Nope. Developers put multiplayer in single player franchises because publishers try to pull in the stupid Call of Duty fanbase. They think "hey, if we cram multiplayer into this game that doesn't need it, then the kids and dudebros that buy games and never even play the campaigns if they have them will buy our game too!"

You go look up pretty much any forum or reddit post about multiplayer in traditionally single-player franchises and you'll usually get a resounding "no." by the members of those respective communities.

And while it is a small sample size, it's definitely foolish to assume that the non-posting majority thinks any differently, especially when there's no actual data to back up that claim. Occam's Razor applies.

Also, what Todd Howard said is irrelevant, really. He's never said anything like "Our hearts are set on not including dragons in our games." However, he HAS said "Our hearts are with the single-player experience." The fact that they "got one of them this time" in no way implies they'll ever get the other.

If they ever made an actual Fallout MMORPG, I would finally have a reason to quit WoW for good.

Please save me, Bethesda. :'(

Fallout has, and will always be, best experienced as a single player game.

Sure, there's Fallout Tactics, but that's barely canon.

You realize that you contradicted yourself and also ignored relevant information right?

First you say that what Todd Howard said is irrelevant then you emphasize that he has said "our hearts are with the single-player experience". Why would you emphasize that at all if you believe that what he said is irrelevant? Contradictory.

Second you claim that there is no actual data to back up that multiplayer is a feature people in general want. Yet Todd Howard said that multiplayer is "one of the most requested features". This much suggests that there is data.

Nothing I said is contradictory at all.

First of all I said that what you quoted Todd Howard as saying was irrelevant. I didn't say everything he's ever said is irrelevant. The quote I used is a prime example of why what you keep quoting doesn't matter. Note that I said "what Todd Howard said", not "what Todd Howard says". There's a big difference.

A feature being requested the most doesn't matter if nearly every time the feature is requested, it is asked not to happen by a majority of others.

You may have 500 requests for something, putting it at that top of your list for the most requested features, and if for every 1 of those requests, you had 2 people saying they don't want it, then you'd effectively have a majority shooting that request down, making its status as the most requested feature irrelevant. Most requested =/= most popular idea among the community.

People who want co-op or something similar never seem to realize that whatever is invested in the multiplayer is out of the singleplayer. That's a fact, adding MP will always sacrifice portion of SP. I'm really glad Beth is still one of those who concentrate on giving best SP experience.

I wonder how much better even Mass Effect 3 would have been if they had poured all resources they wasted on that completely pointless MP into SP.

Glad the game is just SP, would ruin it for me if MP were to be included.

If Fallout ever goes multiplayer, I'll get the Boomers to shell Bethesda HQ.

What is this stupid notion that everything ever should have multiplayer or friggen zombies?

Granted the time where they added multiplayer everywhere is gone, people including publishers has learned that trying to jam in multiplayer in an single player game don't work well.

Either the multiplayer is just an stupid feature or it ruin the single player game.

It was far more pressure for making Oblivion multiplayer than Skyrim.

its the dragon age 2 effect as I call it, you do dramatic changes to an niche game to make it more popular, the ones who loved the original game hates the new with passion.

The ones who would like the new version hear that its the worst game ever.

Oh, so him saying 'multiplayer is one of the two most requested features' is irrelevant. That's what you are claiming. Right?

And presumably this is because even though that feature was highly requested, there is an even larger amount of people who don't want it (your example of for every 1 request, 2 people shooting it down). Right?

Well, I don't believe that at all. What I believe is that you are grossly overestimating the size and weight of this so called community. To being with, who is this commuity you speak of ? People who are active in this and similar forums? May I remind you what most of those people think about voiced protagonists and wheel-based dialogue systems? Yet, surprise surprise, those are features we will be getting in Fallout 4. Also, how many people in the community complain about TES and Fallout games becoming less of an RPG and more of an action game with every new iteration of the franchise? If they are so against it how come that's what we are getting?

The only explanation I can find is that the community is just a minority of the people who buy those games. And the majority wants multiplayer in the same way they want voiced protagonists and more action-oriented experiences. The only reason we are not getting multiplayer is because so far Bethesda prefers to focus on singleplayer exclusively. Believing that it is because the change-resistant hardcoe fans in the community are against it is ludicrous.

