Era of "Play with your friends"

[Talscar]

It goes without saying, we are in an era of "Play with your friends".
This game probably will be great, but I wanna be able to play with my friends. 10 years ago it was challenging, but every year things improve and now we can play with friends beautifully!

Stalker is one of those games while I might be interested and looking forward to it, I am more or less trying to find ways to play larger games with friends.

Take Lethal Company, Great game including the bugs in it's current state. Meeting many great players along the way!
But it lacks enough content to really give a true adventure to it, and really is a mastery of mechanics with friends.

Space Engineers, very depthy and sometimes quite hard or complicated to play with friends.

Minecraft the only game no one will ever forget after becoming popular and FAMOUS and you can play with friends.

There are plenty more games like Factorio, Terraria yada yada.

Stalker is one of those games which it's only similar game seems to be TARKOV which is not on steam. And even though it is not, it was up for consideration, but is a Hardcore kinda game. something the friends I have are not up for.

Stalker, if it was really that good, it could afford to make itself open to a COOP player experience and move a slider to increase the difficulty by increasing enemy counts.

We have recently Tiny Tinas Wonder Lands which is a great game, it's run out of steam for me but still, it was still a great game!

We need to keep the door open to invite our friends now, we have the internet speeds and the technology is ripe for the taking!
So why not setup a Host game with an invite button for friends to join a coop session?

That would be so SICK!
Sure we might have the drama of "How the death/revive" loop will work. Why not do a knocked down mechanic where you need a medpak to revive a player, and you can move them between Areas or explore for medpaks?

See that is exactly where this game for anyone who has played stalker games before should be able to see... How to keep everyone in the game? IF you die, you normally have to reload an old save. So how do you do that in a coop for Stalker?


At the end of the day, I would love to have a COOP of Stalker more so than the single player or Deluxe edition. It just undersells itself because I like playing with friends.
Everyone will probably buy it, play it etc.
But we will still accrue more hours on average in multiplayer games because it creates a social gaming experience.
We need more of that in these kinds of games.

[Lechuza the Scoot]

That im aware of, this game won't have COOP, and at this point in development I doubt they'll add it.
There's multiplayer tho

[PsyWarVeteran]

Why bother writing all that when it's already been confirmed that there will be no coop?

[BlueSpark]

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

It goes without saying, we are in an era of "Play with your friends".

I'm not so sure about that. True, technology has advanced and we're seeing more cooperative games these days than we have in the past. But I think taking that as a basis to talk about an "era" might be going a bit too far.

Personally, I've been burned too many times by games that are technically fine to play solo, but have clear balancing deficiencies in that department that make the experience frustrating. So I appreciate it a lot when a developer like GSC makes it a point to commit to creating a dedicated single-player game from the ground up.

I wouldn't have any problem if they added on a co-op mode after releasing and bugfixing the main game. But as the two people before me have said, GSC has outright denied this possibility for STALKER 2.

[Lechuza the Scoot]

Originally posted by BlueSpark:

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

It goes without saying, we are in an era of "Play with your friends".

I'm not so sure about that. True, technology has advanced and we're seeing more cooperative games these days than we have in the past. But I think taking that as a basis to talk about an "era" might be going a bit too far.

Personally, I've been burned too many times by games that are technically fine to play solo, but have clear balancing deficiencies in that department that make the experience frustrating. So I appreciate it a lot when a developer like GSC makes it a point to commit to creating a dedicated single-player game from the ground up.

I wouldn't have any problem if they added on a co-op mode after releasing and bugfixing the main game. But as the two people before me have said, GSC has outright denied this possibility for STALKER 2.

That second parraf reminded me of Dead Space 3
Sad

[piet11111]

GSC was very clear that there is not going to be a Coop mode.

Maybe modifications can make it happen but thats going to be a wait and see situation.

[Andonbr]

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

It goes without saying ... followed by 474 word essay.

If it goes without saying, you should have gone without saying.

[Talscar]

Originally posted by Andonbr:

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

It goes without saying ... followed by 474 word essay.

If it goes without saying, you should have gone without saying.

And likewise you should not have read your 474 word essay.

Not to mention I am one of those people who would love this type of game to be coop.
Unlike other people.

[piet11111]

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

Originally posted by Andonbr:

If it goes without saying, you should have gone without saying.

And likewise you should not have read your 474 word essay.

Not to mention I am one of those people who would love this type of game to be coop.
Unlike other people.

Ehh i think it would be cool if we enter certain locations like the 100 rads bar to see actual players we could trade with but to play through the entire storyline with other players would imo be disruptive.

[Talscar]

Originally posted by piet11111:

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

And likewise you should not have read your 474 word essay.

Not to mention I am one of those people who would love this type of game to be coop.
Unlike other people.

