The Problem With Multiplayer

Megalith

Megalith

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As someone who is generally infuriated by multiplayer, I wouldn’t mind if developers did this.

So, I have a proposal. Split the games. Why can’t developers release a campaign game, and a multiplayer game? Lower the price on both, so if they want a complete experience they can get it. I don’t understand why that’s a difficult concept. Games like Halo and Black Ops III are massive hits because of the multiplayer aspect. So what if you split them? Games already come out in cycles, why not just keep it going?
 
Well they wouldn't do that because companies would be spending more in materials. Think about it, why would you produce twice as many materials to create a two products when you could put both into one product.
 
Krenum said:
Well they wouldn't do that because companies would be spending more in materials. Think about it, why would you produce twice as many materials to create a two products when you could put both into one product.
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What?

Don't think you know how game development works. Single player/multiplayer use a l ot of the same assets (models, animations, etc).

The main difference is in the scripting, voice overs, and other things.

"splitting them up" Would do nothing to affect the actual development o fsaid games, rather it'd just be a way to allow people to buy one or the other if they wish or both.

I mean if you could pay 30.00 for the multiplayer vs 59.99, why not?
 
I play for the story, for the single player campaign. In today’s market, I’m becoming the minority
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News flash you are the minority.

Unfortunately I'm also the minority, I play games that I want to play due to single player components only, I like to play games where I can think more so than just act fast, and in games where I do need to act fast (e.g. GTA) I don't want to have to do so against other people who probably are faster than me due to youth or what not.

That said, I like the idea, but there's no way it'd be feasible to split games up, I mean we'd already have the last installment of StarCraft 2 by now if it wasn't for multiplayer, and that's all due to balancing issues. But why in their right mind would they release two versions for cheaper? Seems like they'd lose more money than they gained by doing so.
 
I just wait for the price to drop on games that have short single player campaigns, like CoD and Battlefield. They're worth about $5-$10 because there is zero replay value.
 
I remember when I was 15 in the nineties and people didn't feel entitled to own every video game that was made and $50~60 for street fighter II was money well spent.

I can understand people wanting to save money, but asking someone to charge you less is kinda like begging them to do work at half the value.
 
If they split them into SP/MP they wouldn't sell them for cheaper, they would just sell each for full price. Look at SW Battlefront, it only has MP and is not cheaper.
 
Stiler said:
What?

Don't think you know how game development works. Single player/multiplayer use a l ot of the same assets (models, animations, etc).

The main difference is in the scripting, voice overs, and other things.

"splitting them up" Would do nothing to affect the actual development o fsaid games, rather it'd just be a way to allow people to buy one or the other if they wish or both.

I mean if you could pay 30.00 for the multiplayer vs 59.99, why not?
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Sounds good for the consumer, but why would the big publishers and developers do it when they could just sell you the whole game for $60? If they did end up doing something like this it's probably more likely that they'd sell the multiplayer version for $50 and the single-player version for another $50. A lot of them already do something similar with DLCs and season passes/premium. It's just not split into single/multi-player.
 
trentchau said:
I remember when I was 15 in the nineties and people didn't feel entitled to own every video game that was made and $50~60 for street fighter II was money well spent.

I can understand people wanting to save money, but asking someone to charge you less is kinda like begging them to do work at half the value.
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You can get most PC games at half the price anyway if you just have a little bit of patience. Virtually every PC game has 50%+ off sales within a year of its release, sometimes as soon as just a few months later.
 
The only problem with multiplayer are the scrubs, noobs and gold farmers. They should all be quarantined on one server located in Australia. :D
 
All that would happen if they split them would be two $50-60 games instead of one ... they already tailor their games to a specific audience (if they have one) ... RPGs are exclusively single player most of the time and don't even attempt multiplayer ... FPS games have become more and more about the MP elements with just a cursory single player experience to introduce new players to the game ... there are actually very few games that have both SP and MP populations large enough to justify two separate standalone titles
 
kbrickley said:
All that would happen if they split them would be two $50-60 games instead of one ... they already tailor their games to a specific audience (if they have one) ... RPGs are exclusively single player most of the time and don't even attempt multiplayer ... FPS games have become more and more about the MP elements with just a cursory single player experience to introduce new players to the game ... there are actually very few games that have both SP and MP populations large enough to justify two separate standalone titles
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And the reason why regular RPGs are pretty much single player is this...

I have an old rpg/adventure game that is for the Turbo Grafx 16. It is so difficult that it is pretty much impossible to play with only two players. It has 5 player support as that was the max number of controllers you can hook to the console.

Who has the friends that have enough time to play through an RPG with them?

Now if you are talking MMORPG games, then they are primarily multiplayer.
 
