs. I didn't dare post a thing.
Someone did a great parody of a review for Demon's Souls where the guy raves on endlessly about how wonderful it was that it took him 50 hours to get past the first level, and how the game has the best "You Died" screen ever in the history of gaming.
Don't multiplay much (Score:4, Interesting)
Time sink (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, multiplayer games require time to learn to be functional in it. Maybe too much time. Time to learn the maps, the strats, to not be a noob. It's not fun to be frag meat.
With all the extra time I put in these days at work, not to mention stress, my gaming time is more limited.
I prefer single player more now. Single player means just moving along at my own pace. No pressure, no matches, no expectations.
Re: (Score:2)
For me, multiplayer games require time to learn to be functional in it. Maybe too much time. Time to learn the maps, the strats, to not be a noob. It's not fun to be frag meat.
With all the extra time I put in these days at work, not to mention stress, my gaming time is more limited.
I prefer single player more now. Single player means just moving along at my own pace. No pressure, no matches, no expectations.
I agree wholeheartedly. I dont have the time or inclination to not be the noob. I work, I go to school, I have a life. Yes I enjoy playing video games, but if you dont play for hours on end you never leave the noob status. Most of the elites or experts or whatever on the games are young teenagers who apparently have nothing better to do but spend hours and hours and hours playing the game.
I wouldn't say the problem is with multiplayer (Score:2)
I'd say the problem is the preponderance of squeaky-voiced racist children. Multiplayer games need better filters to keep out the riff-raff.
Re:I wouldn't say the problem is with multiplayer (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the problem is the preponderance of squeaky-voiced racist children. Multiplayer games need better filters to keep out the riff-raff.
That's one of the things that is driving me away from multiplayer games. This problem used to be more or less solved; I'd only play on servers with active admins that would kick/ban people like that. Sadly the major developers/publishers seem to have decided that this is somehow bad, and instead like to match me up with random fuckwads with no way of getting rid of them or choosing a specific server to play on. They all seem to be taking a step backwards in this respect, apparently thinking that a server list is way too complicated for us "consumers", allowing people to set up their own dedicated hosts is evil, and generally sacrificing my ability to play where and how I see fit in the name of idiocies such as global "accomplishments" and stat tracking (seriously? Does anyone actually care about that crap?).
As long as I can opt out (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I firmly belive that I am among the very few people who have played the entire half-life series, and yet have spent less than 10 minutes playing any source or goldsource multiplayer game.
I play RTS games solely for the single player campaigns. I would get bored with the skirmish mode very quickly, and have zero interest in the multiplayer mode.
Playing local multiplayer with friends is indeed fun, but I don't have any friends over (pretty much ever), so I generally find that pretty worthless.
Re:As long as I can opt out (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, I bet your preferences are really common. I've also played all of half-life but never touched multiplayer. My guess is we're the silent majority that you never hear about because game reviewers necessarily like all or most game types, including multiplayer.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't have a choice now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Making a big part of the game online is the only way publishers (developers tend not to care as much) can ensure they can have some sort of effective copy protection (since DRMs don't work because they don't control the client...but they sure as hell can control the servers).
Obviously that doesn't apply to peer-to-peer multiplayers that don't require any interaction with a central server. Sure, you can have an independent server to bypass the need of the main one, but then you lose a big chunk of the community. Not 100% effective, but sure as hell more effective than 99.9999% of DRM out there, so publishers go that route.
How many time do you hear hardcore pirates going "Bah, im gonna buy this game, I want to play online". I know I do almost daily... (yes, daily)
Why is it always competitive? (Score:2)
I've played a lot of games on consoles, PC's, handhelds, and in the arcade.
I keep seeing the same problems with multiplayer: they often ARE added in as an afterthought, and on too many games, the multi-player play is missing some vital element of the single-player mode. A big problem for me is when a game doesn't have a co-op mode, or when co-op is somehow gimped.
For example, Doom was probably the first effect multi-player game with deathmatch and co-op play, but co-op mode would suffer when you ran out of
Mario GP (Score:3, Informative)
Why is there no multi-player quest mode [in Mario Kart Wii] that lets my kid and I unlock new tracks by playing together?
Worse yet, the Super NES and Nintendo 64 versions had a 2-player quest mode.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Single Player is key (Score:5, Interesting)
Take Halo for example, it started as a great single player story with a great combat system (and a second buddy allowed to bum around with you but not shown on cutscenes), and local multiplayer that became extremely popular.
Halo 2 followed the story (but was considered a story flop compared to the first) but turned the multiplayer into quite possibly one of the most thriving multiplayer systems in at least console history. Halo 3 comes around and incorporates even more multiplayer into the campaign, and again continues the multiplayer. It all started with a core single player experience.
COD4, that started the whole FPS as RPG experience, had a comparatively short story mode, but, what a surprise, they started the franchise with COD that was primarily a top notch single player experience. So again, they built upon a successful single player franchise to create a very popular multiplayer experience.
Starcraft, just to point out this isn't limited to FPS, built upon a solid single player experience and was also the first of the craft games to have multiplayer, unsurprisingly it became a crazy hit. Everyone who is interested in Dragon Age has probably mused about how fun multiplayer could be if it was done right. GTA followed this to the T as well, and unsurprisingly most fans liked the multiplayer. Portal was a primarily single player experience that was lauded like crazy. If they come out with a great multiplayer mode in part deux it will possibly be the next big thing. Plan multiplayer for the sequel seems to be the most direct way to make cash moneys. Or at least focus on the single player first.
