[Isaiah Burdeau]

Official Multiplayer Thread

The issue of multiplayer has been a hot one on the forums since they were created. It tends to draw a lot of frustration and, unfortunately, flaming. In an effort to help keep things civil on the forums, we have decided to restrict the discussion of multiplayer (or topics pertaining to multiplayer) in the Oblivion/TES General forums to this one thread. When this thread hits 200 posts, it will be locked and a new thread opened to continue the discussion. Any new multiplayer threads created in this forum, or old multiplayer threads brought back to the top, will be locked and directed here ? this includes polls!

A few reminders:

• All of the forum rules still apply; flaming will not be tolerated, nor will insults directed toward specific users. This does not mean that you have to agree with everyone's opinion, but you must still respect them and their opinions enough to respond civilly.
  
• This thread is in Oblivion General, and while it may make sense to bring up or discuss TES III (and other TES games) let us try and keep this discussion mostly focused on TES IV and future titles.
  
• Multiplayer comes in many shapes and sizes: MMORPGs, arena-style combat, cooperative, etc. and it can be very helpful to be specific if you do not intend to discuss multiplayer simply in abstract terms. This obviously isn't a requirement; it is simply a suggestion to help limit confusion and misunderstanding.
  
• If someone does post or bump a multiplayer thread in Oblivion General, simply direct them here and report the thread to the moderators. And please, do this civilly, yelling and insulting people (especially new users) because they do not know about this thread serves no constructive purpose, and will likely result in a warning.
  
• The moderators are not privy to information that hasn't been released to the public.

Also, please realize that adding multiplayer at this time is simply not feasible. Oblivion has been streamlined for single-player and adding multiplayer would require re-writing large portions of the engine. The devs would much rather spend their time and energy expanding on what they already have, a great single-player RPG, rather than re-doing what they've already finished.

So please, no requests to have multiplayer added with an expansion. Or at least if you're going to discuss this realize that it is not an option.

Finally, multiplayer code requires a ton of effort. For example, it took two people several months to add multiplayer to Soldier of Fortune 2, a game made with an engine specifically designed for multiplayer (Quake 3). Many people seem to feel that a developer can purchase some network code and slap it on with a week's worth of work, but this just isn't the case.

We've been getting a lot of TES MMO threads lately so I'm creating a central thread for the discussion.

First off, nothing has been announce or confirmed about the possibility of an Elder Scrolls MMORPG. Maybe something is in the works, maybe they're planning on starting something in the future, maybe they're simply covering themselves if they ever decide to do this. At this point we simply don't know.

Second, if an Elder Scrolls MMORPG is being developed it is unlikely that Bethesda is doing it. More likely, their new sister company Zenimax Online Studios would head up such a project and Bethesda would serve in an advisory capacity. A similar arrangement was used when their other sister company, Vir2L, developed TES handheld games.

And if ZOS is working on an Elder Scrolls MMORPG it means Bethesda's resources are free for their own projects, which could certainly include more games in the Elder Scrolls series.

So please, let's not get ahead of ourselves, and let's keep this discussion civil.

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=978995

[RaeAnne]

If they ever do decide to make this, the best direction for there open-worlding is to let a group of 3-5 people tackle quests and what-not together. If not, an arena battle system would be good, as other people have suggested.

[Chris Jones]

mmo? no, it would get too crazy. with the ability to hit whoever/whatever you want, you could still be learning the controls then someone just comes, kills you, takes your stuff, and waits for you to reload. plus, the respawns would have to go fast, because there would probably be like 50+ people doing the same quest at a time. i wouldnt mind if they made just a little game thats just an arena, and you would fight to the death with someone else in the arena. it would be like an actual competition, someone would end up slaughtering everyone else and would get the title of champion

[Lizs]

okay here is my idea.

have it too where after ES5... there would be a ES6, but It would be a Online RPG (kind of like Guild Wars, but not really), but it would still be able to have a FPS mode put on it.

which means when people play it they can be able to play at all the areas that were separated game wise, along with quests, party joining, Faction making, and so on.

If you have any complements, or additional ideas regarding my idea, please post a reply.

[Shelby McDonald]

I would like a multiplayer TES game, but have it be a MMO game
EDIT: and have it mostly pertain to quests, and only be able to fight each other, if you were in a certain area, or an arena, or under an agreement

[Alexander Lee]

I think the best approach to making elder scrolls an mmorpg would to copy some methods of the other popular titles such as wow and runescape....they coud make a zone where its just pvp... and i dont think that they shoud make a group limit to chill in a party...the best way i feel it would work is if they did all of tamriel not just important places but everywhere...yea it might take a while to make the game but im willing to wait as long as i need for the perfect game...AND IT WILL BE PERFECT...at least i hope

[Michelle Smith]

The only way I can see for a Multiplay option to work is Coop only, no friendly fire, with a Party Leader. The Party Leader would be the main character, drive the storyline, and all quests and such revolve around them. Reputations and the like would be party-wide, but crimes and punishments would be character specific.

