Will Battlefront have online splitscreen?

[DivinePaladin]

ohmylanta1003 said:

DivinePaladin said:

It's also likely because the game would have to be entirely reworked to run in split screen, having both characters in different places, which would probably be too rough for most players' Internet to run. Old 360 games got away with it because the maps were tiny by comparison. But there's a reason these games don't do it as a whole anymore: not enough people play this way to make it worth the effort put in. Why reprogram the online in a way that may not even work for what's likely less than 5% of players to use it SOMETIMES? You act like it's a baffling decision but it's baffling why any shooter dev WOULD do it. Though Halo 5 having no split screen at all for the Co-op did still bug me quite a bit because that's not exactly a strain on the bandwidth nearly as much as full online split screen would be. 

 

I'm sort of grateful this game has it at all because this will be the only casual shooter this gen (from beginning to the eventual end) that does this, I promise you. 

Well...for one, you made up a statistic (5%), so we actually have no idea what that is. Because we don't know this, we can't really judge whether or not this is a baffling decision. However, taking options away from the players is always a bad thing. To deny this is stupid and I think it's odd that you would say it's baffling that a developer would give the gamers more options just because it requires a little bit of effort on their part. I'm certain it can't be that difficult to "rework" the game (if they even have to do that) and just because most people on VGChartz enjoy singleplayer experiences doesn't mean that a large percentage of people don't enjoy multiplayer and playing with their friends on a couch. And I'd like to make a bet with you on that last statement.

If you read my post before replying bud, you'd see the word "likely." If Microsoft took out the most Halo part of Halo 5 because not enough players use it anymore, then it's likely that not enough players use it. Is it 5%? No, it's probably less. I doubt any more than 500k players (of what will probably be 10m lifetime sales) would use splitscreen online more than once or twice to test it out. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the BF install base will even have two controllers! Again, are there solid numbers? No, and there never will be, but I'm not arguing on numbers, I'm arguing on logic and using my background in game design and technology.

 

It's entirely unreasonable to expect them to be able to compromise a good amount of the game just to TRY and make it work, with no guarantees it even can work well enough to ship with the game. It's a gamble when you have to cut the framerate, probably cut the resolution, and even then HOPE your players have enough bandwidth available to render the entire game twice, from two different angles. The game's already pretty laggy as it is - given, it's a beta, so that's understandable. 

 

As for the bet, do you genuinely believe any other series is gonna do any sort of split screen, let alone online? I have my doubts that Battlefront 2 will even have offline split screen when it comes out in about two years. Splat2n probably won't have online split screen, not that that's 8th gen, Halo 6 won't, CoD had it like once, Battlefield MIGHT add it just because they have the engine coded for it already. Destiny doesn't and won't addit. Horizon, if we're calling that casual, won't based on how that game seems to work. And that's the entire market of casual FPS right there for you. Far Cry won't, if that's gonna be considered casual too. Only other casual shooter that might is Gears of War 4. There's not gonna be some uprising of a new big FPS series outside of Horizon either, because the market is full as it is. The best hope we'd have for online split screen is Resistance but Sony torched that ship long ago and the only developer crazy/awesome enough to do it is Insomniac.