Not an MMO, but Lan support?

[LadyCrimson]

While they've been pretty clear that it won't be in the first game, if when the sequel is made, I wouldn't object to there being a LAN mode for folk who want it. Like Drac said, LAN/co-op doesn't necessarily = WoW or drastically altering gameplay mechanics. And it's not like it wasn't done before in the past, with games of this type.

 

But again, not this time around. Maybe for next game.

[Dracoola]

While they've been pretty clear that it won't be in the first game, if when the sequel is made, I wouldn't object to there being a LAN mode for folk who want it. Like Drac said, LAN/co-op doesn't necessarily = WoW or drastically altering gameplay mechanics. And it's not like it wasn't done before in the past, with games of this type.

 

But again, not this time around. Maybe for next game.

 

I didn't understand the first part.

You don't mind a MP mod for this game, or a MP game for a sequel? Or did you maybe mean an expansion pack?

[Marceror]

While they've been pretty clear that it won't be in the first game, if when the sequel is made, I wouldn't object to there being a LAN mode for folk who want it. Like Drac said, LAN/co-op doesn't necessarily = WoW or drastically altering gameplay mechanics. And it's not like it wasn't done before in the past, with games of this type.

 

But again, not this time around. Maybe for next game.

 

Agreed. If the expansion, a DLC, or the sequel ended up having a multiplayer mode splashed in, I wouldn't mind at all. I might even take advantage and do some LAN gaming with my son (I've got 2 copies of the game coming to me). I certainly wouldn't want to see other key features suffer to get it in, however.

 

An MMO would be a whole different story, and different kind of game. Not only would this not lend to the type of deep, story-based RPG so many of us want Project Eternity to be, but for me, I have sworn off MMOs. After a 2 year stint with Everquest many years ago, I don't play any games that don't have a pause function. Let's just keep it it simple with PE. Make it a game that plays like BG, PST, and IWD, but looks a lot better, and is set in a cool new world. That seems like perfection right there. No need to screw with perfection.

[Althernai]

I bet coop (like BG) will be in for the next game of the serie, after the engine and ruleset will be safe and sound. I'm like 100% sure about it. After all, it's not pvp multiplayer, so it doesn't require any "balance" passes. The story needs to be more IWD then BG\PST though, and for the first game it's not the case.

If the story is more IWD than BG/PST, then I'm not buying it and based on the relative popularity of BG1&2 vs. IWD1&2, I suspect neither are a whole lot of other people.

 

I don't necessarily mind this sort of thing (it didn't seem to do much harm to BG2), but nor am for it. I've never seen the appeal of playing a story-driven game with BG2 or PST style companions in multiplayer mode. The same goes for playing a real time with pause game in multiplayer. It's certainly possible and a few people seem to enjoy it, but I would rather Obsidian not waste any resources on trying to make this work.

 

You don't mind a MP mod for this game, or a MP game for a sequel? Or did you maybe mean an expansion pack?

You can't make an MP mod when the base game does not support connecting to a network and a bunch of other things. The developers have made it quite clear that it won't be happening in this game. They haven't said much about the expansion, but I very much doubt they'll use it to bring in multiplayer. The best you can realistically hope for is the sequel.

[LadyCrimson]

I didn't understand the first part.

You don't mind a MP mod for this game, or a MP game for a sequel? Or did you maybe mean an expansion pack?

Obsidian has been clear that P.E. will focus on single-player alone. No co-op. So if there will be a co-op mode, it will be in a future sequel/DLC/expansion or whatever.

 

As to myself personally, I don't really care if it's included or not. I don't have any personal use for LAN/co-op myself (hubby wouldn't be interested in this type of game), but I have no objection to it being part of a game, so people who do care can play that way....as long as I'm not forced to do something like play single-player while online. *glares over at Blizzard....*

 

Post-script: I should mention that the one time I tried playing IWD in co-op with a friend, I didn't like it at all. Even IWD wasn't "diablo-like" enough for me to find it fun. Party-based games of the IE mold don't work for me as co-op ventures (and I obviously don't want P.E. to be Diablo like). But I've heard of many couples/friends who did enjoy playing IE games co-op.

