It is religious for some of them, but not in a good way. It is fanatical for some of them. . . largely illogical and yet fervid. You are a heretic to want to play other than their way. Such foolishness. If the game can be done with all the features that the devs intended for singleplay, and still have a basic co-op (local, drop in drop out is the best example to my thought), then it would be magnificent and in no way detract from the experience of singleplayer enthusiasts. . . yet I think some of them would still be angry about it. Not for any sensible or decent reason. Nay. They would be angry about not having the final say, the last word, the absolute truth. . . angry that heretics should be suffered to live, we heretics who hold to the true origins of RPGs with the co-operative play the early games almost inevitably involved, and with all the pleasures of interaction and shared experience that accompanied that.

I Hate MMO Games, Please let Skyrim atleast be Multiplayer with Single Player Offline Mode, but Never MMO.

There are so many Games i want to play, but apparently All Games these days go MMO

Lord of the Rings
World of Warcraft
Star Wars

See this is exactly why I posted a thread a couple of nights ago saying that the April issue of OXM US confirms NO multiplayer!!!!!!!!!

This isnt a thread clamoring for it really, its more of a discussion about if or how it could work. Also as in a few threads before this one slander.

Nevermind.

I still do not understand how it will harm the game at all... The difficulty of the game can increase like in TES IV. The higher the level, the higher the difficulty (unless you set the game slider to EASY :snoring: )

I know the story line of TES V is focused on the hero character but why not have a co-op/single player. Like you are the hero in single player but why not have the option to make another character that is not a hero for co-op?

There that solves the issue of "harming" single player hero because you have no 2nd hero, just another character that can join the hero.

I mean a lot of hero stories have had a sidekick or friend. Fable 2 and 3 had a pet dog as the sidekick. I mean hell... that opens the game up to a whole new way to co-op. Pet's... Have your friend play as a pet or maybe a dragon or something. Then it has in no way, shape, or form harm the single player. But just add to it.

I just hope that if there is no plan for co-op or any type of multiplayer that this game does not turn out like Fallout New Vegas. (compared to original Fallout 3, New Vegas svcked)

Edit: Could also make a evil character that harms the hero, kinda like setting traps up ahead of the hero, but that would be more and more and more, so the game would be released 12/12/12

Is there no official word yet on if skyrim will have CO-OP?

If there is could you link it pls, thanks

Online multiplayer like duelling and stuff, and over xbox live is a definent no no. This will not happen, get over it.
However, 2-4 same-console co-op is perfectly possible.

For me, I'm not sure on multi player/co-op missions as such because TES tends to be all about the single player story line. There are a few places where online would work though:

The Arena could return but rather than fighting in easy contests against NPCs you could fight online against other players' characters, you could even have death matches or capture the flag matches taking place in the Arena complex. The whole Arena area could be a social hub where you can buy and sell items with other players (like the auction houses in WoW) or bet on NPC battles in the Arena.

My girlfriend was playing just the other day. She had created a new character. She is wandering through the game, enjoying it mightily, but she really wanted me to play along. And I really wanted to join in, to turn on the second controller, load one of my characters and do a local drop in on her game. I was eager to do so. This has happened before with friends and with relatives, the sentiment strong on both ends. It would offer alot. But any who cannot understand that, probably won't understand, largely because they don't want to understand. They are, for the most part, being willfully obtuse. Damned shame.

Wondering:

How would "pausing" work in a multiplayer Skyrim? Every time another player looks in the inventory, the game pauses? Picking a lock? Reading a book? etc... That would seem to get very annoying, so somehow pausing the game would have to be removed.

In a multiplayer skyrim, if I were to go to do a quest, let's say, to kill a bandit hiding out in a cave, but the other player(s) do not come (maybe they need to go back to town to sell some stuff), and I kill the bandit, does the other player(s) get the quest fulfilled? What if the bandit had a quest item--would that item appear in each other player's inventory (as it does in other multiplayer games)?

How about fast travel of the kind that "takes time". For example, it's 1pm and I want to take a carriage to another town, which would add, maybe a half hour onto the game's time. If the other people don't fast travel with me, what happens to them?

How about sleeping (assuming there is a reason to sleep in Skyrim)? I choose to sleep for a few hours--what happend to the other players?

These seem to be some diffucult issues to resolve.

As far as how MP would hurt Skyrim (or any ES game in general), one issue may be that Bethesda only has so much money and resources to devote to a game's production.

I'll make up a number, which I'm sure is not acurate: let's say Bethesda has $1,000,000 to spend developing a game. If it's SP, they could devote the entire amount to the game. But, if they try to add in MP, then part of that money would have to go to creating the MP aspect and integrating it into the game (the people who work on this wanna get paid, for example, and the money would have to come from that initial $1.000.000). So, let's say, that to incorporate MP into the game would require $100,000. Then only $900,000 would be available for the creation of the game itself. This would mean less money would be available to spend on things like storyline, quest ideas, map area, number of creatures/monsters/NPC's, because all of those things require money to be created (those people wanna get paid for the work they do, also). So, instead of a SP game with a storyline that takes a character through 20 quests, instead there would likely be only maybe 18 quests for the MP game (since there was less money available to create quests.)

This may be one reason that a MP option could "hurt" the game.

