Skyrim - Preview @ PC Gamer

Tragos said:

I have coop aRPGs and space shooters , i have no plans to explore lore and sneak around together with others.

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But that's not the reason you originally gave.

If you give the real reason when you explain your position, then it helps me to understand where you're coming from.

Personally, I think it's strange that people who enjoy cooperative gameplay wouldn't want to play a TES game in that way, but such is how we all differ.

DArtagnan said:

Personally, I think it's strange that people who enjoy cooperative gameplay wouldn't want to play a TES game in that way, but such is how we all differ.

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Open world games to me are all about exploring at my own pace. Other players tend to ruin that.

I'm a hermit nut, so playing Minions of Mirth was a huge step out of character. Still, it was fun for a few months and PKing wasn't allowed on most of the servers. It was cooperative and I had fun taking new players through the ropes. There was a pretty steep learning curve.

DoctorNarrative said:

Open world games to me are all about exploring at my own pace. Other players tend to ruin that.

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That's kind of the same way I feel. I do enjoy a good co-op experience sometimes, but I prefer to explore alone in Bethesda games. I don't even like AI companions, with Dogmeat in FO3 being the only exception.

DoctorNarrative said:

Open world games to me are all about exploring at my own pace. Other players tend to ruin that.

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I play exclusively with good friends - so that's never a problem for me.

The ideal implementation would be one where the game world was persistent, with drop-in features for the players.

The main storyline could progress independently, with or without a party structure.

Basically, it would be like a small MMO - without the subscription based grind-inducement and with the finality of a singleplayer story.

DArtagnan said:

I play exclusively with good friends - so that's never a problem for me.

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I don't really see how that matters. Unless you are of one hive mind you are going to have different exploration impulses and quest priorities and I don't want to compromise. Also having someone there talking to me, unless they remain in full roleplay character, would harm immersion for me.

In a linear game within a genre that has less to do with immersion, like Left 4 Dead or Boderlands, I can enjoy coop. Not in an RPG like this though, not at all.

JDR13 said:

That's kind of the same way I feel. I do enjoy a good co-op experience sometimes, but I prefer to explore alone in Bethesda games. I don't even like AI companions, with Dogmeat in FO3 being the only exception.

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Yeah, I liked the companions in New Vegas writing-wise and such, but I tended to just use them for their quests and then ditch them. I like to explore alone.

DoctorNarrative said:

I don't really see how that matters. Unless you are of one hive mind you are going to have different exploration impulses and quest priorities and I don't want to compromise. Also having someone there talking to me, unless they remain in full roleplay character, would harm immersion for me.

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As I said, it would work best if the world was persistent and the main storyline could progress separately. That way, people could explore alone or together as they felt like - which would make the impulses a minimal issue.

Part of the social experience, however, is that you have to find a way to work together - and that's something I find extremely easy and pleasant when playing with friends. Which is why it's not a problem that we have different impulses. That's the kind of thing I find easy to overcome with good friends. So easy, in fact, that it's never a real issue.

Immersion is a good point, but there's really nothing to prevent you from playing the game alone. It's not a requirement, but a feature for people who enjoy the social experience.

To me, having experiences in singleplayer games often feel too far removed from what happens in the actual world. As such, I find it ever harder to immerse myself in a world that I know is never going to be shared with anyone.

Since I discovered cooperative multiplayer, back with games like Diablo - I've never been able to fully enjoy singleplayer games in the same way as before. The same is true for several of my friends - and we still get together when time allows.

It was really quite profound for me, and I think it's unfortunate that so few people seem to enjoy the experience. I wonder if they've ever really tried playing a cooperative CRPG - but I guess most people here know what a good PnP session is like - and it's much the same kind of experience, except you don't depend on a dungeon master having a good day.

In a linear game within a genre that has less to do with immersion, like Left 4 Dead or Boderlands, I can enjoy coop. Not in an RPG like this though, not at all.

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As I said, to each his own.

Though I think you might be surprised if you actually tried it. Have you played a non-action RPG with friends?