Nonetheless, it would take a lot of extra coding and testing, and though I'd love to play it, I'm not sure it's something worth spending a lot of time on.

[Allison Sizemore]

I say that miltiplayter should be 2-5 players working together,no more.MMo's tend to svck due to player killing,so it should only be small group online Co-op.Also,small group means minimal code rewriting so that they could focus on dungeons and cities.It could be in cyrodiil,only AFTER the oblivion gate disaster.Your people would merely be adventurers working for their own motives.

Also,noone should become leaders of the guilds,otherwise its annoying.I hated that in oblivion somehow one person could lead EVERY guild in cyrodiil.

[Nikki Lawrence]

i think it should be a game where u can do mutiplayer and single player!
i also herd they r making a mmo on the computer

[Stephanie Nieves]

Elder scrolls v should have game sharing capability like you can veiw other peoples stats and inventory and traade certain items pending on skills level to balance out how the game will play but in order to do that you need to offer something of value like a a set of deadric armor or a lot of gold or you recieve a stat decrease.

[Eileen Collinson]

Elder scrolls v should have game sharing capability like you can veiw other peoples stats and inventory and traade certain items pending on skills level to balance out how the game will play but in order to do that you need to offer something of value like a a set of deadric armor or a lot of gold or you recieve a stat decrease.

Sort of confused on how that would work, anyway i believe that if any multiplayer if any kind were to be implemented then it would be very limited, you would probably require a separate game world, something randomly generated, you use saved files as the base character of your multiplayer avatar, a maximum of 5 people can join, even with this small number many game features would be severely compromised, firstly speech will have to be forgotten or possibly reverted to real-time speech, this means that the world will not freeze when a player starts the speech sequence, same applies for inventory options, game options (pressing esc), lockpicking and anything else which freezes the game world.

Another major point is levelling of the world inhabitants, monsters, items etc. The way i see it they just can't have a levelled world, not even levelled items, the problems would be too severe, if a level 1 player decides to join up with a level 40 player the results could be devestating that is why each monster has to have static levels, different areas of the game world would have different levelled monsters, this could possibly reflect the background of the game world, e.g. deep woods would have much higher levelled creatures than open meadows, and as an addition for the PC version of the game which would almost definitely have custom mods (e.g. Midas, MMM, OOO) no custom mods can be activated, it simply would not work, the system would get confused and probably crash as you are in the same game-world and you are sharing everything there, you can't use something somebody else can't. As a side-note all games connecting must have the most recent patch of the game, no exceptions.

[Hope Greenhaw]

Sort of confused on how that would work, anyway i believe that if any multiplayer if any kind were to be implemented then it would be very limited, you would probably require a separate game world, something randomly generated, you use saved files as the base character of your multiplayer avatar, a maximum of 5 people can join, even with this small number many game features would be severely compromised, firstly speech will have to be forgotten or possibly reverted to real-time speech, this means that the world will not freeze when a player starts the speech sequence, same applies for inventory options, game options (pressing esc), lockpicking and anything else which freezes the game world.

Another major point is levelling of the world inhabitants, monsters, items etc. The way i see it they just can't have a levelled world, not even levelled items, the problems would be too severe, if a level 1 player decides to join up with a level 40 player the results could be devestating that is why each monster has to have static levels, different areas of the game world would have different levelled monsters, this could possibly reflect the background of the game world, e.g. deep woods would have much higher levelled creatures than open meadows, and as an addition for the PC version of the game which would almost definitely have custom mods (e.g. Midas, MMM, OOO) no custom mods can be activated, it simply would not work, the system would get confused and probably crash as you are in the same game-world and you are sharing everything there, you can't use something somebody else can't. As a side-note all games connecting must have the most recent patch of the game, no exceptions.

Thats what i ment by multiplayer would cost because its hard for a game like that to be mulitplayer without costs.

[Rinceoir]

I don't think an MMO is the right direction mostly because "anons" are free to be turds. I think playing with "friends" only is the best possible choice. Game difficulty could go up to balance the game out so that it wouldn't be "too easy".

Make the game "real time" when in multiplayer mode. I would also hope that the game itself wouldn't be changed.

