Wolfire Games Forums

This game is awesome and like a lot of others have mentioned it does need multiplayer for so many reasons most mentioned in previous posts. If multiplayer isnt implemented whats going to stop people from just downloading the game illegally from a torrent and cracking it? like most people seem to do these days.

If you had some kind of online login system their aren't ways around that unless u purchase your own cd key, yeah u will still get people downloading it illegally just like every single game ever released, but they will be stuck with single player, whilst all the people that have purchased it can enjoy all the new features that come with a multiplayer option

I honestly would say even if it took another year to implement it, it would be worth the wait. I'm going to buy the game either way but like others have said you could hold tournaments and stuff just like street fighter and those other fighting games.

Just to reply to a previous post i read about lag becoming an issue. You are absolutely right lag in a fighting game can be devastating for any player experiencing it, but there are so many super popular fighting games that require split second reaction and timing too and still they have somehow managed to get it working pretty damn good (tekken, street fighter etc etc)

Mentioning tekken, reversals in a game like this one your making would just be the icing on the cake that would turn this game from an awesome game to an outstanding one.

Keep up the good work and i really hope u do implement the multiplayer option

They don't believe in drm.

ColloseusX wrote:This game is awesome and like a lot of others have mentioned it does need multiplayer for so many reasons most mentioned in previous posts. If multiplayer isnt implemented whats going to stop people from just downloading the game illegally from a torrent and cracking it? like most people seem to do these days.

You're forgetting the fact that implementing multiplayer has several costs associated with it. If the game took another year to make, they'd have to get enough money to pay off the salaries of the main Wolfire team and cover the costs of hiring outside help (Linux port, sound and music, not sure what else). The other costs would be the hosting of servers, but it might be possible to do away with that somehow and any way it's harder to gather any numbers.
If we assume that this site is correct, that's between 40 000 and 50 000 dollars, at least, per person per year. They'd have to get that much more profit to cover their expenses.

Also, since the game WILL have single-player, the pirates for whom multiplayer isn't a deal-breaker would just play the single-player campaign, and not bother with multiplayer.

edit: typos...

Also, multi-player isn't highest on the priority list right now, so if a feature has to be cut, it'll be a prime candidate, especially if time or budget doesn't allow for such a large feature. This is the million and first thread about multi-player, so I'm nor sure how much attention will be paid to what is said in it. We could probably say stuff like, "John sux cuz we can't do Meebo Moments anymoar," and he would never be any the wiser. And yes, Wolfire does not believe in DRM, so it's not likely that they will implement DRM because they aren't a government or religious sect that tends to be hypocritical about what it believes.

Whats happening with all the preorder money? im sure the more this game spreads in popularity the more people are going to preorder, maybe add a straw hat or something for people that do as a little incentive. Surely this would help with the salary issue.
They wouldnt ever need to host their servers as each individual player could host a map themselves for them and there mates to play on.

If they have to cut something i think cutting the multiplayer out would be a real bad decision (in my personal opinion) surely if their are a "million and one" threads about the multiplayer surely the populaty of the whole idea of multiplayer on this game seems too big to ignore, especially if they place this game up on steam like their previous release it just crys for multiplayer and is going to be a dissapointment to millions i honestly think so, sandbox games like this are insanely popular especially to the millions of people that use steam every day.

First, the devs use our preorder money to do one or more of these things:
Pay Bills
Buy Better Equipment
Eat at Quiznos
Have Fun Outside of Work (Do they do anything other than work?)
Eat at Quiznos

