"If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game." Really?
- Thread starter Owyn_Merrilin
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Why? I don't look down on a game for having excellent multiplayer, but a generic or even bad single player. It's just more content for your buck. Also, it can teach you the controls if nothing else, or allow you to play it if the servers are down (which happens a lot on releases)Anti Nudist Cupcake said:
Well if the single player is bad and that is one of the major selling points made by the company producing the game wouldn't other people who see this assume everything else about the game is bad?
Its more a perspective of time. To Yatzhee and Me. Multiplayer is a new thing. But its entirely a point of we don't like companies that try to rely on their engine to produce every aspect of fun. Thats fine for the first 30 hours. But after that, games without solid development in a story usually tend to start collecting dust. And it can go either way, when talking about the extremes of gaming. Some are great singleplayer and horrific multiplayer and visa versa. We're just waiting for one game to get both right I guess. It could be a while.
I dislike multiplayer because I am no good at it. I'm simply not that skilled. I think that for players like me, to make games that are passable as single player and focus mainly on the multiplayer, it is very irritating.
Multi-player focused games usually need some kind of basic single-player experience to introduce the player to various things. Get the player used to the controls and the mechanics before throwing him to the wolves. Every game gets those guys that will play it for 20 hours on the first day. If you're not one of them you want something else to lead you into the game before you get blown to pieces by those types.
This is why an arcade mode should never be completely removed from fighting games. Sure it's a pretty shallow experience but you can try stuff out, see what the AI is doing and try to copy it or find better alternatives. Sure, career modes like VF4Evo or story modes like the BB and GG games offer are better, but you at least need a basic foothold.
The main thing is that if you as a developer notice the multi-player or single-player is going to suffer from that other half then you should make sure to get your priorities in order. Make sure you get one of the two right and make that your main selling point.
This'll come down to one of two cases most of the time. One: axing the multi-player entirely especially if you're making a shooter. The multi-player market there is saturated to overflow. Two: getting a basic single-player experience in place and then dedicate yourself to building a multi-player support structure with appropriate features for your type of game.
Sometimes you can manage to do both. Case in point being Uncharted 2. It'd have been a shame if they'd ditched the multi-player or sold it seperately for a few extra bucks. Racing games also need very little to have a worthwhile online or single player experience, as long as the mechanics are solid, both should basically always be present in this day and age.
So, no, your game needn't stand on single-player alone. Just make sure the buyer knows what he's getting himself into.
Tldr: The line directly above.
This is why an arcade mode should never be completely removed from fighting games. Sure it's a pretty shallow experience but you can try stuff out, see what the AI is doing and try to copy it or find better alternatives. Sure, career modes like VF4Evo or story modes like the BB and GG games offer are better, but you at least need a basic foothold.
The main thing is that if you as a developer notice the multi-player or single-player is going to suffer from that other half then you should make sure to get your priorities in order. Make sure you get one of the two right and make that your main selling point.
This'll come down to one of two cases most of the time. One: axing the multi-player entirely especially if you're making a shooter. The multi-player market there is saturated to overflow. Two: getting a basic single-player experience in place and then dedicate yourself to building a multi-player support structure with appropriate features for your type of game.
Sometimes you can manage to do both. Case in point being Uncharted 2. It'd have been a shame if they'd ditched the multi-player or sold it seperately for a few extra bucks. Racing games also need very little to have a worthwhile online or single player experience, as long as the mechanics are solid, both should basically always be present in this day and age.
So, no, your game needn't stand on single-player alone. Just make sure the buyer knows what he's getting himself into.
Tldr: The line directly above.
Well, TF 2 has a shitty single player but it's multiplayer is the best ever, soooooo i guess Yahtzee is wrong? (No suprise there though)
Here's a main issue for me: I go onto the "Street Fighter IV" or "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light" servers, and there's no one there.
Well, thank goodness they have good single player campaigns.
Well, thank goodness they have good single player campaigns.
Problem with multi-player games is that there's too many elements outside of your control.
