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"Online vs. Offline" (or "Bandwidth vs. Couchwidth") Multiplayer Gaming
BTP
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Holy shit. Get your own damn thread if you want to talk about offline vs online. I really don't want to read another 50 posts about how someone's stupid for having an opinion.
And in the spirit of Thanksgiving (in Canada), I have made it be!
Now then, as a summary, here are some examples of the downsides for both forms of multiplayer:
It seems like crap goes down no matter what you do, huh?
Now then, as a summary, here are some examples of the downsides for both forms of multiplayer:
It seems like crap goes down no matter what you do, huh?
But no matter what, let's remember to be thankful that we have BOTH forms of multiplayer, because they have their good sides which shouldn't be ignored too......I just couldn't find anything in comic form.
Ultimately, we have hit a crossroads in our gaming lives. Some of us may prefer online gaming because you know there will always be others to play, while not able to play with the friends we have in our lives. Others may prefer offline gaming because we can get our friends together for gaming and that experience feels more satisfying to them than any online multiplayer. And that's the point of it all: No matter what, we should be enjoying our times of multiplayer gaming, be it one way or another.
So if we are enjoying both online and offline multiplayer gaming, why is one form considered "better"?
Whatever your opinion may be, here is your thread where you can voice them out. This thread is the prepared battleground.
Just remember one thing a wise duo once said: "Be excellent to each other."
Whatever your opinion may be, here is your thread where you can voice them out. This thread is the prepared battleground.
Just remember one thing a wise duo once said: "Be excellent to each other."
Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection & DS High Scores Thread
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
Spoiler contains Friend Codes. Won't you be my friend?
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
Spoiler contains Friend Codes. Won't you be my friend?
My Friend Codes!
More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
BTP on
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Posts
Some games need it. Most games do not need it. Stop taking points off reviews for not having it, stop endlessly complaining if it is not present. It is just a thing.
Most games should have MP modes. I can't think of one that suffered from having an MP mode. I think the last game that I bought that didn't have MP was Mass Effect 2.
I don't really have time or the inclination to try to schedule friends to come over to play couch video games. Since we've all moved on to professional careers and people have kids / pets / hobbies / commitments the days of "hey lets play some 2k" are gone, unfortunately. Online is 100x more convenient and helps me keep in touch with my friends.
Couch play is a bonus for modern games, but a lot of games these days put out way too much processing need with lots of graphical stuff on the screen, so co-op on the same tv isn't possible. I don't really get the whining about that.
edit: yeah, splitting the screen is infuriating.
what the hell? online gaming has been amazing since 1996. online communities (even this very forum!) wouldn't be nearly what they are now without it. just because Smash Bros sucked online isn't any reason to get bent out of shape about all multiplayer games.
edit: wait you're the guy who lives out on a farm with 56k still right? sorry bro.
Why did Bioshock 2 have multiplayer?
Because entitled whiny little pussies ranted to the developer, that a decent single player game is nothing without multiplayer.
Shadowrun was an excellent multiplayer shooter.
People would not shut the fuck up about it not having single player.
Critics panned the game and deducted "points" ( an archaic and fuckshit system of judging games ) because it had no single player element.
This has bothered me for the past 4 years. All in all im sick of hearing people's bullshit whining about whether or not a game has multiplayer.
What in the world are you talking about? I've got 3 meg VDSL in the middle of a city and I don't think I even played Brawl online. After all, it didn't need it, since online gaming is pretty useless.
Money down the drain for devs everywhere.
Also yes, I hate when online multiplayer just gets shoehorned into every fucking game when they should have just spent that time working on singleplayer. I mean, I honestly don't remember anyone actually wanting to play online Bioshock, and when they crammed it into Bioshock 2, it just kind of.. was not played by anyone I know.
The population disparity between the top 10 Xbox Live games in population isn't a curve. It's almost logarithmic. If I was making a first person shooter myself right now, I wouldn't even do multiplayer. What's the point when your players are just going to boot up Halo or CoD after beating your campaign? It's like someone sticking their foot out into the street in an attempt to stop a bus.
No it did not. And guess what. Shadowrun didnt suck for the opposite reason either.
But both had tacked on elements. The single player in Shadowrun was nothing more than a simple training exercise with bots, and bot play.
