Multiplayer. My personal plea to wolfire.

[Korban3]

I suppose you're right about the rolling and jumping. But what I'm looking at is not the behaviour so much as the technology: The player can jump and the AI can jump, it just doesn't know when to do it. That's the last piece really. The player can punch, and the AI can punch. The player can block an attack, do a throw and then have its enemy escape the throw, just like the player.
I didn't mean that you want to make it work like a player. It's a game, it's all Hollywood magic and fakery, so you just make it appear like it is intelligent (Which is what I mean when I say 'like a human' because you are right about the way people would play). If the AI can parkour after you, gang up on you in circles and form basic strategies, then it appears to be very intelligent until the player begins to breakdown its patterns. If a person plays another person the game changes entirely, but because of what's on the other end, not the technology. That's why I think PvP would be silly in OG in the first place. Co-op would be fine since it doesn't involve one human facing another and thus avoids those weird PvP techniques. Although I'm against PvP, I also stand by the fact that you would not have to rewrite your entire combat system just to balance it. The only way to really balance PvP would be to put weird and awkward limitations on the gameplay. If the game is balanced in single player, and co-op, but not in PvP then the game's combat system isn't the problem nor does it need rewriting.

[Hubbel]

Just because people might play the game weird in a PvP situation, doesn't mean it's bad or silly. The fact that people find new creative ways to use the combat system would be a good thing, as long as it doesn't end up with a single attack or method that is completely overpowered, rendering everything else useless.

[Endoperez]

Just because people might play the game weird in a PvP situation, doesn't mean it's bad or silly. The fact that people find new creative ways to use the combat system would be a good thing, as long as it doesn't end up with a single attack or method that is completely overpowered, rendering everything else useless.

Yes, it's not bad - for multiplayer. Seeing rocket-jumping (in other games) and all other things of that sort can be a shock if you didn't expect it, and it changes how the gameplay feels, but it's not worse - just different.

I was only talking about the AI.

[Jacktheawesome]

Well this thread exploded. Aside from poly initially calling everyone who disagreed with him a troll, this is probably the most productive multiplayer thread ever. At least that I've seen.


I agree with something that was said earlier, I forget by whom. It said that Wolfire could work on the singleplayer game, and release that, and then devote all their energy to multiplayer for the people that want it. Honestly, this is the only way I'd want them to implement multiplayer. That way the people like me who don't really care about multiplayer wouldn't have to wait an extra year, and the people who want it so much that they would wait an extra year can do so. If there was any sort of multiplayer at all, I think I would most like to see co-op.
Also this:

Well, it's getting old. Yeah, multiplayer might be cool, but it'd only be competitive. The only fun would be after stressing your way through a fight. It's like Tomb Raider. Those games were not fun, they were hard and that' why they were played. And multiplayer IS PLANNED! LISTEN!!! The devs would love to give multiplayer a whirl, but it's not a high priority because it isn't the main game. They call the main game 'main' for a reason. And if we get multiplayer, it's more likely that it will be co-op than deathmatch or capture the flag.
And it's not trolls, it's people telling you that what you're asking for is planned, but not guaranteed. Trust us, it gets really tiring seeing another "multiplayer liek in CoD, plz Wolfire" thread. Better grammar or not, you might get what you want. David just said in a forum post that he didn't like concrete plans, but that things would be done from the ground up. So that's how it's going to go. Multiplayer is an extra that some people will appreciate and others will not touch too much, except co-op which is kinda in between. That may please more people.
If we were "Real" trolls we would come in, not use the search feature to find a million posts saying multiplayer, and then post a thread asking for it and then call people trolls for saying what needs to be in a FAQ on the forum.
I'm not trying to be mean, don't take it that way. I'm telling you that you are asking for something that has been mentioned before, is a possibility, and is an extra feature when compared to single player.
Capiche?

and this:

Pretty much. If there's an edge or dominant strategy to be found and exploited, and there nearly always is, then rest assured it will be found and exploited. People are smart like that.

And this can also have the side-effect of fundamentally skewing the way the game is played - partly because of the natural tendency to exploit the system to gain an advantage, but also because human opponents require different tactics to computer opponents. If, for instance, close combat was very twitchy, and people discovered that they win more often by throwing knives at their opponent than engaging in close combat, with or without weapons, then the feel of the gameplay would be quite different from the single-player... at least until the patch which nerfs throwing knives but leaves wolves a bit too powerful.

Mount&Blade is a good case in point for this - designed initially as a single-player game, until the engine was revised to add multiplayer in Warband. I had always wanted to see this in Mount&Blade - I thought the complexity of fighting a smart opponent would take the game to another level, where teams could use intelligent tactics to gain the upper hand on the battlefield - but after fighting against other players online I no longer recognised the game I had so enjoyed playing alone: the reality of the implementation did not align with (admittedly naive) expectations. Not that the strategies the players devised were stupid (I doubt I would have discovered them myself if they weren't already used ubiquitously), but they simply belonged to a level of metagaming that I wasn't interested in.