A big one is will the multi-player portion of the game take off. For a handful of franchises, this isn't a concern, but with more and more games adding multi-player content, the odds are that most of them really won't. Especially if you pick it up fairly cheap a year on after the initial excitement wears off. Even with the big franchises, this can be an issue, since Call Of Duty treats the whole thing like it's Madden Football and you're expected to upgrade to a new game every year.
Secondly, there are a lot of trolls, griefers, and just plain dicks on-line. Any multi-player system that relies on any sort of co-operation is going to run into very obvious problems. Multi-player simply isn't very enjoyable for a lot of people.
Thirdly, there's time zone issues. Very large portion of on-line players are in North America or Europe, which isn't too great for Australians.
Fourth, on-line plays really stresses repetition. You're playing the same maps over and over and over and over again. This is cool if you really get into mastering something, but if you play games more for the novelty value, there's only so much of this you'll put up with. I spent a few days playing Red Dead Redemption on-line and had a fair amount of fun, but in that time I blew through all of the non co-op content. And all I was really doing was replaying the same areas over and over again to level up. I keep meaning to get back in there, but there's too many bright, shiny new games to play, so I never do.
Biggest one is that most players don't really get into multi-player. This flies in the face of all those people who believe that no one really buys Halo for the single player campaign, but just compare XBL Gold subscription holders to Halo purchases. If someone is doing a 5 minute video review of a game, I'd rather they focus on the single player campaign than spend half the time going through the laundry list of multi-player content that they really didn't have time to delve into properly. The multi-player community decides what is and isn't good, not video game critics who have less than a week to spend with a game, which tends to be before gamers get their hands on the game, so they're just playing on-line with game company employees and other critics... not the unwashed masses who will figure out how exploitable and broken multi-player is over the coming weeks.
Lastly, critics are not there to judge games by any other standard than their own personal tastes. It's their job to communicate their tastes, so you can make an informed decision to listen to them or not. If the guy who thinks Weekend At Bernie's is the greatest film ever made is telling you the new Michael Bey movie is a masterpiece, then you ask yourself, do I think Weekend At Bernie's is a great film? Yahtzee speaks to certain types of gamers, primarily the single player. As a critic, I think he does pretty good at communicating what he does and does not like, so the all important frame of reference is there.
A big one is will the multi-player portion of the game take off. For a handful of franchises, this isn't a concern, but with more and more games adding multi-player content, the odds are that most of them really won't. Especially if you pick it up fairly cheap a year on after the initial excitement wears off. Even with the big franchises, this can be an issue, since Call Of Duty treats the whole thing like it's Madden Football and you're expected to upgrade to a new game every year.
Secondly, there are a lot of trolls, griefers, and just plain dicks on-line. Any multi-player system that relies on any sort of co-operation is going to run into very obvious problems. Multi-player simply isn't very enjoyable for a lot of people.
Thirdly, there's time zone issues. Very large portion of on-line players are in North America or Europe, which isn't too great for Australians.
Fourth, on-line plays really stresses repetition. You're playing the same maps over and over and over and over again. This is cool if you really get into mastering something, but if you play games more for the novelty value, there's only so much of this you'll put up with. I spent a few days playing Red Dead Redemption on-line and had a fair amount of fun, but in that time I blew through all of the non co-op content. And all I was really doing was replaying the same areas over and over again to level up. I keep meaning to get back in there, but there's too many bright, shiny new games to play, so I never do.
Biggest one is that most players don't really get into multi-player. This flies in the face of all those people who believe that no one really buys Halo for the single player campaign, but just compare XBL Gold subscription holders to Halo purchases. If someone is doing a 5 minute video review of a game, I'd rather they focus on the single player campaign than spend half the time going through the laundry list of multi-player content that they really didn't have time to delve into properly. The multi-player community decides what is and isn't good, not video game critics who have less than a week to spend with a game, which tends to be before gamers get their hands on the game, so they're just playing on-line with game company employees and other critics... not the unwashed masses who will figure out how exploitable and broken multi-player is over the coming weeks.
