The Chimera trend in Games

[sXeth]

A seemingly recent trend in games releases. Where two (or more, since I guess new CoD is going with three) fairly distinct game experiences are kind of bolted into one package despite having large differences in design and potential audiences.

Call of Duty, which the upcoming contains a multiplayer vs shooter, a separate fantasy mishmash survival game, and apparently also a battle royale.

GTA5 and GTA ONline. Probably the first case I'd properly cite of this phenomenon. Single player story driven contained experience. Vs online mmo sandbox thing with free-to-play design philosophy. Like the next entry, the later addition has basically superseded the original and claimed its identity, which probably leaves some newcomers wondering why the hell their game loads into this weird offline world automatically on them.

Fortnite is a class-based shooter/tower defense/base management sim with a sideline of a third person battle royale shooter. With only art assests and the basic building mechanic shared between them.

The upcoming Dark Souls Remaster is supplanting its bleak vaguely multiplayer RPG campaign with a 3v3 Deathmatch Arena mode.

Kind of similarly, console Minecraft (not sure about the PC version) spent almost half a year adding and expanding a dedicated PvP arena mode separate from the base game.






GTA and Fortnite are the two main weird examples though.

GTA:O by all merits, would actually stand well as a free-to-play spinoff title on its own (questionable shooting mechancis aside). The only real reason to keep the Legacy title tacked on there is to justify a retail tag.

Fortnite is a bit of an odder case. While both halves are getting content updates, the co-op mode is still locked in early access. Once that ends, it'll be a free-to-play game with one side running on cosmetic monetization, and one side running on pay-to-skip monetization. And hopping between sides is outright confusing. Whats a skin on the BR side exists on the StW side as a hero class. Similar weapons are called different things, and StW has its own progression mechanics that if ignored make all the BR experience in the world useless (BR players are notorious in StW for using unupgraded walls with no traps, for instance, which is basically a nothing defense in StW)

 

[sanquin]

Because money. They want to "appeal to a wider audience" so they can make more money. And to do that, rather than thinking about innovation themselves, they go with "hey, this thing is popular right now, let's put it in our game as well!"

 

[Saelune]

Recent trend? Tacked on multiplayer is not new.

 

[sXeth]

Recent trend? Tacked on multiplayer is not new.

Of the four examples. Two are literally multiplayer only games to begin with. Dark Souls is kind of a grey area. And for "tacked on", GTA Online sure has managed to supplant GTA5 to the point of being a vague reference fodder.

I thought about using Far Cry 5 or Doom, which are more in the vein of tacked on multiplayer. But there basic mechanical structure and design isn't disassociated in quite the same manner. (The official DOOM multiplayer comes close with its very bog standard loadouts and stuff), but the Snapmap option keeps harmony with the base game.)

 

[sXeth]

*502 double post, feel free to delete*

 

[09philj]

Being able to reuse your assets for additional modes is a way to add value to the game without having to put in that much effort.

 

[Elijin]

I think its super interesting that both the main examples wildly outperform their non-MP aspects, but still get referred to as 'tacked on multiplayer' or 'soulless cash grabs' by their detractors.

Doubly so with GTA where people were begging for full MP so much there are fully developed MP mods for the older titles.

 

[sXeth]

Being able to reuse your assets for additional modes is a way to add value to the game without having to put in that much effort.

Historically though, multifocusing doesn't lend itself to a polished experience. The glut of Third Person-Stealth-Shooter-Puzzle-Platformers (with occasional driving) is somewhat renowned for doing absolutely none of those things particularly well.

The other pitfall is sharing mechanics between different mechanical experiences. Destiny has long had an issue with its PvP mode bleeding over into its PvE mode which exacerbated with D2 even (which is on Bungie really for not balancing it separately (other then the one time they did and proved it wasn't impossible). IF you're running 2-5 projects out of one client and engine, you're quintupling the odds of something unesxpected happening off a tweak unless you've got some crazy modular design implemented.

Fornite also gives some interesting examples of issues that crop up. Even though BR and StW are developed by different teams (the Fortnite main team, and the Unreal Tournament+old Paragon team), there's still occasional blips of poor crossover. There's been performance issues occasionally popping up from Battle royale patching. Some of the pickups from BR were ported into StW despite having no practical use, only clogging up loot pools and inventory (until they recently patched them not to count against backpack space). Perhaps the biggest crossover problem is that the two games on one client share their V-bucks (F2P currency). Save the World has more options to get V-bucks (as they help move progression along), so waves of BR players (and bots) are flooding matchmaking in a team based game where the mechanics they've learned have almost no application.

There's also a general bloat issue. With these forcibly bundled experiences, people who play one mode but not the other start having to download and store tons of patches, maps and assets that they aren't even using.