Sometimes, having a good social experience can - in itself - be an inspiration for the concept as a whole.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

How did the name actually evolve ?

To me, it's an almost perfect example of an alliteration - I'm deeply impressed any time I read it.

And that's the only reason why I could remember this name.

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I really don't know where the name came from, the original guy who made it is no longer associated with it.

I really only made a dungeon(the pyramid one) and the city on the cliffs. It was made using torque....so easy to make 3d objects for it. I think it would be easy to use to make a MM game as well

Sorry for being totally off topic.

DArtagnan said:

If they could make it work properly, that would be great.

However, such a thing is a gigantic undertaking - because if a game of this scope isn't designed for multiplayer, i'd say it's close to impossible for the modding community to make it work with a decent implementation.

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Options are always good, and if they can do what Fable can with coop, I would not see why that's bad. You'll have to talk to one of the Skyrim devs to find out about the direction they took to only put in single player, we can only speculate and reason to a degree. Otherwise, you'll have to depend on other users to come up with a mod to fulfill your wishes, of which I still have alot of faith in that they can do with Skyrim down the road.

rune_74 said:

..
Hmmm, I wish some fantasy maker would look at how system shock 2 handled char gen, that was genius.

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Best ever!

C

DArtagnan said:

Though I think you might be surprised if you actually tried it. Have you played a non-action RPG with friends?

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Not in a while... Diablo 2 back in the day, and WoW when I played it for about a week. Nothing much else since then. I don't have the impulse really, the way I play these games just does not suit coop.

DoctorNarrative said:

Open world games to me are all about exploring at my own pace. Other players tend to ruin that.

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QFT plus extra characters...

While I totally agree that a coop TES game could be fun, I think Bethesda would be better off doing something like that as a spinoff rather than in their main series. TES are ambitous open world games, and even with the huge team they run now, its clearly a difficult task to make it all hold together. Now imagine making everything even more complicated by having to consider coop play. It seems more than likely to me that it would mean even more balancing problems, cut corners, streamlining etc. I think the chances for a great open world sandbox action rpg are much better if they concentrate on that. It would be a nice project for an ambitous addon or spinoff product though. Does Obsidian do multiplayer games?

No coop for me. Even with Kayla sitting a few feet away, I want to go this way, she wants to go that way. She wants to twiddle with her inventory for 10 minutes and go offload loot back in town, I want to pursue that quest. Certainly none of that is a big deal - but we'd both rather just do our own thing. People are wired differently - some want that social interaction - some don't.

Dhruin said:

No coop for me. Even with Kayla sitting a few feet away, I want to go this way, she wants to go that way. She wants to twiddle with her inventory for 10 minutes and go offload loot back in town, I want to pursue that quest. Certainly none of that is a big deal - but we'd both rather just do our own thing. People are wired differently - some want that social interaction - some don't.

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I see what your saying, but what about if they could do whatever they want and you could as well? The world is just shared, you don't even have to be on at the same time. This of course would require a world that is sufficiently big enough to handle that(think daggerfall) but I think the potential for self contained rpg multi worlds would be great.

Dhruin said:

No coop for me. Even with Kayla sitting a few feet away, I want to go this way, she wants to go that way. She wants to twiddle with her inventory for 10 minutes and go offload loot back in town, I want to pursue that quest. Certainly none of that is a big deal - but we'd both rather just do our own thing. People are wired differently - some want that social interaction - some don't.

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100% agree, you wrote it better than I did.

If the players operate independently without interaction, then it's no longer really coop then. I like the idea of a local (i.e. not an MMO server) shared world, though, where people could cooperate. Sounds like NWN persistent worlds a bit.

Thrasher said:

If the players operate independently without interaction, then it's no longer really coop then. I like the idea of a local (i.e. not an MMO server) shared world, though, where people could cooperate. Sounds like NWN persistent worlds a bit.

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Well you could still cooperate....or do your own thing.

OR, you could all join our regular sessions in DDO!!