The Question Of Multiplayer in RTH

[FlowerChild]

Yes, I think the above is fairly representative of why I consider no MP to be the right way to go.

One of the things that most impressed me about Minecraft initially as it seemed to me to be one of the first times in ages that I saw a game that used the increased processing power available to us to provide forms of gameplay that had not existed in the past. Way too often I think that processing power has been focused almost exclusively on better and better looking graphics while gameplay has remained largely in a state of stagnation for the past 20 years or so, with most improvements being evolutionary instead of revolutionary (a few exceptions aside like music games and games using alternative input devices like those typified by the Wii).

Already I see a number of the next generation voxel games not really getting that part of what makes MC great and going back to their old ways in making gameplay concessions for the sake of visual fidelity or other "back of the box" type features. If anything, I want to take that concept even further than MC or BTW did and focus my development efforts to get the maximum results I can out of them by making even fewer concessions than MC did.

So yes, I basically want to push that concept to the max and try to create the richest single-player *gameplay* experience that I can using modern technology. I am not aware of anyone else that is focusing on that, particularly anyone else with my experience with this particular form of gameplay.

[Magnas]

The fundamental difference between BTW and Minecraft tells me that it would much better to have a solid single-player with deep gameplay. Minecraft requires that you make your own entertainment whereas BTW facilitates your entertainment with a ball-park guideline. The only way I could see multiplayer being beneficial is if RTH doesn't include enough content to keep it interesting. Skyrim doesn't feel empty without other players, but Minecraft does. It's all about the amount you give the player to do. Obviously, preaching to the choir here...

I'd say multiplayer is pretty much a replacement for boring gameplay in Minecraft. I'm a proponent of the Achievement Hunter Minecraft LPs as an example of what Minecraft is capable of. I feel like that sort of gameplay would only work in RTH if you intended on creating a survival game crossed with a creation game. If that makes sense?

[FlowerChild]

I feel like that sort of gameplay would only work in RTH if you intended on creating a survival game crossed with a creation game.

Oh, I most certainly intend to do precisely that. I think RTH could be summed up as "BTW on steroids". I basically plan to take many of the design concepts I've been exploring within BTW to the next level by architecting a game from the ground up that is tailored specifically for that purpose.

[Psion]

I'm of mixed feelings on it myself. I do agree that devoting yourself entirely to single player would enhance the experience quite a bit, especially considering how much you've done as is with minecraft and all its quirks.

On the other hand, I do find the experience of chatting with other players, showing off our creations to each other, and getting ideas off each others builds to be a great amount of fun in itself. Of all the things multiplayer offers in minecraft, the things I like most are the chat feature, and exploring other peoples builds, seeing how they arrived at a solution, getting inspiration on my own builds regarding decoration or mechanisms. Adventuring with others by fighting monsters, sharing of resources, and other things like that are nice, but they're not quite as important to me. I'm don't know if it would be practical from a coding or "fun" standpoint though, if you made it so there was just a chat option, and maybe a way to designate a building or whatnot to let it be showcased to other people in the chat, or even become part of your own world. One of the fun things about multiplayer worlds is that new things pop up all the time, and you never know what to expect, like the one time I found a rainbow castle complete with melon trees and a a villager farm designed to look like clouds were raining golems. it was so random and wacky i couldn't help but love it, like katamari meets mario world.

I also don't know what feel you're going for with RTH, either, whether you're meant to be a lone steve in a desolate empty world, or whether there's sinister other steves trying to actively murder you, or what. I might want multiplayer myself, but if it would ruin your vision of RTH, then obviously multiplayer is a no go.

[Gears]

I suppose the whole thing boils down to A.) what gameplay features we gain from a lack of multiplayer, and B.) what gameplay features we lose from having multiplayer. Considering the game isn't in development at the moment, and testing the waters wouldn't be feasible even if it was, I think the best idea would be to focus on singleplayer, and look back into multiplayer after the game's been in development for a while.

[jorgebonafe]

BTW on steroids

This brings to mind some beautiful green plains, and two years later the same area completely gray and filled with machines feeding each other in a glorious display of progress...
I was very excited for RTH before, and if this is the kind of thing in your head too, I'm getting even more excited now :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Dude, FUCK MP. So many games nowadays sacrifice so much of the core experience to make it mp friendly it's making me super sad. Mp is a whole different ballgame, and I'm sure you know is much more demanding in terms of balancing and receiving flak from the community regardless. You are but one man, and even if things go stellar, you will still not have the resources of a moderate game studio given you want this to be absolutely under your own control. Mp? Madness! The end result will be so much more feeble.

