Anyone else find this game more fun in the singleplayer campaign?

[Bookslayer10]

I've always found that playing singleplayer is much more enjoyable than multiplayer, despite Barotrauma ostensibly being a co-op focused game. Playing with friends, playing on a discord server, and especially playing online really just aren't as enjoyable as getting to have complete control over an entire crew of bots.

It's probably related to how Barotrauma is supposed to be most fun when things go wrong and you can laugh and/or scream with other people. I, on the other hand, prefer things going smoothly 100% of the time. I don't think I lost a single bot on my Singleplayer campaign.

It's also just so boring to only be able to do one thing at a time - 90% of gameplay in a multiplayer sub is just waiting around until you finally get to do your job. If things go wrong, it's usually because someone forgot to do the job they were supposed to do. Meanwhile, in singleplayer it's constant action, or at least constant planning, and you as a player have much more control over whether things go well or not.

Finally, the big one: Coordinating multi-hour-long multiplayer sessions is a pain in the ass, and the utter convenence of being able to play singleplayer literally whenever you want is just SO much better.

[Daimyo]

I agree and was always turned off at the whole goofy/griefy/trolly aspects when I first followed this game (which I totally get is a very online/streamer/content driven aspect, just not for me). Given the deeper campaign and world simulation, I found that there is a really fun deep-sea sim game that I would only exist in my dreams as a kid (I used to play silent hunter games a but Barotrauma really adds a whole new element to the genre).

I'm currently doing a campaign playthrough with my wife and we have a bot crew which is a perfect balance since bots aren't the best at doing stuff outside the sub. Any type of game that allows you to manage NPCs or a crew is always a win for me since those are really really hard things to do in game development that not many people appreciate.

[アンジェル]

Started yesterday a new campaign with fellow Helldivers 2 players from a server I am playing on. It was on the one hand quite exhausting, chaotic and so on, with the exception of me everyone else being totally new to the game. But it was also great fun nonetheless and I was stunned by the surprise that people I thought might never like Barotrauma fell in love with Barotrauma for its awesome co-op mechanics.

It was a rough start and we literally are just at the start, with doing a beacon station like 30 minutes, and another 20 or so to get back to the station we started on because almost everyone died, the respawn shuttle did not work as intended, and the passengers we were supposed to transport are dead too.

Lots of laughter, confusion, more laughter and fun with a party of six.

It might be harsh to coordinate etc. yadayada but it is worth every minute and despite we did not achieve anything aside from having played a prolonged-learning-by-doing-tutorial we had a joyful evening.

With no one being medic me running around as captain to cure people's intoxication because they "cured" themselves by using too much morphine... suddenly our ship sinking because we ran out of fuel... one time we exploded because someone put too many rods in there... "what is this button doing?" FLUSH! ... "I just died out of nowhere! WHY?" me: why the ♥♥♥♥ is there no oxygen... oh crap.... ... yeah. Totally funny!

[Buggy Boy]

I agree with OP on all points. Nothing worse than putting in a few hours to a single round in multiplayer (mostly because other players either haven't a clue what they are doing, they take far too long to do it, or they're just mucking about) only to have the entire round either aborted by the host without warning or consultation (despite you knowing full well you could probably save the round single-handed - I've actually been the only survivor and completely fixed up the sub and piloted it to the end of the round before now, it's not that difficult for a seasoned player to do) or because the sub and crew were wiped out by some acts of sheer stupidity or random griefing. Having said that, it can be quite amusing to sit back and watch a griefer make the reactor go boom and kill all the useless idiots!

If any of that happens in single player then you're either just plain unlucky, or a really bad player and need to improve!

I think generally it's probably the seasoned players who switch to single player, having had enough of the shenanigans of multiplayer and just want to complete a campaign this century.

[jeetrix]

i disagree. i find SP very grindy and lost interest after a few rounds. Got into MP after about 2 hours of playtime and never looked back :-)
this game is a social experimentation laboratory with infinite replayability and it never ceases to amuse me on profound levels because of the way players interact