The multiplayer in Bioshock 2 was mostly deathmatch, and persistant weapons and upgrades. Was the multiplayer good? No. Was it warranted or even needed? NO. It was a waste of development time and money that could have gone to improving elements of the single player.
Necessity is the argument here. People view multiplayer as a necessity. And some people view the same thing for single player.
Multiplayer is not a necessity. Some games certainly warrant it as they are built around having it, but it is not the end all be all necessity of the gaming world.
You dont see people bitching about Console Legend of Zelda games for the most part being multiplayer free. Cause multiplayer is in no way warranted with that particular series, outside of Four Swords, which was designed with multiplayer in mind.
The fact that games seem to have the requirment of having both single player and multiplayer in order to score well with critics, and fans alike is a whole lot of bullshit, especially when people go around spouting it about some games, and not about others.
Im shocked that Mass Effect 2 didnt get a lot of people bitching about zero multiplayer. Yet the first bioshock, all i remember when it came out was people screaming for multiplayer.
Because they're hoping that the game will become a hit and dethrone Halo or CoD, and of course hoping that the playerbase is enough to make money off DLC.
What is more likely to happen is the game will bomb in multiplayer because the multiplayer is unashamedly a CoD clone and people will just go back to CoD. And then EA will shut the servers off a year later due to the population drop.
When Halo: Reach released I brought it over to my cousin's place and we played split-screen online multiplayer for like 4 hours straight. We were both utterly terrible, but since we were both on the same team most of the time, it was a fucking blast. Alot of laughs were had via jokes and sheer ridiculous comments.
Edit: The "8 teams of 2" gametype on Halo: Reach is fantastic for this.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
how many pokemon did you trade with G&Ters? :P
The nintendo crowd is a different crowd. Online on the wii sucks ass. Friend codes suck ass. Maybe if the Wii or DS had streamlined intuitive MP systems they'd want it? I dunno, a co-op Zelda sounds like it would be fun.
Maybe a Bioshock mp game could be fun if they did it right? I remember the Jedi Knight / academy games being fun, and Bioshock basically has jedi powers. Perhaps they just didn't do it right? That happens sometimes.
It's not so bad on a 55" screen.
I did bring over my 360 for later ODST Campaign Co-Op system link, but since he didn't have his own copy of Reach we just split-screened it up.
Edit: Also jeez stop being so freaking elitist.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
More than 4 people? ONLINE!
There are exceptions. Such as fighting games with offer a wide variety of diffSHORYUKEN SHORYUKEN SHORYUKEN!
Each quadrant gets their own 960x540 screen. This is only 50-60 pixels away from the full screen resolution of Call of Duty 4, WaW, MW2, and BlackOps. The original game ran in 320x200 fullscreen in single player, 640x400 if you had an expansion pak.
Same levels, same objectives, it's just a question of whether your team and the enemy team are bots or humans.
Without online play, you would never get any practice versus certain characters and would get trounced should you come up against a character you never play in an offline tourney.
Offline is where it's at though for high level play. No lag, all the pressure of an irl tourney atmosphere, it's all on you to perform.
I dont have the same play experience with my RL friends, as i do my internet friends. In fact, a lot of the time, the gameplay is better with internet friends, because the common link usually is the game, and not the fact that we know each other in real life. There is more invested in the game that way.
With real life friends, there are a lot more experiences outside of the game which are factors in enjoying each other's company.
While both are great, they are both so distinctly different experiences that comparing them will always prove to be a match of personal experience and opinion.
When it comes to local/online, I say it really depends on the game and the amount of competition available (if this is applicable). Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Mario Party (although this doesn't have an online component at all), street fighter2, and Quake i'd rather play offline if possible. Especially street fighter and Quake where I feel lag plays a critical role. However, I play those online much more because there simply isn't a realistic way of getting enough competition locally (or it is non-existent). For me, I can usually get together enough people to play any console games locally. PC, LANs dont happen very often so online play here is the best way to play most of the time.
Now for splitscreen, I'm hugely disappointed it is being omitted from most games, and even then, most of the time it is only 2 players. Most likely due to most console games shooting for 30FPS for better graphics (instead of 60) so performance becomes an issue. Since I can get a good amount of people to play stuff locally and we all enjoyed that with earlier titles, it is a big knock for us. Maybe when consoles get more powerful again, more people will try to aim for a higher framerate.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
On the other hand, Lost Planet 2 is just shit. Instead of giving you half the screen it reduces the screen format until it fits on half the display (so you only get like a quarter of the screen), and the rest is taken up by a pointless map. Couldn't do more than a couple of missions, the enemies we needed to kill were literally not visible at those resolutions.