Seriously, SCREW multi-player. :]

[Yhetti]

This reminds me of my experience with Portal 2. MP just doesn't add anything to the game, I like playing SP because it makes me feel like the hero, and that's what a lot of games are supposed to do; this is impossible with MP. Don't add in multiplayer if it is going to take anything significant away from the game. There's always other ways of sharing things you've made in a game without other being being in the same game as you.

[Jesar]

A good example of the single player vs multiplayer argument with regards to gameplay is Skyrim vs The Elder Scrolls Online. When I heard of ESO, I thought, "Skyrim, but with others!"

It's not. Because it can't.

Whenever I see someone say, "Yeah, mechanisms, larger chunks, more updates per frame, gameplay, that's good but what about chatting and getting ideas from others?"

That's what the forums are for. If you are reading this, you have access to the same features of Minecraft multiplayer without FC having to code a thing.

[FlowerChild]

I like playing SP because it makes me feel like the hero

Wait...you've played BTW before, right? :)

[Psion]

Well, the reason I suggested chat and sharing builds with others is that it's not quite the same as forums and pictures of builds, in the same way that video chat isn't the same as email. Whereas forum posts are time independant to some degree, (where you can post something and have someone respond hours or days later), chat is spontaneous and more inclusive. It's not asking a large section of the audience, it's asking your close friends, talking about whatever you feel like talking about.

Sharing builds I was thinking could be anything from letting people upload building designs to appear in other people's worlds, to just a display you can play with but not get resources from for ideas, or whatever else FC could think of that wouldn't be a big pain to code or ruin SMP experience.

I only mentioned those because they seemed like they wouldn't be resource heavy in the way that having another player be next to you would be, having to sync up your views, worrying about balancing issues, that sort of thing. Again though, im not a designer nor a coder, so if FC feels that such things would ruin his vision, he shouldn't do it.

[FlowerChild]

It's not a matter of interfering with my vision or what have you, as much as thinking that such an integrated chat would be a big waste of time when so many other chat options are available.

It's a frivolous secondary feature, that no, I would not see myself doing when I could be investing the same time into gameplay.

[eternal8phoenix]

Multiplayer I can take or leave. I've only recently started playing multiplayer in BTW, so I can certainly live without it. And I do agree, that some gameplay experiences are better solo, like in Don't starve. That world would not be nearly as terrifying to me if i have a friend. Hell, even Chester makes it less scary.

So I'd be happy with more interesting gameplay mechanics or environments and giving multiplayer a miss. At the end of the day there are things the user can do to simulate multiplayer anyway. I play sims "multiplayer" by setting up a pair of identical neighbourhoods with my sister and then we play different stories with the same people over a skype call.

So long as the game itself is quality, then the lack of multiplayer won't bother me. If it's a game I can properly sink my teeth into and get invested in, multiplayer can go away and I won't miss it.

[DaveYanakov]

I have kept thinking about this today for some reason and came to the realization that it wou,d take a great deal of effort for me to count up all of the games I have purchased solely for the single player content. So many of these were obviously intended to be single player only and either tacked on a poorly designed campaign sorely lacking in the 3 C's or used the single player as a tutorial for multiplayer.

Then you have the games where it went the other way. How much better would Spec Ops: the Line have been if they had not added multiplayer? The developers did not put much effort into it but it was still effort spent on something that added nothing at all to the experience aside from offering a few collecters edition/dlc baubles.

This appears to be a systemic issue with games as an industry from so called AAA all the way down to student project games. I am glad to see one person taking a stand.

[Mason11987]

I know you're not asking for our opinions, but if you think that RTH will be a better experience single player only then that's the RTH I want.

I've seen time and time again that your ideas for what would make a cool game are different from my own. And when I play your ideas I realize you were right. So I have no reason to think this will be any different. Honestly if you said RTH will be a better game if you hand to play it with a 3D glasses and an NES controller I'd have my doubts, but I'd still buy them and try it, and I wouldn't be surprised when you were right. I've done some less interesting development than you, and I fully understand the feature trade-off so I'm excited to see how it goes.

[Fret]

Yes, I think the above is fairly representative of why I consider no MP to be the right way to go.

One of the things that most impressed me about Minecraft initially as it seemed to me to be one of the first times in ages that I saw a game that used the increased processing power available to us to provide forms of gameplay that had not existed in the past. Way too often I think that processing power has been focused almost exclusively on better and better looking graphics while gameplay has remained largely in a state of stagnation for the past 20 years or so, with most improvements being evolutionary instead of revolutionary (a few exceptions aside like music games and games using alternative input devices like those typified by the Wii).

Already I see a number of the next generation voxel games not really getting that part of what makes MC great and going back to their old ways in making gameplay concessions for the sake of visual fidelity or other "back of the box" type features. If anything, I want to take that concept even further than MC or BTW did and focus my development efforts to get the maximum results I can out of them by making even fewer concessions than MC did.

