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Why do you play single player games?
Posts
I can't do that, once I am done with a single player game I am done with it and I will usually not play it again unless it is for an achievment or it has been a long time and I forgot the story. Multiplayer games are almost always more fun and definitely more exciting to me.
When I mentioned exploring before, I meant I like to scope various directions, see what's behind each path (within reason) and then take one, as opposed to co-op etc where you just pick one quick and charge full speed ahead so you don't worry about the other player getting bored.
Btw what games are you lot playing that you seem to get insulted so much? I haven't been seriously insulted after I left cs..
The OP doesn't appear to have one of those, which is the basic core of his problem.
To me it sounds like you think the options are playing a multiplayer FPS against humans or playing a multiplayer FPS against bots. If you are trying to fit every other game into this one experience, I can see how it wouldn't be fun.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
A good game with a good story can be really engrossing and immersive.
I guess some people have an easier time to enjoy the imaginary
I enjoy the experience offered in single player games that are not offered in multiplayer such as certain level designs, puzzles, enemies, and bosses although much of this can be enjoyed in a co-op mode as well. Sometimes, I don't feel like playing against other people (especially anonymous people over the internet) and just want to enjoy a solo adventure. Plus, there's sometimes stories to enjoy in games but I look at gameplay way more than story.
I don't really care for playing MP games with people I don't know. I have 2 RL friends that we all basically like the exact same games as each other, so we will play TF2 and L4D together a fair bit. But when they are unavailable to play, then I like to play SP games. SP games story, atmosphere, etc is a lot more interesting than MP (which usually there is none). I also don't need to be competitive with any loot, build my character the "cookie cutter" way or I will be kicked from a group, listen to retards over voice chat, etc. I can do anything I want to any time I want to at any pace I want to.
Fallout 3, Bioshock, etc just wouldn't be the same running around with other people.
Me - "I want to explore every nook and cranny of Rapture",
Other random people -" FUCK YOU NOOB. WTF HURRY. COME ON. GO. RUSH RUSH RUSH. OMG YOUR SO SLOW. MAN YOU SUCK WHY ARE YOU USING THE SHOTGUN INSTEAD OF THE CHEMICAL THROWER YOU RETARD L2P. HAHA FAG I JUST NINJA LOOTED THIS PLASMID UPGRADE EVEN THOUGH YOU DON'T HAVE ANY"
This exact shit happened when I was playing diablo 2 online. I wanted to take it kind of easy, and everyone else wanted to rush to the boss as fast as they can.
Another important thing is, if you stick to MP only games, or the reverse- SP only games, you are missing out on amazing games. MP would be missing out on Fallout 3, bioshock, and many others. And SP people would be missing out on L4D (yeah ok they can play campaign SP, but the real fun is Versus & Survival -- which the bots suck at) and others.
For the majority of the time I keep MP gaming to my computer, and SP gaming to my consoles. (I would say 2/3 of the time I play MP, 1/3 of the time SP)
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
There is no skill benefit to most single player games. They are an experiences with little skill benefit outside of an emotional one. That being said, I play more then most anyone else I know, and it is almost never multiplayer. I have a full set of Rock Back instruments and an embarassing about of DLC that no one else ever sees, and that's just the way I like it. It's my hobby, one that I don't necessarily want to share.
I also play RTS games in solo skirmish mode the majority of the time (my favorite for it's always been the original Rise of Nations) since I completely suck at them online. Also games like Total War tend to be boring online because they're nothing but battles, which get tiring without the campaign map to spice things up a bit.
Steam | TF2 inventory
I will say a few things about ether though. I love games that have an immersive singleplayer experience. It liken it to reading a good book or watching an excellent movie. When I play a game where the story really sucks me in, I take ownership of that protagonist; I care what happens next, I get excited when good things happen, and feel angry or vengeful when I deal with controversy.
Another note about my MP habits: I REFUSE to play in Pub games anymore. I am a grown man, I have kids of my own (who play as well) and I will be GODDAMNED if I'm gonna let some snot nosed teenaged pussy scream obscenities to me through the security of online obscurity simply because I am not playing the game his way. People like that can choke on a bag of dicks and die for all I care. That's why when I rock MP, I only play with guys on my friends list. Now we may fill out a MP roster with a Pub or two here or there, but if they start that obnoxious shit, they get booted fast. Now to be fair, I will say that I have met some decent people online that started as Pubs, but are now on my friends list....
