Multiplayer?

[monsen]

Having multiplayer is one of the most interesting features they could add imho. Note that with multiplayer, i mean co-op, play through the main story multiplayer, not some tacked on unrelated multiplayer (like deathmatch arenas, seperate multiplayer maps and such). I have had a really good time playing through the campaigns of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights co-op with my friends.

 

Multiplayer's very nature means the story will have to be written to allow for more than one hero, which a story written for single-player simply cannot deliver.

Not really. Baldur's Gate, for example, is a single hero campaign (with a supporting party), but still, co-op multiplayer works perfectly. Not all players have to have equally important roles in the game for multiplayer to be exiting. Obsidian have already said you will have a complete party in this game as well, so I feel that letting a friend control some of these party members (as in BG) would be perfect. Edited September 20, 2012 by monsen

[Vatdim]

Having multiplayer is one of the most interesting features they could add imho. Note that with multiplayer, i mean co-op, play through the main story multiplayer, not some tacked on unrelated multiplayer (like deathmatch arenas, seperate multiplayer maps and such). I have had a really good time playing through the campaigns of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights co-op with my friends.

 

Multiplayer's very nature means the story will have to be written to allow for more than one hero, which a story written for single-player simply cannot deliver.

Not really. Baldur's Gate, for example, is a single hero campaign (with a supporting party), but still, co-op multiplayer works perfectly. Not all players have to have equally important roles in the game for multiplayer to be exiting. Obsidian have already said you will have a complete party in this game as well, so I feel that letting a friend control some of these party members (as in BG) would be perfect.

 

I second that. Just finished a short session of BG2 together with two of my friends. The game works out great, even though only one of us is officially recognized as "the hero". We actually experienced a bug that wouldn't let us rest or save the game but we kept on going for another hour, doing our best to remain alive and to continue the adventure. After that, we got into an auto-save and that let us load it and get rid of the bug. It was actually a refreshing experience since we aren't used to this kind of gameplay that much.

 

I mean, even if such problems do exist in the multiplayer of PE, I won't be mad and I won't start bashing people for it. I know this is mostly perceived as a secondary feature and I'll be more than happy if I get it working just as well as it was in BG.

[Klaleara]

/waves Resurrection wand

 

I want coop, saying it now. All the other games had it, I used it everytime. I would like it in the new one.

[Onyx]

While not 100% a deal breaker, despite this game being primarily single player, I like playing group-based tactical RPGs with a group of friends. I did it with NWN1, NWN2, I tried doing it with BG 1 and 2 and the like, and I overall much prefer multiplayer over singleplayer for group-based games like this.

 

The reasons are that these games, for me, often become tedious when I'm trying to manage a party of 6 by myself despite any AI availability, and I don't much care for any of the narrative being changed or destroyed in any fashion, since my friends and I always discuss what options are best based on the overall direction we want the story to go, and we end up having a ton of fun exploring the narative together as our adventure, instead of just my adventure.

 

Tactical Group-based RPGs naturally lend themselves to a multiplayer experience, and the existence or lack of multiplayer, at this point, is the only thing fully keeping me out of funding the project as it sits. It's a big issue for me whether the game has multiplayer or not in a way that if it were more akin to a, as much as I don't wish to directly compare to it, an Elder Scrolls game, it wouldn't bother me as much. That is to say, the game is designed to only have 1 player. In games like this or BG or IWD, these titles all draw their experience from Dungeons and Dragons, which is, first and foremost, a social game. And that's how I, personally, want to play a game like Project Eternity. In a social setting, with friends who will joke about tiny inconsistencies in the writing. With friends who will mull over what direction we want to take the group, whether towards good or evil. With friends who don't know just how truly evil the MotB ending actually got, and slowly guiding and baiting them towards it to hear their reactions while still enjoying the experience of playing the game with them despite this.

 

While in some games, like Skyrim, multiplayer might ruin the immersive nature due to its first person, non-tactical, single-person gameplay -- having multiple dragonborn might be silly, the group-based tactical games are, in my opinion, enhanced by the multiplayer experience as long as multiplayer is designed into it and you have a group of friends willing to sit through the text and figure out what direction they want the group to go. As a note, I'm using Skyrim/Elder Scrolls as an example mostly because it's fresh on my mind. This could also be said for a game like Alan Wake or Demon's/Dark Souls or any other such single-player-designed game.

 

To me, however, multiplayer adds a lot of value, replay, and overall enjoyment to the game. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but I'd like to see this game since Obsidian is notorious for having ridiculously strong narratives in most games they work on, and running a tactical group RPG in singleplayer for me often outright ruins my enjoyment of the game.

[Tale]

The other thread has been far more active of late, so let's try to keep it all in there.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60065-merged-co-op-multiplayer-as-some-potential-future-stretchgoal/