The Evolution Of Multiplayer

[Neil]

How do you feel about it these days? In the past, people on here have given off about traditionally single-player games like Assassin's Creed spending resources on multiplayer. I have to disagree, though - this unlikely vehicle prompted a refreshingly original and compelling online component.

Things can, in general, get a bit too caught up with deathmatch, plus CTF etc. At times it doesn't feel like there's much innovation, and there's too much reliance on the old, established modes.

Do you still play online often, or do you never bother for some reason?  What's the game you've spent the most time online playing?  Mine would still be Quake III Arena, I'm sure.

[madhair60]

I play co-op online a fair bit, on stuff like Dawn of War II Last Stand, and especially Minecraft.  I used to play Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead a fair bit but fucked that off.

The stuff I play most is offline co-op in games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, MAME roms like Alien Vs Predator, and emulated Wii games like Donkey Kong Country Returns.  I still find that the offline multiplayer experience is generally a lot more enjoyable, but they are both very different of course.

[Utter Shit]

I only really play FIFA and it's more or less infinite now, thanks to online mode. Because every match is defined by the clash of styles, no two games are ever the same so it doesn't tend to get boring compared to older versions where even the more advanced AI would gradually become predictable after you'd played a hundred or so games against the computer.

[NoSleep]

Mine is Quake III Arena, also. After 12 years ID Software have finally pulled the plug on their Q3 Master Server. There was no announcement; it just disappeared a while back and never returned. No problems there, as several people have created new master servers which can be added into your config or game browser. That's if you haven't opted to play Quake Live, that is. I don't have a choice as Quake Live is Intel Macs only so, no dice.
The Q3 mod I've played the most is Urban Terror which has been a free standalone online game for several years now. It plays a little more realistically than Q3 Vanilla but is actually all the more fun for that. Even joined an UrT clan for a while.

[BeardFaceMan]

You've just reminded me I should play some more Team Fortress 2 before SSX takes over my online life. TF2 is by far the best multiplayer game I've played and unsuprisingly the game I've played most online. I was kinda put off by the fact it's a multiplayer game only and there was no single player mode. That kind of thing was very new to me, I'd never played an online-only game before. I thought it would get boring pretty quickly. Oh how very, very wrong I was.

[Dark Sky]

Co-op with a friend in the same room is great fun, but very few games seem to do that sort of thing any more. 

Multiplayer over the 'net where it's full of hundreds of people who've been playing it for ten years non-stop isn't fun at all and I rarely bother.

[VegaLA]

The arena style of run and kill tires fast but I do love my online Co-op for the campaigns, and i'm pleased Developers are realising this. One of the first for me was Doom 3 on the original XBox. You could only co-op on 20 levels back then but it was enough, and the first Gears of War beat the Halo francise for online Co-op. Sinbad and I had an awesome time playign from start to finish.
Unfortunatly since the move from Bungie to 343 Industries it looks like online Co-op is royally fucked. The recent Halo Anniversary game, the first full Halo game from 343 lags like a bitch on online Co-op and despite the many complaints on various boards about the issue 343 are not aknowledging the problem, so thats left me wondering if I should even bother with Halo 4 as the main joy is playing with Sinbad online.
Pleased Left 4 Dead took this angle seriously and last years Dead Island allows for online Co-op, *but alas, like Saints Row 3, it only allows the Host to progress through the story, while the co-op partner just helps/dicks about in the Hosts story. Dead Rising 2 is the same.
I'm hoping other games can match Gears online Co-op in that all players advance in the story and it will be interesting to see what GTA V has to offer in order to earn its 5 title. 

*Correct me if i'm wrong. I'm also wondering if Dead Rising 2 Off the record is Host story only, just waiting for anyone on my friends list to get the title before I see for myself.

[I accept the terms of the]

Too many numbers in that post. Be careful.

[VegaLA]

13

[Big Jack McBastard]

It's all down to how good the base game is and how much the developers are willing to put into it, updating and improving it while not taking the piss with the prices attached (if any). I think Halo 3 was probably the first game I played on-line more than off up until quite recently when Horde in GoW³ really got it's teeth into me.

I get sick of its death matches and CTF very quickly though, the odd one now and then is fine but I'd never put in 2 or 3 hour stretches like I do with Horde as there's barely a whiff of finesse to them, it's: 'March in, Shotgun, Fire, Fire. Live/Die' 95% of the time and it just gets boring, especially when you're subjected to someone who's been doing nothing but that for god know how many matches and you find yourself pasted 8 times out of 10. Climbing that ladder might be other folks bag but it ain't mine, not again..

