Extra Punctuation: Mixing Single and Multiplayer

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Mixing Single and Multiplayer

Are you a game developer thinking about adding multiplayer elements to your single player game? Well stop it, it's stupid.

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[Giest4life]

Silly, Yahtzee, the cake is a lie. Everyone knows that.

OT: I really, really enjoy co-op missions. But I do see the need to have single-player only campaigns and not thrust co-op mode down our throats. I wish the Battlefield series had co-op multiplayer missions. That would be so awesome, and maybe then I'd try them at a higher difficulty.

EDIT: Dare I say it?

Spoiler: Oh yes I did :D

First!

 

[CptRumGuy]

I'm so disappointed in the FEAR series. I had such a scary good time with the first one way back in the day. I got really excited when I heard about the second one coming out, then forked over my hard-earned $60 to play it. And it turned out to be a silly over-the-top circus of monsters going BLOOORREEHEHEOAAHAAHH in my face and a naked filthy woman trying to jump me.

Now with the 3rd instalment, I'm not even going to bother playing it. Any semblance of creepiness the series had left is ruined by the multiplayer.

*sigh* my only hope is that game developers will eventually use up all the bad ideas for horror games and eventually come full circle back to the good ideas.

 

[l3o2828]

I understand your point,Yahtzee, i really do.
But then again,some people just like to play with friends , to a game with no care in the world for the plot or the immersion, and just have fun and having something to chew on when the chat goes dry.

 

[cynicalsaint1]

I don't think the problem is so much mixing single and multiplayer, its doing it in a hamfisted manner where you just sort of shove co-op stuff into your single player game.

Take Demon's Souls, the messaging system, the bloodstains, the white phantoms all add to feel of the game. The threat of having a black phantom invade while you're playing in body form. Teaming up with someone as a blue phantom to get some revenge on a boss that pissed you off. It all works very well, and adds to the atmosphere of the game rather than ruin it.

 

[cornmancer]

As a lover of co-op I agree. Stop trying to put story down my throat, I want to shoot dudes and make jokes with my friends. That's the brilliance of Portal 2's co-op. It takes away the story focus, puts in that puzzle and brief joke focus of the first game and doesn't make me stop talking to hear everything GLADOS is saying.
I love story in singleplayer, but don't put it anywhere near the co-op campaign. And don't be a dick and make the single-player and multi-player campaigns the same unless I can skip the cutscenes or they're so hilariously bad that I can mock them with my friend.

 

[OCAdam]

I actually do like co-op games a lot. But the thing is, it works better if it's done through a separate storyline (Portal 2 for example). There are some potential abilities to go for co-op from originally single player storylines though (P1 plays story character, P2 plays random grunt from that level on P1's side). This way you avoid having to make extra story for P2 to make sense there, they're just a soldier who is moreorless not completely necessary to be there... they just are for reinforcements or cannon fodder to the story chars normally.

 

[Strife2GFAQs]

Here's my take.

I had a friend for over a year. He was always trying to get me into Magic, DKR, and SMB multiplayer stuff, and I utterly resisted. The last co-op game experience I liked was FFVII with my brother, and that was 15 years ago. Now, multiplayer can **** bricks. I don't need other people to muck up my gaming experience. Adding co-op gameplay to what should be single player campaigns just strikes me as straddling the fence. You can't decide what will sell, so you **** it all up by being mediocre. Look at Catherine; it's purely single player, with no inkling of need or want from multiplayer nuts, and I'm more excited for that than any MAG, CoD, or whatever stupid shooter they make so online nerds can earn kills and spam grenades.

Hell, the attempt they made at co-op with DQIX was fun...for five minutes. Purely single player campaigns should be able to standalone. Pick a market for your game and stand by that decision.

 

[Avaholic03]

Surely there are some games with decent co-op focus, but still playable single player. I like what Gears of War did with co-op...sometimes separating the players so they could deal with separate issues, or tackle the same fight from different angles. Sure, only one player could go each route so you might "miss out" on one of the experiences, but it was an interesting idea. Now, if only that story had a little more depth...

 

[castlewise]

I wonder how WoW fits into the "multiplayer can't have good story" thing. Pretty well I imagine. I know I never read the quests and have no idea whats actually supposed to be going on, but is it true for everyone?

 

[Richardplex]

I wonder how WoW fits into the "multiplayer can't have good story" thing. Pretty well I imagine. I know I never read the quests and have no idea whats actually supposed to be going on, but is it true for everyone?

With WoW, your not forced into questing with people, bar a couple of quests which are generally one offs with no story or one offs at the end of an epic questline. WoW is an example where one can have his cake and eat it too. Mostly. Until the alliance burns down your quest hub, or people start farming your kills.

Edit: I read every quest, and back when I played, I loved the lore of the game, I was a certified Lore-Whore.

 

[Eicha]

I completely agree. Another aggravating thing today is how when they package the eggs into the boxes the put a single player quail egg in with the multiplayer ostrich egg, and it just screws up the balance for the ones that enjoy eating eggs on their own. In english, it feels like games nowadays focus more on multiplayer content, using the single player bit to just give the loners something to do, or to unlock a silly hat when you play multiplayer.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I ....don't think anyone is pretending to portray Fear 3 was a horror game. It just felt like they promoted it as a shooter from....... Day one.

Man, I miss Hankman. Even HE'D be jealous of that one.

 

[kcarl2a]

Not really disagreeing at all but I would like to say that the cake joke alone will probably drive him up a wall.

 

[Sicram]

I can't do anything else than agree. Singleplayer is for a single player and multiplayer is for multiple players. Nothing messes up a story more than someone else blabbering during the whole thing.

Also, sadly this has been spilling onto PC as well (which is my only refuge) and here's there's even less sense of having a two player coop (or 4) seeing as unless at a LAN you are far away from each other. One does not play games like L4D for the story.

P.S. The painkiller doesn't shoot "lightning", it's more like a laser and I remember this from playing it a bunch of years ago. *legs it*

 

[TheCakeisALie87]

I think this is just an expression of the old split screen multiplayer that used to be so much fun. I was really excited when online tech became common-place because I used to love playing against my brothers while admonishing them for staring at my screen (while I stared better at theirs). Unfortunately playing online with someone will never be the same as playing in the same room and unless two players start playing at the exact same time it gets even worse. Look at Portal 2's coop. How can you play that with someone who has played more levels than you?

 

[SammiYin]

Games are [for me at least] 100x more fun when played with friends, we regularly say to eachother how more games need co op campaign, and we even stoop to bad games just because they have a co op focus [LP2 and L4d]
I understand that games should have single player, and not mix up the mechanics by forcing you to see the co op, but co op is just more fun.
Surely the primary focus of a game is the 'game' aspect? And aren't most games just more fun when played with other people? If you want story you read a book, if you want a good time you play, if you want a really good time you play with friends. If you have good friends they don't get in the way of the story, you make fun of it but still retain the ability to follow along what's happening.
Yes companies are struggling to divide the two effectively, but I must just be one of those weird people who would prefer Fallout or Crysis if you could play through the story with some friends.

 

[Wolfram23]

3 Cheers for Yahtzee!

Hip Hip Hooray!

Haha but yeah, I totally agree. I loves me a good, engrossing story. Recently got Crysis 2... ugh it's just not that good. I mean the physical gameplay is ok, the graphics are great, but it's not that compelling. I think some of the best FPS games I've played in the last year or so are Cryostasis, Metro 2033, STALKER: Call of Pripyat, and... hm... I can't really think of another FPS that was as interesting as those 3. OH!! Penumbra/Amnesia! Those games were great fun.