Edited November 6, 2012 by LadyCrimson

[Dracoola]

By MP mod, i didn't mean an ingame MP mod. I meant a third-party mod. Some people find a way to make it coop, and create a mod so we can play together. Would that be possible?

[LadyCrimson]

By MP mod, i didn't mean an ingame MP mod. I meant a third-party mod. Some people find a way to make it coop, and create a mod so we can play together. Would that be possible?

Only if the underlying works/infrastructure was in there for the modders to latch onto, so to speak. And as Althernai already mentioned, it wouldn't appear that will be the case for the initial release of P.E.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Borderlands 2 is a good example of how adding co op to a single player orientated game is a pointless waste of time, but even then because of the differences between it and Project Eternity, it's not nearly as bad as Project Eternity co op would be. Not to mention the complexities you have to account for in scripting when you have two or more people interacting with the environment. There are a variety of incredible co op games, please play Portal 2, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and Orcs Must Die 2, they are some of the best games ever made, and they are geared towards cooperative play. We get it, you want to play with your friends, go play co op focused games and other multiplayer games. There will be times when you cannot play with your friends, and these are the times for single player games. Every game does not need tacked on multiplayer.

[CanineKind]

To all those nay sayers let me just pose this little real life scenario... I assume that most of you probably play PnP games with your friends and know the amount of preparation time required to not only design levels but also write an engaging story can be real encumbersome. What the multiplayer option in both BG and BGII allowed for, at least for my friends and I, was to play a campaign that allowed all of us to play without having one of us designated as the DM for weeks, or months or even years in some cases. It was especially useful for those of us who do not have huge amounts of free time, who could maybe meet for an hour or two on the weekends (In this case, an hour or two on the computer). It was also helpful for those of us who couldn't make it to every session due to outrageous drive times. Instead all they had to do was slap in disk 2, punch in the IP adress and off we whent. I dont have much intrest in playing with random people online so much as being able to play with some close friends, who are ultimatly the most valuable aspect of any PnP game. So in my opinion, yes, a thousand times yes.

Edited November 8, 2012 by CanineKind

[Ieo]

To all those nay sayers let me just pose this little real life scenario... I assume that most of you probably play PnP

 

CRPG design and development are absolutely not the same as PnP play. There will be emulation of elements, but the entertainment types are simply different. Many things simply cannot be fully translated into a computer program.

 

I suppose we can continue to expect these threads to continue to pop up despite all the previous interviews, articles, discussions (see links in sig), so here are a few cogent quotes to quash simplistic sentiments like this:

It seems you don't understand. Having coop support doesn't mean it will cost us better game experience. No.

 

Wrong. See below. Do actually read the dev quotes, and there are more interviews linked in my sig.

 

If you ask me, it doesn't need a special campaign to have mp support. Borderlands is basically a singeplayer game played by 4 people. A bad definition, but it's a closest one i could think of.

It basically means that 1 player takes a quest, all of his party members receive it. The progress counts for everyone that's in the game while the quest is being taken/worked on/completed.

Let them make a singleplayer campaign, and just add that LAN button. That's all i want.

 

But, as Pipyui said, i guess having modders make a MP mod is good enough, as long as it is not crap like the Oblivion one.

 

This sounds horribly awkward for a game with multiple factions and where quests will have multiple outcomes--I suppose if you spend several minutes discussing preferred choices for a given quest, it can be roleplayed, but the only technical way this can work is that only the leader can "do" a quest and pick dialogue outcomes. Have you played Planescape: Torment? If the narrative, quest, NPC interactions are going to be anywhere near that level, with more dialogic content than BG, I don't see co-op working well (unless, again, all other players besides the leader are there for cannon fodder and not to play the narrative content).

 

But you are thinking as a player only. Not a developer. Not someone who has to look at the overall market and company budget.

