Less than one in four play online multiplayer

Lots of people (myself included) feel the same. I always play for fun. It’s just tricky finding each other online.
I strongly feel that we need an MMO that has no levels and no scores, so people play for fun rather than to see numbers go up.

Maybe you should play more turn based strategy games online? RTS requires as much if not more “action oriented” skills as a FPS. Being able to micromanage units all over the map requires lots of dexterity. You also need to memorize optimum build orders which I find very mundane. Of course there is strategy involved too but that’s not going to get you anywhere if you have crappy micro skills and don’t research min/max strategies online before you play.

Also FPS aren’t just about running around in Deathmatch like they used to be. Team based FPS can utilize many strategies. Then there’s the new breed of FPS that allows customization (COD4 perks) which adds another layer of depth.

The main reason I don’t play RTS online much anymore is because of all the work that needs to be put in to remain competitive. I might have a brilliant strategic mind but that by itself is not going to win me games.

My feelings exactly. I buy a heap of games, and I almost never touch the online component (MMO’s aside).

I’m not sure what your argument is. I agree that RTS games require more effort to play in multiplayer. I disagree with your characterization of RTS in that it requires more action skills and memorization. Playing a game like World in Conflict or DoW2 is nothing like Starcraft, however it still needs more entry level learning than most any mp shooter. Now a great mp shooters like Red Orchestra will have a steeper learning curve and require more effort than most online games, but a “noob” can still grab a gun and shoot in the general direction of the enemy to contribute. The RTS genre doesn’t have that kind of low level contribution factor. I just disagree with the idea that RTS games are somehow necessarily developed to be hostile to new players. It’s simply a matter of familiarity.

Well, due to my own nearsightedness I discovered recently that MW2 multiplayer has about 2.5x more people than the single player on Steam.

I don’t play RTS games online because of all the scary opponents that wipe the floor of me. No one loves turtling strategies. :(

I have reservation about the accuracy of the report given by Stardock. Not that I am saying that they are lying, but I suspect that there are some errors in their method of collecting the data. Because using the same data the report cited (http://dgstats.insidesupcom.de/), only ~8% of players online are in actual games at any given times. Something just simply do not add up in here.

I kind of posted this in the bargain thread re: Frontlines: Fuel of War, but I’m one of those that rarely if ever plays online multiplayer anymore. So if even half of your potential audience (never mind 75%) doesn’t play online, why not include bots? (This applies to FPSes–I haven’t seen an RTS without some kind of AI opponent, although I’m sure they’re out there).

Especially for a developer like Infinity Ward that’s reasonably assured of continued funding for future games, why not invest some development time in bots? Can’t the code be more or less re-used for future iterations? (Unreal Tournament bots being one example).

and yet the greedy companies keep making multiplayer a big deal. it’s not. since demigod was marketed and designed as such, i didn’t buy it - nor will i ever.

i will tell you why. they (iw et al) don’t want to give up this control. it’s all about monthly fees. (if not now, eventually) they all want to monetize the multiplayer aspect. iw has those (real?) leaked documents about their plans. why would they make bots (and today’s bots could behave much like most humans) (i mean, shit, the UT bots from 99 were fucking superb) so that online multiplayer would not be required ? the “new” trend in gaming is to make games into a service, not a one off sale. they want to keep taking money over and over for the same game.

at the end of the day, if mw2 had bots as good as 1999’s unreal tournament, a lot of people would never go online to play mw2 multiplayer, the bots would be more than good enough. i’d be one of them. iw is banking on the multiplayer aspect as a piracy deterrent (that is why they went with steam) with bots, a lot more warez versions would be played offline but in “multiplayer” mode. understand ?

All Blizzard games are single player with instanced multiplayer and their continued existence / reputation / fame is based upon how well they are as a multiplayer experience, for the most part.

Networks like Mplay, TEN and Kali all revolved around catering multiplayer gamers (yes, I’m aware they don’t exist anymore…though I do believe there’s a free Kali around, but that was due to dysfunctional/non-pragmatic business model, rather than the technology not working or lack of people wishing to multiplayer).

Any “instanced MMO” (PSO, DDO) is essentially just a large multiplayer lobby.

CounterStrike, the most successful FPS game (or at least, one of the top three most-played games, in particular in the FPS genre if not across all genres…WoW notwithstanding) is essentially just one giant multiplayer mode (you want the single player mode experience? go buy HalfLife).

It was my understanding that Lucas Art’s mysterious exquisite anti piracy produced “George Lucas hates you!” error notes every time a pirated copy tried to offline skirmish with bots or go online multiplayer.
Why can’t IW match up to that level of technology? Or was LA’s tech already busted by now?

anyway, so why isn’t master brad talking about why the hell they made demigod into what it is ? no sale here.

why ? to control people with their servers and make money via dlc and future releases.
make sp games or perish.

Brad didn’t make Demigod. He published it.

Troy

I don’t have the exact stats in front of me at the moment but with Sins of a Solar Empire it was something like 16% of all sales resulted in the creation of a multiplayer account (I believe most of them played at least one game). I have no idea what percentage plays via Lan or virtual Lan (Hamachi) but I doubt its very high.

Given the amount of effort and cost it took to incorporate and continue to support multiplayer it certainly wasn’t a good business decision. Good thing we are primarily interested in playing multiplayer strategy games or we would have cancelled the feature for the next game.

It’s interesting, watching the trends in thought on this site. We used to have constant online gaming nights for major releases - now we’ve got threads bitching about developers wasting time on multiplayer gaming. Shit, anecdotally, I’ve had to remove dozens of old-time QT3 members from my friends list on the 360, just because they never show up to play anything anymore.

It’d be interesting to do a poll tracking the current median age of QT3, because I suspect that has a great deal to do with the way this place has been trending more and more towards nonsocial casual gaming in the past few years. When DO you get too old to have fun shooting strangers in the face online, anyway? This is important data, since we need to know what year to calibrate the palm jewels to.

Just calling it “online” is too broad.

I don’t care at all for the single player part of MW2, but play MP every night.

I’m somewhat interested in MP on the Xbox, but the prevalence of people actually using their headset have had me detesting playing with strangers and my only Xbox owning friends are the QT3-people and you’re hardly ever online, when I am.

And I’ve played online RTS once or twice many many years ago and that’s just not something I want to do again.
Oh, wait. Defcon was sorta real time and I played that online.
I like Magic XBLA well enough online even against strangers and I like the idea of playing TBS online, but don’t really have the time or the friends to play it with… which is why I haven’t bought Solium Infernum yet, even though I loved AE.

So for me it’s not a case of for or against online. It really depends on the game.

Actually, I suspect I might be on quite often at the same time you are. I keep very strange hours. I’ll make some room to add you to my friends list, then at least one useful thing will have come from this thread.

I preferred coop Doom to deathmatch. In 1994. I was…um…under 25. It’s not an age thing, and it’s not even that I dislike competitive games. I dislike competitive assholes with anonymity. I especially dislike them when someone hands them a microphone that’s wired directly into my ear.

Though if you want to argue that it’s all downhill from 25, you won’t get much argument from me.

That’s what mute buttons are for, though - specifically, you can mute everyone who isn’t on your friends list, and only play with a full team of friends. Playing with random strangers on your team has always been a crap shoot.

There’s another source of error in the 23% played demigod online. I’d bet a huge number of people buy games and never play them much again single OR multi.

SO assuming, as some of you are, that the other 77% are spending a lot of time on demigod playing single player is probably false. Some large % bought it, played it a very few times, and then dropped it for something else.