"If a game can't stand on single player alone, it's a bad game." Really?

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

(subpoint of 2) i hate dealing with people playing the game THEIR way (yes yes i know we all paid for it and can do what we want, but when the faggots are only using cheap strategies and are being the biggest cunts in every sense of the word, i'll immediately go back to my singly player games)

Like guys running on the roof in Brotherhood. The multiplayer was perfect in theory, but then people started playing, and there's always that 10-20% of people that fuck it up. The point of the game is to blend into crowds as you stealthy head to your target and stab him in the back. Not sprinting across rooftops and attacking people from above.

i have not played brotherhood but bring a group of people together who all have their own ideas in their heads, or change their ideas, shit gets fucked up and people get annoyed =\

 

[A random person]

Considering games like Counter Strike and TF2, saying games that focus on multiplayer are bad is simply stupid.

I am annoyed whenever a campaign is just some tacked-on feature, though, as a single-player oriented person who strongly prefers local multiplayer.

 

[llew]

i was going to agree (because not everyone has online so if it is shit single-player its not worth getting) but then i remembered having this argument while playing bad company 2 online with my friend and he just said "so what game are you playing now?" and felt a massive *touche*

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

...I think halo is a prime example. So with developers and publishers looking at Halo and saying "that really works" they basically copied that design. Sure there are differences with story, setting, weapon design, etc., but a lot of it obviously ties back to that original design. Yeah there can and are so new innovations to them, but these ideas get copied too, like perks for say...

So with that statement you say that HALO is one of the only original games with multiplayer?

"shooters have been basically copying some of the first shooters that established the genre like Wolfenstein or Doom. (don't crucify me if those are bad examples)So shooters then copied their basic gameplay elements. Now, look at what game(or games) really had the first success and defined multiplayer."

If you look back on the part right before you quoted me I say "games" and the fact that if halo was a bad fps, the multiplayer would have gone to shit. What makes it the shooter that it is? Games like Wolfenstein and Doom (I'm looking at you >_> -->Owyn_Merrilin)halo just came to mine, and last time I check its not a bad example. You can prove me wrong but hey i tried.

MrJKapowey and I were calling you out on your claim that Halo was the first game to really define multiplayer, when online multiplayer had been a standard feature of FPS games for a good 7 or 8 years by the time Halo came out, let alone Halo 2, which introduced online multiplayer to the console versions of the series. The PC version, interestingly enough, had online from the get go. I'm not arguing that you didn't see a lot of games copying Halo after it proved to be so successful, but you need a lesson in gaming history if you think it was the first successful shooter or multiplayer game on anything but the Xbox. It did define the modern console shooter, but I'm not alone in thinking that that definition was a step backwards from the one put forth by Rare and, later, Free Radical, which was much better suited to a gamepad than Bungie's school.

I sound angrier than I really should about this, but basically there's this perception among the PC gaming community, or at least there was around the time Halo was new, that there were a lot of people who thought Bungie single handedly invented the multiplayer FPS, which rubbed those of us who had been playing the genre for years the wrong way. Pretty much any time someone starts talking about Halo like it invented online multiplayer, those old wounds get reopened.

okay.












I'm 15, I obviously wont know a lot of early games because hell I was probably younger than 7 years old and I don't care enough to research it. All of that was to prove the point that if a game can't stand on single player alone its a bad game. Its tacked on because your doing to the same thing capture the flag, death match, and etc. over and over again. What makes the fun is not really just the setting or event. Its the people you play it with. I assume people play with other people they like or at least don't hate most of the time. Or at least are killing the assholes they hate. A game company has no control over that. Yes it can be stream line and awesome gameplay but eventually didn't modern warfare 2 get a little bit boring after the thousandth time of going through an event? After the initial awe of it, games and multiplayer can really lose there shine.

Oh i just reread your paragraph, and I'm not saying it didn't have a mutliplayer or didn't made what halo's multiplayer became but, Did one game literally have the numbers behind its multiplayer that showed growth in that part of the genre like Halo. I'm not saying other games didn't, maybe they had a better multiplayer than halo but did get the publicity halo got. Me? I don't know, the the way you phrased sounded like pc gaming is and/or was being undermined at least for multiplayer in certain genres. Honestly I'm just asking you a question at this point. I remember seeing this thing on X-play about it too.