(But if a modder wanted to work on a MP mod for free, then that would be a different story.......)

It's a tough call: a SP Skyim with a deeper game development, or a MP Skyrim with less depth. I'm not sure which one I would prefer.

It's not that people (even the devs) don't understand that there are some cool possibilities with multiplayer. The problem is that multiplayer takes a long time and a lot of effort to implement. There are basically two options for this - get the game out on time, but so much time has been dedicated to getting multiplayer to work that the single player experience and the overall game is diminished in quality. The second option would be to delay the game to focus on designing/implementing/testing/debugging multiplayer, which could take a very, very long time especially since the engine was probably not designed with multiplayer in mind. Honestly, if they have to delay the game, I would much rather them focus on adding single player features and polishing the single player system. There has been a sad trend in games recently where games with really good multiplayer modes tend to have sub par single player/campaign. In order to make a game have a very good single player and multiplayer, it takes a lot of time dedicated to both of those modes individually.

Also, what he said ^^^. Budgetary constraints are a huge problem, and the money would have to be divided between MP/SP.

Yeah there are some problems that could happen to the game if there are two players. Probably, if a second players is added, these problems would need to be fixed somehow. And changing many of these stuff would lead to a different game. I think that's why it would kill the experience as we know it. Maybe it would look like an mmo. No thank you.

I'm a fan of co-op stuff. I think the best thing to do is to add a "mode" or a place or something..

A place where you could go just to hunt, raid dungeons, do some side quests, and gain money, loot and xp, with a friend or two. But of course, there would be nothing related to the main story of the game there so nobody's experience will be trashed.

In this place, it could work like and mmo: the menus you open don't freeze the world, they are just for you. Conversations are now like activating an object, so if your friend stands next to you, he will be able to listen to the npc you are talking to. You could trade some things with you fellas, not quests items, or items obtained while playing single player (so you don't give the most amazing armor to your level 1 friend xP). Here maybe you could get some special loot. If a player is level 1 and the the one is level 20, enemies could be of average level (10) or maybe 20+ I don't know. Imagine hunting dragons with your friends

Now i'm drooling with the idea xP

What about voip chat? but nothing like a walkie-talkie sound, no, the sound would come from the player, so if he is very far, you will hear him far.. or if he is standing at you left, or your right

But yes, there are lots of stuff to think about..

what if a player dies?
what level should be the enemies? based on players level? an average?
how loot would be managed?
dragonborn uniqueness? everyone will have dragon shouts? :/

(I speak spanish btw, sorry for any mistakes)

We will forgive you. :wink_smile:

No in all honesty, great post. Those are all questions the devs will have to answer if it is ever going to be implemented.

I am all for Co-op, me and my friends just putting the beat down on a dragon. That being said it would rather difficult to pull of from a quality point of view, Would one person's shout cool-down effect the other persons? would the visiting player even have shouts? If they did what would that do to the cannon of the story. And what is this other persons story? How could there be 2 dragonborn? Did the Aedra double down as it were? Even if this other player wasn't Dragonborn the other player's presence would surely effect how the story plays out.

Halo is a great example of how co-op just makes the story seem off.
i mean look at the they just put your friend there and no one mentions that now there is TWO spartans running around which just made it seem off. And since TES is a story driven character driven game they would have make a completely different narrative, or worse NOT make a different narrative and do what Halo did=oh him? he just stand's there and helps he never talks has no story and is forced to watch me and my rise to glory, just ignore him its like he's not even here anyway.

So yes i want Co-op but it would have to Bethesda's goal in the beginning of development in order to incorporate it and still hit the TES high-bar that we expect with each new TES game.

I agree with this. If there is going to be co-op in a ES game, it should be incorporated into the game from day-one of its development, so that the storyline (among othe factors) fit into it seemlessly.

MMO: No

Arena 1v1: Yes

2 Player Co-op/Free Roam: Maybe

Co-Op would be nice, more not. Just letting a friend of yours log in on your game. It wouldn't distract the game as your the main player and your friend is just a companion.

It's a option but not that necessary.

I would love cooperative play in this game literally more than anything, but everything has to be client side and without server support it is near impossible for Bethesda to prevent exploits and hacks. Granted, exploits only affect the player at hand and won't really affect those who play by the honor system, but folks who have touched Borderlands know what can happen when tools strt flexing their modded platform. Add restrictions to prevent this and you get the mess that shipped with Fable II.

Since the market focus is either on massive multiplayer or single player it is not worth money and development time to implement the open-ended Co-Op we (a minority niche, unfortunately) desire for one time purchase of the game.

I would like LAN and maybe splitscreen multiplayer, I won't expect it though.

I really hope that Bethesda keeps the course their on and does not create multilayer.... But i wouldn't mind an MMO of TES... The story for beth games are usually ok or bad, right now they need to focus on gameplay and story... But i am quite glad the focused on their engine also...

1 vs 1 Arena fight will be good but Pc gamers need to play original game with no mods and cheats are Disabled when in Arena so that they are playing Fair cool if it's also in Console version

Co-op Maybe like Borderlands ? That in Co-op you doing Quests Together Can battle eachother in Arena Trading Items,Give Coins to Eachother

i hope at least in the the next tes