Is online gaming really the future?

[Kumagoro]

Of course it is but i dont think its a good thing.

Take for example the game Socom 2, its a really good game online and very addictive. The things which ruin it are the lag ,the people who cheat, and the people who use unfair advantages.

For those who dont know, the game is a 3rd person team death match war game. Unfortunatly the people who programmed it didnt have the foresight to see that having better guns on one team makes playing unfair and ultimately no fun to play. Originally there were unwritten gentlemans rules which people followed and it was much more fun to play.

The game also ranks everyone that plays but if you lose the game (calculated at the end) you lose a lot of points and rank. So people if they lost use to abort which ruined the rank. To fix this they made it so that people who aborted lost points .. more then they would if they stayed. This stopped people aborting but all the people who only care about winning started using the "banned" weapons. This has made playing a lot less fun.

The thing is with a bit more common sense and thought they could have made it better isntead of worse.

[mike_w]

In reply to the title - I hope not. Online gaming is all well and good, but sometimes single player is the best for certain things - you can take your time more, you can have a storyline, etc.

Online gaming also tends to involve a lot of people. While most people tend to be alright, it only takes a few to ruin everything. Some things are better played with friends or just with other people, but equally so, offline games are good in a different kind of way.

[klarrix]

I think that in all games there shall always be an 'offline' singleplayer experience as it is impossible to immerse players into a game when they get told by hAxx0r186 that they were "pwnt!11! lolz" everytime they die.

In most ways, games are more fun to play online and the 'human' aspect adds to longevity, but it can also detract if the community is unfriendly or has diminished since release and so it is unwise to rely entirely upon being conected to other players. Still, nowadays its actually weird to find games without online capeabilities so it definitely seems to be where things are headed..

[iMc]

I was reading about a game which was like C&C Red Alert but every individual unit was controled by a real person and there was an overall general, again a real person who directed what he wanted his 'troops' to do. Now in theory this sounds immense and great fun, but in all honesty it could never happen because you can't get that many people to co-operate.

It's gonna take one hell of a game to make mass team based online games fun. I can't see it happening in the near future either.

[directhex]

I was reading about a game which was like C&C Red Alert but every individual unit was controled by a real person and there was an overall general, again a real person who directed what he wanted his 'troops' to do. Now in theory this sounds immense and great fun, but in all honesty it could never happen because you can't get that many people to co-operate.

there are a few with a system like that - Natural Selection mod for HL, or Savage for Win/Linux

[iMc]

Is it possible to get good games regularly?

I suppose NS will be ported to source at some point. May check it out then.

[Rave]

The only online game I've ever played is Tribes 2. It's been out for a long time now; you still get a few asshats, but in general it's pretty damn cool to shout 'Repair me!' after your bomber has been shot down and have the pilot, who's probably sat at a computer 4000 miles away, run over and fix you up before you both run off to cause as much havoc as possible around the enemy base.

Rich :¬)

[mr_anderson187]

im a slave to PSO, unbelievably addictive MMORPG

although ruined on both xbox, pc, and dreamcast by cheating scum

[Bazzlad]

I'm majorly into Dawn of War, haven't come across cheaters, but some bastards fight without honour. Serious Vehicle overkill etc. Then I feel bad for playing nasty back. It's a downward spiral!

[Butuz]

I was reading about a game which was like C&C Red Alert but every individual unit was controled by a real person and there was an overall general, again a real person who directed what he wanted his 'troops' to do. Now in theory this sounds immense and great fun, but in all honesty it could never happen because you can't get that many people to co-operate.

It's gonna take one hell of a game to make mass team based online games fun. I can't see it happening in the near future either.

Planetside comes very close to being the ultimate onlin game.

ITS FPS, but then you team up with groups of 10, those groups of 10 can team up with 2 other groups of 10 to becomne a platoon, those platoons team up with 1-10+ other platoons to become an outfit, there are hundreds of outfits that play for your warring faction for want of a better word, there are three factions. Everyone in the game is a real person, theres no AI, there are thousands of players on each server.

There is team communication via text chat or via the built in voice chat, there is faclility's for squad, platoon, outfit and faction leaders to comunicate with various other people or groups of people.

Theres a basic experience system where you can earn battle experience points which lets you access better weapons / vehicles / etc, and command experience which lets you access more of the commanders stuff for people who like playing generals.

There are land based and air based vehicles that you can take command of and drive/fly, many vehicles require gunners etc so most are useless on your own.

The games totally team orientated and whilst it has had bugs and sometimes sony have been slow to respond, it has really set the president for things to come. Think of it as Halo / Halo 2 but done properly (with 2000 players in the game rather than 8)

Super

Butuz

[Zedmeister]

No way, I hope not. In some ways a game is like the telling of a story. With multiplayer, you have no control over that story and you end up playing a dynamic rather than a storyline. Take Thief for example: Here is a game that is impossible to play multiplayer without sacrificing the amazing atmosphere and well scripted storyline. There has been a Thief conversion for UT (Thieves V Guards) but again there is no cohesion, prone to cheaters (Guards hacking at every shadows) and no way to get the same kind of atmosphere. This doesn't make the Thievery conversion bad (apart from the cheating), just different.

