Has the multiplayer experience put you off single player?

Jonny7

As shiny and awesome and cool as a new game looks, I just know I'll spend 10, maybe 20 mins on the single player and just get bored.. its chronic now

As a nerd I want the game, I buy it, like Portal 2, am initially vaguely entertained, then just.. meh..

Whereas the multiplayer experience (years of rts, fps, mmo's) has truly and utterly addicted me to the human element and competitiveness, and anything else just feels a bit.. artificial and repetitive..

I mean for fecksake, I'm watching a stream right now of an online tournament, I even pay to watch these things - I think I've finally reached the final gamer endboss of multiplayer only

said stream
http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/Day%5B9%5D

Retr0gamer

For me the multiplayer experience has put me off multiplayer. The only multiplayer game I've enjoyed since L4D 1 and 2 (and then only with people from boards) has been demon's souls, a game withno voice coms.

J. Marston

I have little to no interest in multiplayer. Give me a good story driven, single player game anyday.

Multiplayer seems to be tacked on to everything these days.

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

For me the multiplayer experience has put me off multiplayer. The only multiplayer game I've enjoyed since L4D 1 and 2 (and then only with people from boards) has been demon's souls, a game withno voice coms.

You robbed the exact post that popped into my head reading the thread title.

There's only a handful of MP games I spend any time with, mostly Valve ones at that.

Multiplayer is polluting single player games too, wasting resources that can be used better elsewhere.

You can inject leaderboards into my veins though. Best thing about XBL.

deathrider

Agree with most of the boys here, I'd much rather a good quality single player game. I enjoy a bit of CoD (not married to it, but I do have a lot of fun with it) in multiplayer, but the fact the I have to text my mayes to see if they're available for a game is really off-putting. I'm not just going to jump in with a team of randomers, because all the craic in that game is over the headset, in my opinion. I've nothing against multiplayer, I'm just pretty sick of playing very similar modes in mode multiplayer games.

richymcdermott

Im a singleplayer guy myself , always have always will be. I dont mind co op though when its done correctly having a buddy there with ya completing the game together is good craic :pac:

krudler

depends on who you're playing with tbh, playing with the lads in the COD forum is an absolute hoot some nights, playing with random public can be headwrecking most of the time. I dont like how so much emphasis is being put on the Uncharted 3 multiplayer, 2 had a fun little MP mode, it was simple run and gun and it was a laugh, now its trying to be COD with customisationa and killstreaks and the like, better not take away from the SP as its one of the best SP games around.

deathrider

This might be slightly off-topic, but I think it kinda backs up how I feel about a lot of multiplayer games.
Oh, and warning: There's loadsa bad language in the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGL5QAMT2qo

jaykhunter

Jonny7 wrote: »

As shiny and awesome and cool as a new game looks, I just know I'll spend 10, maybe 20 mins on the single player and just get bored.. its chronic now

Holy God, that's scary! :eek:

In general I only play Single Player, when I branch out into multiplayer, it's somewhat fun but I hate playing with people I don't know; that and the 'reset nature' of multiplayer maps. Then again I'm talking about stuff like Gears etc not MMOs so I've no idea about that.

Well you're in luck because current gaming trends will focus more on multiplayer than single. Bad news for me.

johnny_ultimate

Remember: Call of Duty does not represent the current scene of singleplayer gaming. I find a distressing amount of people forget that sometimes.

Jonny7

I think its more being a part of an organised clan/team with good friends, playing across different games is a major factor

There are some well established games where the multiplayer, with teams/communities/leagues/cups all that is a bit better than just firing up something like Crysis2 and hopping straight into some messy random ffa.

I tihnk once you're really experienced all that it can be hard to go back to normal single player, that said I wouldn't touch the multiplayer on most games either, just to good well established ones

Retr0gamer

I went through some serious multiplayer gaming with Quake 3, starcraft, CS, Half-Life and Tribes back in the day. Was only really having fun when playing lan with friends. It just wasn't fun trying to keep up with people online that played the game too much. It was a novelty and I grew out of it and went back to single player games which provided a much wider and more satisfying game experience. Multiplayer can be fun and all but it's not going to give me the emotional rollercoaster ride of Mother 3 or Silent Hill 2. I would however like to see more games like Demon's Souls where the multiplayer aspect is integrated passively into the single player exprience.

Funky

Depends on what you want out of a game. If the competetive side of things is what you like then games designed for multiplayer, not just a tacked on game mode, will be far more value for money than any single player game.

funky penguin

Depends on the type of multiplayer tbh.

I used to love CS on a LAN with my mates for an hour after school. Great craic shouting at people across the room.

