Originally posted by: Azn
That's why PC's are more focused online multiplayer.
You can't party on a PC like a console. It's the sitting arrangement. I can't see gamers crowding on a desktop to play games with their buds.
They don't want to do that.
What they want to do is play games like System Shock 2 cooperatively over the internet.
And I don't just mean last minute patch that adds 1 or more redundant players to what is in inherently a single player game. I mean make the game, the levels, the puzzles, everything in the game accommodating of multiple players. System Shock 2 with the coop patch gave a hint at how it could be with diversified roles alone (one person Psi and hacking, other person conventional weapons and weapons expert), even though the game wasn't designed to have two levels in play at the same time (characters split up in different areas) or simultaneous goals to accomplish.
Think about something like Dead Rising (I know it's 360 only but just demonstrating what coop should be). Diff players start in diff areas and players have to work together to help each other (pass critical game items like keys through the security gates, etc). In fact look how many scoops and stuff in the game cannot be done in one sitting. Split up, you get the lady trapped in the record store and I'll go find the security station to lock the front doors, while Joe scouts around for some food and weapons, vehicles, etc. Oh crap Joe got trapped , lets meet up at the escalators and go find him. etc. Find Joe, oh hey guys, look what I found, etc.
Games like Bioshock and Penumbra, instead of a voiceless radio, have that person on the other end in place of AI scripts with the only scripts being to synchronize the completion of cooperative tasks between players until they finally meet each other?
How fun would Deux Ex or Spinter Cell be with multiplayer coop, where players can do diff parts of the same mission at the same time (I'm aware they tried this in the last title, how did it turn out?). Instead of meeting an NPC already there who "infiltrated the complex in disguise and planted bugs for you" or "scouting out for snipers and marking locations" or "created a diversion while you hack the computer"; why can't that be another player who is actually DOING it?
I don't want coop games like Halo and Serious Sam where its nothing but redundant players and twice as many enemies. Instead take all of the most in depth time stealing single player games out there and replace the NPCs with your friends over the internet, and make them perform the purpose of the NPC with individual objectives that bring the players together at the right times.
Problem is games are merely all single player with multi player thrown in as a cookie cutter death match mode after the fact in almost every PC game. The story itself and the game mechanics and level and quest design have to accommodate multiple separate players at once and provide accommodations for a single player when friends aren't available (ie: make events automatically happen, leave doors unlocked, AI, etc).
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