 

To make a good multi-player RPG, design concessions must be made on the single player side of the game. This is especially true for titles with a lot of interactive dialogue and/or narrative delivered via text. George Ziets and I have had this conversation many times over the last few years, and it always boils down to one simple truth. Reading is not a team sport.

 

If you don't make those concessions, you end up with sub-par multiplayer. As much as I love the Baldur's Gate series, the multi-player aspect took a lot of patience (putting it mildly), as the design focus of those titles was the single player experience.

 

I do believe you can create an awesome multi-player experience with dialogue and choice and consequence, in my mind it would require a very large budget. I'll let you guys decide what that may or may not mean.

 

RPGamer interview with Tim Cain

 

MAC: Obsidian has been hit hard in the past by having games released before they seemed as polished as they needed to be technically. How does having crowd-funding over publisher-funding change the way you'll plan to tackle QA down the line?

 

TC: The biggest change is that we will decide on each and every feature in the game, and we can avoid the ones that add little to the game's content but a lot to its complexity. For example, we are not supporting consoles or multiplayer, both of which make the game far more complex and hard to debug. Instead, we are focusing on making the best single-player PC RPG we can make, and that focus is simplifying a lot of our choices.

 

So, that said. I don't care if some players want to do all the debug work themselves with a mod--that'd be great. Mods open up resources and creative possibilities (yes, quite a bit of crap too). Or maybe the retail PE will sell MILLIONS of copies and make this a AAA franchise so Obsidian can properly look into MP without sacrificing SP. Or they'll add a crappy layer after the fact, long after the SP elements have been laid down for the main game and sequels (because if MP would require concessions in sequels, that would mean sequel content would be inferior to the original).

[CanineKind]

I agree that CRPGs cant replicate the complete freedom that a player has in a PnP but that's really beside the whole point of the original post. My argument was that multiplayer worked, at least for me, as a premade campaign were my friends and I could play through a rich and rewarding storyline. it functions -more like- a PnP game when you have a party of players, especially close friends, than a party of companions all controlled by you. Don't get me wrong though, I defiantly would rather see a perfect SP game with all the bells and whistles if it means that we have to sacrifice MP for it.

 

Also, this is my first post and actually my first time on the fourms so alttile patience would be appreciated , i'll do a little more research and read those links but the bottom line is if the devs think that multiplayer would take away from SP then they know best.

 

(Edit just read that interview, Yuuup, that cleared things up right quick. lol thanks for the post Ieo)

Edited November 8, 2012 by CanineKind

[Hormalakh]

If the story is good in P:E, and they keep making games in the universe, I would like to see a game sometime in the future with some sort of LAN/MP play. The game mechanics would probably be different and it wouldn't be a classic cRPG, but it might be fun. Some sort of Action RPG style whatever. But that would probably be several games down the line.

[Hormalakh]

I agree that CRPGs cant replicate the complete freedom that a player has in a PnP but that's really beside the whole point of the original post. My argument was that multiplayer worked, at least for me, as a premade campaign were my friends and I could play through a rich and rewarding storyline. it functions -more like- a PnP game when you have a party of players, especially close friends, than a party of companions all controlled by you. Don't get me wrong though, I defiantly would rather see a perfect SP game with all the bells and whistles if it means that we have to sacrifice MP for it.

 

Also, this is my first post and actually my first time on the fourms so alttile patience would be appreciated , i'll do a little more research and read those links but the bottom line is if the devs think that multiplayer would take away from SP then they know best.

 

(Edit just read that interview, Yuuup, that cleared things up right quick. lol thanks for the post Ieo)

 

Welcome to the boards. Don't let the angry hordes beat you down, they're mostly harmless.

[samm]

Hell no. Sure hope they're not going to waste any resources on multiplayer aspects. Maybe in some other game in the future, but not on this project - resources are relatively scarce and decent network implementation seems difficult enough judging by many games - and that's not even considering that multiplayer would have to make sense in game terms (i.e. integrated into the story, or leave the story weak like in Diablo, MMOs and similar).