Well, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but it would be a fairly safe assessment that at one point, PC gamers were playing multiplayer in comparable if not higher numbers than ever played the first two Halo games online. The Quake series, for example, had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players in its day, with a tournament circuit that was something of a prototype for MLG, and certain player, like Fatal1ty, becoming household names.

When Halo came out, though, we wound up with people who had never played games before buying an Xbox just to get that one game. It was hugely but, to the people who had been gaming since Doom, inexplicably popular. It's not that it was a bad game, but it didn't do as much new as people tend to think it did, and it was in many ways a step back for the genre. Before Halo came out, there were two main schools of shooter: PC and console. The two styles differed mainly in the control schemes, with PC shooters generally involving lots of jumping around and shooting in three dimensions, while console shooters usually didn't even have a jump button, instead being built from the ground up to work within the limitations provided by the game controllers of the day.

At the time, most shooters of both schools had at least 10 weapons -- the number of number keys at the top of the PC's keyboard -- were very fast in terms of gameplay, and had non-regenerating health. Halo brought two main concepts to the forefront, two concepts that, while not actually invented by Bungie, have been copied in pretty much every console shooter since. The first was limited weapon slots. In the old days, the player carried every weapon in the game at once. Bungie decided to make it possible to only carry two weapons at a time, making it take less buttons to have instant access to all guns. ]
The other design choice was regenerating shields, and regenerating health as well in the sequel. Both of these design choices had been done before -- for example, I know from personal experience that Delta Force 2, a "realistic" PC shooter from 1999, had limited weapon slots, and I know there were a couple of games that had regenerating health as well -- but they didn't really take off until Halo came out.

Add to this that the game felt slow and clunky compared to what had come before -- a result of trying to shoehorn a more PC style control scheme onto the still limited buttons of the gamepad, and you can see why people who played games the generation before, especially PC gamers, were annoyed at all of the people who had never really played games before coming in and claiming that Halo was this incredibly original game, and quite possibly the best game ever.

 

[llew]

(subpoint of 2) i hate dealing with people playing the game THEIR way (yes yes i know we all paid for it and can do what we want, but when the faggots are only using cheap strategies and are being the biggest cunts in every sense of the word, i'll immediately go back to my singly player games)

Like guys running on the roof in Brotherhood. The multiplayer was perfect in theory, but then people started playing, and there's always that 10-20% of people that fuck it up. The point of the game is to blend into crowds as you stealthy head to your target and stab him in the back. Not sprinting across rooftops and attacking people from above.

i have not played brotherhood but bring a group of people together who all have their own ideas in their heads, or change their ideas, shit gets fucked up and people get annoyed =\

if brotherhood was multiplayer only i would get very pissed, people who just sprint everywhere annoy the crap out of me because if you notice them you are immediately being chased by them so if you see your target you end up losing them by running from your pursuer when they didnt know where you were

 

[Shadu]

I think I must rather agree with Yahtzee on this one simply because I don't like multiplayer. Now, if a game has multiplayer, I might play it with my roommate or something, but I typically only play with maybe one other person. I dislike online a lot because generally, people are a jerks on there, and I'm not talking about just what's being said through the coms.

For me, multiplayer gets too hectic to keep track of what's going on and, generally, I'm not at a good enough level to go toe-to-toe with others. AI can be predicted, humans can't. And I'm not one who wants to try and figure out what the humans will do. And besides, most players are in it for themselves, so they will do whatever they want, even if it means stabbing you in the back.

So, for me, if a game's strong point is the multiplayer, I'm not interested. If I read about it, and everyone says "Well, the single player campaign was very bad, but the multiplayer, especially online, was awesome," I'm not interested at all.

 

[DarkChoclate]

Well, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but it would be a fairly safe assessment that at one point, PC gamers were playing multiplayer in comparable if not higher numbers than ever played the first two Halo games online. The Quake series, for example, had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players in its day, with a tournament circuit that was something of a prototype for MLG, and certain player, like Fatal1ty, becoming household names.

When Halo came out, though, we wound up with people who had never played games before buying an Xbox just to get that one game. It was hugely but, to the people who had been gaming since Doom, inexplicably popular. It's not that it was a bad game, but it didn't do as much new as people tend to think it did, and it was in many ways a step back for the genre. Before Halo came out, there were two main schools of shooter: PC and console. The two styles differed mainly in the control schemes, with PC shooters generally involving lots of jumping around and shooting in three dimensions, while console shooters usually didn't even have a jump button, instead being built from the ground up to work within the limitations provided by the game controllers of the day.

