You guys heard of MAG? This PS3 game with like 250 online players all playing a FPS at the same time in an almighty frag fest.
We all had this dream at some point "what if every NPC was a human character?" With human intelligence. How marvelous that would be right? Like we all thought how wonderful 1:1 motion would be until we realised we all sucked at real world sports and that for games to be fun you have to limit capability.
I dont know about you guys, but I'm fairly new to online gaming and not really a competitive guy. Stepping out onto the field of battle online I went fron a managable and enjoyable single player experience, to a confused battlfield where every enemy was a real person. All as skilled, or more skilled than me. It completely changed the dynamic of the game and wasn't fun at all. I was even killed within a fraction of a second respawning.
To me, games are about empowering you, to make you feel special, just that little bit better than the competition. Your lifebar is bigger, your gun does more damage, your intelligence is higher than NPCs. You want to be that ace pilot, that Arnie Commando style character that can defeat an army of 200 at once.
How you feel about a future of games where everything is interconnected? There is no multiplayer sectioned off, the game exists online and every character is a real person. Ambitious? Scary? Unfocused?
How would these things work and why are they preferable to a focused single player experience?
Aside from that, what kind of online interactions do you value the most? I like co-operative experiences, helping rather than hurting. And usually slower paced or easier I guess.
Properly developed netcode should take into account packet transfer delay in order to deliver an experience as seamless as possible. When that is not possible (i.e. crappy servers, or peer to peer wonky connections such as the ones over Live) the game will try to resynchronize all players by pausing for small periods of time, that intermittent pausing is what most of us associate with lag.
Different games use different methods, but the server is what keeps games playable. Lag is created by the time it takes for the data to reach the server and then from the server back to the player and other players. Given that data is not always transmitting at the same speed between players or even from the same player, it must correct itself in order to sync the data.
How this is reflected on the players' side is typically where there's variation. Traditionally, the characters may warp on occasion or at least have a little clipping. Halo 3 does it the opposite way and actually warps the trajectory of shots (you can see it in the sniper rifle trail in replays).
Brawl actually seems to wait until the action is relayed back to the user from the server before the game reflects the action which causes the delay in everything on a poor connection (as opposed to typically you see the action happen immediately, then the consequence isn't exactly as expected because everything on your screen is slightly behind).
Also, because this is all on the server, if you're not using a dedicated server and instead a player is the host, he obviously experiences virtually no lag and has a big advantage.
Pfft, WoW has more players than that!
MAG would be pretty cool for novelty value, but that's about it.
I'll try and think of something better to say after I've been to the toilet.
Have you ever seen the freaky chicken dance? I was so freaked out I could barely speak! There is no predicting that.
Fedor did a chicken dance once. Fujita had trouble predicting that!
Online gaming that actually works began with XBL. (Yeah, yeah, I used to play Doom on dial-up, and Phantasy Star on Dreamcast, but XBL pulled it all together). On day one of XBL I took the day off work, drove around until I got an XBL kit and registered my current screen name - Claude. I played NBA2KX against some kids in Atlanta, then against a dude in Seattle, and on and on for hours. It was a compelling and uncomfortably intimate experience. On that very first day I had people drop out of games when they started losing.
The only other games I have played online have been shooters, and I've been abysmal at them, but I have found them to be just as enjoyable.
What MS has done is amazing, making something that did not exist into something that is taken for granted, or even an enduring, compelling reason to buy their consoles. (even though I hate them for their Thompson Drive quality garbage hardware).
The future of online gaming is somewhat threatened by a lack of net neutrality, with companies starting to cap bandwidth in the US. In Australia most broadband packages cap at 10 GiB a month before you are slowed to 64kbps. With an average gaming session costing 100 MB an hour (assuming the fucking garbage developers don't have any updates for your game) this severly cramps your ability to game (asuming you have any game given the prices in Au).
Yeah I think so too. I put a good deal of time into the beta and I totally love it. I wish the full or 'real' game would hurry up and start.I evaluate online multiplayer on a game-per-game basis. Online multiplayer isn't just something that should be thrown in to artificially lengthen the life of the game. In fact, it needs to be more fine-tuned and glitch free than most single player games, imo. If I'm playing your standard shooter and there's a huge misbalance in weapons, or level balance, or lag's a constant problem, or ridiculous amounts of glitches/exploits are being used, it's an instant deal breaker for me.
As for other things discussed: I prefer co-op multiplayer over competitive (though competitive co-op is sometimes a fun twist), and I think MAG looks brilliant. Though it doesn't offer you escapism by giving you super powers, it still gives you the ability to become a soldier, and participate in a large battle. I'm, in a way, kind of a military nut, so I appreciate that brand of gameplay.