Multiplayer games are great for competitive reasons. If I want to feel challenged, I'll play a game online, or play Soul Calibur with friends. I like multiplayer games and all, but I can't relax while playing them. If I'm playing with a shitty team, then I get stressed. After a long day at work, the last thing I want is more stress.
Lately, I haven't been playing a lot of multiplayer games because I hit a breaking point in dealing with retarded teammates. So I've been working through the backlog that piled up while spending almost all my game time exclusively online.
Think about how hard that game tries to balance asymmetrical character types in a MP setting (the Survivors are powerful in some ways and the Infected play a completely different kind of game) and then you'll get some sense of why games don't pull that off more often. It's just difficult. People don't like playing as cannon fodder, they don't like being forced to give the main characters some breathing room, they want to win every time, and they'll try to break the experience in any way they can.
Longevity is a great asset of MP games, but there are a whole range of game experiences that you just can't have in a competitive context. That's why co-op has become more popular -- it lets the people who enjoy MP get a taste of what used to be the exclusively SP game experiences, like solving environmental puzzles or progressing through a story together.
But co-op still ends up being like a watered down SP experience, because the whole thing has to move at a pace that is interesting for multiple people at once.
It also means I have to try a lot harder than most to interact successfully with others.
I play games to relax. I don't always want to focus on making sure I'm coming across ok with everyone else while playing a game.
Are you implying that the above poster doesn't suffer from a debilitating condition?
Nintendo Network ID: unclesporky
You... you realise how dickish it is to claim that someone’s making up an illness when you have no evidence this is the case right? Or equally claiming that it isn't real/is over diagnosed/belittling it? Because when people do that for dyslexia I have a strong anti-social urge to knock their teeth out.
Edit: Hi5 Sporky.
He actually already answered that -
Not to come off the wrong way/rude, I find that sort of sad. He's missing out on so many amazing experiences and stories because of this.
The Pipe Vault|Twitter|Steam|Backloggery|3DS:1332-7703-1083
I agree with you - it is sort of sad. Since I've been an avid reader since an early age and I love getting affected by good fiction, it strikes me almost as a form of blindness: an absence of a sense that I find as central to myself as vision or hearing.
Exactly. I often can get so immersed in a good book that I don't even realize I'm reading but am able to "see" or imagine the events going quite easily.
The Pipe Vault|Twitter|Steam|Backloggery|3DS:1332-7703-1083
It's called IMAGINATION.
Get one..
Seriously, if you can't "lose yourself" in the story or world of a video game without getting distracted or bored, or feel the need to go play with "real people" online, then you may just be missing the point of SP gaming entirely... Imagination and Immersion go hand in hand. It is EXACTLY like absorbing yourself in a good book or movie.
Saying that multiplayer is a more realistic "learning" experience when you play online is probably not the best comparison, as actions are learned, copied, mimicked and repeated ad nauseum just the same way (if not worse) in MP... People jump-strafe and build turrets in the same exact places... the same way everyone jumps for the first goomba or steals that first bike in GTA. - The difference is people will criticize you for not "doing it right" if you play your own commando style online for long enough. (TF2 is a great example, great game, but can be repetitive for the exact reasons you say it's fresh.)
It's a shame you can't understand the brilliance of losing yourself in a good single-player game world, it's possible you may be losing touch with your inner child or inner imagination. It's the big kid in me that will always enjoy gaming (and game-storytelling), alone, online or even just in my own head, re-acting out my favorite game stories and experiences.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C.S Lewis
Also, I can turn it off any time without screwing up anyone else's game.
Huh? I'm not sure I understand your response. I was just suggesting a possible reason for why the way you feel the way you do, after having thought about it for a while.
Sports are about having fun competition between people*. I think your problem with single player experiences is that you derive your enjoyment from games the way people often derive enjoyment from sports.
I don't mean to sound deragatory because I'm not. I'm suggesting a possibility.
* - some sports can be played "single player," I know.. But you get what I mean.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
It was hard to explain to him how fast paced arcadey action could be fun when, from his point of view, the only satisfaction that can be derived from a game is from a satisfying and entertaining story.
In his view, games could only have a "point" in much the same way books or movies have a "point." He could not see past that.
This thread reminds me of that day/conversation.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
When people say competition, I generally equate it with winning or losing, because that's what people tend to obsess about. I figured that's what you meant when you said sports - I guess you could say that the clashing with another person is what I enjoy. It adds life to the game.
