Multiplayer in expansion?

[splintex]

I would say that if you do multiplayer mode in your game do it well, which means that it most likely cost at least same amount as single player mode even though they usually can reuse art asset, because technical implementation and server implementation of good multiplayer is expensive. You can do cheap multiplayer modes if you do similar half-assed job like what Bioware did with DA:I's multiplayer. 

 

I feel like you are addressing the current multiplayer paradigm of aditional multiplayer specific content, or custom maps, characters, dedicated servers (perhaps) rather than thinking of it as plain old ordinary co-op,  my background is in a different programming field than game development, but I don't see the packing sharing and syncing of game data peer to peer for co-op using all of the assets and engine extant in the existing single player game, to be of the same order of magnitude as the creation of the game itself (again, not my field, but my gut feeling, totally non-scientific, I know....) and different from other implementations of what the gaming community has come to view as multiplayer.

 

As to a co-op (I can't say the m word as that isn't what I mean) fix of a cRPG there is only one and that was D:OS same style of thing as the IE engine originals, just with a nice shared decision making, I didn't like the ability for people to wander off, but then there is a certain desire to appease people who was to venture forth without gathering their party.

 

I don't see co-op as a half assed multiplayer implementation,  i see it as co-op implementation, I couldn't give two hoots about a multiplayer expansion, I want a co-op mode.

 

*edited for spelinks

Edited March 24, 2015 by splintex

[Sky_walker]

IMHO Multiplayer is nothing more than a waste of time. It's a real time with pause game - these work very badly in multiplayer. Even if it's just coop (and they're flat out frustrating in competitive gameplay).

[axan22]

Already confirmed no multiplayer in expansion.

[Sky_walker]

Already confirmed no multiplayer in expansion.

Question wasn't about the upcoming expansion packs but rather if multiplayer can be implemented in additional expansion / DLC. Read the first post, not just a title.

[Night Stalker]

 

 

Yeah. If you ever played MP in the IE games, you'd know it was just "tacked on" - it didn't change they game in any way, except that other players could control some characters. Doesn't sound hard to implement to me.

Wait.

 

What?

 

I'm all for MP, but it's a very large technical process. 

 

They have already got the Unity engine, in either case they have already made games before (DS3) which you can play online over Steam. To implement the functionality in PoE from there onwards should not be particularly hard.

 

Well of course all labels such as "hard" are subjective. What I'm saying is that it's IMO not hard to write a program in Java or C# which communicates over an internet connection. It is not very hard to communicate positions on the map of players, creatures, et.c. (especially not if you have already written code that does exactly this, then you don't need to do any deeper thinking about how you want these things to work out in theory). Then you already have pre-alpha multiplayer right there. I have no idea if it's hard or easy to make it efficient, though.

 

Personally, I have never made a multiplayer game so I don't know exactly what would be necessary (although I have many friends who are working on that kind of stuff). I have done some rudimentary stuff using sockets in Java (which is on a comparable level with C#), for example a chat program (pretty much a homebrew MSN Messenger with uglier graphics ). I have also done a lot of other programming of course, but mostly I do sciency stuff, I guess the closest I get to programming multiplayer games is cluster programming with MPICH in C, at least that is about message passing over connections.

 

EDIT: If anyone should believe otherwise, to clarify I am talking about multiplayer as it worked in the IE games. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

 

Proper multiplayer requires quite a bit more money mainly because we would need to bring on network programmers and have a dedicated online QA staff. Also, the total programming dev time would probably increase by around 33% which is quite a bit.

 

Source

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

 

But still bad. I'd hate to see real resources burnt on jamming in multiplayer

I love how people always assume devs are ****ing idiots when something they don't want is brought up, but treat them like unfailable Gods when they something they want is brought up.

 

Unfair.  I think they're idiots all the time.  I'm terribly disturbed if I've ever conveyed the idea that Sawyer and Company are unfallible gods.  Especially since I've outright stated my disappointment in most Obsidian games, and feel big chunks of this game are terrible design fails that even a starting game designer wouldn't have botched with a little research into the basics of game design, especially when cribbing from established franchises.

Why are you even here...? By all accounts, it sounds like you hate the game.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Yaz]

I don't think anyone has any trouble imagining ways that multiplayer can be tacked on to a game like this; that's not exactly a new concept and has been done.  This is not some revolutionary idea that needs brainstorming.  Just because people aren't receptive to the idea doesn't mean they can't imagine it; heck they don't need to they can probably just think of another game with a story that multiplayer ended up taking away from the enjoyment.