The problem with multiplayer games is not being able to host personal game servers or worse, having to pay a monthly subscription just to play them.
 
Stiler said:
What?

Don't think you know how game development works. Single player/multiplayer use a l ot of the same assets (models, animations, etc).

The main difference is in the scripting, voice overs, and other things.

"splitting them up" Would do nothing to affect the actual development o fsaid games, rather it'd just be a way to allow people to buy one or the other if they wish or both.

I mean if you could pay 30.00 for the multiplayer vs 59.99, why not?
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I think you are misunderstanding what he is saying. By splitting them up, it's not the developer that has to spend a lot of additional money, it's the publisher. Why would a company spend more money to create two different packaged products, one for a reduced price, when they can spend less and they know you will buy that $59.99 package anyway?
 
travbrad said:
Sounds good for the consumer, but why would the big publishers and developers do it when they could just sell you the whole game for $60? If they did end up doing something like this it's probably more likely that they'd sell the multiplayer version for $50 and the single-player version for another $50. A lot of them already do something similar with DLCs and season passes/premium. It's just not split into single/multi-player.
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^ er ya what he said.
 
it's really an industry wide problem really. Not enough time spent on quality. It''s quantity over quality and that leaves many of us with a bad taste in our mouths.

Maybe it's time to move on if I feel that way.
 
This is just the frustration of losing taking a new form. You guys, and the author of this bullshit article, are not fooling anybody.
 
So, I have a proposal. Split the games. Why can’t developers release a campaign game, and a multiplayer game?
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Game studios want to move their customers over to multiplayer instead of single player. Multiplayer has a lot of potential against used game sales and piracy while allowing massive amounts of monetization. But at the same time customers aren't ready to leave behind single player so games like Halo 5 sorta add on the single player to ease consumers over to the multiplayer. Why you think Halo 5 was only a 4:30 hour campaign, besides 343 cutting back on development costs?

To make a proper single player game like Witcher 3 costs boat loads of money, while another Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament clone is a fraction of the cost. A lot of people should be furious about the lack of single player gameplay in Halo 5 but because everyone thinks Halo is all about dat multiplayer, they sorta forgive 343 for the shat singleplayer.

BTW user score of Halo 5 is 6.7, so a lot of people aren't happy with the 4:30 hour compaign. Was Angry Joe the only reviewer who reviewed Halo 5 correctly?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahRDm9Bwlyc
 
A lot of people play video games as a form of escaping reality. A single player game allows the player to completely escape reality and society and be with their own little world.

Multiplayer pulls in all members of society and pretty much removes all inhibitions. The people who enjoy single player gaming, want to avoid that all costs.

Even the MMORPG's have changed as the "normal" members of society have moved in. I saw the player base of WoW change over the years as more of the self entitled started playing. And WoW itself was greatly different then the days of Ultima Online where people did a lot of actual role playing.

It's not a game thing. It is a social thing. A difference of social behaviors.
 
Not gonna happen unless, like someone mention, it becomes a 120 dollar game or the like. Though they might back off and only charge 45 to 50 dollars per half game.
 
I love multiplayer games. I played the SOCOM series and Halo for a long time.

I finally got sick of the cycle. Their model is to release a game and almost immediately abandon it then expect you to pay another $60 in a year.

PC is where its at except for the most casual COD players.
 
foxhound2001 said:
The only problem with multiplayer are the scrubs, noobs and gold farmers. They should all be quarantined on one server located in Australia. :D
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Nah, IMO the problem with real people is that they don't act like real people.

You can program an AI to care about its life, to fear suppressive fire, to freak out when his buddies are dropping like flies around him, and perhaps retreat and run away. You can program them to act like people, that perhaps have jobs as security guards, so they are watching TV with their feet kicked up or something like that, to enhance the realism.

When you interject human players, they don't act like humans. They run around screaming, jumping up and down as they run (who does that), and are often suicidal just for the lulz. And humans don't like to lose, so just as you're winning they may end up just rage quiting or killing themselves rather than let you get the kill.

So the least human human is a human player IMO.
 
westrock2000 said:
A lot of people play video games as a form of escaping reality. A single player game allows the player to completely escape reality and society and be with their own little world.

Multiplayer pulls in all members of society and pretty much removes all inhibitions. The people who enjoy single player gaming, want to avoid that all costs.

Even the MMORPG's have changed as the "normal" members of society have moved in. I saw the player base of WoW change over the years as more of the self entitled started playing. And WoW itself was greatly different then the days of Ultima Online where people did a lot of actual role playing.

