Are Single-Player Gamers Slowly Becoming Alienated?

Gamer Bhoy 89

I know multiplayer online gaming is the biggest thing going for the industry nowadays, but does anyone else feel like the people that prefer the single-player focused story-driven games (myself included) are getting a smaller number of choices for single-player games as the years go on?

I feel that more and more online-multiplayer games keep coming and single player games are pretty much "endangered" (for want of a better term) at this stage. Aye, I think there are a few games coming that still focus on the single-player aspect primarily, though Metal Gear Solid 5 is all I can think of at the top of my head.

I feel like there needs to be a more fair balance of both multiplayer and single-player games. I exlude games that do have a single player aspect but has a more focused online aspect (Battlefield and Call of Duty, for example) and vice versa (Dark Souls and Assassin's Creed)

What does everyone else think of the direction gaming has come - and is going - in regards to its focus on online gaming?

pablomakaveli

I do wish single player games would just stay that way. Seems to be a lot of online stuff creeping into the single player experience in recent years.

I'm not against multiplayer or co-operative but i prefer those as a choice instead of forced on me.

Outkast_IRE

Top of my head.......................

Single player mostly recently

Alien Isolation...... Single player, excellent game very hard like games should be.

Batman origins/ araham city / arkham asylum / soon the dark knight. Single player.

Shadow of Mordor. single player mostly

Civilisation beyond earth. Most people play single player.

Company of Heroes ardennes assault good mix of single player campaign and multiplayer.

All in all on PC it has been a good couple of months for single player games.

Stone Deaf 4evr

There's loads of single player stuff. Even the multiplayer focused stuff like cod etc have singleplayer. it's going nowhere and never will.

Agricola

Yeah for PC anyway, I don't see a problem. I always have a choice of good SP games and many I never reach on. I think all the noise surrounding the MP scene kind of makes it seem like SP gamers arent being catered for, but its not really the case.

Robert ninja

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

Batman origins/ araham city / arkham asylum / soon the dark knight. Single player.

Arkham Origins had multiplayer. I didn't touch it, though.

Outkast_IRE

Robert ninja wrote: »

Arkham Origins had multiplayer. I didn't touch it, though.

I dont know anyone who did

TheFullDuck

Wolfenstein: New Order. all single player and one of the games of 2014

Gamer Bhoy 89

TheFullDuck wrote: »

Wolfenstein: New Order. all single player and one of the games of 2014

Oh yeah I completely forgot about that game. I never played any Wolfenstein game in my life.

jayo26

The last of us one of the best single player games I ever played but I have to admit most games now I only play for online modes

irishmover

Dislike online. Much prefer a good story.

Wolfenstein is definitely FPS of 2014. Just goes to show what you can do to a single player game if you dont latch on online gameplay to it.

Wish there was more games like that and The Last of Us even though that has multiplayer.

Mal-Adjusted

Single player games are going nowhere. It's true that developers are pushing multiplier, because it might mean that players will keep it rather than trade it in, which keeps publishers happy. It's part of their desired transformation from a goods industry to a service provider industry. There's plenty of room for everyone (often on the same disc). The problem is when multiplier features start penetrating the single-player experience, like in Starcraft II where you have to be online and signed into Battle.net in order to continue your campaign.

The best of both worlds (at least for shooters) would be a game with a single-player campaign with the option of on or offline co-op, an online multiplier and an offline multiplier with the option of either split-screen or bots.

calex71

I don't mind multiplayer as long as it's not tacked on for the sake of it or to sell maps etc later on. I'm sure we could fill this thread with those kind of games from over the last number of years. It can also add to development time/cost/resources that in many cases would have been better spent on a single player only game.

Most recent example I can think of is Far Cry 4, the co-op I could get but the rubbish multiplayer modes they have weren't even as good as the FC3 ones, and seemed half ased and there for the sake of it.

Akrasia

Single player fans have the entire back catalogue of games going back as far as Asteroids... You'll never run out of excellent games to play.

Multiplayer games require an active user base and active servers so many games are essentially dead after a year or two and only a tiny minority of games will be playable 5 years after release

calex71

Akrasia wrote: »

Single player fans have the entire back catalogue of games going back as far as Asteroids... You'll never run out of excellent games to play.

Multiplayer games require an active user base and active servers so many games are essentially dead after a year or two and only a tiny minority of games will be playable 5 years after release

Thats actually a very good point, but ties in with my point about many MP modes being tacked on , those are the ones to die the fastest generally.

Quality usually endures, only day I was playing Bad Company 2 which is what 6 years old on Xbox 360 and still some numbers playing it.

saneman

Personally I love a good single player game - a well developed story with a definitive "end" meaning I can leave it aside with some sense of accomplishment - and from looking at the upcoming titles for 2015 I don't think we have to worry about there being any lack of choice (Arkham Knight, Mad Max, Witcher 3 to name a few).