None, or one. I don't play pokemon online for the same reason I don't play almost anything else online: it's about e-peen. Whoever's got the biggest bestest hacked team wins. Whoever has more hours to practice killing mans wins. But don't worry about it, nobody will be playing it in a week anyway.
If you really really want to know about a game I play online, try Minecraft. Because it was designed with online in mind, and goal-less cooperative building turns out to be really fun. It's one of those games I mentioned that needs multiplayer!
Most games don't. That's got to be, what, 10% to 20% development time and money for a negligible payoff?
this is some kinda weird loner/trenchcoat mafia conspiracy theory stuff
I tried minecraft once, I wasn't obsessive enough to play it.
Saying most games don't need multiplayer and it's a negligable payoff seems very 1995 (or very Nintendo).
And in the first post, he nails my problem with multiplayer
Note to most developers: Your multiplayer is not special. It was never going to be special. If you had played it for ten minutes, you would know this. Just because it's an action game does not mean it's conducive to multiplayer. You are not extending the lifetime sales of your game by throwing half-assed multi in.
People are always, always going to go back to the Halos, the Calls of Duty, the Team Fortresses. They all bring something fresh and new to the table within their respective genre of first-person shooters. They're not heavily-story-driven single-player experiences. So why waste time and money and add multiplayer to Singularity? Ghostbusters? Dead Space? Uncharted? Assassin's Creed (it's not out yet but the multiplayer videos look terrible)? BioShock? How great a profit do you think stands to be made? Do you honestly see a long-term commitment to your game, is throwing out Ghostbusters map packs really something you see as a possibility?
I just do. Not. Get it.
I'm still of the opinion, and no game yet has convinced me otherwise, that you can only do a great single-player or multiplayer game in one package. The other may be decent at best, but one of those modes of play is going to get a lot more attention during the development cycle and it will absolutely show. This is why, even though I don't play them, I'm more than happy that there are games like Monday Night Combat and Left 4 Dead around. They wear their multiplayer badge of honor for everyone to see, and I know, "Hey, I should stay away from that game because multiplayer is really not my thing at all and if there is a single-player component, it was not the main focus."
This rule above does not apply to music, racing or sports games. I'm pretty much just talking about action games here.
Or maybe an easier way of looking at it:
Are you mature enough to actually discuss the topic rather than trolling? I don't see why it's necessary to behave the way you are.
Do you disagree with my assessment with regard to e-peen and short life span, and if so, how/why? Explain in detail why a developer's resources would be wisely spent on multiplayer. Either way, please contribute.
it's possible to have a fun game you play with your bros online that continues for years? see any multiplayer game on PC or any of the big titles on 360.
Valve games are a perfect example; they make a billion dollars every time they release a patch for their game with a sale. They just introduced a way to buy items in game and they are making $texas off it.
I don't know where the chip on your shoulder came from about online gaming. I've been playing games online since '96 or so and I've always had a super fun time and I've never been more than an above average player at most games. Maybe you've just played with the wrong people?
edit: no amount of screenshots will get me to play Perfect Dark, good try though
You know... some games.. have both.... and both are good. Its on a case by case basis, but as many times as multiplayer isnt warranted, there are plenty of cases where it is.
The problem is people seeking it where its not supposed to be.
Valve games are a perfect example. They are part of that top 10% before you fall off the logarithmic curve that makes the investment not worth it. Most devs don't have the budget of Valve or Blizzard, which is why their hubs are empty after a week or two.
That's pretty much a good way to look at it. Although even then, a lot of racing games will fall off the map super quick, I think it was Scott Kurtz who wrote about the PA guys convincing him to get Blur to play with them and by the time he bought it they had all moved on to the next racing game.
Music games are a small (uncrowded) enough genre that multi in all of them is a good idea, although band games are obviously best played in the room together. It's also about the only game where there's no disadvantage to split screen at all.
The game demands pinpoint precision and communication. The communication is fine with headsets and all but any bit of lag would have killed it.
And yet it sold like 7 kabillion with zero online modes (or even connectivity).
To be fair, Mario.
But yeah, games tend to sell equally well with multi as without...which is the whole point.