This is a very, very huge logical leap. You're basically saying "co-op/multiplayer fails in any kind of complex RPG because it fails in three RPGs that are almost identical in terms of gameplay and that all run on the same engine and use almost the exact same interface." Basically, you're trying to make the claim that because what is more or less a trio of variations on a single game that had multiplayer included as an afterthought didn't do it well, it's impossible for any complex RPG to do it well in general. That... makes no sense. It'd be a bit like me saying that no game can do RPGs in general well because Lionheart didn't do them well.

RDR have both single and multiplayer and no one complaints about it, wich shows that i does work in a sandbox game.

They could use one of Zenimax's other studios to develop it, or else outsource a multiplayer component to someone else entirely. It's not exactly uncommon (it's how Ubisoft generally handles it when they want to add multiplayer to a single-player-focused experience).


You need to explain this better. It's very easy to arbitrarily say that any potential feature "doesn't fit" if you don't want it included, but that doesn't say anything useful about why it wouldn't work when the entire topic of discussion is more or less a matter of whether or not it fits.


I really don't think that's true. Rockstar's capable of a lot of things nobody else in the industry is.

I do that :celebration:

I picked them because they were close, and because they illustrated the point; I could have used Sacred and NWN :shrug:

Am I? News to me Rabish12.

What I said was, "If you ever played multiplayer Baldur's Gate (1, 2, IWD), then you've seen why coop/multiplayer fails (or is at least inelegant) in any kind of complex RPG". Now that points to one example (a good one too). Have you seen any complex RPGs with better than inelegant multiplayer?

***EDIT:
The real question is TES... and the effects of injecting it with multiplayer support.

Well spent, I would say. Though I'm speaking as a PC player, and since my content is basically unlimited, I could see why it would be selfish of me to say so. It's a hell of a lot easier to mod in additonal content (weapons, NPCs, armor, buildings, quests, etc) than to create a multiplayer option. If the studio could just do that part....

Well, they'd better make Skyrim even more moddable then Morrowind or Oblivion ever was. There was a multi-player mod for Oblivion... But due to limitations on the engine it really, really svcked. For one thing, we couldn't interact with each other. Or even see each other move. Other player was usually just standing still, occasionally teleporting randomly around.

Actually, you couldn't have used NWN. The issues that had with single player apply to the multiplayer as well (basically, that the main campaign is horrendously bad). The game itself plays fine in single player (something that becomes obvious in the expansions, some of the DLC, and a gigantic number of the modules made for it), and the multiplayer was and still is considered among the best in any game.


Saying that those games having poor multiplayer makes it apparent that multiplayer is poor in any RPG is basically making the statement that... well, that those games are enough to prove impossibility for any case. They aren't.

As for complex RPGs with better than inelegant multiplayer... again, Neverwinter Nights. You can argue that the multiplayer wasn't well done, but you'd be arguing against the vast majority on that one, and without a lot of basis that I can think of.

EDIT:
And I've already addressed that. It doesn't necessarily have any effect, depending on how it's done, and there are several open world games that I'd argue are more focused on a complex single-player experience than Bethesda's titles but that have excellent multiplayer components (just about all of them Rockstar titles, but... well, the fact that they're the only ones to do it so far doesn't mean they're the only ones who can).

My reasoning is that I'd rather have the Devs working on building cities or adding quests than fussing over Co-op. Remember Fort Sutch? Well, go check the UESP or Imperial Library, and look at maps of Cyrodiil. Sutch was supposed to be a city - at least the size of Chorral. The cities are oddly small and empty in Oblivion, and the Imperial City just...felt like Balmora with a whitestone thing going on. Things like that get cut when they run out of time, and I would fear that co-op would eat development time.

I was always under the opinion that the sale was really the framework of a digital D&D engine... The campaign was "proof of concept" (at least that's how I looked at it. :shrug:).

Diablo is classed as an RPG, but its a hack-n-slash affair that does not even need to track merchant inventory across clients. The game has no plot changing dialog that one player could trigger; TES is different no? NWN (iirc) lets you walk away from conversations... I've never played it long enough (co-op) to see its handling of multiplayer dialog ~but it was not the original example; and was designed for multiplayer from the start ~it's previous incarnation was the first pay-to-play internet RPG.

The executable would be bigger.

Just because you don't like an option doesn't mean it's not an option.

In school I had an option to take College algebra or statistics. Guess what? I didn't like either option and I still had to take one.

