[QUOTE="snared04"]

[QUOTE="Baranga"]

I don't want a coop Stalker, because I like the loneliness the setting evokes. I don't want a coop Elder Scrolls, because it's a game about being the ultimate badass in a fantasy world and I don't need a douchebag as my sidekick/companion/challenger etc. Can you imagine how hard a coop Undying would suck?

Dungeon Siege 3 has an elegant solution for player choice - everybody votes the lines of dialogue, but that will leave people unsatisfied.

Coop always detracts from the atmosphere. I'd rather be alone than watching a random person doing random stuff and ruining my immersion.

Baranga

1. You continually use the word "I". As in, your specific, personal opinion. The bulk of the world, as can be seen in game trends, wants coop gameplay.

2. There are very few games where coop altogether replaces single player.

3. "Coop always detracts from atmosphere". I don't think you can back that up. I'll refute it though:

-Alien Swarm had a good atmosphere, and was awesome to play coop.

-Left 4 Dead 1/2 had amazingly made atmospheres, and were fun to play coop.

-Sven Coop was a bad ass mod for half like, and made half life 1 fun to play coop.

I can go on and on and on and on, but even the games you mentioned would work fine with coop. The points being:

-Any coop game can also be played single player, so don't rob others of choices for literally no reason.

-People like to play with friends, it's more fun that way.

Of course I use I, I'm a person. I don't have any statistical data to objectively determine that coop is universally better - nobody does...

A game designed for coop suffers when played in SP. A SP game which allows coop will fall apart more or less - less if you have a solid coop partner, and even then... Just imagine the ending of Episode 2 in coop. Christ. I don't need another person with me when exploring the labs of Stalker. You want that? That's cool. I also want to play the new Operation Flashpoint alone, but that's impossible because Codemasters didn't bother to implement AI for my squadmates. Or Resident Evil 5, man, Sheva is my biggest enemy in SP.

How the hell will a coop Stalker evoke loneliness, which is one of Stalker's most loved features? How will Bioshock's story work when there's a second player? Will you **** your pants in terror in Undying when a coop partner keeps cracking jokes and watching your back? Why do you think Borderlands, L4D and Nazi Zombies are campy? Look at World at War, a game very similar to HL in its focus on cinematic setpieces which skipped scenes and entire levels in coop. That wasn't the World at War experience anymore, that was a shooting gallery dressed up as World at War. I don't play games just for their mechanics.

Let the "majority" enjoy their specialised coop experiences and let the rest of the world enjoy their single-player focused game. After all, boardgames didn't kill LEGO and GI Joes. There's a place for everyone, but please don't force coop in what's intended as a solitary experience. Let modders break the rules if they want - but the rules of the game are there for a reason.

Edit: I wonder how accurate "game trends" are. I remember mountains of games that shoehorned in multiplayer after Q3 and UT and failed miserably. I see all modern shooters implemented XP and unlocks and most of them fail miserably. Hell, I see coop games that fail miserably.

You may see coop games fail miserably, but it wasn't because of coop.

Don't want someone else tagging along while exploring stalker? Then don't bring one, it's that simple. But for a lot of us, having another person there would have been awesome.

I reiterate, games do not fail because of coop. Though some can seem worse because of a lack thereof.

Don't throw World at War out there, it was one of the worst shooters in years.

Lot's of games that ended up as single player experiences might, and probably would have been better off as coop-possible, and many of them had strong contigents of fans vying for that very thing - Morrowind is a shining example of that.

You might could make a case for coop designed games suffering in single player - Borderlands and Left 4 Dead are good examples to point at - but that doesn't mean that, with a little thought and care, a game can be designed to work well both ways. For example, I have enjoyed hundreds of hours of Diablo II while playing both solo and with a single partner, and as many as 7 others, so I know it CAN work.

Taking a game like Stalker, Oblivion, etc. is a pretty easy adjustment for coop. Just increase the number of enemies and/or their toughness, and then let the players decide which cutscenes they do or don't want to skip.

I could even go along with you if developers spending time implementing coop invariably resulted in a lessened single-player experience, but that just isn't the case as I have observed it.

If you want to say something I can get on board with, then say that modern day FPS games' single player campaigns have suffered because of the market trend of people only wanting deathmatch style multiplayer. That I can get onboard with. A full campaign of coop though? Nothing is more fun.

[QUOTE="snared04"]

Hmm.. a continutation of an earlier debate. Interesting but not surprising.

I'll just skip all my logic from before and simply ask: name a game that was made worse because of co-op.

You see, I can name dozens made better by it. In fact I can name some whose ONLY redeeming factor was coop.

Coop is a good thing, period. It is an extension of well-designed single player campaign/experience. If a game is made well enough, coop can only enhance it, but I don't think you could make a strong case for it ruining it. There are tons of games that tons of people wished would have been coop. Maybe Valve is just seeing the light before they reach the end of the tunnel. Good for them.

Baranga

I don't want a coop Stalker, because I like the loneliness the setting evokes. I don't want a coop Elder Scrolls, because it's a game about being the ultimate badass in a fantasy world and I don't need a douchebag as my sidekick/companion/challenger etc. Can you imagine how hard a coop Undying would suck?