Lastly, critics are not there to judge games by any other standard than their own personal tastes. It's their job to communicate their tastes, so you can make an informed decision to listen to them or not. If the guy who thinks Weekend At Bernie's is the greatest film ever made is telling you the new Michael Bey movie is a masterpiece, then you ask yourself, do I think Weekend At Bernie's is a great film? Yahtzee speaks to certain types of gamers, primarily the single player. As a critic, I think he does pretty good at communicating what he does and does not like, so the all important frame of reference is there.
^_^LordOrin said:
OP, I think one of the biggest problems in looking at a game and judging based on multiplayer is the need for many gamers to see the video game itself as a form of art and deciding that multiplayer is a "cheap thrill" in comparison. I support the idea that a single player focused game can be a thing of art, however, a multiplayer experience itself can be a work of art.
Consider an architect. He's not the designer, he's playing the numbers game. Working out all the angles (quite literally), considering the stress of weight distribution across the structure,integrity of the design from outside forces, managing the available space for optimal use once the final product is built, etc. The final result won't have the aesthetic appeal of the designer, but the end result, a carefully balanced and well thought out design, is in its own way a work of art.
That final sentence there could easily apply to many multiplayer games, specifically the ones the general public consider quite good. It's very hard, and maybe impossible, to render the same emotional response we can receive from a single player experience. Note that I'm saying it's unlikely we can get the "SAME emotional response". A well made multiplayer game can give us the visceral rush of living in the moment, poised against another living, thinking human being. It's the same reason well made action movies are works of art. Even though they are typically superficial, we can still take something away from them even if its that brief but thrilling experience. In truth, its often the loud, aggressive, immature minority of a community that pushes the online experience down a notch and makes it harder to appreciate good design, which is a real shame.
I've tried very hard not to veer too far off topic here, but I really felt strongly about this point. As for my own opinion: I disagree. The attitude that a single player game is the only "true" way to view a game is wrong as it implies that all other design work such as combat balancing, environment design, atmosphere building (which involves all that was mentioned here and far more) and all the other creative aspects that go into multiplayer design is in itself not valid when considering the strength of the game as a whole. That viewpoint is, in my opinion, very narrow minded and one of my biggest problems with the Zero Punctuation reviews.
*points*Popadoo said:
I'm basically re telling this.
TF2 is an exclusively multiplayer experience tailored to provide a multiplayer experience.
Yahtzee's mainly bitching about the lack of attention paid to the single player. It's not necessarily quantity but quality.
It?s the fact the single player has suffered in quality DUE to the focus on multiplayer, if that?s your focus, then dump the single player and focus solely on the multiplayer, the money used to go toward all the bullshit fun robbing cinematics could be used to make the multiplayer even more expansive.
The fact that they pump out a weak single player is something of an insult.
It doesn?t need to go on for hours and hours either;
The poorer Final Fantasy games for example (in my opinion), crushingly dull but drag it out over 30 hours.
But Mass effect, doable in 8 hours but far more interesting, streamlined and thoughtful. (again in my opinion)
On a side note, i miss the increasing lack of couch co-op and couch multiplayer, that used to be the more social aspect of multiplayer for me, now it's going into repose and probably extinction soon enough.
Are you seriously arguing that a fun game is not, by definition, a good one? Or for that matter, that it's possible for a game to be good, but not fun? Because that's a load of hogwash. As for people moving on quickly, you do realize that that doesn't happen on the PC unless the multiplayer isn't very good to begin with, right? I'll never understand why it happens that way on consoles, but it's rare for a PC game to completely lose its user base before the 10 year mark.Signa said:
Since when do games need a story to be entertaining? You may prefer it that way, but pretty much every game made before about 1995 would like a word with you.sheah1 said:
To both of you: The story is and always has been optional. The fun is not.
I love you.Superior Mind said:
I prefer to do the SP before I do MP kinda deal....test the waters see the weapons and know a little bit of background.... The stories for MOST FPS games is pretty simple...Save World Play MP...and Why I Hated Modern Warfare 2 and Why World at War was pretty decent in story telling!