At the time, most shooters of both schools had at least 10 weapons -- the number of number keys at the top of the PC's keyboard -- were very fast in terms of gameplay, and had non-regenerating health. Halo brought two main concepts to the forefront, two concepts that, while not actually invented by Bungie, have been copied in pretty much every console shooter since. The first was limited weapon slots. In the old days, the player carried every weapon in the game at once. Bungie decided to make it possible to only carry two weapons at a time, making it take less buttons to have instant access to all guns. ]
The other design choice was regenerating shields, and regenerating health as well in the sequel. Both of these design choices had been done before -- for example, I know from personal experience that Delta Force 2, a "realistic" PC shooter from 1999, had limited weapon slots, and I know there were a couple of games that had regenerating health as well -- but they didn't really take off until Halo came out.

Add to this that the game felt slow and clunky compared to what had come before -- a result of trying to shoehorn a more PC style control scheme onto the still limited buttons of the gamepad, and you can see why people who played games the generation before, especially PC gamers, were annoyed at all of the people who had never really played games before coming in and claiming that Halo was this incredibly original game, and quite possibly the best game ever.[/quote]

I see your point completely but regardless, people still thought it was great. It probably wasn't, but people still said it was. Now when looking at something sure to sell and safe publishers jumped on the boat used halo as a basis for a lot of their games. Certainly not the only, but when it comes to money, they definitely did.

But in the end I don't really care about that, I'm wondering if you changed your mind on whether a game should be able to stand on single player alone?

 

[Apocalypse Tank]

I have two friends in school who visit the Escapist forums. They moan and ***** about the story of a FPS as if they are reading a goddamn book.

Being raised on Counter Strike as my first FPS and the C&C series as my first videogame experience, I believe it should be any true game's agenda to invent the story and universe canon according to gameplay, not vice-versa.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Well, I don't have the numbers to back it up, but it would be a fairly safe assessment that at one point, PC gamers were playing multiplayer in comparable if not higher numbers than ever played the first two Halo games online. The Quake series, for example, had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players in its day, with a tournament circuit that was something of a prototype for MLG, and certain player, like Fatal1ty, becoming household names.

When Halo came out, though, we wound up with people who had never played games before buying an Xbox just to get that one game. It was hugely but, to the people who had been gaming since Doom, inexplicably popular. It's not that it was a bad game, but it didn't do as much new as people tend to think it did, and it was in many ways a step back for the genre. Before Halo came out, there were two main schools of shooter: PC and console. The two styles differed mainly in the control schemes, with PC shooters generally involving lots of jumping around and shooting in three dimensions, while console shooters usually didn't even have a jump button, instead being built from the ground up to work within the limitations provided by the game controllers of the day.

At the time, most shooters of both schools had at least 10 weapons -- the number of number keys at the top of the PC's keyboard -- were very fast in terms of gameplay, and had non-regenerating health. Halo brought two main concepts to the forefront, two concepts that, while not actually invented by Bungie, have been copied in pretty much every console shooter since. The first was limited weapon slots. In the old days, the player carried every weapon in the game at once. Bungie decided to make it possible to only carry two weapons at a time, making it take less buttons to have instant access to all guns. ]
The other design choice was regenerating shields, and regenerating health as well in the sequel. Both of these design choices had been done before -- for example, I know from personal experience that Delta Force 2, a "realistic" PC shooter from 1999, had limited weapon slots, and I know there were a couple of games that had regenerating health as well -- but they didn't really take off until Halo came out.

Add to this that the game felt slow and clunky compared to what had come before -- a result of trying to shoehorn a more PC style control scheme onto the still limited buttons of the gamepad, and you can see why people who played games the generation before, especially PC gamers, were annoyed at all of the people who had never really played games before coming in and claiming that Halo was this incredibly original game, and quite possibly the best game ever.

I see your point completely but regardless, people still thought it was great. It probably wasn't, but people still said it was. Now when looking at something sure to sell and safe publishers jumped on the boat used halo as a basis for a lot of their games. Certainly not the only, but when it comes to money, they definitely did.