I'm not a fan of any form of online multiplayer, coop or social gaming so usually id say absolutely not. But considering the fact Beth completely ignored the New Vegas fans and gutted all the cool mechanics, degradation, needs, silent protag etc, well I honestly don't care what they do anymore, since its not a a game I personally will be buying. At least not until modders can (maybe) add those things. So yeah bring it on. I hope they do put in a coop mode, and an adversarial MP, lol. May as well go the whole nine yards, if they want to reach the broadest audience possible.

That makes absolutely no sense. Why would two people share vats for multiplayer?

It would be fun to have maybe co-op or 2 more people with you but considering all they have done to the game, I don't mind it's single player. I feel that if it were multiplayer, people will fight over what belongs to them. I hoard things in Fallout so I don't want to fight over gear. I'm in love with the game no matter what.

I don't believe most of the people who purchase the The Elder Scrolls video games and the Fallout video games want multiplayer at all.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim sold over 23+ million copies and is still selling tens of thousands of copies to this day today still. The PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is selling about 80,000 copies each day on PC on Steam.

Adding any type of multiplayer component to the The Elder Scrolls video games and the Fallout video games would also be bad for modding in some sort of ways.

Not fun at all? Wait for Zenimax announce Fallout Online or something.

To be honest, I'm glad that there will be no multiplayer in Fallout 4. That would kill the entire series.

Very possibly. However, how many more players would purchase TES and Fallouts if there was a multiplayer component, and how many players would stop purchasing them if such multiplayer component existed? And, in case it attracted more people than it disuaded, would the extra influx of players be enough to justify the developement costs? Those are the important questions from a business standpoint.

Also, don't consider 'bad for modding' a strong argument here. A voiced protagonist is also bad for modding. Now everyone who wants to do a quest mod will have to either a) reuse existing player dialogue in creative ways in order to create new lines or b ) keep the player character silent, which will be in stark contrast with the rest of the game. Yet, that has not stopped Bethesda from implementing voiced protagonists.

There are many things that can go wrong with modding if not taken seriously if multiplayer gets added.

#1. The ANTI-CHEAT systems will ban you if you use mods that give the players a advantage like infinite health or some other mods like that, take a look at the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V's Online a lot of PC gamers got banned because the mods were used in online. Now some PC gamer who is a modder developed a tool that disables the scripts when you go from singleplayer to online.

#2. As other people have mentioned before in video games developed by Bethesda Game Studios your Player Characters (PC's) can pick up almost every single item that he or she sees in front of their faces, that will be a lot of work to get to work properly so Player 1 and Player 2 can see at the same time, etc.

Yes, I can see how this would be problematic.

Personally I'm not that interested in PVP multiplayer. I'd love to try LAN co-op in the singleplayer campaign though.

You can choose not to believe it all you want. It doesn't change anything. The simple fact of the matter is, roughly 3 million people bothered to play ESO's open beta, and an estimated 1.2 million purchased the game in the first week of release^[1].

To contrast this, 3.4 million copies of Skyrim were sold within the first 48 hours^[2]. And 7 million were sold in the first week.

Now that ESO has dumped the subscription fee, they're still struggling to move units. The game is in the process of being overtaken by Lego Jurassic World in sales on console already^[3].

Given the fact that ESO was obviously the answer to the people who did want multiplayer-enabled TES games, and given the relatively paltry sales figured, AND given threads like this one... your assertions don't hold water. The data simply does not corroborate your idea that any kind of majority wishes for there to be multiplayer of any kind in Bethesda's games.

As for your examples of other things being added to the game... again, they're irrelevant. Bethesda has never stated that they were averse to those changes, and they fit within the confines of their single-player philosophy. They also likely know that most of those kinds of changes will be addressed by the community post-launch, whereas the time they spend implementing a stupid multiplayer function instead of working on the single-player experience can't be replaced.

You can cry for multiplayer in your BGS games until you're blue in face, along with the other minority of players. I pray to Todd you never get what you want in that regard.

