Has Online Ruined Some Games In A Way?

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crispychicken49
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TL;DR Before I digress, I will say, Online is a huge benefit, in that you get to play with an almost unlimited amount of people, at any time. But just like a lot of good things, there are always disadvantages, and with online gaming, there's a big one.

Back in the days of PSX/2, and a part of the Xbox's lifetime, Online gaming wasn't available. It was just a PC thing. That meant, that the only way fix major game breaking bugs and flaws through major mechanics was to release another version of the game. Ultimately, it would result in a higher cost, thus game developers tended to thoroughly check the game for anything that could break the game.

When online gaming went to consoles, the main purpose was to let gamers play each other, without having to go over to another person's house. It also allowed you to verse other people around the world, raise your skill level at the game, and then the big one. Update the game through patches. This method was more cost effective than releasing a version two of the game. It also meant that about 90% of your customers would get the update.

Now off of the history lesson, and onto the subject. Why I think, online ruined some games. With the introduction of online, the developers get the mindset that, if something is broken, we can just fix it in a patch, without spending a whole bunch of money, and get it to all the fans. The problem with this is, the game comes packaged flawed. That means that the people who are fortunate enough to have online gaming will get the patch. The people who don't have online gaming, will have to either play with a broken game, or not play at all. This then hurts sales, by making potential fans turned away from the game, because they can't play with a fully polished game. Then when the developers decide to create the patch, they keep the mindset of fixing everything with a patch, and then when released, it could create new problems, or even fail to fix all of the problems.

TL;DR-Basically, dev's used to try and do everything good the first time, now with patches that can afford to do it one, two or even ten times over, while the gamers suffer from a flawed experience.

That being said, I want to point out, I have been tested, and I'm not insane.
 
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I 100% agree, another problem is that the game has a perfect amount of content, but just because the Devs can add content people complain about "no" content.
 
Totally, last year i bought f1 2010 and had to wait a month before i could play it and this year i bought nascar 2011 and had to wait 3 months before i could play that. So now i no longer preorder and wait to see what the forums have to say. Which has the benefit if the games crap i save myself £40.
 
So I'm not the only one. :D This was my first reaction to the introduction of major online content for games. It is annoying to come up against bugs, but proper games should be fully checked for such bugs before release. I feel sorry for people who buy a console, and can't connect to the net for various reasons. They might buy a game, and find that is is very broken, and be unable to get a patch for it.

Plus, Online gaming has brought about some "cheesing". If you were sitting in a room with friends playing a multiplayer game, you are accountable for you decisions, like spamming grenades at a reloading station (ref: Star Wars Battlefront). Plus, you can easily interact with you friends in the flesh.

Maybe I'm nostalgic (even though I'm 20) for my console era (the PS2). One of major focuses for games these days is online multiplayer. My internet connection is as slow as a wet weekend, and I'm on a limited plan. I have no idea how much a multiplayer session is in data, and I don't want to get slapped with a huge charge for exceeding data download limits. This is my case, and I can bet that there are others in my boat.

The long and the short of this TL,DR post is, that multiplayer confines the gamer who cannot access the internet.

PS: The focus on multiplayer has significantly reduced a decent singleplayer experiance. FPS games have gone from 10-12 hour tough campaigns to 2 hour semi-interactive movies, (Ok, enough, I shall put the posting down and go outside)
 
This is an issue I feel strongly about too. I don't really have internet access on my ps3, so I can't play online. Nor can I download patches. Another issue to add to this thread is that the focus on online gaming is (understandably) growing, but sometimes that can leave us offline gamers feeling a little short-changed. We still have to pay the same price. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that some games feature rushed single player campaigns.

One of my main gripes with the likes of Modern warfare 1 + 2 was the fact that you couldn't play multiplayer modes against bots. Is it really that hard to implement? I remember having a blast with the original Unreal Tournament even though I always played offline.

Instead, 13 or so years down the line, the most I can do is run about empty maps. A little extra coding to include bots could add months of play time to certain games.
 
I completely agreewith you. I have 8 or 9 games for PS3 and all of them were bought cheaply and after patches, except GT5 that came with my PS3 (but this is more because of price, not patches :p). Also, before any buy I check reviews and all that stuff so I know what I expect.
However, I still remember on PS2 days when there were no net or patches (for me), no reviews just games that were made the correct way. Look at GTA VC or SA, immense games incredibly stable, or GT4... just buying for pure passion:) But now, no way. Life is harder and there is less...credibility.
 
I could give a three hour lecture on how online connectivity has harmed video games, but I'll spare everybody the boredom and say that I 100% agree about the patching.

I also completely agree that online multiplayer just plain sucks, because of the 3% or so (who often seem much more numerous) who ruin the game for everyone else either by intentional game breaking or taking the game so seriously that they refuse to try any play style other than the one that has been found to be the "best". The fact that people are able to hide behind a computer and never have anybody know who they are eliminates any shame they might have had for cheating/playing too hard/etc. There's also no peers there to tell them to stop being a douche.

Even leaderboards suffer from this curse. As much as devs try to balance the game, there is always going to be an advantage somewhere, and the leaderboards become completely pointless unless you are using the "best". Of course, this could be fixed with leaderboard filters, but few games ever seem to have these, or if they do, they're not enough.

Then there's the issue of devs wasting resources to develop multiplayer sections for games that have no business being multiplayer. Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto, etc. These are heavily story driven games that are best experienced alone, where there is one hero who has something special to elevate him above everyone else in the world. Simply pretending that others can have these powers just seems.. wrong.