 

Multiplayer is not some holy grail that should be added to everything possible.  Pillars was marketed, designed and created as a single player game.  This is highly interactive book telling and elaborate story.  Myself and I'm sure many others would greatly prefer they focus on telling intricate stories for the single player experience and not put a bunch of resources and time on something that will likely ultimately take away from that.  There is no way at all to implement something like multiplayer into a game like this without having to make compromises for it to fit.

[Planeforger]

I don't understand the negativity surrounding multiplayer here.

 

With the exception of Planescape Torment, all of the Infinity Engine RPGs had co-op multiplayer features, and they were all fun to LAN (sometimes even fun playing online on Gamespy, if you could find a good group).

 

Pillars is a party-based RPG, so allowing other players to control certain party members wouldn't necessarily hurt the game in any way - outside of budgetary constraints.

 

Personally, I don't mind that Pillars is singleplayer only, but multiplayer can be a lot of fun in games like this.

[Coaxmetal]

If there was a multiplayer I would like to see something similar to NWN online campaigns and custom adventures. Not a death match orientated core. Although a map pack were that could easily be arranged?

[Eurhetemec]

 There is no way at all to implement something like multiplayer into a game like this without having to make compromises for it to fit.

 

There's no way to do anything in this world without having to make compromises. There is absolutely nothing about Eternity or any other game in existence, that is not, on some level, a compromise.

 

So this "Well, it's a compromise and thus bad!" approach to this makes literally no sense. It gets rolled out like clockwork, but it never has made sense as a free-standing, context-less criticism.

 

The real question is, how do you lose, how much do you gain, when you implement MP? If we look at the Infinity Engine games, they had multiplayer and lost approximately nothing. I mean, does anyone think BG1/2 were "compromised" in a negative sense by their multiplayer? If so, please explain how, in detail. With a game like this, multiplayer is not a gigantic technical obstacle, and we also need to remain sane and remember that the team who development multiplayer, would not be the content team.

 

I've bolded that so no-one gets confused and starts making wild claims about how implementing multiplayer would prevent X areas or Y bosses being implemented in an expansion, or starts claiming that MP would "impinge upon" content in general. It would not. The team developing multiplayer would largely be programmers, not content developers or artists.

 

Now, the nature of Eternity means that MP would have to be kind of limited - you'd need one player to be the "main", and the other player wouldn't be able to interact the same way as them with the NPCs and so on. They'd largely be controlling, say, half the party in combat and dungeon-type situations. Anything more than that would have needed development from the ground up, like D:OS.

 

So I think we have a situation where we have a relatively low cost to acquiring MP, but also a relatively low (at least at first glance) benefit from acquiring MP. So one could go either way on it.

[Rostere]

 

Proper multiplayer requires quite a bit more money mainly because we would need to bring on network programmers and have a dedicated online QA staff. Also, the total programming dev time would probably increase by around 33% which is quite a bit.

 

Source

This sounds like complete overkill to me for the kind of MP that the IE games had. "Network programmers" in plural and a dedicated online QA staff? I don't understand how dev time would rise by 33%, that sounds absurd - but maybe I'm underestimating what Roby means with "proper multiplayer". I am talking about the very rudimentary MP the IE games had, with no fancy stuff. Maybe I'm also underestimating how difficult it would be to get it running smoothly. But Obsidian have made MP games before, so they should not need to wrestle with the theoretical questions behind constructing an efficient MP solution.

[Elerond]

 

 

Proper multiplayer requires quite a bit more money mainly because we would need to bring on network programmers and have a dedicated online QA staff. Also, the total programming dev time would probably increase by around 33% which is quite a bit.

 

Source

This sounds like complete overkill to me for the kind of MP that the IE games had. "Network programmers" in plural and a dedicated online QA staff? I don't understand how dev time would rise by 33%, that sounds absurd - but maybe I'm underestimating what Roby means with "proper multiplayer". I am talking about the very rudimentary MP the IE games had, with no fancy stuff. Maybe I'm also underestimating how difficult it would be to get it running smoothly. But Obsidian have made MP games before, so they should not need to wrestle with the theoretical questions behind constructing an efficient MP solution.

 

 

In multiplayer you need to keep multiple client at sync all the time as in real time game it matter if there are even 0.1 delay between what players see. Which is why you need "network programmers" in plural as there are usually quite lot programming work that they had to do to ensure that network latency don't hinder gameplay.

 

IE games had engine which had developed multiplayer in mind from beginning, even though Unity has all the necessary components to implement multiplayer mode in game it don't offer any ready-made implementations for one, but instead developers need to actually develop one by themselves. So IE game didn't actually have any cheap multiplayer mode that was easy to implement over single player mode, but instead of they had multiplayer mode build-in from start.