But in the end I don't really care about that, I'm wondering if you changed your mind on whether a game should be able to stand on single player alone?[/quote]

Oh, that's what you were asking. I had a hard time finding the question you mentioned, and assumed that it was about Halo. My answer is that no, I haven't changed my mind; I think it's entirely a case of different strokes for different folks, and that a game in which multiplayer is the main focus shouldn't be judged for having tacked on singleplayer, at least as long as the multiplayer is excellent on its own. I also think that a game with excellent single player shouldn't be judged for having a tacked on multiplayer mode; the two types of game are simply aimed at two different target audiences. Really, if anyone who absolutely can't stand multiplayer bought a game like Modern Warfare 2, they deserve to be disappointed by the single player for not reading any reviews, news, or forum posts ahead of time.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I haven't read through all of these responses so I don't know if this game was mentioned or not.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Yeah, the single player was good but the multiplayer was orgasmic. Take THAT yahtzee.

 

[DarkChoclate]

Well what about when the multiplayer becomes deserted? How many will be playing modern warfare, the first one, one the next power house call of duty game comes out? Like 5, 10 years from now, if I notice I have Mass Effect 2 and decide to play it, i'm still going to love that game becuase it is probably the best damn writing and story, among other things, I have personally seen heard and played in a game.Sure shines wears off in both games, but even if i find other people to play would it really be fun to play it again for the millionth time? Modern warfare actually had a good singleplayer but just say if it didn't? or if it was another similar game but didn't have that kind of publicity?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Well what about when the multiplayer becomes deserted? How many will be playing modern warfare, the first one, one the next power house call of duty game comes out? Like 5, 10 years from now, if I notice I have Mass Effect 2 and decide to play it, i'm still going to love that game becuase it is probably the best damn writing and story, among other things, I have personally seen heard and played in a game.Sure shines wears off in both games, but even if i find other people to play would it really be fun to play it again for the millionth time? Modern warfare actually had a good singleplayer but just say if it didn't? or if it was another similar game but didn't have that kind of publicity?

Well, as I've already pointed out, I play on the PC, where pretty much any game with a multiplayer component that so much as qualifies as decent is going to last at least 10 years. Heck, there's still people playing the original Doom online, and that game is going to turn 17 this year. That said, I was mainly using CoD as an example of a popular game that has what most players agree to be excellent multiplayer, but a lackluster campaign as of late; I don't own a single game in the series, as they just aren't my variety of shooter, even when it comes to the multiplayer. That doesn't mean that I think it's a bad series, though.

As for the comparison to Mass Effect, we're really looking at two different types of experience here. If 10 or 20 years down the road, I want to play TF2 but can't find anyone to play it with, I'll remember the good times, and then try to find some other game to fill that void. Heck, it's already happened to me once -- Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the first game I ever took online, gave up it's last online gasp in 2008, 10 years after its 1998 release, and 6 years after I started playing it in 2002. I eventually got over it and found a new game, even though I still miss the old one from time to time.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

I think we has a probelm more with

Battlefield 2.

That's basically it.

Instead of writing a dull speech about how Yahtzee's incorrect in saying that every game should stand on its singleplayer, but I'm not going to.

I'll just say "Battlefield 2" and leave.

I don't understand...battlefield 2 was a fucking awful game...both single player and multi-player.

You sure you're not thinking of Bad Company 2?

Even then, Bad company is is pretty damn good.

 

[mitchell271]

I whole-heartedly agree with you. I hate a tacked on single player *cough*Call of Duty*cough* and a tacked on multiplayer even more *cough*bioshock 2*cough*. Unless they give us a good and polished experience that actually makes sense and is believeable in that setting, why should we waste our hard-earned cash on something that will not bring us joy?

 

[burningdragoon]

Lot's pages I don't feel like reading through, so I'm sure someone probably brought this up, but anyway...

There are plenty reasons why if you a making a game with a single player campaign that the single player should be a main focus, or at least equal focus as multiplayer.

1. not everyone has reliable enough internet for online multiplayer
2. not everyone can guarantee a lack of interruption
3. not everyone is fortunate enough to not encounter douches on the internet

probably some other reasons that I can't think of atm

Anyway this whole discussion is pointless. People who only care about multiplayer, are going to be pissy towards people who complain about bad single player. People who like both are going to get pissy at the lack of good single player and at people who only care about multiplayer getting pissy at them and people who only like single player aren't going to keep buying new installments if the single player sucks.