It's not a game thing. It is a social thing. A difference of social behaviors.
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Was just explaining this to my wife today. I was one of the original WoW playerbase of 350,000. It was easy to find people to play with on the server, because by and large we were all cut from the same cloth. You had to REALLY want to be there to progress in the game so it was full of like minded individuals. Now anyone can stroll to victory and so finding hardcore players willing to put in actual work is so much harder.
 
Ducman69 said:
Nah, IMO the problem with real people is that they don't act like real people.

You can program an AI to care about its life, to fear suppressive fire, to freak out when his buddies are dropping like flies around him, and perhaps retreat and run away. You can program them to act like people, that perhaps have jobs as security guards, so they are watching TV with their feet kicked up or something like that, to enhance the realism.

When you interject human players, they don't act like humans. They run around screaming, jumping up and down as they run (who does that), and are often suicidal just for the lulz. And humans don't like to lose, so just as you're winning they may end up just rage quiting or killing themselves rather than let you get the kill.

So the least human human is a human player IMO.
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This is pure denial of the reality of what humans are and how they act. You are comparing humans to an ideal you have in your head, instead of accepting the behaviors as human.
 
Spire3660 said:
This is pure denial of the reality of what humans are and how they act. You are comparing humans to an ideal you have in your head, instead of accepting the behaviors as human.
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I think Spire's point is he plays games for escapism, and 4tehlols and ragequitters kind of ruin the immersion factor. Yes, they're human players, but they aren't ACTING like they are a character in a game, they're acting like they're too aware of their virtual immortality, instead of behaving like their death is final.
 
The problem with multiplayer is you are depending on other players for your game experience. Thats why I typically hate online multiplayer games...
 
The people who hate multiplayer are generally overly sensitive types who are not very good at games.
 
Krab said:
The people who hate multiplayer are generally overly sensitive types who are not very good at games.
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That can certainly be a reason, but you can't concede that human players are notoriously shitty at role playing and are sore losers?

We have tier programs in many games to ensure that equally skilled players are playing, because you too don't want to login to just get owned all day, but aside from that how can you convince a human player to stay in character, especially if that character should be doing a task that is boring? The answer is you can't.

That's why I generally don't enjoy 100% human/human multiplayer, and prefer to have other players and NPCs in the universe as well, as at least sufficient NPCs can provide some illusion of role play to keep the feel.
 
Yes because battlefront is being received so well as a multiplayer only game :/

I like a game that has a lot of love put into it. Single player games that are primarily that, usually are pretty good (exceptions to everything of course) and multiplayer games that focus on that do it well.

What I don't like is when one is thrown in, it ends up being half assed and not enjoyable. Call of duty campaign comes to mind when I think of that, also tomb raider multiplayer.
 
I think we'd be just fine if companies just stopped trying to shoehorn multiplayer into games where it doesn't make sense. Mass Effect 3 is a good example. I only play multiplayer if the game is really focused and I find it very interesting. In the last few years I've only really played Titan Fall, Street Fighter IV and Star Craft 2 enough to get competitive. If I don't absolutely love a game I'm not putting in the time necessary to get good at the multiplayer. Multiplayer often has a really steep learning curve.
 
So he wants a developer to focus specifically on developing two full games, one SP and one MP, and charge less; makes sense!

"Waiter, I'll have the surf and turf. What, $60?! Highway robbery! How about this...bring it out on the surf and turf on two separate plates, with full sides, and charge me $25 each."
 
Stiler said:
What?

Don't think you know how game development works. Single player/multiplayer use a l ot of the same assets (models, animations, etc).

The main difference is in the scripting, voice overs, and other things.

"splitting them up" Would do nothing to affect the actual development o fsaid games, rather it'd just be a way to allow people to buy one or the other if they wish or both.

I mean if you could pay 30.00 for the multiplayer vs 59.99, why not?
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I don't think it's that simple. Splitting up the multiplayer and single player parts of a game means each game's sales have to stand on their own merits. That means you can't do a half assed job on the single player part of the game and expect your half-assed garbage to sell and you can't expect someone who buys the title because of the promised single player part to help carry the multiplayer title.

That means it would effect the development of those titles that would otherwise sacrifice one for the other.
 
Stiler said:
What?

Don't think you know how game development works. Single player/multiplayer use a l ot of the same assets (models, animations, etc).

The main difference is in the scripting, voice overs, and other things.

"splitting them up" Would do nothing to affect the actual development o fsaid games, rather it'd just be a way to allow people to buy one or the other if they wish or both.

I mean if you could pay 30.00 for the multiplayer vs 59.99, why not?
Click to expand...

Now you have:

- Two separate products to test.
- Two separate products to market.
- Two separate products to actually sell.
- Patches/updates may have to be applied, and tested, between both products.

And many more reasons. Truthfully an SP game is best left an SP game and an MP game is best left MP only. Few games do both well.
 
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