why no multiplayer?

[beer is good for migraines]

VR still doesn't have a kickass multiplayer FPS game. The only very active ones are Pavlov (most active) and then Onward, and the rest are just active enough to be playable with others or have nobody playing. Half Life Alyx could finally have been the game to fix this problem. Pavlov doesn't offer much variety and nothing unique as far as gameplay whereas a new Half Life deathmatch would probably be extraordinarily fun so this is a truly epic soul-crushing letdown of the 1st-world-problem variety here, man.

[ognar]

Because Half-Life was never known for multiplayer, but for singleplayer.

[beer is good for migraines]

And yet they made half life: deathmatch, a stand-alone deathmatch game based on half life.

[ognar]

Originally posted by ContraVania:

And yet they made half life: deathmatch, a stand-alone deathmatch game based on half life.

Yea, exactly.

[LemonyNebula]

A few reasons possibly.

First, as ognar said, it has always been a single player game. So there never was a focus on it.
Multiplayer games tend to sacrifice story immersion. The social interaction between players keeps people out of the story and characters as they tend to focus on what each other is doing than what they should be.
We tend to muck around more with friends than we do alone. Which I certainly am not against, but it may simply not suit the more serious tone this may be aiming for. This game is meant to be promoting VR as a serious gaming system after all.

Second, it could have cost a lot of resources. Dependant on the mechanics, syncing up other players movements in a game with so many interactabels could be difficult. Most of the current multiplayer games have less interaction with scenery and stuff so it has less to sync. By not worrying about servers they can experiment more with mechanics.
Then there is the time it would take to actually implement when they are probably already pushing time to the limit. It really is a huge thing to implement.

Third, it could pull focus of design. With one player, the story can be built around them. With two or more, you either have to specifically make it work for multiple people or treat the others as tag alongs unrelated to the story. Like the last point, servers may need a different design too if this is heavy on physics interaction.

Basically its a single player game, and if it was to be a multiplayer game, they would want to fully focus on that. They mentioned multiplayer games in an interview, saying that they wanted to avoid multiplayer only games for now due to the smaller playerbase and wanting to keep the game alive after release. So this game should help pave the way for multiplayer games if it raises the player base, which seems to be the case with the high amount of sales currently.

Overall, these are some guesses on what we have heard and know about multiplayer games.
If we are lucky, someone may attempt a multiplayer mod down the line like they did the last games as the tools will be open to mess around wtih, but for now I find it pretty understandable why they would keep a single player designed series single player on a new system that has a smaller player base.

[Chaunsey]

when it comes to half life games, it is always about single player, and creating a great engine first.

the multiplayer comes along soon after, there is a very good chance there is already a source 2 MP shooter in the works, or at the very least, support for it in source 2.

[leppermessiah]

Yes, let’s add more feature to the game that took 13 years to make.

How about some RTX shenanigans on top of it too! Maybe some microtransgenderations?

[Chaunsey]

Originally posted by leppermessiah:

Yes, let’s add more feature to the game that took 13 years to make.

How about some RTX shenanigans on top of it too! Maybe some microtransgenderations?

it didnt take near 13 years to make.

the earliest parts of what became HL:A were started around 5 years ago at most.

[leppermessiah]

Originally posted by Chaunsey:

Originally posted by leppermessiah:

Yes, let’s add more feature to the game that took 13 years to make.

How about some RTX shenanigans on top of it too! Maybe some microtransgenderations?

it didnt take near 13 years to make.

the earliest parts of what became HL:A were started around 5 years ago at most.

5 years... 13 years...

[supersonic2233]

Considering the game will have modding, i wouldnt be surprised if someone mods in a deathmatch mode.. before valve makes one themselves

[Tottery]

I've heard good things about Pavlov. Give that a try.

[Sham!]

Originally posted by ognar:

Because Half-Life was never known for multiplayer, but for singleplayer.

other hl titles have multiplayer tho

most likely because of vr limitations (ofc vr is perfect already for most of you)
anyone that played some hl1 multiplayer would know that if you cant turn on a dime or bhop fast you'll die a lot

movement option are limited for vr and multiplayer alyx wouldnt hold a candle to older hl titles, at least when it comes to skill ceiling, and i expect that people that care about hl multiplayer wouldnt like to give up on that
but im sure it would be very immersive

[ognar]

Originally posted by Sham!:

Originally posted by ognar:

Because Half-Life was never known for multiplayer, but for singleplayer.

other hl titles have multiplayer tho

most likely because of vr limitations (ofc vr is perfect already for most of you)
anyone that played some hl1 multiplayer would know that if you cant turn on a dime or bhop fast you'll die a lot

movement option are limited for vr and multiplayer alyx wouldnt hold a candle to older hl titles, at least when it comes to skill ceiling, and i expect that people that care about hl multiplayer wouldnt like to give up on that
but im sure it would be very immersive

I never said that they did not have a multiplayer I have played all of them. Multiplayer in first Half Life was a lot of fun but kinda meh at the same time, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source just felt like downgraded version of it (for some weird reason) and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
is overall just bad.

Valve wants this game to be as good as posible and having multiplayer would just drag the game down. Not mentioning that there just are not many people who would play that, after all oficiall multiplayer mods in singleplayer oriented games are in 90% of the time dead on arrival (plus the fact that this is a VR game).

[beer is good for migraines]

Originally posted by Tottery:

I've heard good things about Pavlov. Give that a try.

i've already put 400+ hours into it. It isn't a bad game, it just is far from a great game. It does nothing bad yet does nothing new nor provides many features.

[Sham!]

Originally posted by ognar:

Valve wants this game to be as good as posible and having multiplayer would just drag the game down.

lol ok, i guess they didnt want hl1 and 2 to be "as good as possible" since they had multiplayer

but tell me why would multiplayer drag the game down?
why cant valve - a company always known for innovation™ - make a good vr multiplayer for alyx?

[LemonyNebula]

Originally posted by Sham!:

Originally posted by ognar:

Valve wants this game to be as good as posible and having multiplayer would just drag the game down.

lol ok, i guess they didnt want hl1 and 2 to be "as good as possible" since they had multiplayer

but tell me why would multiplayer drag the game down?
why cant valve - a company always known for innovation™ - make a good vr multiplayer for alyx?

A lot of this VR half-life's features rely on environmental interactions. Ensuring a similar play experience over a server means syncing pretty much everything in the scene to the other players. This is a challenging thing to do that would cost a lot of time and resources. Something they simply do not have after already pushing the game back.

They could release a deathmatch style multiplayer without those features, but that would mean removing most of the stuff that makes this game special. It would be slapping on a poorly done mode onto something that is meant to boast how serious a gaming system VR is. It would drag the game down.

They probably 'could' make a good multiplayer VR game, but not with the skeleton for Alyx. They mentioned about the possibility of multiplayer VR games but chose this game first, as they where concerned a multiplayer focused game's life span may be heavily shortened due to the smaller playerbase. It would be a waste of time and resources until they raise that playerbase. Half-Life: Alyx will hopefully do just that.