I probably wasn't alone. There were servers dedicated to dueling, for instance, where people were expected to use melee weapons only and had to wait to engage opponents 1 vs. 1. The game didn't enforce this as far as I am aware, just people who didn't want to have to play as an archer or knight to compete with other players, and although it eschewed the popular way of resolving mass melees by skewering people from behind there was still a large emphasis on who could make contact with their weapon the quickest (by moving and turning in a certain direction whilst swinging your weapon). Imagine the leg sweep in Overgrowth coming down to that, positioning your avatar in such a way so that the game registers your attack closer to the beginning of its sweep than your opponents.

In an attempt to balance the game, I think the developers also introduced numerous mechanics such as kicking, breaking blocks with heavy weapons, becoming unbalanced if swinging with certain weapons, and changing stances with spears to better combat cavalry. Personally, it just seemed to make things more convoluted because the game wasn't designed with multiplayer in mind to begin with, and no amount of extra abilities is going to achieve that balance. (Course, you could argue that even games designed specifically to be played competitively between multiple people are never perfectly balanced, but you stand a better chance of achieving a happy balance if you allow it to influence the way the game is designed early on.

This essentially is the problem with adding the kind of competitive multiplayer in Overgrowth that the OP is asking for. To work well it has to be planned and designed as part of the game from an early stage (like Starcraft or Streetfighter), and not tacked on as an afterthought or a novelty, which entertains people for a short while but ultimately lacks the depth/richness of gameplay to keep people competing for a long time.

For example, if maps which are currently designed to be played in single player were to be used for multiplayer they would also need to be designed to keep the movement of players flowing around the map and not constantly gravitating towards the same small area (otherwise you'll get bored of it quickly), and you also have to give places strategic weakness to maintain balance (so no ledges and towers only accessible by climbing where someone could simply wait and kick other players off as they pull themselves up). Then with the gameplay itself, you have to prevent any one element (weapon/attack/creature) from being dominant, usually by introducing as many levels of strategic depth as possible, encouraging players to out-think their opponents and anticipate their actions (I think the word "Yomi" in Japanese means something to this effect). So you have your first level of depth, the basic attack, but then there is a second level which you can use to counter the basic attack, and if you guess that your opponent will open with the second level attack there should be something you can do to counter that. And so on. The more levels the better. The best multiplayer games have lots of layers, and also allows the inexperienced player to occasionally win, e.g. when the experienced player is so used to countering the second level or third level of opening attack, and so doesn't expect his opponent to open with the most obvious first level of attack (which thus is itself a counter of higher levels of attack and bring things full circle to ensure the mindgames never stop). Imagine doing that for each form of attack, each weapon, each creature, and even locations or routes in maps if you plan on CTF.

Endoperez already brought up financial and time-related reasons why this specific kind of multiplayer - the hardest kind - might not represent a worthwhile investment to the Wolfire team, especially when one of their aims is to capture the experience of cinematic combat (which would be even harder to achieve in multiplayer given the reasons I stated above). That's not to say that no kind of multiplayer could work, or that I wouldn't want to see competitive multiplayer if it could be done well - it's just, with a team of this size (talented though it is), it's a very big ask

Seriously man, great first post. That's about 50 times better than what most people do

[polyoptics]

Korban3,

It's not about limiting the combat for multiplayer, it's about having a system that is robust enough to handle it. In order for multiplayer to succeed, it can't be tacked onto the end or released in an expansion, unless the initial combat system was designed with the intention of having pvp multiplayer combat.

I think if Wolfire goes ahead with OG without multiplayer heavily influencing the combat system, it will most likely never be included.

Jacktheawesome:

I do think posting against multiplayer as a concept, in a thread created to foster it's growth is very much trolling, but 'you catch more flies with honey' as they say.

[Jacktheawesome]

I do think posting against multiplayer as a concept, in a thread created to foster it's growth is very much trolling, but 'you catch more flies with honey' as they say.

.........wat




This here place is called a forum. In forums you discuss things. If your idea of a discussion is you and a bunch of other like-minded people going:

"I want multiplayer!"
"Me too!"
"Multiplayer is great!"
"ZOMGZ BUNNIZ"

then you've got that horribly wrong. People here have differing opinions, and each is as valuable as the next. A discussion with only one side is not going to last very long, it's not going to be entertaining or interesting, and nobody will learn anything new.