 

Having co-op multiplayer mode also means that you need to check and make sure that all the interactions, conversations, selections and UI components work as intended also in that co-op mode, which means that you need dedicate online staff, who also need to check that lobbies, server (don't matter if dedicate or hosted)  - client connections work always as intended.

 

And many bring up D:OS as example of simple co-op game even though it has engine that was build from scratch just so that they can offer that kind of co-op experience. Meaning that it was not any simple task for them actually do, but instead whole game starting from engine was build that co-op play in mind, which is why it is so good as it is.

[stratigo]

I want what NWN and NWN2 had.

 

NWN2 multiplayer has gone badly stale and a lot of us still there are desperate for a game that replaces it. But the modern market sensibilities don't do multiplayer like that anymore and retro sensibilities like PoE scorn multiplayer of any type. It is intensely depressing for the small number of folks who found true joy in Neverwinter nights persistent worlds, knowing that NWN and NWN2 is the only thing we have. There is nothing else that facilitates roleplaying in the way a NWN server does.

 

It has nothing to do with Co Op (though D:OS did Co Op amazingly.). It is essentially just giving players access to a toolset, a dm client, and the ability to set up multiplayer infrastructure.

[Adelmar]

 

 There is no way at all to implement something like multiplayer into a game like this without having to make compromises for it to fit.

 

There's no way to do anything in this world without having to make compromises. There is absolutely nothing about Eternity or any other game in existence, that is not, on some level, a compromise.

 

So this "Well, it's a compromise and thus bad!" approach to this makes literally no sense. It gets rolled out like clockwork, but it never has made sense as a free-standing, context-less criticism.

 

The real question is, how do you lose, how much do you gain, when you implement MP? If we look at the Infinity Engine games, they had multiplayer and lost approximately nothing. I mean, does anyone think BG1/2 were "compromised" in a negative sense by their multiplayer? If so, please explain how, in detail. With a game like this, multiplayer is not a gigantic technical obstacle, and we also need to remain sane and remember that the team who development multiplayer, would not be the content team.

 

I've bolded that so no-one gets confused and starts making wild claims about how implementing multiplayer would prevent X areas or Y bosses being implemented in an expansion, or starts claiming that MP would "impinge upon" content in general. It would not. The team developing multiplayer would largely be programmers, not content developers or artists.

 

Now, the nature of Eternity means that MP would have to be kind of limited - you'd need one player to be the "main", and the other player wouldn't be able to interact the same way as them with the NPCs and so on. They'd largely be controlling, say, half the party in combat and dungeon-type situations. Anything more than that would have needed development from the ground up, like D:OS.

 

So I think we have a situation where we have a relatively low cost to acquiring MP, but also a relatively low (at least at first glance) benefit from acquiring MP. So one could go either way on it.

 

Well said! I can only hope others here will read this and realize the logic you just put down. 

 

I would absolutely LOVE the option to play co-op with a friend as I did in the old Infinity games. Like you said, it took nothing away from both the story and the gameplay to do so, which makes me hopeful that Obsidian will eventually make it a reality for this game in the future.

[Luridis]

I'm going to stretch here and say that it will absolutely not happen. I'm not normally that sure of anything, and I could still be wrong, but I don't see it. They'd have to rework just about every bit of mechanics code in the game to facilitate its collection and transmission. That is, unless they could make it collected somehow like the combat log, but that won't fix the issues of each player needing to interact in real time and the need for action buffering in the case of time delays.

 

Too much work and most of the backers and customers probably don't care. So, ask yourself this: Would you waste money changing everything to include a feature that might have minimal appeal at best?

Edited April 4, 2015 by Luridis

[Adelmar]

I'm going to stretch here and say that it will absolutely not happen. I'm not normally that sure of anything, and I could still be wrong, but I don't see it. They'd have to rework just about every bit of mechanics code in the game to facilitate its collection and transmission. That is, unless they could make it collected somehow like the combat log, but that won't fix the issues of each player needing to interact in real time and the need for action buffering in the case of time delays.

 

Too much work and most of the backers and customers probably don't care. So, ask yourself this: Would you waste money changing everything to include a feature that might have minimal appeal at best?

 

I would argue that quite a few backers and customers would use the feature if added. I understand that it may take some time to code for the network, but I don't believe it would be "a waste of money." Yes, who knows if it will ever be added, but it's a feature that would add a lot of replayability to the game so that's hopefully something the devs see in the future.