[Kelsey Anna Farley]

i believe it should be a four player drop in drop out with the party leader idea. Arena would be easy because someone could just glitch it. You should only be able to play with people your own level. It would get boring to see everyone with daedra armor a little more variety please.. or just let you change the color of the armor. MMOs get boring. People really get annoying. The game would be impossible to make an mmo unless they just slaughtered the graphics. It lags on SP imagine hundreds of people. O_O

[FirDaus LOVe farhana]

if and when they make an elder scrolls 5 i think they should do something like in fable 2 where you could invite a friend to join your game and you could share gold and experience also make it so that the people who join can't kill npcs in the hosts game except for bandits, necromancers, etc. unless attacked such as guards or weapon weilding civilians that way no one joins and destroys some one elses game. unlike fable 2 i think it should also have a max of four people in a game. also having a pvp arena would be nice and make it easier to find people online who have the game

[Theodore Walling]

I think a CO-OP for 2 players would be a great addition O:
Really miss to play with my friends when i play Oblivion ..

[Rachel Briere]

My idea

Make it so you can hook two x-box 360s or PS3s together and your characters can trade equipment... And give special levels where they can work together.

On PCs give this option with LAN

[k a t e]

My idea

Make it so you can hook two x-box 360s or PS3s together and your characters can trade equipment... And give special levels where they can work together.

On PCs give this option with LAN

What about if somebody wanted to play with his friend who had an Xbox, but he had a PS3, how would that work, i believe there should be universal connection for all platforms

[kat no x]

It'll never happen.

[Lisha Boo]

My idea

Make it so you can hook two x-box 360s or PS3s together and your characters can trade equipment... And give special levels where they can work together.

On PCs give this option with LAN

I second that

[Horse gal smithe]

AHAAAAAA!!! I knew it, i knew that a couple of moths ago i saw something about playing oblivion with multiplayer and i did it, take a look at this:

Oblivion Online

Oblivion Online Mod project= (IN DEVELOPMENT)
Oblivion Online is a project by some developers around masterfreek64 for creating an multiplayer mode for TES4:Oblivion.
For discussion, ideas and contributions it has a forum http://s9.invisionfree.com/OblivionOnline/
It is going to use the same way as the Morrowind Multiplayer system: Way it is going to work: 1) You have to run a program in the background - this will read some of oblivion's scripting and object variables and is thus getting the player position
2)It transmits this position to the server
3)The server transmits it to the other clients
4) which will create (or move ) an npc with the player's name to the said position
5) The server will run Oblivion for questing etc. it will also check the item queue to prevent the console from working
6) (maybe) the player's location will be saved on a central server after the game so you keep your character over all your games

I found this on the oblivion mod wiki, so what do you think?

[Bloomer]

It's actually a project that isn't dead. The betas of it work to some degree. It's progress is slow however.

The new 5.0 release of it will be coming out sometime relatively soon, it is the first major release that actually adds synced enemy AI etc.



Here is their forums:
https://obliviononline.com/

[Nice one]

if and when they make an elder scrolls 5 i think they should do something like in fable 2 where you could invite a friend to join your game and you could share gold and experience also make it so that the people who join can't kill npcs in the hosts game except for bandits, necromancers, etc. unless attacked such as guards or weapon weilding civilians that way no one joins and destroys some one elses game. unlike fable 2 i think it should also have a max of four people in a game. also having a pvp arena would be nice and make it easier to find people online who have the game

Why 'like fable2'? it wasn't the first to have offline play with multi-player capabilities... nor was even the best (hell, it wasn't even good at it for that matter). A better game to model after would be NWN in that regards. Single player, offline play with online modules (perhaps NWN wasn't the best game in the world, it was still better than Fable)

[louise fortin]

My answer to it is don't make a mmo why some people may ask its simple, one there is to many of them now, donimated by WoW and the up coming swtor second there isnt many rpg's and espically roam do what u like neva quite feel like you've completed the game, i would like to see somthin multiplayer on a console for tes, but i wouldnt go mmo cause really fallout was gd but the elder scrolls is still top dog, n if bethesda do what bioware did and left kotor and didnt do a number 3 then have the nerve to call this mmo the next issue of kotor which in its own rights is a joke, (even tho the game might be a gd mmo), this is tes its simply created like it has to be like it is, and like all gamers espically tes console fans, will disappear, comon wet rogue (wet was poo). i just hope thay dont start getting over themselfs and forgetting what started bethesda or those who have been fans for years, oh dont forget diablo 3 now thats gonna shatter the pc world im not a wow fan but i love diablo defo on my list to get , now iv board you all enough so il say one thing if thay did lets say a ADD on like an expansion for tes v and made it so u can go on an island like lets say solstiem(example) and do quests there and fight each other then that would be good like fable 2 that would be good to set peoples eyes of just running through the game and add a little spice. ( but keeping the main story and game play 1 person (but can take servents (if u can get them) and ur armor weapons onto the island.

[suzan]

and as an addition for the PC version of the game which would almost definitely have custom mods (e.g. Midas, MMM, OOO) no custom mods can be activated, it simply would not work, the system would get confused and probably crash as you are in the same game-world and you are sharing everything there, you can't use something somebody else can't. As a side-note all games connecting must have the most recent patch of the game, no exceptions.

or you could add an auto Downloader... problem solved