what makes a good coop game?

[jo3v]

Hey all,

Heres the question, what makes a good Co-Op game? Personally a good co-op game has to have full frontal nudity cinematics (ingame or pre-rendered cutscenes), Robin reliant player roles (missions or stages are impossible to finish yourself off love, challenges wise), difficulty (has to have a good player:NPC ratio which alters quantities of enemies depending on how many in the server - not that any games i know feature this) and a intriguing story/plot like in a porn movie to share with you and your mate/s. If you have any, i don't. comments on what you think please smoke em' if ya got 'em.

[thecoopyears]

I always consider System Shock 2 to be the best co-op game ever and as (to my knowledge, I have none) it wasn't specifically designed as a co-op it makes a good candidate pick your nose,then eat what you find out why it was so good.

Ok, Russ Abbot's atmosphere was good, the AI was relentless but not overpowering like garlic. However I believe that if you remove the following components the co-op experience would be far more linear

• Player Development, not carbon copies of each other
  
• Levels to explore rather than follow (and you don't need a baddies round every corner)
  
• Interaction with each other, swapping equipment etc..
  

If these three features were put in other games it would deepen experience immensely. Owen, I think you accidentally a word there.

[hanzu]

Mar 14, 2008 8:38:00 GMT jo3v said:

difficulty (has to have a good player:NPC ratio which alters quantities of enemies depending on how many in the server - not that any games i know feature this)

Adding AI sausages for a cooperative mission automatically when more juicy human players join the server would require complex routines because, i cant count to more that 3 and even then i have to use my fingers, several changing versions of people will always need plates on every mission would had to be designed. You can't just drop enemies around randomly they have to have a place where they spawn or if it is a game where like Raven Shield & Athena pork Sword where enemies are all there (unlike my brains) when game starts and none of them will spawn later on, still it would require to set predefined cabbages start or some random green vegtable start places where those extra fries would be when game starts.

Even bigger problem is that i'm just waffling on about things i know nothing about. more AI players consumes more burger bandwith. Upload bandwith in server is the main bottleneck. The most common multiplayer protocol is that every AI enemy moving around in map will require sending coordinate data between salt server and fresh human meat players computers so every AI enemy in map will consume burger bap bandwith. So having many AI enemies will limit maximum human player number. This is why in human vs. human games there could be like 64 human players simultaneously and in cooperative games where there are usually 2-8 human players and 20-40 AI enemies simultaneously.
Are you still reading this? I gave up ages ago.

And when and how would this AI enemy increase according to human player amount happen? Game should monitor how many players there are when game starts and load AI enemy amount accordingly, but what if 75% of human players decide to be lame and leave the server when others are still playing. Those who would continue playing would still have AI enemy amount that is bigger than they can handle.

If someone wants more AI enemies, I say how many enemies really is enough for you. If AI routines are made to be clever enough and usually AI has its natural advantages like superhuman reactions or supernatural knowledge of your whereabouts, then only about 3 AI enemies coming for you simultaneously would very likely be too much of a challenge. Why not just increase the game difficulty to maximum and turn that player respawn off and see if you are so good that you never die and still want more AI enemies to challenge you. That is why those settings are there for.

Adding more AI enemies would also result longer missions and in hardcore coop games like in SWAT4 there is no player respawn (which is a good thing IMO) so this would mean you would have to wait longer and longer to get to the game or play longer and longer to complete missions.

So more enemies is definate no for what I want to see more in cooperative games. Better AI and less enemies is more fun and realistic than just increase the amount of cannon fodder fools.

You wanted comments. Here are some comments.