But, having said that, I'd also like to see co-op available in more titles. The Borderlands and Dead Island series come to mind as games that offer a solid single player experience but with the option to play through with friends. This has to be taken into account at the beginning of the development cycle which I'm sure adds it's own technical challenges but it can be done successfully. Borderlands & Borderlands 2 in particular do this very well and are on a short list of games I've played through more than once simply because of the co-op option.

Captain Chaos

Two of the PS4s big exclusives, The Order and Bloodborn due out shortly are both single player only as far as I know. Then you have the likes of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games (bar Elderscrolls Online MMO) with no MP and Skyrim was very popular on all platform when it came out. Shows you don't need MP to sell a big and successful game.

Big Knox

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Two of the PS4s big exclusives, The Order and Bloodborn due out shortly are both single player only as far as I know. Then you have the likes of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games (bar Elderscrolls Online MMO) with no MP and Skyrim was very popular on all platform when it came out. Shows you don't need MP to sell a big and successful game.

Unsure about The Order but Bloodborne will have a big emphasis on multiplayer in the same way the Souls series has with co-op and invasions etc.

Captain Chaos

Big Knox wrote: »

Unsure about The Order but Bloodborne will have a big emphasis on multiplayer in the same way the Souls series has with co-op and invasions etc.

To me I know they are two games I won't go near until the drop in price at the end of the year sometime despite them being hyped as big AAA hitters.

I found all of the Souls games too hard for me to enjoy and The Order looks very bland, missing something.

Never though there was any sort of co-op in the Souls games.

SeantheMan

You mention Borderlands and Dead Island.
But I would argue that they are Multiplayer games, best experienced with others.....going through solo takes away from the experience.
Similarly the likes of L4D, you can play that solo...but it's really meant to be played with others.

There is nothing worse than co-op / multiplayer for the sake of it

Big Knox

Captain Chaos wrote: »

To me I know they are two games I won't go near until the drop in price at the end of the year sometime despite them being hyped as big AAA hitters.

I found all of the Souls games too hard for me to enjoy and The Order looks very bland, missing something.

Never though there was any sort of co-op in the Souls games.

The souls games are honestly not that hard but they do require you to learn quickly and have patience. They would be fantastic single player games that most definitely could stand on their own but it's the multiplayer aspects that make the souls series so unique and replayable!

SeantheMan

Big Knox wrote: »

They would be fantastic single player games that most definitely could stand on their own but it's the multiplayer aspects that make the souls series so unique and replayable!

DO stand on their own
The Souls games are definitely single-player first, multiplayer-invasions later.
When I play Dark Souls I have no interest in invading or being invaded tbh.....I'm completely playing for the single player experience.
I would think most people are too

Its a very rare thing that I would finish a single player game these days. I get so tired so quickly of playing against AI. Its the same old rubbish of figuring out their pattern; rinse, repeat. I'm more interested in entirely story driven single player games like the Telltale games. If I want to really "play" a game, I'd have to go some online games for an actual challenge.

SeantheMan

SeantheMan wrote: »

DO stand on their own
The Souls games are definitely single-player first, multiplayer-invasions later.
When I play Dark Souls I have no interest in invading or being invaded tbh.....I'm completely playing for the single player experience.
I would think most people are too

I have to agree with this. I wish there was no online aspect to Dark Souls. It really takes me out of the experience. It's one of the rare single player games that I actually got a decent bit through. I hated that you pretty much had to summon other player to beat the bosses.

Banjo

The thing is that a fair whack of Single-player-game-focused gamers are Nintendites, and we're so used to being pushed to the margins that we don't even feel it any more. And if you start to feel it you just pop a couple of 1Ups to take the edge off.

But if you're not feeling the love on your platform of choice, I seriously recommend you check out the WiiU. Plenty of excellent single-player focused games on there, and when they go Multiplayer they go all-in.

Retr0gamer

Deleted User wrote: »

I hated that you pretty much had to summon other player to beat the bosses.

The bosses are perfectly beatable in single player without summoning help.

Retr0gamer

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The bosses are perfectly beatable in single player without summoning help.

I knew someone would come in with this. Perfectly beatable for hardcore gamers like yourself. I don't think you're gaming experience aligns with most people out there. I found at least half of them could not be beaten after multiple attempts. Especially in 2v1 scenarios, they were almost impossible.

johnny_ultimate

This topic comes up with relative regularity, and TBH I just don't see it. There's still a huge variety of single player games to suit every taste. Not only with the big budget PC and console games, but portable, independent and mobile games are still predominantly aimed at a single player. If a game has multiplayer elements in a mostly single-player game (whether that's the ghosts in Mario 3D World or the 'choice' breakdowns in something like Walking Dead), then that is absolutely fine as long as it doesn't get in the way whether you choose to or not to indulge.

If anything, it was the local multiplayers that were becoming legitimately alienated - but 2014 saw a delightful rejuvenation there that will hopefully continue

Duggy747

A couple of years ago I would've thought so, in terms of PC gaming anyways since I don't own a console (not since the N64 and this used to be all fields......). There was a fairly dull or "meh" amount of good single-player games since MMO's and games like L4D / Minecraft were storming through. I loved the likes of L4D but I was getting increasingly bored with SP games which left me playing through an older catalogue of games for a while.

