Are people oblivious to the fact that we exist?

[Haoie]

Wow!

I know now where to go when I want to feel self important.

[Octopod]

I like leader boards. If you suck try harder. If the leader boards piss you off then don't play, or just ignore the leader boards. I like leader boards most though for arcade style single player games. Those really show who sucks and who doesn't. It is funny looking at the Deathsmiles boards and seeing all the people that used 9 credits to beat the game. Arcade games were meant for leader boards, that is why we all had our three letter initials we always used as kids.

[Gamerforlife]

1. It's pointless. You kill some guys, start up another match, kill some more guys, start another match, kill some guys. Even if you're playing something like the original Halo with some friends in a living room, it still gets old quick for me. With a single player game, I can look forward to cool bosses, interesting new stages, some nice story elements. I feel like I gain something from the experience. I had a group I used to play Halo 1 with. It just go so boring after awhile, as it was basically just the same damn thing every time with got together. Mutli-player gets boring quickly for me.

Now, I had a friend come over once to watch me play Resident Evil 4. He was amazed by some of the bosses and cool moments. He actually made me like the game more than I already was. His enthusiasm for everything in the game rubbed off on me as I was playing it. Then we started taking turns. I'd die, he take over, he died, I'd take over. We kept playing that night until we beat it and we were just having a great time experiencing all the cool moments in the game, like that one part where you have to go through a gauntlet of ganados and Mike shows up in the combat helicopter to back you up. A cool moment made even cooler because I had a friend there to experience it with me. Multi-player death matches are nothing compared to the experiences a good single player game can provide. And my story just proves, that a single player game can entertain you and one or more friends. No multi-player required.

2. I like single player games because I can have accomplishments that no one can take away from me. If I S rank a few stages of a Devil May Cry game on Dante Must Die difficulty(not that I ever have LOL), that's a great achievement that no one can take away from me. Now you look at multi-player, you kick some ass, get a high rank, then some better players come along and kick your ass. Now your rank goes down

And I hate leaderboards for the same reason. "Wow, you're number 1 on the leaderboards, go you!!!" One day later after some more people put up scores. "Wow, you're down to like level 30 now, you suck"

The only kind of multi-player I can get into is co-op stuff. Admittedly, going through a beat'em up or Gauntlet style game with a friend or two can be lots of fun for me. And 2-d fighters can be fun to play against others, mostly because of how insanely over the top and cool combat can be in games like X-Men vs Street Fighter. It helps that I'm a sucker for pretty much anything 2-d like a lot of people here. However, I still prefer the enjoyment of a good single player game where I can enjoy a good story and take pride in whatever individual accomplishments I attain within the game and I love it too when I can show someone some awesome moments in a game like Shadow of the Colossus that are much more memorable than watching some nobodies get taken out with a plasma sword in a Halo game

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on a few of these points, Gamerforlife. First off, both multiplayer and single player modes offer the same thing over and over again: in multiplayer you kill a guy, while in single player you kill a guy. But jump in a decent multiplayer match and enjoy a round, and then play the map again and you'll see differences. Human opponents will try different tactics. AI will do the same thing over and over again. Play through a single player game more than once, and you'll see the same enemies in the same places do the same things over and over again.

I absolutely agree with you that leaderboards are annoying because I dislike being reminded of how often I die in a game...but then again, I consider it the price one has to pay to try new things, which I will do in multiplayer. I feel I can experiment with the game more in multiplayer, whereas I'm supposed to play it a specific way to get through a single player game.

I also dislike ranks which are based entirely on everyone's score. I feel unlockables work in multiplayer quite well, but I don't think they should offer a drastic advantage: case in point, the dog tag knife in Battlefield 2142. Get 75 kills with the knife, and the appearance changed. Compare it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where unlocking a few guns gave the player a large advantage over people just getting into the game. With a little skill the base gun was quite good, but players just coming in were at a disadvantage. This bothered me, so when I played I spent a lot of time with the base M-16. Made it more interesting. And when I maxed it out, I tried other weapons I had unlocked.

But to say that multiplayer doesn't offer the experiences that single player does...I just can not agree. I'll give you a few stories that happened entirely because of multiplayer:

Battlefield - Fastbilly and I stole a gasoline tanker, drove up a mountain and off a cliff, and rammed a helicopter piloted by a friend of ours in mid air, saving the rest of our team from being pinned down by said chopper.

Warlords: Battlecry III - A friend got bored and built an entire army of nothing but leprechauns. Listening to them sing about their pots of gold as they rushed the defenses of everyone else's base. I still have nightmares.