1: http://elderscrollsonline.info/news/number-of-subscribers-and-success-rate-of-elder-scrolls-online

2: http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/

3: http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/22/the-elder-scrolls-online-battles-lego-jurassic-world-for-uk-number-one-5257419/

Multiplayer =/= MMO, Bethesda Softworks =/= Zenimax Online

You can't seriously be using the sales figures of a subscription-based MMO developed by a new company to argue that multiplayer in a gamesas-made TES or Fallout is a feature only a minority would want.

To me, ESO was not the answer. What I'd like to see is the same singleplayer campaign we are used to, but enriched by the fact that at any moment a friend could jump in. take control of a follower, and then adventure with me as I play through the dungeons/quests.

The examples I provided are far from irrelevant. This is the explanation Tood Howard provided when asked why including a voiced-protagonist:

If you take a look at how stories are being told and a lot of them have a voiced character so if you weren抰 looking at our games before, you would expect the character to be voiced. (http://gamingbolt.com/fallout-4-bethesda-explains-why-the-main-character-will-be-voiced-talks-about-ps4xbox-one-memory)

So here you have it "you would exepect". Those are certainly not the expectations of the community mind you, but the expectations of gamers in general (Todd specifically ays 'if you weren't looking at our games before"). So, if we reach a point where games have to have a multiplayer component because that's the norm (and we are getting there), don't be surprised if Bethesda includes it too.

A topic can be "most requested", and still also be one of the most vehemently opposed. Heck, if you have enough different things requested, you can have a "most requested" thing that still only gets 25% or less interest.

(Ex: Ask ten people what pizza to buy. Three of them say "Hawaiian", the other seven are divided into three pairs and a single. Six of the ten utterly hate the idea of Hawaiian pizza. Thereby making it the "most requested", and also spectacularly opposed by the overall group.)

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The other big issue is that making the game multiplayer would irrevocably change even the singleplayer game. 1) making the MP features would take time/budget away from the other parts, and 2) altering the engine, world-building, storyline, combat balance, etc.... to properly support MP would effect how SP played as well. So there is no "pleasing both sides" or "just play it SP, it'll be fine."

With two players in the game, they'll have to stay in sync (time-wise). Either they both enter VATS, or one of them is getting annoyed with constantly going into slow-mo while the other one is in the next room killing molerats.

Bethesda's game systems are built around a single player. Everything would have to be rebuilt for multiplayer--nothing that pauses game time works with multiple players, and forget about saving a complete game-state anywhere you like. World-persistence goes out the window when multiple players are involved.

Mutliplayer absolutely = MMO.

It doesn't matter if ESO was the answer for you or not. Zenimax Online was given the game because Bethesda Softworks thought it would be a good answer to the people who wanted an Elder Scrolls game with multiplayer features. Why do you think they spent so much time and money marketing it as "a true Elder Scrolls experience" in spite of the fact that it was an MMO?

And yes, the examples you provided are irrelevant, and so is your new one. Once again, a protagonist with voice-acting in no way, shape, or form dismisses their established philosophy.

Not to mention, this new [censored] you're trying to peddle is most definitely not something that was requested by many, if anyone at all. I can't remember a thread anywhere discussing how great it would be if Bethesda's games had PC voice acting. This is a decision Bethesda came up with on their own. Even your own quote alludes to that fact, in that he doesn't speak of it being requested at all. They decided that was the natural progression for them to make in their next game.

Meanwhile... "We always look into multiplayer, put lots of ideas on the whiteboard, and it always loses."

What you are advocating is detrimental to the kinds of games Bethesda makes. They know that the MAJORITY of their fanbase would not want to see the single player aspect of their favorite games lessened because of multiplayer components being strong-armed into the game. Period. It's not happening... not now, and hopefully not ever.

Ehhhhh. Yes, MMO is a type of multiplayer. But that doesn't mean that all multiplayer is MMO. Divinity:Original Sin, for instance, is two-player co-op. Then there's all the "local" co-op MP games that don't go online at all. Heck, "lobby" based games where you find some players and then go play a 4-8 player game, aren't MMOs.