I personally find tacked-on single-player more offensive than tacked-on multiplayer, but then I do tend to prefer solo to multi anyway.
I'm glad Shogo, with its huge solo campaign, gave you the chance to run around some arenas and blow shit up once you'd finished, just as I appreciated FEAR's multiplayer, though I didn't feel Shogo's was particularly 'tacked on' (nor FEAR's, really, but FEAR's main focus was always on the story). I even regretted that games like FAKK2 and Alice didn't have multi. Oni's removal of multiplayer for release was, for me, a crime, even with such a huge focus on the story.
Quake 3 didn't hold my interest as long as, say, Unreal Tournament, or pretty much anything multiplayer-focused that I've played. Except maybe Counterstrike, because I played Quake 3 longer than 2 weeks (honestly, not that big a fan). Quake 2 held me for ages, maybe even past the release of Quake 3. I've dabbled in the odd MMO, though I refuse to touch WoW since I have other things I need to do.
As for tacked-on single-player... I can really only think of Gore that was particularly offensive in that regard, and if you've never heard of it then all the better.
I guess as a bottom line, I prefer for both to be done well, but if I have to choose between good solo and good multi, I'll go for good solo.
I'm glad Shogo, with its huge solo campaign, gave you the chance to run around some arenas and blow shit up once you'd finished, just as I appreciated FEAR's multiplayer, though I didn't feel Shogo's was particularly 'tacked on' (nor FEAR's, really, but FEAR's main focus was always on the story). I even regretted that games like FAKK2 and Alice didn't have multi. Oni's removal of multiplayer for release was, for me, a crime, even with such a huge focus on the story.
Quake 3 didn't hold my interest as long as, say, Unreal Tournament, or pretty much anything multiplayer-focused that I've played. Except maybe Counterstrike, because I played Quake 3 longer than 2 weeks (honestly, not that big a fan). Quake 2 held me for ages, maybe even past the release of Quake 3. I've dabbled in the odd MMO, though I refuse to touch WoW since I have other things I need to do.
As for tacked-on single-player... I can really only think of Gore that was particularly offensive in that regard, and if you've never heard of it then all the better.
I guess as a bottom line, I prefer for both to be done well, but if I have to choose between good solo and good multi, I'll go for good solo.
i'm just going to break this down into a few brief points:Owyn_Merrilin said:
1. Read what Yahtzee says on the subject of Multiplayer. There are a few flaws based on your comprehension of what he's said. One of which is you took his pithy comment without any context of him actually talking about multiplayer.
2. There is plenty of room, but that does not mean they get released in equal numbers. If you like MP, that's fine. But it's just plain dickish to tell people to not complain about the majority when the alternative is rather anemic. "Just ignore it" is a shitty solution in this case.
3. Multiplayer is a rather large cop-out for developers. Try getting people to play the same level ten times. It's hard. Throw in multiplayer, and people will happily select Nuke Town 50 times in a row if possible. they'll even play it with the same people doing the same things 50 times in a row.
4. I hope you've never complained about casual games. Not much to say here, but as party games rise, the number of "core" gamers complaining is rising, too.
If it is designed primarily as a multiplayer game, with no single player, then I consider this comment null and void, but if there is a single player, it damn well better be decent and able to stand on its own. People have probably already said this, but meh.
Holy cow, another person that played Shogo. That was the first FPS I ever took online, and to this day I haven't found a game that comes close to matching the frantic action found in that game. The fact that the campaign was excellent as well easily catapults it onto my short list of favorite games of all time.ExileNZ said:
Multiplayer is fun, but you can't justify charging $50+ for it.
Yes, TF2 is an awesome game despite having no singleplayer campaign. It also costs $20.
Even when you got it for $50 in the orange box, it came bundled with Half life 2 episodes 1 & 2 and Portal (one of the greatest games ever made.)
Yes, TF2 is an awesome game despite having no singleplayer campaign. It also costs $20.
Even when you got it for $50 in the orange box, it came bundled with Half life 2 episodes 1 & 2 and Portal (one of the greatest games ever made.)