Not only does working cost money, it costs time. Multiplayer costs a lot of money. Server hosting alone, as Endoperez said, is expensive under the common methods. It will take quite a while to implement either co-op or vs modes. There is quite a host of issues such as synching players, lag reduction, server hosting. In co-op, you have to create a good method for two or more players. Do the other players jump in and out or do they have to follow through with the whole level? Do the extra players take the role of allies that are already in the game as AI? Do enemies increase in numbers or difficulty as more players join? Do the players have to use teamwork to reach certain areas, take down certain enemies, or complete side tasks?
For head to head, you have to decide how to keep people entertained. As OG is, I find it hard to sit there and punch Robbert for 2 hours. Do you do Natural Selection 2 kind of spin or do you do more common ones like Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, and King of the Hill? Maybe something like from Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow, where one set of players are mercenaries, and the other are spies(Ninjas in this case)? Maybe a mode where wolves hunt down a rabbit and the rabbit has to evade for oh-so-long, or dogs chase cats.
It's not always as easy or obvious as it may seem. Pulling a CoD and making crap is a rediculous waste of an indie company's resources. Big companies can usually afford it, indies normally can't. As for disappointing millions, which would they rather have: Wolfire Games going under because they couldn't finish OG with bad ass multiplayer or a finished, polished OG and Wolfire working on another game? May be an extreme case, but it does happen. I'm not saying I wouldn't like co-op. It'd be really cool and not enough games have it these days. What I'm saying is what the devs have said.
You need host servers to hold shared info and files during an online session. It's how multiple players can display one character identically at the exact same time. You can't really host a map individually because of the fact that most people don't have that equipment. It'd be tough to make that work on the dev's art, and there are easier, more time-efficient methods.
The incentive preorder's get is the fun of contributing to and following the tech development of a bad ass ninja bunny game. Normally, games in the alpha stage of development are not usable by consumers. They are early tech and are rarely playable things. OG is actually an outlier from the rest of the game development world.
It ma be a popular request, but many folks here might say agree that they'd be happy with OG if it did single player and did it well, even without multiplayer. Multiplayer isn't as necessary a feature as many folks seem to think it is. Half-Life 2 wasn't co-op. There may be mods and such that are, but HL2 itself wasn't.
Also, this game isn't a sandbox game. It's an action/adventure game with beastly ninja combat. It's in Alpha development, so it is doesn't have a level progression system up yet, although David was working on it a few weeks ago by dealing with how RAM is disposed of and cleared up. The tools we get are modding tools that work pretty well.

Also, remember that only the people interested in multiplayer post multiplayer threads. The people who don't care about multiplayer don't post threads where they tell that they don't care about multiplayer.

Furthermore, people active on the forums are usually a tiny majority of the playerbase. Those who don't visit the forum are more likely to not care about multiplayer.

Endoperez wrote: Furthermore, people active on the forums are usually a tiny majority of the playerbase. Those who don't visit the forum are more likely to not care about multiplayer.

That's a very big assumption. Just because someone doesn't want to participate with the community doesn't mean they don't want to play a game with/against other people. If that was the case, pretty much every mainstream FPS would be a metaphorical ghost town.
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One way to cut costs for multiplayer is to avoid dedicated servers. Let the players handle the hosting, let them rent servers if they want to. They can also avoid the fees for a matchmaking service by making the players exchange IP addresses for their servers or they can use a cheap/free (doubt it) service, even making their own (though I doubt that too). An issue with this is the multiplayer would be open to pirates.

A game that comes to mind is Mount & Blade Warband: No dedicated servers, no log ins, yet the multiplayer is what a lot of the players go for, and I don't visit the game's forum, yet I (and -many- others) play it's multiplayer. The only thing they have that I doubt Overgrowth would is a matchmaking service.

Credan wrote:

Endoperez wrote: Furthermore, people active on the forums are usually a tiny majority of the playerbase. Those who don't visit the forum are more likely to not care about multiplayer.

That's a very big assumption. Just because someone doesn't want to participate with the community doesn't mean they don't want to play a game with/against other people. If that was the case, pretty much every mainstream FPS would be a metaphorical ghost town.

nice reading skills.

Credan wrote:That's a very big assumption. Just because someone doesn't want to participate with the community doesn't mean they don't want to play a game with/against other people. If that was the case, pretty much every mainstream FPS would be a metaphorical ghost town.

One possible reason for people not being active on the forum is limited internet access.

I only said it'd be LESS likely. Many people who aren't active on the forums probably would like to play multiplayer, but those who are already active on the forum are more likely to want to play multiplayer. If nothing else, those who hang around on these forums a lot, like me, have already proved they have so much free time they don't know what to do with it...

i'll put in my quick 2 cents. dedicated single player games are generally pretty awesome, but do you know whats even better?

co-op

in my opinion actually (note: opinion) i find games with a multiplayer aspect more appealing. not to mention all the mods that WILL come out, there is some serious potential for tag team bunny massacres.

I really don't care about online, but I really want LAN based co-op and versus.

A splitscreen co-op or vs. would be really awesome

We JUST HAD THIS.

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