Battlefront is Barely Multiplayer At All

[SKBPinkie]

My experience of two CoD free weekends and various free team-based shooters: you aimlessly run around the same few maps shooting others before they can shoot you while trying not to shoot your teammates.

And it's okay if you feel that way; that was basically your experience with it. I could try and tell you that if you played with friends, it's entirely different. The issue comes with people like Yahtzee constantly telling us (for years at this point) that all multiplayer is basically the same as killing his dog. It's getting tiring to listen to.

What's worse is when he generalizes and projects his opinion to every other game in the genre based on a couple bad incidents.

[Not true]

[I agree. It's true.]

[I didn't read the article.]

Such co-ordination! I really should stop doing this, but... The irony, it burns!

And finally - if you're gonna quote someone, at least snip it spoilers if you don't want to include the whole thing. Just replacing what we've said with "Not true" kinda defeats the point of discussion. Or if you feel like what we've said is or isn't valid, explain why.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"Basically it becomes an on-the-nose satire of World War 1 battlefield strategy as wave after wave of plebs spawn, run to the front, and are cut down."

At least WW1 also had the Spanish Flu going on... So you could get cut down from both enemy activity AND disease, which mathematically makes it twice as interesting at least.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Given the apparent failure of Battlefront, can you blame them for wanting to resurrect single player games like 1313 and even possibly the pretty much finished but abandoned Darth Maul origin game?

 

[BeerTent]

I've actually been noticing this trend over the years too.

Back when we played DoD and other Half-Life creations, you needed a mic. It was required. No mic, no communication, and you felt left out. You felt useless, and you were just there to bog down the team while you pick up scraps of what everyone else said. If you had a mic, you could say, "Hey, guy in the church tower, look out." And spectate another player killing said church dude after you were killed.

Now-a-days, playing Co-op heavy games, it's more like, "Holy shit. A guy with a mic. A GUY WHO'S LISTENING TO ME! STEAM FRIEND! LOVE ME!! LOVE MEEEE!!!" Games like PD2, NS2, Killing Floor 2, Vermintide, Dirty Bomb. These are all games I'd love to play... But, nobody talks. Nobody works together. The "Social" aspect of multiplayer for these games have dropped dead unless you get lucky. (Especially for PD2, as nobody plays that now. It really is a shame, because it really is a great game, excluding the DLC.) I find it incredibly difficult to get into these games now without a dedicated group over Steam VOIP or TS3.

So... Now? I just play Space Engineers. Or XCOM. Actually, any XCOM Players wanna go up against a Long War Player? I also need to get back into Fallout.

[...]If you play with me online, you'll see I'm the type who cracks jokes and laughs, someone for whom the casual nature of the experience is important. I play to get my mind off things or to wind down after a long day at work, so performance is the least of my concerns. I'm pretty much the Anti-Rager; someone who laughs when he's killed, especially if the ragdoll breaks or my recent demise came from my own stupidity. I apologize when a planned assault goes to shit and do my best to assist my teammates.[...]

Edit: THIS, is the kind of person I look for when playing online games. Someone who doesn't take it seriously, still tries to succeed, and is a goddamn blast to be around. ~<3

 

[Foolery]

What a sad, bitter, and deluded read. I kinda knew that going into this, knowing Yahtzee's opinion on multiplayer games, but it was honestly a lot worse than I expected.

I agree, this was poorly written. And uses an analogy that doesn't work. The only point I agree with is that certain online games have become less social. Pop on Xbox live to play Halo or whichever, and very few people are using mics. Or if they are, they're just not talking, and you get to hear the occasional cough or shuffling about.

 

[saxman234]

I remember back in the halo 2/3 days, many more people talked and actually communicated. Of course you would get some man-childs, bigots, etc, but at least it felt like a social experience and there were always a few normal people. I do think party chat has contributed to the death of teammate communication. Now, if I am not directly playing with a real life friend, online multiplayer is just a lonely boring experience.

 

[Robyrt]

You'd be surprised how few people are actually into games that require multiplayer coordination.

Yes, Destiny raids are a wonderful example of a video game that forces you to talk to people and plan your strategies, but remember that under 20% of Destiny players have completed a raid. Most people just treat it like a Souls game: a fundamentally single-player experience where you can wave at other players as you pass by, or go into a dedicated PVP arena and get destroyed by them.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Destiny more or less feels like a single-player game to me, since you can do the main story by yourself without assistance from anyone else, same with Defiance. They feel more like single-player games wearing the clothes of an MMO.

