Multiplayer...whats the apeal?

[run_forrest_run]

The feeling of accomplishment you get when you see that 10xp pop up above an enemies perforated cranium. That's what kept me coming back to Modern Warfare 2, despite how frustrating and unbalanced it was. Personally I don't like multiplayer. The longest I've played a multiplayer game was a month and I wouldn't go back.

 

[TerranReaper]

Multiplayer games are engaging and fun, just like any other aspect of gaming. Multiplayer adds longevity to a game, provided you can stand it when it gets frustrating. The challenge is better, because I find the AI can become very predictable after a small amount of games while human players will always seem to employ different strategies. If the multiplayer has a developed a meta-game, you will find that players adapt to what's new and what's considered to be good, while AI doesn't what human players do. There is also a drive to change up your playstyle to be a lot better because of how much better human players are, this often applies to RTS games, such as the Command and Conquer betas being multiplayer only or the Starcraft 2 beta being multiplayer only.

I personally play multiplayer for the challenge and the competitive nature, for the drive to become better at a game when I lose. Plus, it's always more satisfying to beat a human player than it does to beat a CPU.

 

[DanDeFool]

In contrast, the number of times I get totally surprised by a person doing something completely crazy that I just hadn't thought of makes it interesting and exciting.

Exactly! See, my favourite genre is real-time strategy. Even in the most sophisticated RTS games, the AI won't really ever show much strategy. They build their buildings, build a few units here and there, constantly harassing you. In better RTS games, the AI might start to adapt to the units you use or the placement of your defenses.

Man, you've never played Supreme Commander. That has to be the best, most challenging AI I've ever skirmished against that didn't flat-out cheat.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I'm a competitive person by nature, so there's a lot of appeal in testing my mettle against real people rather than shitty AI.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Other people are better than AI.

They're less predictable and it tends to be faster paced. I personally really enjoy CoD:WaW's multiplayer, it's the least nooby etc of the CoD games online, and the maps are better.

 

[Grey_Focks]

Because it's fun, and if done well, doesn't get old.

Really though, the appeal isn't so much that it's challenging, it's that you're playing against real people, who can change strategies on the fly, and are generally less predictable than an AI opponent. That and things like community and teamwork can really add to a game.

 

[fix-the-spade]

is it more satisfying know you are working/killign real people?

Depends, on a lot of PC games there's a good community around multpilayer as well as masses of modified content. If you spend a while playing Source games online you will discover ways of playing the game you never dreamed of, such as surfing in Counter Strike or Balloon Boat racing in TF2.

Less community based, competitive multiplayer is like having bots that display adaptive behaviour. It gets old much more slowly than facing AI that can be defeated the same way every time, in some game's cases it never gets old at all.

 

[Yoh3333]

As people have allready said but im going to say it again:
The AI will NEVER EVER EVER outsmart a human. It has been programmed that way. There are ofcourse "insane" difficulties on bots on Starcraft but heck they follow a set strat aswell. Make a match between 2 insane difficulties and you will see they have the exact (almostt 100%) movements / tactics up until the point where they confront eachother for the first time.

Humans change their tactics in different fashions and experiment. I've tried fun combos that an AI would never do and that other players wouldn't expect because they were not used to people thinking too much outside the box. It went fantastic! It was fun, satisfying and just plain awesome!

I on the other hand realy do NOT see the appeal in single player games. I love the stories but that is why the only games without an MP i play is from Bioware... and Bethesda.
Why pay for a full-priced game for it to be over and done with in about 30 hours? (that's average i think)
Sure there is replayability but i just can't do that, THAT is repetitive beyond belief in my opinion...

 

[Stammer]

Man, you've never played Supreme Commander. That has to be the best, most challenging AI I've ever skirmished against that didn't flat-out cheat.

I actually have. It wasn't for me, though. Just not my kind of game.

 

[WolfmanNougat]

Say what you will about humans being more interesting than AI, but for my money it's all down to people being competetive dicks. Deep down, we all wanna just yell "I'm better than you" at any possible chance, even in interactive digital entertainment.

Can't rule out the joys of teamwork in regards to co-op, of course.

 

[DanDeFool]

Man, you've never played Supreme Commander. That has to be the best, most challenging AI I've ever skirmished against that didn't flat-out cheat.

I actually have. It wasn't for me, though. Just not my kind of game.

Fair enough. For my part, I thought the tech tree is kind of bloated and intractable compared to something like, say, Starcraft. The sheer quantity of units you can control makes SC stand out, but it requires a huge amount of brainpower to keep it all straight.

Still, big, BIG improvement in AI quality over Total Annihilation, which would pretty much just sprawl all over the map with buildings until it hit the unit cap, and then just sit around waiting for you to come and burn it all down at your leisure.

 

[Stammer]

Still, big, BIG improvement in AI quality over Total Annihilation, which would pretty much just sprawl all over the map with buildings until it hit the unit cap, and then just sit around waiting for you to come and burn it all down at your leisure.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars had pretty sad AI too. They'd harass you a little bit in the early game, but once you took out their main army (which was usually as easy as putting up a couple defenses) they were almost completely useless.

 

[Mallefunction]

I see it being similar to the following situation: going to an amusement park by yourself versus with friends. By yourself, the park and rides are still plenty of fun, but with friends, you have your inside jokes, shared experiences that you can talk about later, potential conflict, etc, etc.

Both are great and yet both can also suck terribly because you can find single-player to be utterly mindless or you can get into an argument with your friends...

-or find they are so much better than you that the game becomes a kill-streak for them instead of a challenge for you...etc, etc.

 

[Batfred]

It doen't work on everything - for example I like playing at my own pace on Dawn of War 2 and RTS's in general, but for FPS it is the way forward. I have clocked up about 26 hours on CoD BlOps and haven't even looked at the single player.

Wait wait wait are you telling me that black ops has a single player?

So I have heard. On the start screen there is an option "Campaign". I haven't tried it, but people talk of a bland and dry solo experience where people come out the other side trolling and flaming on forums like this.

 

[Wondermint13]

From what Ive seen, the appeal of Online is playing -with- friends and having jolly good chats and 'did you see that?' moments over the mic.

Unfortunatly for me I dont have any friends and I'm too lazy to f*** around with hardware so Ive never sampled that appeal myself...

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