Horde has a pleasant unpredictability to it though, you can have some ludicrously experienced players who know what they're doing occupying the finest spot on the map, efficiently share your money to get your defences up and keep everyone above the waterline for buying back in should they cop it mid-round and the AI can still pound you into the ground 10 waves in and not necessarily because of any glaring mistake. Plus it's nice to not have to hear people bitching at each other or trying to piss everyone else off over the mic for the sake of bloody mindedness. The focus on keeping each other up lance(r)s that boil nicely. Now if only there was a mode that kept squawking American preteen brats off it.

My wanking hand has cramped up from playing SSX all afternoon.

Multiplayer is on a steady gradient up round these parts.

[Famous Mortimer]

I just got an email this morning about Max Payne 3, proudly trumpeting the game's online multiplayer modes. If there's ever a game where that should never have come up, MP3 is that game. It doesn't fit with anything about the series to this point. I bet there's many meetings about trying to crowbar some multi-player deathmatch element into Tomb Raider's next installment.

I'm, at best, a casual player of games with online content, at least partly for the reason stated above. No fun playing people who've mastered the tricks of the game or have put more time into it than you possibly could. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried some racing game online, after getting pretty good at it (or so I thought) to then be immediately left in the dust by the other five racers (well, apart from the guy who freezes at the start line then disconnects 30 seconds in).

I guess there's been moves made in my direction, with "casual gamer" rooms and the like, but until they can stop some asshole who knows all the slight ways to beat the game from joining those rooms too, I'll probably still not bother.

[MojoJojo]

I just got an email this morning about Max Payne 3, proudly trumpeting the game's online multiplayer modes. If there's ever a game where that should never have come up, MP3 is that game.

What about ME3? (although that might be going completely off the rails).

I suppose multiplayer is inevitable because of the second hand market. It makes people buy games on release (i.e. new) and keep them for a long time (so they don't trade them in so there are few second hand copies). The continued success of CoD despite very little innovation seems to confirm this.

[Neil]

Plus they're using (full) access to the multiplayer component to get payments out of people who buy pre-owned.

Unlikely games like Max Payme Three really are the best chance of multiplayer making big leaps forward, I reckon.

[Famous Mortimer]

What about ME3? (although that might be going completely off the rails).

I suppose multiplayer is inevitable because of the second hand market. It makes people buy games on release (i.e. new) and keep them for a long time (so they don't trade them in so there are few second hand copies). The continued success of CoD despite very little innovation seems to confirm this.

I'm not denying their popularity, more that I wish the mulitplayer thing would stop encroaching onto the world of single-player games.

Also, I have a few mates who are huge fans of the Mass Effect series, and they say there are basically three ways to play the game - as an FPS, one that mixes FPS and RPG elements, and another which is roughly the same as previous installments. Or something. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to him.

I think if there's a good reason for multiplayer then I'll give it a go (like co-op runs on games) but deathmatches bore me to tears.

[Humper]

I spent almost 2 years non stop playing Delta Force Land Warrior online. There was then maybe a 6 year hiatus where i didn't touch a game. now i play battlefield 3 for about 2 hours every afternoon. i still have old friends from my Land Warrior days. i was in a squad and we all had microphones and spent weekends drinking and playing online together. it was really socialable and at times very very fun. met many interesting people and have remained in touch with 2 or 3. multiplayer can be good for that, is my point i spose.

[NoSleep]

Ah yes, the microphones. When I was in an Urban Terror clan we all communicated to one another in-game via Mumble (as Teamspeak didn't work for Linux users in the team) for training and actual play (although we never got as far as entering any leagues). A few of us still talk together (now on Teamspeak) to this day. Maybe we'll reboot the clan, too.

[MojoJojo]

I'm not denying their popularity, more that I wish the mulitplayer thing would stop encroaching onto the world of single-player games.

It wasn't their popularity I was commenting on; more that whatever popularity a MP game has translates into more direct sales at higher price than an equivalently popular single player game. People wait for single player games to become cheaper/second hand.

[eluc55]

As an old-fogie, I tend to feel multiplayer has lost something since the move to online multiplayers with 50 people battling it out. For me, that style of multiplayer can never match the excitement of a handful of friends sat in a room screaming at each other, jumping up and down and cheering over the latest game of Mario Kart, or Smash Bros.

Without the smaller number of people, the fact you know these people well, and the fact you're all sat together in the same room, I just find the online experience hollow and dull. The closest I've come to it is playing co-op online with someone I know, but even that wasn't a patch on playing it with them in the same room.   