But of course, the obvious answer is to just ignore the multiplayer content, which I largely do. But still, don't you always get the feeling that the game could've been better if it didn't have multiplayer?

I too am not insane.
 
I totally agree that online has ruined gaming to a certain extent....

Being able to deliver DLC and updates so easily has led to sloppy game development and a 'release first patch later' mentality. It also allows them to hold back content and charge you for it even at game launch.

Most games have become so multiplayer orientated that dev's focus totally on it to get sales then give a stupid 6 hour half baked campaign. Games which are still more single player driven are forced to put some kind of online mode in for the hell of it which just wastes disc space and dev time.

The most fun I've had out of games has been single player in the PS2 days with the occasional in room multiplayer. Online is OK but I would say its brought more bad than good.
 
I'll play Devil's advocate then. I think online gaming can be and is a tremendous addition to console gaming.

It's opened up whole new genres of games and created simulation opportunities never before afforded to console players. Now you can have a full 11 vs 11 match of soccer and a 6 vs 6 game of hockey online. You can have a realistic war happening anytime of day right in your living room too.

Patching has allowed for developers to push the envelope of some major games. Say what you will about the Call of Duty series (which I no longer play) but with a game like that they can choose to tweak weapon specifications at anytime, fix map bugs, and reduce glitches which just aren't entirely possible to find without millions of gamers to test it.

Battlefield 3 is going on 2-3 years development time, alpha trial, and beta before release and I guarantee it will ship with bugs simply because it's not feasible to keep a game from release just to find those last few bugs and glitches.

You can't tell me that psx games didn't have bugs because they tested them more. I know they did, I played them too. Now they have the ability to almost literally rewrite the game through updates and patches.

DLC is another matter entirely though and I'm strongly, strongly against most of it.
 
There are strong cases for and against online gaming. I don't really think it would kill developers to include bots for offline players to experience multiplayer modes. That's the way they always used to do it until the current gen. It's just lazyness really.
 
For a casual gamer, these are all relative non-issues for me. The BIG issue for me is that I only have time to play in 20–30 minute stints every week or so, and every time I boot up my damn PS3 I have to wait 15 minutes to download and install an update. Ergo, I’ve not managed to play anything in the past few months.
 
I take it you play online? If not, then you could always just disconnect from the internet.
 
I agree with all the above.
What is worse is when a game is released untested and sometimes unfinished (wether it's due to budget or timeline issues) it doesn't really matter.

Then the game ends up failing on the market, but could have been a great game and had lots of potential with some dev support and patches, but due to poor sales, all support gets dropped. Then we end up with a game that is pretty much broken and we can't do squat about it.

That's what pisses me off the most.
 
I pretty much feel that now that online is here, it's a necessity. Online play is more valuable than offline play, and the ability to eliminate game breaking bugs is a huge plus.

The only potential downside would be developers becoming lazy and released unfinished games. But I don't really see that. Two examples would be Gran Turismo and Armored Core.

GT5 was an unfinished game, that's true, but that issue has been continually improved. It also, in theory allows PD to listen to the fans and continually evolve the game. Compare this to GT2. I don't know how common the bugs I encountered were, but some were fairly annoying. Plenty of out of track glitches, but the biggest one was "car destruction" bug. I found this after having played for a while. Randomly, my most used car (Viper GTS-R) would suddenly gain 10,000,000 hp (or some crazy number). The first time this happened I was pretty amused and tried to take it to the test course, but the car was immobile. It just sat at the line. Obviously I'd have to sell it. The price listed was a number similar to the hp. However upon selling it, I either got nothing or the regular price. I never found out what caused it (and it kept happening) and I never got it fixed. A close GT5 equivalent would be the game save size bug. It's a good think that that was patchable.

AC on the other hand had an issue of balance. Some games were better balanced than others, but there were always overpowered weapons in multilayer during the PS1 and PS2 era. When the PS3 came around, AC4 was released. Initially, it wasn't very well balanced at all, but 6 update patches were released for the game which made it the most well balanced in the series. This probably couldn't have happened without FromSoftware monitoring the effectiveness of various weapons in real, competitive PvP. Without being able to patch they would have had to try to get the same level of balance in one or two re-releases or expansions of the game that would have cost more money and wouldn't have benefited from a large test group (all of the online players).

In short, I really don't think that online has many downsides. Maybe it does have a few, but they're all overshadowed by the positives. Going back to the way things were would probably just kill games for me.
 
In short, I really don't think that online has many downsides. Maybe it does have a few, but they're all overshadowed by the positives. Going back to the way things were would probably just kill games for me.

There are more than a few.

-No story mode unless co-op
-You can't play it unless others are also playing the game.
-If the server is down you can't play
-If you have an issue with your own internet you can't play
-hackers, modders, idiots that don't play very fair, ruins the whole experience.
-Greater cost to run bigger servers, plus the increase in used game sales means an increase in "pay to play" style programs.
-12 year olds somehow get online and scream rather vulgar things
-Very few games have good matchmaking, again ruins the experience
-Many developers have locked content on the disc only to charge for it later.


I'm sure there is more.

I don't mind online play, I just hate the way developers seem to be doing it and what it has done to most games as a whole. It should be an addition to the single player mode, not a move to replace single player.
 
It does hurt the single player aspect of some games. Some developers dump all their time into developing the MP and it makes for a lackluster single player campaign.
 
It does hurt the single player aspect of some games. Some developers dump all their time into developing the MP and it makes for a lackluster single player campaign.

I believe that there was a title that people expected a MP since the Single player campaign was awesome...
 
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