I never once said that they weren't options. I only said that the argument of "Don't like it, don't use it" is a crappy argument because all of the available options are crappy.

True. If they did this, and stayed out of it's creation themselves for the most part, I couldn't see any problem with it. Of course there is the chance that it doesn't fit with the rest of the game, seeing as how it's developed by a different studio with different views on what they want.



There's really no way for me to justify this one right now until we see the engine and find out how the game is going to run. However, going off the way Oblivion was made, the fact that it pauses with basically everything you do (talking, inventory management, etc.) is my main reason. Obviously there are other limitations that could come into play as well. (What happens when someone tries to enter a different cell?)



You really have no way of knowing what it did and didn't take away. Yeah it was a good single player game, but imagine how much better it would be if they'd spent all their time and resources on single player. We'll never really know how much of an impact it actually had, but the point is it had to have some kind of impact.



TES games are much more than sandbox/open-world games.

Why would it fit?

***What I mean is... They've been crafting this series since 1994, and have never seen fit to add any form of multiplayer.

I'll just quote myself from another thread.

Please elaborate.

More or less. The intent with NWN seems to have been to provide a sort of "Build Your Own RPG" toolset with a campaign included mostly for show, and the results are... more or less what you'd expect from that sort of thing (which explains why the expansion campaigns and DLC are all so much better). Either way, the actual single player and multiplayer gameplay and systems don't seem to suffer at all from the way it's handled.


Its previous incarnation isn't really related to it in absolutely any way except by name.

As for the rest, NWN doesn't let you walk away from all conversations, and when it does the "walking away" doesn't really impact much of anything - it isn't inelegant because the game doesn't break and is still capable of keeping you in place when it needs you to be. And the fact that it's not the original example is somewhat irrelevant, as is the fact that it was designed for multiplayer from the start - I'm not using the game as an example of providing a solid multiplayer and single player experience being an easy thing to do in a game focused on the single player experience, only as an example of a game that handles both the single player and the multiplayer exceptionally well. Basically, NWN is proof that it's entirely doable, not that it'll inevitably be done with that level of quality.

Red Dead Redemption actually is a better example though, now that it's been brought up here. The single player component has dialogues (and cutscenes) which you most certainly can't leave, as well as a number of minigames and events that wouldn't fit well in the multiplayer. Rockstar's way of handling this was to... strip those things out of the multiplayer. Instead, multiplayer is the game world with all of its random encounters and "quests" stripped away. In their place is content that's more suitable for a multiplayer experience - "gang hideouts" that can be cleared alone or with a group of players in order to gain experience and equipment, hunting grounds where you can handle hunting challenges, and the ability to initiate game modes like capture the flag or deathmatch (or to basically form teams on a whim and start arbitrarily killing each other, if you're too impatient for a proper game). And this is all with the parts of the single player that do function well with multiple people - the well-populated areas, the crime system and wanted levels (though it's tweaked for multiplayer so that it works more like GTA's wanted system than RDR's standard single player one does), and the randomly spawning animals and such out in the wilderness.

Basically, RDR takes its single player game world, strips out everything that wouldn't work in the multiplayer, and then adds in a few things that would. The end result is pretty enjoyable (not AS good as the single player game, but given that RDR is probably the greatest sandbox game ever made with the single player alone that'd be a bit of a high standard to judge it by), and works exceptionally well. There's not really any reason that Bethesda couldn't do something similar, provided they have the time, resources, and inclination. Whether or not it would turn out as well as it did in RDR's still an open question, but... well, you can't know unless you try.


Not necessarily. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's multiplayer (outside of the co-op, at least) doesn't make the executable bigger, because the multiplayer component is just about entirely separate from the single player game. I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood comes out on PC. Really, any influence that multiplayer could have on the game itself would depend entirely on how it was approached.

hello lich freak here, um thats a really cool idea but it probably wouldnt work so well for questing but a multiplayer vs in the arena now that would be cool get you player all spiffed up and do battle with a friend and really show off your character that would be sweet

Why do people like turning single player games into multiplayer ones? To me the elder scrolls games are about you...not you and your friends.

If it's a separate component (which it very nearly always is in video games, and absolutely always is when the multiplayer is outsourced), that's not really an issue. It doesn't need to fit with the rest of the game because it isn't a part of the rest of the game.


Entering a different cell wouldn't really be an issue even if cells are handled the way they were in Oblivion - the fact that someone else who's connected to my game is in another cell doesn't change the fact that my game only really needs to have the cell that I'm in loaded. It's only at the point that I enter their cell that whatever's in that cell becomes relevant.