 

[Netrigan]

...I think halo is a prime example. So with developers and publishers looking at Halo and saying "that really works" they basically copied that design. Sure there are differences with story, setting, weapon design, etc., but a lot of it obviously ties back to that original design. Yeah there can and are so new innovations to them, but these ideas get copied too, like perks for say...

So with that statement you say that HALO is one of the only original games with multiplayer?

Seriously. Doom had multiplayer for cryin' out loud.

Are you really going to say that halo didn't have one of the biggest influences on online multiplayer? And so what? That doesn't disprove my general point, it might even further it. And by the way i already mentioned Doom as one of the biggest and first influence for fps, so yeah.

Your point seems to hold water, but apart from bringing on-line play to the console scene, Halo didn't really bring anything new to multiplayer.

The various game modes have been slowly growing since the Doom days, mostly because of the mod scene. In many ways, id software provided the tools to the fan community, then incorporated the more popular game modes into future games. Epic managed to come up with a few new game modes (I think) because they went head-to-head with id in the great FPS Tournament Wars of the late 20th Century. Without innovation, they wouldn't have gone anywhere. I'm pretty sure Domination (holding certain control points), Assault (where teams take turns assaulting and defending a location), and whatever they called Horde (team of players defending against AI baddies) were all innovations of the Unreal Tournament series... but I could be wrong.

But the multiplayer scene is largely the result of the fan community. When Wolfenstein 3D was hacked to allow user created maps, id resisted the urge to send in the lawyers and they (and other studios) gave an unprecedented amount of power to the fan communities. This is the real reason why FPS have such a rich amount of multi-player content.

I'm actually curious to see if LittleBigPlanet 2 manages to bring the same sort of energy to the platform scene. The vast majority of their user made content will be mediocre at best, but if the fan community continues to embrace the game, it could be a wonderful breeding ground for new multiplayer game modes.

 

[Superior Mind]

I think if a game is Multiplayer alone then fine. BF1942 is still one of my favourite games as is TF2. However if a game includes a Single Player campaign there's nothing worse than it being half-arsed. Franchises that know the replayability lies in Multiplayer don't tend to create good Single Player games and opt for passable. I hate "passable", it's why I don't bother with CoD any more.

See Single Player campaigns have to be made with a bit more thought that Multiplayer games, that's a given. If a game advertises having both Single Player and Multiplayer and delivers a shit Single Player game with a decent Multiplayer one it's obvious that the entire game is half-arsed. Multiplayer's easy, Single Player, not so much. Therefore, in my opinion, if a game's Single Player doesn't stand up on it's own then the game overall will get a "meh" from me.

Curious that you use BF1942 as a 'multiplayer' example given that BF1942 HAD a single-player Campaign mode... not very advanced sure, but it was still there. I was Mortified that BF2 didn't have a campaign mode.

Good point, I forgot about that. I don't think that really counts though, BF1942 Single Player was literally just multiplayer with bots.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

Certain games and franchises are multiplayer focused. Halo, Call of Duty, Starcraft, fighting games... in my opinion those games shouldn't be judged poorly if they have a mediocre single-player, because it's obvious to anyone that's paying attention that single-player wasn't the focus of the game.

 

[Oliver Pink]

I think if a game is Multiplayer alone then fine. BF1942 is still one of my favourite games as is TF2. However if a game includes a Single Player campaign there's nothing worse than it being half-arsed. Franchises that know the replayability lies in Multiplayer don't tend to create good Single Player games and opt for passable. I hate "passable", it's why I don't bother with CoD any more.

See Single Player campaigns have to be made with a bit more thought that Multiplayer games, that's a given. If a game advertises having both Single Player and Multiplayer and delivers a shit Single Player game with a decent Multiplayer one it's obvious that the entire game is half-arsed. Multiplayer's easy, Single Player, not so much. Therefore, in my opinion, if a game's Single Player doesn't stand up on it's own then the game overall will get a "meh" from me.

Curious that you use BF1942 as a 'multiplayer' example given that BF1942 HAD a single-player Campaign mode... not very advanced sure, but it was still there. I was Mortified that BF2 didn't have a campaign mode.

Good point, I forgot about that. I don't think that really counts though, BF1942 Single Player was literally just multiplayer with bots.

Not so - it was an overall campaign wherein the ultimate outcome (ie, the 'End-of-Campaign Epilogue) changed depending on how well you fought over the course of the campaign.