Asheron's Call - I created a character dressed like an enemy race in the game and declared myself a superhero. People remembered me three years after I quit the game, and there's now a statue of that enemy in that town.

Battlefield - In the map Carenten, we would steal the regular cars and engage in roller derbies in the middle of a large field. We would then attempt to ram tanks.

Battlefield - Fastbilly got really good at flying the planes upside down and knocking people's heads off with the tail.

Call of Duty - We discovered you could melee people with binoculars. The only time I was ever killed by binocs was to Fastbilly, who I beat down with a smoke grenade at the same time.

Guild Wars - We managed to synch up characters dancing about three months before the auto-syncing emotes were put in the game.

Battlefield 2142 - A squad of friends and I held a tower from a 64-man invasion while we waited for the rest of our team to start jacking points farther down the field.

World of Warcraft - A friend and I started a running battle against the Alliance in one area that lasted three days.

Guild Wars - Fastbilly tanked the economy.

I have lots more stories of multiplayer experiences with my friends(or just on my own in servers). I find the best way to enjoy multiplayer games is to play with friends of course, but I also find coming up with unique ways to play games extends the life far beyond what I can do with a single player game. Just be creative with your gameplay and understand that you'll likely die and get cursed out a bit...but even that is entertaining.

Also...are you complaining about repetitive gameplay? But...but we like Dynasty Warriors...

Well, one thing really stands out in this post. Multi-player game + fastbilly = fun stories

Games like Dynsaty Warriors can be repetitive, but they still provided me with a goal. I like that as I replay stages I am improving my character's stats as I go about unlocking new weapons and items. I guess with multi-player games I feel there is no real goal, hence my lack of interest. I'm not competetive by nature, so that doesn't matter to me and even it I was, ranks and leaderboard positions are such temporary things given the very large pool of online gamers you are competiting against. There's always someone better than you

Now you can have some cool experiences with multi-player, but consider the large number of boring, pointless matches in between those cool moments you mentioned. I'd rather spend that time playing a cool new single player game. And personally, as cool as those stories are, it still nothing to me compared with the experiences some single player games give me. First time taking down a colossus in Shadow of the Colossus trumps all of those stories, but now we're just talking about personal preferences and I respect your opinion on the subject


And @Pichu, that Gameinformer article is relevant to me. I also dislike the idea that all games require multi-player now

[Ack]

But the issue I have with that is that for every awesome sequence I have in a single player game, I also die and have to replay something or just experience a repetitive moment of gameplay. Or I'll play through the same thing over and over again to perfect a skill or grind a stat upgrade or new item or...well, yeah. Like in VF4, I played over 1000 matches against the AI to unlock items, and matches weren't memorable at all. If anything, those repetitive moments in both make the truly memorable single and multiplayer moments so memorable.

I just hope if we ever do meet we can sit down and play some games together, be it co-op or competitive.

And in regards to that article...no, I don't think certain games need multiplayer. Dead Space 2 will have multiplayer. I'm not quite sure how.

[Gamerforlife]

But the issue I have with that is that for every awesome sequence I have in a single player game, I also die and have to replay something or just experience a repetitive moment of gameplay. Or I'll play through the same thing over and over again to perfect a skill or grind a stat upgrade or new item or...well, yeah. Like in VF4, I played over 1000 matches against the AI to unlock items, and matches weren't memorable at all. If anything, those repetitive moments in both make the truly memorable single and multiplayer moments so memorable.

I just hope if we ever do meet we can sit down and play some games together, be it co-op or competitive.

And in regards to that article...no, I don't think certain games need multiplayer. Dead Space 2 will have multiplayer. I'm not quite sure how.

I see your point, I also hate it when I die in a single player game and have to rewatch some annoying cutscene again, like right before the last boss of God of War:Chains of Olympus. That's just as annoying to me as having to replay some annoying bit of gameplay again.

I'd certainly be down for fun co-op play if we ever met, and I could probably be talked into some multi-player too I guess.

Multi-player in Dead Space 2? I guess maybe they could do something like they did in Resident Evil 5 maybe? Dead Space is all about atmosphere though, with a lot of that coming from the sense of solitude. Weird

[MrPopo]

They did manage to shoehorn in multiplayer for Metroid Prime 2; they might use the same method for Dead Space 2, with the same results.

[Pichu]

I actually liked the MP2 multiplayer. It was awkward and a little slow, but it made for some laughs. But if it was magically taken away I wouldnt mind.