So yes, I basically want to push that concept to the max and try to create the richest single-player *gameplay* experience that I can using modern technology. I am not aware of anyone else that is focusing on that, particularly anyone else with my experience with this particular form of gameplay.

I never looked at it this way, but your analysis makes a lot of sense. It also makes me really excited that you plan on taking this path for RTH. I don't really care about single-player versus multi-player. The above is what I care about and your dedication to use computing power for gameplay makes me very happy. Insight treats like this always are a pleasure to read.

[TiLT]

So yes, I basically want to push that concept to the max and try to create the richest single-player *gameplay* experience that I can using modern technology. I am not aware of anyone else that is focusing on that, particularly anyone else with my experience with this particular form of gameplay.

I don't know why this is, but that just sounded so badass. And yeah, I agree that multiplayer is not often worth the sacrifice. But feel free to do whatever you think is best.

[PatriotBob]

I think the game best served by it's creator not changing it's design halfway through. (Looking at you Squad...) As much as I would love to have multiplayer, I think it the social aspect of it can add a great deal to a game. But only if it was designed with it in mind.
As much as I would like to be able to share the experience of RTH with friends, if that's not how it's being designed, then I'll get a great single player game.
Don't people remember when games where either singleplayer or multiplayer? Not just singleplayer with a piss-poor multiplayer strapped on because, well... because it "needs" multiplayer.

[Rob]

Flowerchild, just make the monthly Pay2Play hellish MMO we all know RTH wants to be and take my money forever. ;-)

[FlowerChild]

Flowerchild, just make the monthly Pay2Play hellish MMO we all know RTH wants to be and take my money forever. ;-)

Sigh...yeah...not going to go there :)

I almost brought up the differences between classic RPGs and MMORPGs earlier in the thread as an extreme example of the design disparities that can result, as I think that's a more concrete example of the design compromises that are made to accommodate other players that most people have some very clear experiences with.

As an aside, their development history also serves as an excellent example of how pursuing visual fidelity can result in decreased gameplay possibilities, as many of them are still adding "oh wow!" features to this day, that were in the first real game in the genre, Ultima Online, what must be 15 years ago or so. Everquest was actually a huge step backwards in terms of gameplay, but it was in 3D at a time when that became "expected", so it became the standard that almost all of them have been based on since.

I still pour one on the curb occasionally for what happened to games back when the 3DFX came out. The mid to late nineties were seeing some very creative designs (I look on Steam and see some of them being remade now), and MC was pretty much the first game I've seen since that really seemed to pick up that ball again and run with it.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Definitely agree. The 90ties was probably the most creative era in gaming, and most of what we consider classic games now, and compare everything to, were conceived right then.

It's funny really, cant talk about a 4x game without comparing it to master of orion, same with a turn based squad game and ufo EA or jagged alliance, RTS and starcraft, party-based rpg and stuff like Baldur's gate Torment or Fallout, etc..

Gaming right now has such a bit audience and is so mainstream that huge budgets are swung around and the more money you pour, the less risks you are willing to take leading to stagnation. Wish kids these days had moved on to something else instead of devouring mmos, dota clones and CoD style games.

Luckily not everyone is of that mindset, so yeah, we need game makers like you as much as you need making games like that and having players like us.

[FlowerChild]

Luckily not everyone is of that mindset, so yeah, we need game makers like you as much as you need making games like that and having players like us.

That made me smile man :)

Yeah, it's definitely a symbiotic kinda thing going on. Well put.

[Whuppee]

I'm also using this thread as a litmus test regarding how much hell I'm going to go through as a result of this decision.

Initially, I didn't like Hardcore Beds, Buckets, Spawn, Tools, and others. In every case, I was wrong. You merit my unreserved confidence.

[Magnas]

I feel like that sort of gameplay would only work in RTH if you intended on creating a survival game crossed with a creation game.

Oh, I most certainly intend to do precisely that. I think RTH could be summed up as "BTW on steroids". I basically plan to take many of the design concepts I've been exploring within BTW to the next level by architecting a game from the ground up that is tailored specifically for that purpose.

I definitely figured that's what you intended. In fact, I think I messed up the point I was trying to make. What I meant to say was that I feel like multiplayer would only work if you made a creative game mixed with the technology aspects. It's still a bit difficult to break it apart from the Minecraft mindset at this point, where you have to go out of your way to create your own fun. Multiplayer might work down the road if you have to delegate jobs to other people to make more progress- dedicated farmers, miners, etc. for a large scale settlement. But like I said, I'd much rather see a solid single-player experience instead of a watered down version of an MMO. I hate MMOs.

[Yhetti]

Wait...you've played BTW before, right? :)

If anything this applies more to BTW than Vanilla, because in BTW, you actually have to accomplish things to get somewhere, vanilla is just like "here you can do dis now"