The only thing is, there do seem to be some exceptions. Counter Strike, Team Fortress 1+2 for example, but those could be attributed as the "real" multiplayer modes of half life and HL2. Shadowrun was completely multiplayer and was a hilarious flop (even though the gameplay wasn't bad).
Are there any extremely successful multiplayer games that either didn't have a extremely successful single player experience that preceded it, a strong pedigree or were popular PC mods?
EverQuest. (Score:4, Interesting)
Starcraft, just to point out this isn't limited to FPS, built upon a solid single player experience and was also the first of the craft games to have multiplayer
Warcraft II had LAN play.
Are there any extremely successful multiplayer games that either didn't have a extremely successful single player experience that preceded it, a strong pedigree or were popular PC mods?
EverQuest. Unlike UO, FFXI, and WOW, it wasn't an extension of an existing single-player RPG franchise.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ancient history...there were two services that allowed quasi-battle.net like games: Kali and Kahn. I believe Kali was the original. IIRC, it was written by Jay Cotton, and you could get a registration number for $15. You would dial into one of their servers and it offered chat services and you could organize games. Kahn was something similar. It was similar to dialing into Prodigy or AOL (or Compuserve, etc...). I believe it was just an IPX-TCP/IP wrapper. Blizzard eventually released a WC2 version c
Multiplayer = Longer game lifespan (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiplayer mode is one of those features that relatively few players use, but almost everyone surveyed say they will use. Go figure.
However, one conclusion is very clear (as seen at various discussions on Gamasutra and at GDC Austin): multiplayer is seen by developers as an excellent way to extend the lifespan of a game. Multiplayer is essentially free content. The idea is that a player will keep coming back for multiplayer, thus keeping the title fresh in their minds, and making it more likely they will buy expansions or sequels. Is this true? Case-by-case basis.
I suspect that until multiplayer gaming is cleaned up (something done to lock out griefers and cheaters, and deal with bad behavior generically), many people will quickly find that multiplayer play loses its sparkle. As the industry is starting to realize, if a game is associated with nothing but a bad experience due to a cretinous few, it won't matter that it's not the publisher's fault. A player will say "Crysis, yeah, that's where the aimbots are at, and that's where I get called a fag every five seconds", then go off to TF2 (which enjoys a better reputation for being more supportive towards n00bs like me). In a situation like that, someone will be more likely to buy TF3 than Crysis 2, because of the negativity surrounding the one and the positivity surrounding the other. Fair or otherwise, that's reality.
If it's a FPS (Score:2)
Re:If it's a FPS (Score:5, Insightful)
It better have good multiplayer. I haven't even touched the single player campaign of MW2 but I play online daily. Play the Medal of Honor beta that's out right now and then say multiplayer doesn't matter. DICE doesn't seem to think so with the crap job they did on MoH's multiplayer.
Similarly, I wish SHODAN had been played by a random other person selected via a matchmaking service. And Doctor Breen would have been cooler if he were voiced by a kid on XBox Live. How great would Pripyat have been if the monolith were controlled by a Ukrainian connected through Gamespy?
I gravitate toward multiplayer nowadays (Score:5, Interesting)
I no longer enjoy playing against 1's and 0's once I've played against humans. It's much more challenging and satisfying as well. Nothing beats making a headshot across the map and just KNOWING that someone is pissed off. When hit by said shot, I'm both pissed and admiring the shot as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that depends entirely on the game. Some have entirely too few good strategies and MP becomes more about knowing the "right" way of doing stuff than the fun of trying different things. Humans have unfortunately a very good ability to min-max on a few "best" strategies, while AIs can by programming have different behavior as long as it doesn't end up being pure stupid behavior. I prefer that at least.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
And the real reason is... Money ! (Score:2)
The real reason for writing multiplayer games is that you can force people to pay every month to have access to your server.
Frankly, every game developer knows that doing a multiplayer game takes a lot more time than doing a single player game, and also it's pretty boring to code (yes, I wrote several multiplayer games several years ago).
But when you realize that the most successful games are multiplayer because of the subscriptions, it would be dumb to miss this opportunity.
deus ex 3 (Score:2)
single player only -- 'cause it's all story. and it'll be amazing.
I don't like competition in a casual game (Score:2)
If a game is multiplayer only, I usually avoid it.
Furthermore sometimes it seems companies just want to avoid the cost and effort to develop a good AI and then sell this as a feature.
I agree with this. Case in point: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I fully agree with what you're thinking here. They know that once a player has beaten the game, no matter the difficulty, they may not care to keep playing it after that. They toss in a multiplayer to keep interest in the game so it can keep selling more copies.
A big part of the reason the Halo's and the COD's sell is not because of the single player elements. I've encountered numerous people who couldn't care less about single player. They play the games for the notoriously fun multiplayer. A gaming compa
Character classes or expansion packs (Score:2)
Once you have mastered the single-player aspect of a game, what is there left?
Play through again with a different character class. Publishers assume that once you finish that, you'll have earned enough at your day job to buy expansion packs and sequels.
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If thats the situation I wont buy the games or the consoles. I want good single player games and good local multiplayer (Screen sharing). If you dont offer that, then the suggestion that I will buy 2 of everything (consoles, tvs, and the game) is laughable.