Play the raids. It is most certainly not single player.

That's why I specifically said main story, and the raids are technically not part of it.

Fair enough. It's just that most people who play that game are missing out some of the best stuff it has to offer by skipping the raids. Get a group of friends together if you can to check those out. And if you can't, there are tons of "sherpa" players on most LFG sites who are interested in guiding newer players with the raids.

That being said, the whole reason I kept playing Destiny (in spite of its major design flaws) is because I genuinely think that if one were to judge an FPS or action game by the controls (core mechanics / "feel"), it is one of the best games out there. So if you don't feel the same way, it is entirely possible that your appreciation of the game wouldn't really be affected a whole lot by the raids.

 

[Mike Fang]

In certain instances this is a pretty accurate description of pvp multiplayer. Games like TF2, Battlefront (apparently), Red Orchestra, Counterstrike, and so forth are pretty damn chaotic and largely seem to lack any sort of strategy beyond run-there-and-shoot-whoever's-wearing-the-different-colored-uniform-than-you. However, not all multiplayer games are like that. If you want a multiplayer game that actually encourages more teamwork, I think you're better served looking at PvE multiplayer games. Games like Payday 2, Killing Floor 2, Vermintide all encourage people to actually work together and watch each other's backs because no one player can win a round on their own, and since you're not going to respawn immediately if you fuck up, you're not likely to last if you act like a self-important glory hound and ignore your team mates.

Now that's not to say PvE multiplayer games are guaranteed to have teamwork in them. You can certainly get players together who are just "there" and expect you to fill the space they'd otherwise use an NPC bot for. This definitely happens as the PvE games get older and the maps and objectives of the maps become increasingly well known, so more players know the "correct" course to take and they go through the motions with little to no communication with their team mates. But there's always at least some acknowledgement of your team mates and the necessity of you sticking together and helping one another; you're not just part of the noise and chaos around you in these games; you're in it together, and even if you both have the way the map goes down pat, with the numbers that you're up against being more than any one person could hope to take on, you're still going to need each other if you're going to make it to the end.

 

[metalblazeman]

If you think that a Doodle Jump machine is bad wait till you hear this: at Dave and Buster's I saw a Candy Crush Saga machine. Now that's what I call hell.

 

[beastro]

Yahtzee showing his ignorance of military history yet again.

 

[iller3]

Been mostly a pure Pubbing Multiplayer focused gamer since the days of Kali and the very first BattleNet support (diablo & WC2). I'll Admit LAN gaming with bros from my Highschool programming class was infinitely better. But ... even pub side, a bunch of people who replied to this thread, I have to say, are the ignorant ones here. Not Yahtzee. It's a bit more subtle so these new guys probably shouldn't even be expected to notice it. But the kids these days just don't even have that reminder anymore that on the internet, they're NOT the only person they should be able to relate to or acknowledge as being human. Nah, the Desensitization is so INGRAINED from the start up of most games now that we might as well just be thinking of all of them as AI too.

Things have definitely changed over time. All Social aspects have been replaced lock stock and barrel with incentives & Achievements designed for the shortest of attention spans... and I'm an expert on the subject having dealt with ADHD for 30 years

 

[Squilookle]

Yahtzee showing his ignorance of military history yet again.

It was a damn impressive show of a three way perfect storm of ignorance about World War One strategy, arcade machine playing motivation, and multiplayer gaming in general.

At least now I know the *real* reason he doesn't like classic splitscreen shooters..

 

[votemarvel]

I would in all honesty rather read a review of a multiplayer game from a person who doesn't like them.

Why? Because they are going to comment on the little things, the things a fan of multiplayer gaming will quite naturally gloss over in the initial rush of playing a new title. Those little things can quite often build up over time into something that can sour a experience for even the most diehard of fans.

 

[Something Amyss]

That would make sense, given this revelation about arcades is about that old. It's literally been one of the big arguments I've seen made in favour of Call of Duty as far back as CoD was on my minimap.

Also, there should be some sort of law about this: if you're playing online, SOMEONE is thinking bad things about you. Could be a teammate. Could be an opponent. Maybe everyone does. But it's happening.

I feel like Yahtzee's piece of mind on "the multiplayer issue" is a bit too muddled with inconsistencies.

This is bound to happen when you try and mix serious criticism and reductive snark. Ultimately, don't take it too serious. He's pretty clearly an entertainer first, and that's fine.