requiem_for_a_starfury said:
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.
That approach would lead to more dumbing down and problems as an RPG. Some might not call a terribly flawed, tacked on system unworkable, but I must emphasise that it would be a serious issue that would almost surely damage the single player game by wasting resources and biasing design. A nigh on perfect development team would still have great difficulty balancing the game and making both options workable.
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….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?
Colocalisation is not always trivial or necessarily obligatory. Co-op creates numerous problems, from potentially minor ones such as having to wait for both characters to reach a door/exit grid equivalent, to the even more marketing unfriendly case of having one character wait for the other to go through a long conversation or solve a quest problem. Having an NPC companion that rarely uses a specific skill is a different kettle of fish to a real person that needs to be credibly kept occupied, challenged and stimulated. To keep both players happy and help prevent one player from solving everything, you might have to ensure that the two characters must both use different skills at the same time, or press buttons etc. That would require a lot of extra work, which is more difficult than just adding more scaled enemies. I strongly dislike the kind of second chances where you are bailed out by drugs or whatever without adequate negative consequences. If one character pisses off an NPC, the shared reaction/reputation should apply, regardless of what the other player might want. Otherwise interaction and questing can soon become ridiculous, and dialogue again devolves into simplistic wikis. Balancing material reward is not easy either and designers would want to reduce the chance of player squabbling, probably taking the option of duplication. A real world GM can keep things fair and working well on the fly, but a computer game only has what is already there, limited by the likely conservative choices of the designers pressured by the marketing types. I believe a co-op mode would be a shallow move towards Gears of War rather than a rich G.U.R.P.S. style P&P RPG.
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.
If they had the talent, patience and resources they could work on a total conversion after completing the single player game, but I don’t believe they could and it would be highly inefficient anyway. Things are looking bad now, but co-op would make things worse.
It's on the site, more than likely another mistake from MS, but why wouldn't they try it?
As above, it would be wiser to invest in single player games than a technically fiendish co-op gimmick. Co-op is not ‘what they do best’.
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.
If it was brilliantly implemented, taking several more years of development to please traditional role-players it might be alright. But then the single player will likely be a shallow and mediocre RPG without their worrying about co-op. So no, it is worth complaining about. If people want co-op, they can play a MMORPG, FPS or best yet role-play without a computer.
Sorry for the waffling.