I'm not being told by someone that they're real - either the person at the keyboard exists, or he doesn't. There's no Schroedinger's cat via fibrewire here.
I guess the difficulty you have may be purely psychological - when you know you're playing AI, you don't get that feeling of it "adding life" to the game and it's pointless no matter what parts of the brain it engages in terms of skillset. But when you know you're playing people, no matter how good, bad, repetitive they are, foolish in their mistakes, easy to predict - or alternatively how absurdly good they are - you know that it's "real" and it's adding life as you feel it is (it is literally, but I mean this in an 'adding life' in such a way that makes it 'fun' for you). I think that the knowledge that you're playing people is making it the only thing that makes it worthwhile for you.
But what I think you're missing in terms of perspective from other game types is that this distinction is actually very arbitrary. Why do you need clashing with other people to have fun?
I'm going to repost this because it reminds me heavily of this topic:
About 10 years ago I was playing Doom, and my brother came in watching me and asked, "Why do you play this? What's the point. There's no story! What's the point of shooting a random bunch of computer controlled goons and getting to an exit? Games are pointless without story; you don't gain anything from it. There's little ultimate underlying goal or incentive, you don't sympathize with the characters, there's no plot development or characterization, there's no twist, there's no real moral dilemma, no moral question to ponder, no real internal conflict. What's the point?"
It was hard to explain to him how fast paced arcadey action could be fun when, from his point of view, the only satisfaction that can be derived from a game is from a satisfying and entertaining story.
In his view, games could only have a "point" in much the same way books or movies have a "point." He could not see past that.
This thread reminds me of that day/conversation.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
He played them as a young child.. stopped as he got older.. then picked them back up again with 16 bit RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana.
That was at about the point this conversation took place.
But indeed he felt this way about 99.9% of games he deemed as having unworthy "story." As very pointless, or rather, he couldn't see why there was anything worth playing about games without "story." He couldn't "get" why I was having fun shooting mindless AI imps in Doom without a "real story." Couldn't understand why I would play such a thing. He almost never played games as a result (except the very rare RPG here and there).
I talked about it with him for an hour or two. Didn't make a difference. He just couldn't see how it could be fun without "getting something out of it," which could only be derived from a meaningful story.
This thread reminds me of that conversation. "Having a great story" as being the metric for having a point/being fun is just as arbitrary as "playing against other people." These are just two different ways of "getting something" out of games. We all have our tastes and opinions of games. But I feel kind of sorry for people who can't at least see how other types of gameplay can be fun or do something for the person playing.
This also kind of reminds me about how some people think that Guitar Hero / Rock Band is pointless/unfun/not getting anything from it because it's not real instruments and/or you're not in a real band.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Probably played computers, there are plenty of computers games even as far back as the early 80's that had a story. Even text only ones like "A Mind Forever Voyaging".
As for the original topic, different people get different things out of games. I myself almost NEVER play multiplayer, except in co-op mode.
There are two types of games, the competitive game where the goal is for one player to beat the other, and there are objective drive games where the goal is for a player to reach an objective. I prefer objective driven games.
Yes, he also played lots of Point/Click adventure games like Grim Fandango.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
There really isn't.
I can think of 9.5 million reasons.
None of these involve the "clash between people," yet they are fun for the individuals. It's hard to explain the underlying reasons, but what I mean to point out is that you have to see that there are different ways to enjoy activities.
Maybe someone likes to paint because they like to be creative, constructive, and produce beautiful works. They might look at playing sports or videogames as pointless because you're not being constructive and producing aesthetic tangible things... Sounds silly doesn't it? It sounds silly because we can see that there is satisfaction and enjoyment derived from these different activities for different reasons, and one activity may not necessarily be fully compatible with the type of 'satisfaction' you get from another.
Likewise, playing multiplayer for "the human element" is just one way to derive satisfaction, and perhaps that cannot be replicated through AI. But playing a single player game and playing multiplayer, for some people, the satisfaction for one doesn't exist in the other. For other people, they get soemthing out of both. And yet for others, they may not get anything out of one, but can still at least see how the other might be fun for some people.
And they can argue, "But, it doesn't have Element X that I like about this style of gameplay." Well! That's what makes it different! Why does the other need that Element X to be fun? (this you would ask yourself)
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Some guy recently sold a Comics collection for over $600,000. Not as impressive I know. But one particular book went for over $100k by itself....
What I want to know is who is paying that much money for the things!
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games