If you think that those people were trolling, I will feel very sorry for you when you run into a real troll :snarky wink:

[polyoptics]

Yes, it's not bad - for multiplayer. Seeing rocket-jumping (in other games) and all other things of that sort can be a shock if you didn't expect it, and it changes how the gameplay feels, but it's not worse - just different.

I was only talking about the AI.

Interesting point about rocket jumping, It would be cool to see what players come up with in a game like OG. It will also be tough for the devs.... Bt worth it!

Jacktheawesome: I completely disagree with you that like minded people getting together to discuss a topics bears no fruit. There are countless examples and organizations that say otherwise. Let's drop it and not clog this thread further.

[Korban3]

Polyoptics has a good point. When like-minded people get together and agree a lot, you get all kinds of great things:
Whether they're fictional
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space ... #Backstory
Unitology FTW!

or real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Panthers
Fuck Da' White Man!

[Jacktheawesome]

Heh.
Even though that was sarcastic, I'll still address that. I don't think nothing gets done when everyone agrees, but if we're talking about the merits of multiplayer, it seems you might want multiple sides of the argument. If you think multiplayer should be a priority, obviously you have a different view of the merits of multiplayer than someone who thinks it should be a patch or not in at all.

[Korban3]

Hold on, I think I sat down on something... What is this? I don't even...

Even if some of the words don't fit, I bet you all forgot about this. But it's still here, oh yes he is. AND HE'S HOLDING ANTON HOSTAGE! MUAHAHAHA!

Endoface_pompous.jpg (114.28 KiB) Viewed 6178 times

[Jacktheawesome]

Nooo! Give Anton back, you well-read killer rabbit!

[Korban3]

"Sorry Mr. TheAwesome, you'll have to wait until the next issue of The OG Comic to see your precious music-master again!"

[Jacktheawesome]

Curse you! Super Meat Bunny will get you soon!

[illogicalAlready]

Seriously man, great first post. That's about 50 times better than what most people do

First impressions and all that.

Anyway, Korban keeps remembering to be mindful of co-op multiplayer while most people are keen to discuss PvP, so I'm curious what people (especially main advocates of PvP) think about co-op. Would it be a satisfactory replacement in lieu of PvP, or would co-op lack something that you can only get from PvP?

Also, what co-op modes would suit Overgrowth? Fighting AI opponents of varying difficulty in the arena and other locales goes without saying. Other modes that spring to mind are...
- Assassinating or hunting evasive or guarded AI opponents e.g. so one player could get the guards to chase him while the other player stealthily attacks the vulnerable assassination target.
- Having to either get through a guarded environment together (victory occurring when you get to a specific point on the map rather than by killing all enemies) or even to steal an object and then get back to your starting position (a bit like a one-sided CTF). (You could also throw the object for friend to grab while fleeing from the enemies... which gives me an idea... Overgrowth sports, anyone? )
- Having to stay alive against waves of enemies for as long as possible, or guarding/escorting a AI character or object against marauding [insert disliked anthropomorphic race here].
- Puzzle-solving levels. So, both players might have to get to a certain point of the map, but they both start in different places and/or are unequal in ability (e.g. one plays a creature that is faster and can jump, while the other is less acrobatic but more suited to combat). If things like levers and pressure-plates were implemented, you could have situations where one player, a rat, could use his size to bypass a gate (through a hole) and pull the lever to open it, letting his larger friend through, who then has to dispatch a guard with his sword.
- Races. Korban already suggested this earlier, but it could be set up a few ways. Either against each other (but where you are unable to attack) to see who can get to a point or object first, or, where you both need to reach a point alive within a time limit (a kind of "the cavern is collapsing!" scenario).

All of the above would work in single-player too, I think (at least the switches from the puzzle levels if not the co-operative element). Personally, I think it would be awesome if, like the single-player, you could play campaigns in co-op (an obvious one would be climbing the ranks in the arena and fighting increasingly difficult opponents as a team) - and especially cool if people could make their own campaign levels and distribute them to other people to play together. You'd end up with a lot of variation too I bet - some campaigns with narratives, some that are purely designed around challenges, some that are very varied in gameplay, and some that are devoted to a single type.

Also, like single-player and perhaps unlike PvP, there's a possible argument to be made that co-op would lend itself well to the cinematic combat experience that Overgrowth seeks to create, but replacing the lone hero or vengeful outsider with steadfast sidekicks and unlikely bands of adventurers.

One final thought - although you might not technically consider it multiplayer if you're not playing on the same map with another player, there are some games which have asynchronous multiplayer elements, where people are still playing alone but are linked to other players in a way which allows them to compete or interact. Being able to upload and view high scores or times on speed runs for bragging rights within the community is one example, which beats taking a screenshot, uploading it and posting it.

[SuXoR]

looks like the creators already considered some multiplayer capabilities with the new alpha ^.^