Crytek: Closed Single Player must go
- Thread starter Silvianoshei
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Well sometimes you need alone time.
I think the most important use of online in single-player is in server-side services (hmm, inadvertently redundant). Things like online backup of save game files and uploading of videos to youtube or some other video hosting when gameplay recordings are made, but most of those are AFTER the game has been shut down, not really something connected while online.
I'm not particularly impressed by being told my best time on an assault course isn't as good as the best out of the 5 million people who bought the game. Leaderboards are pointless, they are only relevant at all for the top 1%. What's needed is personal achivement tracking that you don't need to be online for.
But the most valuable thing might be monitoring for balance. This is done in the pre-release testing stage, many developers put games throughs tens of thousands of hours of gameplay with constant statistics-based analytics to see what elements people are challenged on, what they are put off by and what they breeze though with too much ease. That would be something useful, the more you play a game on single-player the more the developers learn how people actually play their games.
And I think this should be an opt-in kind of thing, where the developers encourage the user to allow monitoring.
And after the failure of OnLive... and more importantly, how so many were glad to see the last of it... what would actually be useful for online server-side content? But server side content might be useful for things that you access very slowly but need to access from a very wide data pool, like high quality audio that we can now stream very well. Think about Metal Gear Solid codec conversations or Mass Effect style talk trees. You wouldn't need to cram it all onto a disc, jsut connect online.
And without online, you only get text dialogue.
I think the most important use of online in single-player is in server-side services (hmm, inadvertently redundant). Things like online backup of save game files and uploading of videos to youtube or some other video hosting when gameplay recordings are made, but most of those are AFTER the game has been shut down, not really something connected while online.
I'm not particularly impressed by being told my best time on an assault course isn't as good as the best out of the 5 million people who bought the game. Leaderboards are pointless, they are only relevant at all for the top 1%. What's needed is personal achivement tracking that you don't need to be online for.
But the most valuable thing might be monitoring for balance. This is done in the pre-release testing stage, many developers put games throughs tens of thousands of hours of gameplay with constant statistics-based analytics to see what elements people are challenged on, what they are put off by and what they breeze though with too much ease. That would be something useful, the more you play a game on single-player the more the developers learn how people actually play their games.
And I think this should be an opt-in kind of thing, where the developers encourage the user to allow monitoring.
And after the failure of OnLive... and more importantly, how so many were glad to see the last of it... what would actually be useful for online server-side content? But server side content might be useful for things that you access very slowly but need to access from a very wide data pool, like high quality audio that we can now stream very well. Think about Metal Gear Solid codec conversations or Mass Effect style talk trees. You wouldn't need to cram it all onto a disc, jsut connect online.
And without online, you only get text dialogue.
I don't really see this trend stopping, and I fear we'll have more Diablo 3 (control the player) than Dark Souls (enrich the player's world and provide more organic-feeling warnings of incoming danger).
And as an aside, Crysis's alien swimming thing level has cast an awful shadow on my entire perception of the game. I hated that part more than I hated The Fade in Dragon Age: Origins.
And as an aside, Crysis's alien swimming thing level has cast an awful shadow on my entire perception of the game. I hated that part more than I hated The Fade in Dragon Age: Origins.
Only together, not separate.Hawkeye 131 said:
Micro-transactions for a game you've already put a wodge of money down for is buuuuuuullshiiiit.
I hate to see good games unable to make the money they deserve because people are too afraid to commit, Free to Play is a great way to get people in the door and paying for extra after that is I think a great idea.
What is not a great idea is "Pay to play" which may be labelled as "Free to play" but it isn't, it's free to install but it's blatantly obvious that you have to pay up right away to start actually playing to any measurable extent. And the "Pay to win" is the worst example of this.
"Free to Play" needs to monetise based on things other than play, otherwise you defy the very term. The whole way this works is friends can very easily join and play with their friends, then you make money on the side.
Hmm, I'm not saying cell-shaded graphics but you need to do something INTERESTING with graphics and not just go for realism.
Why is it I find the hellish-future setting of Doom more interesting with it's semi-2D graphics than Crysis... well it's of interesting things. It's got a lot of enemy variety both in how they look and how they act. I mean there is an enemy in Doom that fires out smaller enemies at you.
I was really disappointed how much I fought the same damn enemies in Crysis 2 over and over and over again, in such samey environments.
Doom may not have had a good story nor original protagonist, but it didn't depend on one. If you are going to occupy my time with cutscenes, they better not be a waste of my time with them being crap.
I understand they have limited funds but with those fund they should use them to get as much quality voice acting as they can get. Don't spread the voice budget thin. And if you haven't got them to say anything compelling, don't have them say anything at all. I don't appreciate hours upon hours of audio-logs that are as dull as people reading their laundry list.
I know this is off topic but I must rant about audio logs: They are almost always a TERRIBLE form of exposition, it's so forced having people literally speak into an audio recording the relevant information. It's almost impossible to make it seem natural, I mean when I found a recording in Bioshock of the Villain gloating about his evil plan into an "audio diary"... WHY!!?!? He basically made a recorded confession!
If you are going to have audio exposition, have it as DIALOGUE! There are so many ways this can work:
-Bugged telephone lines, essential for any conspiracy for conspirators to conspire
-Meetings where the minutes are recorded, evil council got to have evil meetings and record it.
-intercepted radio transmissions, could intercept a whole Die Hard "Roy and Sgt Powell" banter establishing two characters long before you meet them.
-Searched body reveals one was an informant wearing a wire, listen for his last few conversations
-Phone messages: these seriously need to be brief, people almost never leave anything useful on such recordings. Have it things like "if anything happens, I'll meet you by dock 18 on Tuesday night... I've found a way we can get out of here"
And you don't have to reveal EVERYTHING, they just have to be interesting. There is no point in serving the plot if it's done in a tediously boring way. Most of the time the plot doesn't matter, what matters is how the plot is revealed though the characters and events.