Fast forward to 2011......I've never gone near COD multi-player and never will, it's just not my cup of tea. Saying that, I had fun on Uncharted 2 online.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood put an interesting spin on it, and it was incredibly rewarding for patient, mature playing. However, it can be quickly spoiled by idiots who just got off the COD servers.

One thing completely ruins online playing for me though: Lag. Tekken 6.....ugh. Oh, and cheating for rankings. That annoys me no end.

In summary, I love single player!

Chairman Meow

Retr0gamer wrote: »

For me the multiplayer experience has put me off multiplayer. The only multiplayer game I've enjoyed since L4D 1 and 2 (and then only with people from boards) has been demon's souls, a game withno voice coms.

This. Im well and truly sick to the ****ing back teeth of LOL I PWN YOO BOOM HEADSHOOOOOT ****ing crap nowadays.

The most compelling multiplayer experience ive had in years has been Demons Souls, and Minecraft. And i only do co-op in DS, i dont even go in for pvp. And yeah before that it was L4D1, all co op games. Cant stand competitive mp anymore. Its literally become what i hate the most about games nowadays (besides waggle).
SP games like bioshock, and now Metro 2033 having to get multiplayer components shoehorned in just because billy xbox and johnny playstation wont buy a game nowadays unless theres carrot on a stick progression based multiplayer as standard. **** off.

I only ever enjoyed multiplayer with games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Counterstrike. Can't even remember the last time I played a multiplayer game. What really annoys me is when a game gets brought out that is basically geared towards the multiplayer market. This is lazy, extremely extremely lazy.

Potential-Monke

I'm a single player fan, like most here. I'll play the SP before any MP, even when MW2 was released i put all my time into the SP before going into MP. I much prefer SP, games like the Legacy of Kain series, Uncharted, Portal, inFamous, even Tomb Raider, and all the older classics, it was all about SP back then, and it's lost on nearly every game these days, with the good few exceptions.

However, in MP i prefer random matches. I've played with a few friends i met through MP (due to my job, none of my real-life mates are gamers! >_> ), and i much prefer jumping into a random game. If there's twats, i mute them if there's no craic to be had with them, and if there's cheats i just leave. It's nearly a part of MP now.

As for MMO's, never got into them, for one simple reason. I just know that it would finally ruin my social life. If i started WoW i might as well sell the house, lose the missus, quit the job and get rid of all my friends! :P

KilOit

I'm all about the multiplayer, games today rarely hold my attention long enough to finish a singleplayer. a single player game would need a very good story with interesting characters to keep me playing, only game recently that ticked every box was Starcraft 2.

Sisko

I'm more similar to Jonny I guess the most of the other posters in this thread. Once I got broadband I found it very hard to play most single player games to the end without getting bored/sucked into adrenaline fuelled multi-player.

Few games could pull me away from the likes of Battlefield and its sequels & mods or C&C Generals and so on. MMO's would only interest me if theres PVP.

I had the fortune to have friends into gaming as well as being involved in the whole clan thing at the time too. On top of that I tended to be well above average in most mp games I played so maybe that helped. Although I think its more that I don't take losing as badly as others I know, for example I'd have friends who might enjoy RTS games, but would not go near the multiplayer because "All these deadly players will kick the crap out of me" a lot of people prefer the safe bubble of single player where the game is designed to give the impression that you are deadly at it.

Where as for me losing is what you have to do to learn how to win - going into a new mp game, getting beaten by more experienced players, learning why they beat you then beating them is part of the fun.


All that said though I'm a massive fan of excellent sp games and had the luck to be pc gaming back in the late 90's 2000's with the likes of Dues Ex the half lifes and so on. I also think gaming has a very unique and immersive way to tell stories but I find anything lower than pure excellence is hard to hold my attention.

7 years later though I find myself having less energy and time and thus playing games I wouldnt have touched back in the day. Playing my ps3 more and so on. However its still that spark of multi-player that gets me going, of late however its been more about the CO-OP side of things.

It can turn mediocre games into excellent games. Had great fun completing Resi 5 with a friend for example. Find myself looking at games like Skyrim something that'll be likely be mediocre at best, and wishing that it would have coop so I can run around that world with my mates making it a whole lot more interesting.

But all around me I'm seeing pure hatred for multiplayer - from what I can tell - console gamers who have only recently been given multiplayer and have had all their previously enjoyable (to them) SP console games turned into multiplayer games filled with screaming 13 year old american kids on servers they have no way of filtering through due to that horrible feature known as "matchmaking" - servers not policed by admins, where the players have little control over the crap going on.

