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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why is there a bias against MP only games?

Nem on 26 May 2016
LudicrousSpeed said:
Nem said:
You missed the most important argument. They live and die by the community. It's impossible to keep every community alive. So, you are paying full price for a game that isn't going to last long and after the servers close is just a piece of trash.

But, if you like to be gouged, by all means.

You're using gouged wrong. Gouged would be a SP game you complete once or twice and are too bored to go back to. So cool, you spent $60 on a 10 hour game and got maybe 25 hours of play time out of it. Meanwhile I can spend $60 on a MP title and get 300 hours of play time out of it. Gouged, lol.

As you can see, the argument can go either way. In the end when these discussions happen it basically boils down to people who play MP and people who don't. People who don't care for MP won't understand that you can get hundreds of hours of quality play time out of these titles.

Regarding online communities, if the game is good, there will be a community. Even Titanfall, which is always spoken here and on GAF as if it's a ghost town and a dead online community, has thousands of players online all the time and you're never in trouble trying to find a game. There might be some instances like MAG where it wasn't a good game and the servers get shut down, but then again you can also have situations like The Order or Murdered: Soul Suspect where you pay $60 for a terrible and short SP experience and once it's done the game is, as you put it, a piece of trash.

At least you get the option to get back to it. Better clock those 300 hours fast though, because the quality of the service will be in freefall.

Also... not really fair to be comparing a MP with a crap game. A crap game is a crap game, regardless of SP or MP. This is about the fact that MP only games are short lived. I might also add, that very few will play them for 300h. You need alot of free time and tolerance to repetitiveness to do that.

Try to think on the pov of a casual gamer.



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Veknoid_Outcast on 26 May 2016
LudicrousSpeed said:
Nem said:
You missed the most important argument. They live and die by the community. It's impossible to keep every community alive. So, you are paying full price for a game that isn't going to last long and after the servers close is just a piece of trash.

But, if you like to be gouged, by all means.

You're using gouged wrong. Gouged would be a SP game you complete once or twice and are too bored to go back to. So cool, you spent $60 on a 10 hour game and got maybe 25 hours of play time out of it. Meanwhile I can spend $60 on a MP title and get 300 hours of play time out of it. Gouged, lol.

As you can see, the argument can go either way. In the end when these discussions happen it basically boils down to people who play MP and people who don't. People who don't care for MP won't understand that you can get hundreds of hours of quality play time out of these titles.

Regarding online communities, if the game is good, there will be a community. Even Titanfall, which is always spoken here and on GAF as if it's a ghost town and a dead online community, has thousands of players online all the time and you're never in trouble trying to find a game. There might be some instances like MAG where it wasn't a good game and the servers get shut down, but then again you can also have situations like The Order or Murdered: Soul Suspect where you pay $60 for a terrible and short SP experience and once it's done the game is, as you put it, a piece of trash.

This is a fair point. How many single-player games have a 10-hour straightforward campaign that, once finished, never inspires a second or third replay? And how often do those games sell for $60? Very often.

That said, I'm still wary of games that focus strictly on online multiplayer. Disappearing communities and closed servers are real concerns. Those concerns can be mitigated by the return of something that's become a endangered animal over the last two generations: local multiplayer. If developers took a little extra time and resources to build splitscreen multiplayer and/or bot matches, I think a lot of the trepidation about multiplayer-only games would disappear.



kitler53 on 26 May 2016

it's the dependencies. you can only play an online mp game online with multiple players.

1. the game sells like shit
2. the community moved on
3. the developer no longer wants to pay for the servers
4. the online infrastructure sucks

any of these can make your game unplayable. it just feels like a risk to me that i'm not often willing to take. i'm waiting to see if everyone else buys it first which means i just never buy.

also the ones on consoles this gen feel low on content. the mp only games have as much online content as a game like halo or uncharted that also comes with a single player campaign. if you are going to be mp only i think you need to have more online content than the sp/mp combo games if you are still going to charge $60.



archer9234 on 26 May 2016
Veknoid_Outcast said:
I'm a single-player first, co-op second, multiplayer third kind of guy, so admittedly I don't gravitate toward multiplayer only games. However, if the game in question has great gameplay and a variety of modes, then I'm fine with it.