As for the game pausing for basically everything you do, that's not really a hard thing to handle. Just... don't make it pause in the multiplayer. That wouldn't be an issue for dialogue (since you're rarely actually talked to anywhere with hostiles unless it's specifically the hostile talking to you before attacking you, in which case it's not an issue), and with hotkeys it'd be manageable with the inventory - it just becomes a matter of not opening it up to change your equipment midway through a fight.


You've assumed that it had to have some kind of impact. Particularly in Rockstar's case, that's not necessarily a correct assumption - they probably have more to throw at every game that they make than anyone else in the industry, and as a result they regularly splurge for things that are almost entirely inconsequential. I can just about guarantee that Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption's single player would have been the same with or without the multiplayer.

That said, that's Rockstar. Rockstar can do that. I don't think anybody else in the industry can. Bethesda might be able to with a multiplayer component, but once again that's a judgement for Bethesda to make, not for us.


Not in a sense that would be meaningful against a comparison to Red Dead Redemption.


Except in the two games they did add multiplayer to.

And like I'd said earlier in this thread, "they've never done it before" isn't the same as "they shouldn't do it now".

Had you seen it before?

18th century dungeon crawl and/or RPG deathmatching? I've seen the series, but have never played it.

This to me, seems inelegant :shrug: (but effective).

A game's functions for multiplayer, are just part of it... like you mention with RDR ~they stripped down the gameplay to just the timeless encounters. (if I understand you correctly)
I can't shake the feeling that a MP enabled TES would show symptoms of it outside of the multiplayer sessions. :shrug:

***Are you arguing for it on principle or is it something you'd like to see implemented?

Yes. They're entirely different games.


Inelegant in what sense? Pared down compared to the single player game, maybe, but that's fairly standard for multiplayer in most games and "not quite as good as the single player" or "doesn't have the same features as single player" doesn't really equate to inelegant.


They stripped it down in some places, they changed and tweaked it in others, and they added a few in some other places. Multiplayer has a leveling system that handles unlocks for weapons, characters, and mounts, for example - when you enter a multiplayer game, your level determines what weapon you start with (though you can easily just go and find a better one, either by lifting it off of an NPC, earning it by completing some sort of challenge, or killing another player and taking it from them). They didn't make changes to the single player experience to make it sit better with the multiplayer experience, they made changes to the multiplayer to change, add, or remove features that wouldn't work with the single player.

And again, I'm not sure why there would have to be any symptoms of the multiplayer within the single player experience. Issues with components of the single player being less polished than they could have been thanks to a shift of resources towards multiplayer development maybe (but again, this isn't really something I think anyone except Bethesda would really be able to say would happen with any sort of certainty), but the multiplayer component of a game actually "leaking" its design elements into the single player experience is pretty exceptionally rare in general outside of games that are built for multiplayer first (and even then, it's more an issue with lower-profile titles than anything).

And as for a game's functions for multiplayer being a part of it in general... again, I have to use Chaos Theory as an example. The multiplayer is similar from a larger design perspective - it's recognizably a Splinter Cell game, and it plays like one - but when it comes to specifics, it's a very different game - controls, movement, abilities, equipment... pretty much everything handles at least slightly differently in the multiplayer. The multiplayer component even has issues with modern graphics hardware that the single player component doesn't, since (IIRC) it's actually based on a different engine. It's literally an entirely separate game. There's a few other examples like that (Crysis is a good one - the multiplayer for that is actually standalone and is just included with the game itself), but that's a bit besides the point.

I'm not trying to make the argument here that Bethesda should add multiplayer, that it would work well, or that they can do it properly. All I'm saying is that it could work well and it could be done properly. Whether or not Bethesda themselves could do it is something that I think only Bethesda has enough information to decide right now.


I don't especially want it, but I don't care either way if it's in or not. I just find nearly every argument against its inclusion to be pretty shaky at best, and whether or not I agree with where they're coming from doesn't change the fact that I won't stand for a poorly-founded argument.

An announcement that they're including a co-op component wouldn't influence my opinion of the game in either direction, because right now I don't think an assumption that it would necessarily harm the rest of the game or necessarily be bad and/or pointless has a solid basis. It might have a negative influence on the rest of the game, or it might be an extremely fun and worthwhile addition. It might do both. Maybe the two would balance out and the game would be no worse off so long as you're willing to play it with other people. Maybe they wouldn't, but the co-op would end up so good that the game would be better overall (again, assuming you're willing to play with other people). Maybe it would be handled so catastrophically poorly that the entire game would end up worse than Two Worlds as a result. My point isn't so much that I think any of these would happen as that I don't know if any of these would happen, and I don't think anyone really has enough insight into Bethesda's resources, employees, willingness to spend on these sorts of things, or general abilities in these areas to make a judgement on whether or not they would happen, let alone talk about these things as though they're almost guaranteed.

