quietfanatic said:
From my assumptions based on what we have seen so far and with Bethsoft aiming for mainstream appeal I can't immediately see a viable compromise, in contrast to a tacked on feature that could negatively bias design. I bet it would be possible with enough talent and resources, but not just now.
When aiming for mainstream appeal then co-op is even more likely, biggest gripe I've seen from the casual players regarding Oblivion was lack of multiplayer. Yes it's Bethesda and given their track record it's dubious but unworkable no.
quietfanatic said:
Let's assume we wanted a co-op option. For FO3, the two players would have to remain on the same map for co-op.
Which is the point of co-op, to work together, not to have one person head to New Reno and the other to San Fran.
quietfanatic said:
Scripting a dialogue tree going three ways would be a lot more work I believe, with players effectively taking turns watching each other, or more likely with the combat boy watching the speech boy talk.
Since the beginning of rpgs you've had mixed parties with characters having a mixed bag of skills. Each coming into their own in specific situations. You don't send your Paladin to disarm traps, or your Ghoul to charm the shop keeper. Even if one player talks to an npc and fails and then the other player has a go how is that different from going away and adjusting you intelligence etc with drugs before trying again?
quietfanatic said:
Each quest would have to be made more challenging to avoid their taking turns again if not going on to do some serious work to encourage special cooperation. Different character reactions, consequences and reputation could also be rather complicated, so quest paths/world values would probably become party based. Combat might cause implementation of immortality or rapid autosaves in case one character dies, and lead to even more extreme level scaling or additional enemies.
While it's likely there would be some sort of party death (you only truly die if everyone is down) why would quests need to be more challenging to encourage co-operation? People would be playing that mode with the intent to co-operate, some scaling of difficulty yes. But is it really that much more hard work to implement that in co-op mode without affecting the single player? As for reputation, if you're working together why would you earn a different reputation?
quietfanatic said:
Similarly there might be the need for more items and more money. Two of everything nice in each location.
While there would no doubt be some 'friends' who'd end up fighting over the loot, you don't have to have two of everything at a go. When I used to be a part of a group my old DM never filled a chest with 5 +1 swords just to keep everyone happy.
quietfanatic said:
It would likely lead to simplification in quest design, reduction in dialogue and greater emphasis on combat. The entire design of the game would have to be reconsidered and balanced differently. This would most likely hurt the single player game, just as V.A.T.S/RT and TB/CTB causes balancing trouble.
Well it sounds like all that has been implemented already, but having an optional co-op mode wouldn't have to affect the single player game.
quietfanatic said:
But anways, there is no chance that they would try any of this stuff at the moment.
It's on the site,
more than likely another mistake from MS, but why wouldn't they try it?
zioburosky13 said:
Well...this ain't no DnD pal.... why the co-op?
Nope but it was going to be GURPS at one point. Out of all the things to complain about FO3, co-op ought to be the least of them.
Not really coop though, but meh.