[Thursday]

I'd be willing to try more multiplayer, but it's pretty costly on bandwith so I can't really do it too often. But other than I kind of agree with eluc about multiplayer, but Assassins Creed does seem like an interesting direction that takes advantage of the fact that other people aren't in the room.

My main concern is the direction something like Mass Effect 3 is going to go in, and to some extent what Portal 2 did, where the multiplayer game reveals other aspects to the story. If I'm going to read a book or watch a film, I don't expect to have to rely on a friend to be around for me to see everything.

Although at the same time, the lack of any story reward is what makes multiplayer uninteresting to me. In fact it's not even story so much  as the idea that I'm making progressing. Unlocking a new weapon and getting better statistics doesn't give me a sense of progress that completing a level does. There's new arenas to unlock I suppose, but that's not quite the same thing.

[glitch]

Back in the 90s I'd play as much mp as I could afford but due to the high cost of Internet then, I ended up playing more sp overall. Now that I have broadband and a console, I think I prefer multiplayer to singleplayer. I absolutely loved Mass Effect and Fallout 3, preordered the sequels and they've barely left the box because Black Ops came along and I started playing regularly with a group. Hell, it may just be the group thing I like - I always prefered objective teamplay/coop to FFA/TDM. I think this may be my lefty politics shining through.

Do you still play online often, or do you never bother for some reason?  What's the game you've spent the most time online playing?  Mine would still be Quake III Arena, I'm sure.

QWTF, Counterstrike or Company of Heroes (especially if you count skirmish), easily.

I only really play FIFA and it's more or less infinite now, thanks to online mode. Because every match is defined by the clash of styles, no two games are ever the same so it doesn't tend to get boring compared to older versions where even the more advanced AI would gradually become predictable after you'd played a hundred or so games against the computer.

I have that with CoD/etc. The only time it gets stale is endlessly thrashing a rotating parade of pubbies, which is why the group I play with has so many gimmicks (pacifism, hush, shields/knives/pistols/RPGs-only, Juggernight etc.) to try and handicap ourselves or keep it interesting. When we actually come up against another group and it's actually a challenge to win, it's glorious - even if we lose.

[falafel]

What Eluc said. It's ridiculous that with so many games you have to be on completely separate machines - ergo usually separate buildings - to play with a friend. Online, the person I'm playing against may as well just be a not, I don't give a shit, which is why I'm usually bored by multiplayer. And which is why I hope the new SSX has a split screen setting,  and I like the point scoring element because it makes it a bit more like a game of Scrabble or even I suppose an athletic sport rather than a load of people swearing at each other.

[falafel]

But then I always hated team sports too, there's probably a connection.

[Mister Six]

As an old-fogie, I tend to feel multiplayer has lost something since the move to online multiplayers with 50 people battling it out. For me, that style of multiplayer can never match the excitement of a handful of friends sat in a room screaming at each other, jumping up and down and cheering over the latest game of Mario Kart, or Smash Bros.

Yeah, pretty much this. The lack of broadband when I was growing up kind of put the kibosh on a lot of online gaming, and my interests have always leaned towards solo, narrative-led stuff anyway. But when I do play multiplayer, whether co-op or otherwise, I prefer to be in a room with my mates, rather than listening to a crackly voice down a knackered Xbox headset.

[Steve Lampkins]

I rarely play single player games. I think the first game I properly got into was Counter Strike (1.6, then Source). I dread to think how many hours I put into that. I was in a 'clan', though we weren't competitive, just rented a server. I would occasionally go on VoIP, but I found it a bit weird.

Then I had a break. Maybe I played the GTA games at this point, but never tried the multiplayer mods.

Played a lot of Battlefield 2142, then Battlefield Bad Company 2. Not sure I ever used VoIP for those, but you still would get random unspoken teamplay.

I've had Battlefield 3 since launch (late October), and have about 165 hours played. I haven't even finished the single player mode, it's all online.

This is the first time that a real-life friend has been playing the same game as me though - so we've played together a few times. I usually only play when my 3-year-old goes to bed though, so it's a bit tricky to chat (live in a flat). But the couple of times we've played together on voice has been amazing fun. It took me a while to get used to it though - I don't even talk on the phone much and don't like to, so even though it's with a mate, it felt a bit awkward almost. Feel a bit silly in front of my wife being 30 and playing my pew pew game while calling out enemy positions and tactics... When we've played together without voice though, it's almost too distracting to try and stick together with silent communication.

I was a bit worried how the voice thing would go, as normal background sounds like the TV or talking can be really distracting to me - I usually play in silence with headphones, listening for footsteps and gunfire. But I found when you're actually talking about the game it's more relaxed (we can just mess about) and helps rather than hinders.