So I can understand the hatred. Still I can't help but wish certain SP games had multiplayer cause I know it'd be excellent playing them MP with my friends on my PC.

Zero-Cool

Only games like COD where the single player is awful and the multiplayer keeps throwing shiny unlocks at me so I keep playing it. However, Left 4 Dead was the best multiplayer experience I ever played. When it was 1st out, me and 3 lads from work on it every night. No levelling up or gimmicky things to keep you playing, Just an awesome game......I miss L4D

Jim

Multiplayer all the way for me. But I only ever play with mates and mostly on PC. Been playing BF games on voice comms with my friends for the past 8(?) years. Jesus. That's long.

And if my mate's aren't online I'd just hit up one of our regular servers where we got to know the other lads who play there so it makes avoiding the unwashed public a good bit easier (this was my main point in the debate when dedicated servers were taken out for COD).

I really only play SP if I know I'm going to get a unique experience. Such as Portal or Mass Effect. I recently got LA Noire for this reason but got very bored of it after about 3 hours. Been gathering dust since.

deathrider

sheehy83 wrote: »

Only games like COD where the single player is awful and the multiplayer keeps throwing shiny unlocks at me so I keep playing it.

I actually really enjoyed the single player in the last three CoD games. They are not mind-blowing, but they are still a lot of fun.

dreamers75

Prefer playing Coop online even with FPS, dont get into games like COD which is basically a single player but online.

BF2 and Arma the pinnacle of coop gaming a decent squad in BF2 and that game just becomes something different. Arma is the same but slower paced.

Used to love UT and Quake for the single player online kind of game but nothing out like that anymore.

krudler

Deleted User wrote: »

I only ever enjoyed multiplayer with games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Counterstrike. Can't even remember the last time I played a multiplayer game. What really annoys me is when a game gets brought out that is basically geared towards the multiplayer market. This is lazy, extremely extremely lazy.

eh, why? making a multiplayer game is basically making a game that will be played for years. Modern Warfare 2 came out almost 2 years ago and it still has thousands of people playing it online, COD4 even longer and still has players. single player only games get played once or twice then either traded or put on a shelf, multiplayer games get played infinitely for years by hundreds of thousands of people , look how many people are still playing Counterstrike and its variants.

Retr0gamer

I think it's more to do with resources being taken away from a single player game to add a tacked on multiplayer mode that can be detrimental to a games development that is annoying.

I don't mind it at all for games were there is a budget to focus on multiplayer and single player but some games like Bioshock 2 just to keep the marketing people hapy because the game won't be traded in so soon.

Jim

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I think it's more to do with resources being taken away from a single player game to add a tacked on multiplayer mode that can be detrimental to a games development that is annoying.

I don't mind it at all for games were there is a budget to focus on multiplayer and single player but some games like Bioshock 2 just to keep the marketing people hapy because the game won't be traded in so soon.

Tacked on anything ^ this.

Battlefield 3 shouldn't have a SP

marco_polo

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I think it's more to do with resources being taken away from a single player game to add a tacked on multiplayer mode that can be detrimental to a games development that is annoying.

I don't mind it at all for games were there is a budget to focus on multiplayer and single player but some games like Bioshock 2 just to keep the marketing people hapy because the game won't be traded in so soon.

Ugh, everytime I think of of Bioshock 2 multiplayer I cringe, what an absolute mess. Theres a half an hour of my life that can never be returned.

Duggy747

Used to love playing Unreal Tournament and Rainbow Six online, then there was a dry spell in my interest for multiplayer. Plenty of LAN games (Age of Empires, Battlefield, AVP 2 - which is brilliant to play with a couple of mates)

Tried out COD and was amazed at all the abuse over the mics and the almost robot-like players. Biiiiiig change since I last played online in terms of abuse, American kids shouldn't be let near the internet, the little punks

Picked up L4D and fell in love with it and now L4D2 is the only multiplayer game I always play now.

calex71

Most recently for me was Red Faction : Armageddon, decent single player game with a multiplayer mode there was no need to add.

It was basically 4 player horde mode over about 10 maps with 30 waves each needless to say it got old fast.

Multiplayer has not put me off single player , quite the opposite. But I think the argument of money being spent developing both or one or the other is fair.

Sisko

I was always very sad that I missed out on playing system shock 2. My pc is in need of rebuilding atm so all I have is my laptop.

Just found out system shock 2 has coop.

Its oooooooooonnnnnnnn now :cool:

Retr0gamer

Hmm not sure how it would work in co-op considering the atmosphere is created by how alone you are. Anyway whatever way you play it prepare for one of the best FPS/RPG experiences ever.