What I'm not fine with is online-only multiplayer games because once the servers are retired it's game over. The solution: just add an offline mode with bots.

Agree. But by the time this happens. The company is bankrupt, they're EA, or out of money. So that never happens. I normally don't like MP only games, for this reason. Overwatch being the only exception.



Veknoid_Outcast on 26 May 2016
archer9234 said:
Veknoid_Outcast said:
I'm a single-player first, co-op second, multiplayer third kind of guy, so admittedly I don't gravitate toward multiplayer only games. However, if the game in question has great gameplay and a variety of modes, then I'm fine with it.

What I'm not fine with is online-only multiplayer games because once the servers are retired it's game over. The solution: just add an offline mode with bots.

Agree. But by the time this happens. The company is bankrupt, they're EA, or out of money. So that never happens. I normally don't like MP only games, for this reason. Overwatch being the only aception.

I miss local multiplayer/bots. I was weaned on GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, etc. I just expect that stuff. Halo 5 ditching split-screen was a huge body blow.

I've been very critical of Guerrilla Games over the last decade, but one thing I love about that studio is its commitment to bot matches. I wish Guerrilla was the rule, not the exception.



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GribbleGrunger on 26 May 2016

Die, respawn, die, respawn, die, respawn, win/lose.

So fulfilling.



 

The PS5 Exists. 


archer9234 on 26 May 2016
Veknoid_Outcast said:
archer9234 said:

Agree. But by the time this happens. The company is bankrupt, they're EA, or out of money. So that never happens. I normally don't like MP only games, for this reason. Overwatch being the only aception.

I miss local multiplayer/bots. I was weaned on GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, etc. I just expect that stuff. Halo 5 ditching split-screen was a huge body blow.

I've been very critical of Guerrilla Games over the last decade, but one thing I love about that studio is its commitment to bot matches. I wish Guerrilla was the rule, not the exception.

Yeah. Luckly that's one reason why I got Overwatch. It has bot modes.



Goatseye on 26 May 2016
Veknoid_Outcast said:
archer9234 said:

Agree. But by the time this happens. The company is bankrupt, they're EA, or out of money. So that never happens. I normally don't like MP only games, for this reason. Overwatch being the only aception.

I miss local multiplayer/bots. I was weaned on GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, etc. I just expect that stuff. Halo 5 ditching split-screen was a huge body blow.

I've been very critical of Guerrilla Games over the last decade, but one thing I love about that studio is its commitment to bot matches. I wish Guerrilla was the rule, not the exception.

Sorry to break itto you Vek but local mp is a thing of the past. At least here in the US, if a game doesn't have online mp component, it doesn't sell as well as the big dogs. People/kids don't go to each other's house to play games anymore.

Halo 5 splitscreen issue was blown out of proportion by a vocal minority, like many more issues that became a trend to hate on 343i. But that's another story.



Veknoid_Outcast on 26 May 2016
Goatseye said:
Veknoid_Outcast said:

I miss local multiplayer/bots. I was weaned on GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, etc. I just expect that stuff. Halo 5 ditching split-screen was a huge body blow.

I've been very critical of Guerrilla Games over the last decade, but one thing I love about that studio is its commitment to bot matches. I wish Guerrilla was the rule, not the exception.

Sorry to break itto you Vek but local mp is a thing of the past. At least here in the US, if a game doesn't have online mp component, it doesn't sell as well as the big dogs. People/kids don't go to each other's house to play games anymore.

Halo 5 splitscreen issue was blown out of proportion by a vocal minority, like many more issues that became a trend to hate on 343i. But that's another story.

I can't argue with that. You're right. It's the reality. I just miss it.



outlawauron on 26 May 2016
fatslob-:O said:
pokoko said:
It's kind of funny, really.

10 hour single player game -- "I can play it again if I want! Yay! I might play it three times and get 30 hours total! 30 hours makes it completely worth the money!"

Multiplayer game you can put hundreds of hours into -- "Sure, I played this game for 50 hours but what if it gets shut down a year from now? 50 hours of gameplay is a waste of money!"

Except hardly anyone pours that much time into a game, let alone complete them ... 

Shallow example ...

But the average user of these games do pour a ton of time into them...



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