[Alexjh]

I asked Adam about the prospect of co-op during his Icewind Dale 2 session and he said they weren't intending to do it.

 

But the reason I asked was because I've had some great times in Infinity Engine games in co-op, there's a certain level of unpredictability it adds to the whole affair when you only control some of the party and there are some moments I've had which were better in co-op than singleplayer because of it.

 

That being said, I'd agree with the desire to get a solo game that works great and just leave the option open to add in a co-op later on, even if it's something as horrible to get working as the IE games.

[Starglider]

Dev time is probably fairly low but the amount of QA needed would be huge. I would just leave some hooks in there so that it can be modded in easily by the community, that way we can have co-op functionality but Obsidian don't need to support it.

[pnhearer]

Multiplayer yes. MMO style NO NO NO NO NO NO. Please consider balancing. There is NO challange in games now a days and multiplayer balancing is a huuuge issue. Please provide a multiplayer challange fulfilling, but one that doesn't ruin the content.

[LePig]

I would love Lan and co-op and would gladly pay extra if it came in the future.

I know alot of you didnt like the co-op in BG2 but that single feature is the reason I still play BG2 after so many years!

[Halsy]

Why not just say co-op instead of Lan support? And yes, co-op would rock like Mr. Spock.

[Grivenger]

Co-Op/Lan worked for Baldur's Gate and the other games. It would be a good extra option for players who enjoy their videogames with more than one.

[Bartimaeus]

I would not have minded LAN support...but it is not something that I feel is absolutely needed, especially given that we'll be able to generate our own parties if we want to anyways, (yay!). But if they're absolutely focused on singleplayer, that is completely fine by me, too.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Bartimaeus

[deepsheep]

I keep returning to the Infinity Engine games and NWN franchise for the coop experience. I think it adds a lot to the game experience.

 

The problem is that we are losing track of what players who play story driven RPG want out of MP. We want the ability to play with our friends and experience the story together. If that means designating one PC as the leader than so be it. Borderlands MP ruins the SP experience because the premise is to have everyone be a main character. Everyone loots, everyone talks, we all have money. MP can be a lot more restrictive in a story driven RPG and still be fun for everyone:

1. Lock PCs at game start. No adding or removing characters.
   
2. Make the party leader be the only one who can talk to NPC.
   
3. Make the party leader be the only one who can change zones.
   
4. Have 1 quest log for the party.
   
5. Have 1 common loot bag.
   

4 & 5 are features that I would like to have seen in BG, BG2, NWN, etc. Keep in mind that we are talking about LAN support. If you invite and @!#@& in your house, ... well kick him out.

 

I think it's too late for Project Eternity to have this type of Coop, but I hope that they allow for Mods to give basic MP support or that another kickstarter is initiated for this type of MP.

[Frisk]

I think it's too late for Project Eternity to have this type of Coop, but I hope that they allow for Mods to give basic MP support or that another kickstarter is initiated for this type of MP.

 

I really, really doubt it will be possible to mod in co-op play, unless the game is designed from the start with that possibility in mind, but another kickstarter project for a came with co-op - in particular if it had something as easy to use as the NWN toolset (just with up-to-date graphics) - now that might be interesting.

 

That's not this game, however.

[deepsheep]

I think it's too late for Project Eternity to have this type of Coop, but I hope that they allow for Mods to give basic MP support or that another kickstarter is initiated for this type of MP.

 

I really, really doubt it will be possible to mod in co-op play, unless the game is designed from the start with that possibility in mind, but another kickstarter project for a came with co-op - in particular if it had something as easy to use as the NWN toolset (just with up-to-date graphics) - now that might be interesting.

 

That's not this game, however.

 

If they can create a multiplayer mod for Skyrim, why not with Project Eternity? As long as the developers allow it.

They also started on Dragon Age multiplayer mod, but that got shutdown by EA.

[Enclave]

No interest in this at all. If you guys who want it get it than good for you. I just remember how bad the IE games were multiplayer and if this is going to be the same I would just assume they not bother.

 

Just to point out, Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II were fun multiplayer.