I guess in the transparent sense. Multiplayer in Quake (for instance), has the game play pretty much indistinguishably... aside from the deadlier intelligence of the opponents. (and some navigational map tweaks). An elegant multiplayer Co-Op mode (just imagining here...) would see the players fill
the spaces in a multi-PC conversation with one or more NPC's, and have them react to the input from any player that responds... Essentially expanding beyond the single player experience. Consider the NPC that has three tasks in their quest, and of them one was completed by the guest, the others by the host... and it being allowable for the guest to interrupt and say "I handled that bit; here is the whatchamacallit", and the NPC reacting sensibly to this; Perhaps even sensibly to being told that their whatchamacallit is theirs only for a price. Deliberate seamless integration is what I meant.

Sounds pretty cool. Is this what you, or anyone would want in TES?

How about issues with maps. Deathmatch maps are very different from campaign maps, and TES has an open world. We are talking Co-Op not DM, but still... I'd think map design would be affected; for example, I'd expect a forked path in the hall to each wind up at the same room further along, just on the chance that they split up. Something along these lines if not literally.

I have Chaos theory... and unfortunately never played it (I think its infected with Starforce :shrug:).
But like I said... its the game content. I honestly did not consider dual executables. :facepalm:

It might be "completely optional" Just like it is in Fable II and III (except when you want to do the things that require a second player,,, ) but I fear that having cooperative play in the game would divest time and resources from making the single player experience as good as it could be. Furthermore, the potential for a visiting player to screw up your world just strikes me as a pretty severe negative factor in a TES game.

Also, it would just be another instance of a game feature that console users would have to shell out a monthly fee for. Ridiculous. (To clarify, I will be playing on console and pc)

i don't want online multi-player. I would prefer it to be on the console only. So your buddy has to be sitting on the couch with u. that way they dont mess up the whole immersion thing.

It could work, I mean, I have to admit it would be fun to explore Tamriel woth a friend or 2

I have been thinking about the idea of multiplayer for a while now and here is my opinion. I think the only multiplayer aspect of the game should be an arena where you fight other players. Similar to the arena in Oblivian where you first join as a low rank then when you accumulate enough wins you advance to the next rank. The game should randomly choose your opponent out of people of similar rank and level as you. This is the only part of the game that I believe should have multiplayer and require internet access, and the only rewards from doing this is the fun of it and prestige of being a high rank. This is so the game can be equally fun and playable for people who either don’t have internet access or don’t enjoy multiplayer. Also any sort of cheating or mods should automatically disable the character they’re used on from the arena, but other than that you can bring anything you get from the offline world into the arena. I also think this would help motivate people to explore all they can and be as creative as possible with spellmaking and enchanting in order to try and get an edge over the other players. It also might be fun to have some SMALL team deathmatch type games (3v3 or 4v4 at most) just because everyone loves to play with their friends. I don't know how well this would work in the context of TES but it'd certainly be fun to try to make interesting combinations considering the amount of variation from player to player (for the team games). However I think the idea of a 1v1 arena with progressive rankings and leaderboards would be a great addition to the game, adding a whole new competitive aspect and opening up the series to a new type of player. The most important part would be to make sure that not competing in the arena doesn't detract from the single player game and that when choosing who you fight the computer ensures they are of both similar character level and ranking within the arena so you don't end up fighting someone who has enourmosly mroe pvp experience than you or whos gear is unfairly better. But anyways just my two cents, I'm very interested in everyone elses thoughts on this, and multiplayer in general.

I know I said earlier that you should be able to bring any spells or items from the offline world into the arena however after reading an earlier post that mentioned how someone could just use a paralyze spell and then just wail on you I would like to amend my stance. I think problems like this could be easily remidied if Bethesda just didn't allow certain spells or enchantments into the arena. However, even without this it would not ruin the arena just requier serious players to make sure they bring some necesary, albeit anoying and inconvinient defensive spells or enchants with them. I also doubt very many players would take advantage of it if a major flaw like this became aparent because it's just not nearly as fun if theres no competition involved, I mean thats the whole point of pvp right?