Ehh i think it would be cool if we enter certain locations like the 100 rads bar to see actual players we could trade with but to play through the entire storyline with other players would imo be disruptive.

Fair fair.

The game was never designed around a coop experience.
I found it cool back in the day to tag along with other NPC's as they travelled but wish they could come with me. Or better still my friends because then I can actually converse with my friends :D

Being able to go to the bar and talk to other players or even trade, that would be pretty slick! Until we get people dropping tons of hacked loot or giving it away which disheartens the game experience. Also breaks lobbies.

[deimos]

The "Era of playing with your friends" doesn't exist. I played with my friends in Borderlands and Dead Island when I was younger. Now I don't have any friends to play with, so I avoid games focused on coop. There is no "era of playing with your friends". There is "an age of playing with your friends". And whether you grown out of this age or not.

[moparhippy420]

This "era" your speaking of is the microtransaction era, not the "play together" era. Purpose built single player experiences have taken a back seat to companies printing money with skins, battlepasses and emotes. This, of course, only making sense, and more importantly sells, when games are multiplayer.

We dont need to pay 60-100+ to have a vessel to have our screens littered with ads pushing us to nickle and dime ourselves to death. Theres plenty of that crap on the market already. What we need is an actual, full legnth single player EXPERIENCE. Not an excuse for companies to charge us even more for pointless junk. And not a game built from the ground up to push that ♥♥♥♥ on us, gameplay and innovation be damned.

[Crystal]

Stalker has always been a mostly single player experince, you may need to wait for a mod

[Talscar]

Originally posted by moparhippy420:

This "era" your speaking of is the microtransaction era, not the "play together" era. Purpose built single player experiences have taken a back seat to companies printing money with skins, battlepasses and emotes. This, of course, only making sense, and more importantly sells, when games are multiplayer.

We dont need to pay 60-100+ to have a vessel to have our screens littered with ads pushing us to nickle and dime ourselves to death. Theres plenty of that crap on the market already. What we need is an actual, full legnth single player EXPERIENCE. Not an excuse for companies to charge us even more for pointless junk. And not a game built from the ground up to push that ♥♥♥♥ on us, gameplay and innovation be damned.

I know what your saying. Fortnite is a perfect example of what you speak of. But it does not mean you have to give into that crap. Atleast responsible people don't, but Fortnite exploits younger people who use Mommy and Daddy's credit cards for a simple skin.
And while yeah, it's absolutely crap that this stuff happens, think about the costs behind one of those items for the game.

You have to pay for the VFX, 3D Modelling, Texturing, Rigging, Animations and in some cases Licensing.

Depending on how much work goes into it you are right, these things are not worth that much money to thousands if not millions of consumers.
I've paid freelancers $200 just for a model or a simple piece of art for game development, but AAA stuff costs a lot more and has all the bells and whistles.

Everyone can agree, Micro-transactions in games is crap. You pay a premium price for a premium game, you don't expect so many micro transactions, and when you think how much people spend in games from tens of dollars to thousands of dollars, it is defiantly exploiting the players by design and psychology.

But to be fair and sensible here. Your base game is all to paid a premium to have and play. The next item they sell can not give you an unfair advantage over another player otherwise that becomes pay-to-win.
Games are for skill and mastery of the mechanics.

Skins, Cosmetics are your choice, they don't openly offer an advantage unless we are talking for colours in environments that can affect stealth or who gets targeted first.
But when that is the intent, then that does turn it into intended pay-to-win mechanics of the sale. Otherwise it's free choice to spend or not.

[Talscar]

Originally posted by Crystal:

Stalker has always been a mostly single player experience, you may need to wait for a mod

That's correct,
Stalker SOC, CS, COP are all single player games with an arena style multiplayer which for me at-least never had players to play with.

If a Stalker game came out with a COOP I would be so thrilled to try and grab my friends to get into this game!
But I can't, it's flat-lined me there.

I really would love a nice Stalker like multiplayer experience with friends.
Closest thing I can think of is/was fallen earth, but that game is quite janky to get into and play, it's not a high quality gaming experience but once you know the game, it is tolerable.

[Crystal]

Originally posted by 11800H 3070P Talscar:

Originally posted by Crystal:

Stalker has always been a mostly single player experience, you may need to wait for a mod

That's correct,
Stalker SOC, CS, COP are all single player games with an arena style multiplayer which for me at-least never had players to play with.

If a Stalker game came out with a COOP I would be so thrilled to try and grab my friends to get into this game!
But I can't, it's flat-lined me there.

I really would love a nice Stalker like multiplayer experience with friends.
Closest thing I can think of is/was fallen earth, but that game is quite janky to get into and play, it's not a high quality gaming experience but once you know the game, it is tolerable.

Theres always Stalcraft, it may look weird but you can play it with your buds