Dungeon Siege 3 has an elegant solution for player choice - everybody votes the lines of dialogue, but that will leave people unsatisfied.

Coop always detracts from the atmosphere. I'd rather be alone than watching a random person doing random stuff and ruining my immersion.

1. You continually use the word "I". As in, your specific, personal opinion. The bulk of the world, as can be seen in game trends, wants coop gameplay.

2. There are very few games where coop altogether replaces single player.

3. "Coop always detracts from atmosphere". I don't think you can back that up. I'll refute it though:

-Alien Swarm had a good atmosphere, and was awesome to play coop.

-Left 4 Dead 1/2 had amazingly made atmospheres, and were fun to play coop.

-Sven Coop was a bad ass mod for half like, and made half life 1 fun to play coop.

I can go on and on and on and on, but even the games you mentioned would work fine with coop. The points being:

-Any coop game can also be played single player, so don't rob others of choices for literally no reason.

-People like to play with friends, it's more fun that way.

[QUOTE="snared04"]

So I've been super excited about this game, since I loved the first two to death. However, I thought it was a little farther out than this site claims:

http://www.vgreleases.com/pc/ReleaseDate-838344.aspx

Can we really be a mere week away from its release? Where are all the "excited about mount and blade with sword and fire" forum posts, etc. I don't see it on Steam... I would be trully apalled if it wasn't released there.... Is there some kind of cosmic joke I don't know about, or is everyone just as in the dark as I am about its imminent release?

xLittlekillx

Wow I would jump up and down naked if it's really only a week away.

It is, follow that site's "source" link and you'll find the developer himself saying.

No screenshots of your reaction please.

Deus Ex, Morrowind, Diablo series, Left4Dead 1-2

So I've been super excited about this game, since I loved the first two to death. However, I thought it was a little farther out than this site claims:

http://www.vgreleases.com/pc/ReleaseDate-838344.aspx

Can we really be a mere week away from its release? Where are all the "excited about mount and blade with sword and fire" forum posts, etc. I don't see it on Steam... I would be trully apalled if it wasn't released there.... Is there some kind of cosmic joke I don't know about, or is everyone just as in the dark as I am about its imminent release?

Hmm.. a continutation of an earlier debate. Interesting but not surprising.

I'll just skip all my logic from before and simply ask: name a game that was made worse because of co-op.

You see, I can name dozens made better by it. In fact I can name some whose ONLY redeeming factor was coop.

Coop is a good thing, period. It is an extension of well-designed single player campaign/experience. If a game is made well enough, coop can only enhance it, but I don't think you could make a strong case for it ruining it. There are tons of games that tons of people wished would have been coop. Maybe Valve is just seeing the light before they reach the end of the tunnel. Good for them.

I feel like the term is for lazy people who don't want to describe exactly what the problem with the game is. I'm so sick of hearing consolation this, consolation that.Pvt_r3d

On the contrary, through various forum posts and reviews I've chronicled and detailed EXACTLY what it means, and what it does to games. Maybe the lazy people are those who don't bother to read and understand what others mean by it? ;) maybe?

[QUOTE="snared04"]

Consolization? It exists. It's valid.

Don't think so? Play Morrowind then Oblivion. Horrible dumbing down of just about every aspect of the game... for a multiplat release. Go figure.

Try the PC version of Star Wars: Force Unleashed. Has console written all over the damn thing. Never been in a PC game menu that had no mouse support... And before the first major patch came out the game's engine was optimized so horribly the damn thing barely ran.

So yeah, it's valid, and exists. And these were just two major examples off the top of my head.

Grodus5

Just saying. But yes, I agree with you, Oblivion was much simpler than Morrowind. However, was that because of just console gamers, or perhaps some PC gamers are simple as well? Not every PC gamer is the uber gamer, some PC gamers hardly know how to game at all (look at games like Bejeweled).

Of course not every PC game or gamer wants uber complicated mechanics.

However, Morrowind was a port TO consoles, not FROM them. Oblivion was designed with consoles in mind. That's a key difference.

Simplicity is also not a bad thing overall, but dumbing down is. This is what happened to Oblivion, not a streamlined simplification.

Menus were worse, item selection was a mere fraction, etc. etc. etc.

Now let's take a look at specific FPS trends:

Older, uber popular/succesful titles like Half Life 1 started on the PC, then were sometimes ported to consoles if they were successful enough. They ALWAYS included lengthy, bad ass single player campaigns, and multiplayer was tacked.

Fast forward to modern day with all the mega multi-platform consolized FPS a la CoD, etc. and what do you see? Short, often awful single player campaigns, meant as a mere teaser to the mindless, endless multiplayer that console players live on. I see a trend, and a symptom. Don't you?

[QUOTE="morrowindnic"]

[QUOTE="Darksonic666"] I guess it was mostly the combat system that got me and how everything seem to go at a very slow pace. That plus most of the enemies where tougher then you.Darksonic666

So the game sucks cause it was too hard for you?

Nice.

Didn't like the expansive skill system, the endless possibility for character improvement, the world that's in the top 5 of biggest game worlds ever, the hundreds of quests?

I see what you did there.