I reckon multiplayer and singleplayer can exsist side by side. Multiplayer for competitive gameplay, singleplayer for storytelling and roleplay (not necessarily the RPG genre but the genral playing a role of thief, soldier, trapped scientist, et al).

[dkmech]

I'll second Butuz about Planetside. Its something I've been coming back to every 3 months and found new things to do. And it can be great fun, although you know how in an rts you build your troops and they stand there idle waiting orders - things like that happen but you can always fool around and chat while you wait. It has a great community too. And what other game, apart from maybe some MMORPGS where you have healing mages, has so many people willing to repair your armor, heal you or give you a lift in their tank? Its great!

[Fatboy]

Online gaming is here to stay, but ultimately it is about balance. You're always going to play single player games, become immersed in that narrative etc, but similarly, there is just an extra edge when you are playing against "real" opponents - be they next door, or on the other side of the planet. Like in any team activities, everyone is going to feel the most benefit if they can start playing with the same group of people consistently - again, it adds to the whole experience with an added level of competitivity. There are always going to be bad losers, bad winners and the inept - ultimately we play games for recreation (unless you are one of the select few professional gamers) and should just accept that you're always going to be able to get a game going online, but that it is going to be pot luck as to how its going to go (no Forrest Gump references please!).

[Zedmeister]

I was playing america online last night and its really bad for kiddys throwing there rattle out of the pram.

in one round a guy ran infront of someone firing long bursts of a SAW, and then spat his dummy when he got shot by him, next round he just ran up and shot the guy in the back of the head, so we kicked him.

in that same round, i accidently chucked a grenade right at my teammate and blew him sky high, he just messaged "lol dead again, no problem i die sooner or later"

I get team killed and just laugh, even when i was firing over the top of my teammate who had a barret sniper rifle, thought id give him some protection seeing as he was looking through his scope, he turned around to see who was firing, and there was me stood in USA uniform, same as him, he still stood up and i think probably through dumbness, shot me in the head with a .50 cal round Even then i only laughed about it, dumb people.

I predict one day though, everything is going to be online, when the connections are tens of gigabytes fast, we probably wont have massive hard drives, and instead run games straight of the internet, in a thin client way, so they can prevent piracy.

Gah, tell me about it man! Was playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein a while back. I was covering a group of Teammates defending a bunker as a medic and Started getting a high score from reviving the soldiers after a volley of panzerfaust rounds. This so called "Teammate" eventually comes over and drills me in the head for, and I quote "F*****g CHEAT, playing medic so you can have a high score". My fellows wern't too pleased at loosing their personal medic and promptly kicked him. Don't play online much these days, cause I can't stand these idiot kids that can't be bothered to play properly or type normally...

[Lee H]

Online gaming is getting bigger and also badder due to the amount of cheating scumbuckets out there that think using a "hack" or a "bot" is fun. Many people will not play online as they have seen this stupid behaviour on public servers and to be honest it is a disease that is affecting most online games nowadays.

Many games such as CS for example do not have good bots that react and respond to your actions like humans do, so online gaming is going to be more realistic until one day they create a PC AI that can control games like a human can (eeeek - skynet run!)

I've seen a lot of cheating and childish behavour on a lot of servers, but the main group of people that seem to have the "I am greater than thou" attitude are mainly a small group of wanna-be "pro" CS gamers. Why is it everyone that kills them is a hacking n00b, and everytime they get killed they blame lag, mouse issues ( jesus - these guys have more PC problems than half of the UK combined)...

Thats why I hate public servers and only use private servers now.

[Zedmeister]

Online gaming is getting bigger and also badder due to the amount of cheating scumbuckets out there that think using a "hack" or a "bot" is fun. Many people will not play online as they have seen this stupid behaviour on public servers and to be honest it is a disease that is affecting most online games nowadays.

Many games such as CS for example do not have good bots that react and respond to your actions like humans do, so online gaming is going to be more realistic until one day they create a PC AI that can control games like a human can (eeeek - skynet run!)

I've seen a lot of cheating and childish behavour on a lot of servers, but the main group of people that seem to have the "I am greater than thou" attitude are mainly a small group of wanna-be "pro" CS gamers. Why is it everyone that kills them is a hacking n00b, and everytime they get killed they blame lag, mouse issues ( jesus - these guys have more PC problems than half of the UK combined)...

Thats why I hate public servers and only use private servers now.

Completely agree, mate. Reason numero uno on why i don't play online anymore. The only time i multiplay is against a group of friends on a private server.