The past few years have been great though for SP I think with far better and meatier campaigns to them compared to the lacklustre ones that could be completed within a few hours or got very dull and repetitive. Wolfenstein, FarCry 3, Bulletstorm, Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite, Walking Dead / Wolf Among Us, & Alien: Isolation immediately come to mind in terms of games I saw through to the end and thoroughly enjoyed.

Only problem with some SP games is that they seem to have dire endings to them, with some just suddenly stopping (RAGE being a perfect example of a "Is.......is that it!?!" ending)

Then the rise of indie games definitely gave a boost to SP with some great crackers amongst them.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Deleted User wrote: »

I knew someone would come in with this. Perfectly beatable for hardcore gamers like yourself. I don't think you're gaming experience aligns with most people out there. I found at least half of them could not be beaten after multiple attempts. Especially in 2v1 scenarios, they were almost impossible.

theres a very set "way" to handle the bosses in dark souls, they have an attack pattern and triggers that lead to certain moves being used over others. learning takes a bit of time and Patience is the key, going toe to toe is rarely the answer - and I say that as someone who is still dipping in and out of dark souls on my first playthrough and has yet to complete the game (but I'm nearly there).

o1s1n

Deleted User wrote: »

I knew someone would come in with this. Perfectly beatable for hardcore gamers like yourself. I don't think you're gaming experience aligns with most people out there. I found at least half of them could not be beaten after multiple attempts. Especially in 2v1 scenarios, they were almost impossible.

The Dark Souls games aren't as hard as people make out. I played through them both offline and while yes, there were bits that pissed me off (Capra Demon for one), most of it is well within the capability of anyone to finish on their own if they just stick with it.

The only 'hard' thing about the game is keeping your cool when something pissing you off. Once you do that and don't fling the controller away you figure it out through trial and error.

Shiminay

Heard this argument 15+ years ago when Quake 3 was just an arena shooter. Been hearing it a lot since. It's never been true

There're definitely a number of games which have had a tacked on multiplayer because it looked like there was some sort of market pressure to include multiplayer in everything.

Do you know what *has* disappeared completely though? LAN games. All this "managed" server bollox and no more simply releasing the server exe for people to run their own has been a real shame.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

theres a very set "way" to handle the bosses in dark souls, they have an attack pattern and triggers that lead to certain moves being used over others. learning takes a bit of time and Patience is the key, going toe to toe is rarely the answer - and I say that as someone who is still dipping in and out of dark souls on my first playthrough and has yet to complete the game (but I'm nearly there).

This pretty much extrapolates on what I was saying before and why I lose interest in the vast majority of single player games, especially modern fps games. Figure out the pattern; rinse, repeat. Dark Souls had a ton of variation though.

Generic Dreadhead

I think you mean Quake Wars: Enemy Territory.

My 2 cents is that there are too many oared in PvP experiences these days (Bioshock 2 etc)

Stone Deaf 4evr

Deleted User wrote: »

This pretty much extrapolates on what I was saying before and why I lose interest in the vast majority of single player games, especially modern fps games. Figure out the pattern; rinse, repeat. Dark Souls had a ton of variation though.

But you cant really have your cake and eat it in that regard - theres no better test than against human opponents, even the best AI is going to come up short there. personally I'd even argue that the telltale games, that whilst brilliant in their own right are more "interactive comics" than actual games. you're not really only an observer rather than a participant - They're a long way removed from something like Monkey Island in that regardless of what you do, the story is going to move on anyway.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Shiminay wrote: »

Heard this argument 15+ years ago when Quake 3 was just an arena shooter. Been hearing it a lot since. It's never been true

There're definitely a number of games which have had a tacked on multiplayer because it looked like there was some sort of market pressure to include multiplayer in everything.

I actually wish that the likes of Battlefield and COD could make the break away from single player entirely and invest that money into multiplayer, which is really what these games are about anyway. If anything games are too busy trying to be all things to all men. Even worse is the crime of having all the achievements loaded into the single player elements of these. Theres a lad on my friends list who has over 100 hours logged on advanced warfare and has only 2 achievements

CiDeRmAn

Well I just had the most excellent time playing and finishing Wolfenstein on the PS4, I still have Super Mario 3D World and Bayonetta 2 to finish as well, not to mention the likes of Dark Souls 2 and Dishonored to polish off.
I see no lack of single player and innovative experiences for the likes of myself and others for whom capture the flag sounds like death.

Retr0gamer

Single player games might not be going anywhere but great well paced 8-12 hour single player experiences are becoming a relic of the past. Some games warrant multi hour experiences but most games these days I find follow the Ubisoft model of stretching out gameplay that can sustain a game for 8 hours to 60+ with watchtowers and other busy work fetch quests.

Mal-Adjusted

To be fair, that kind of stuff is usually in no way necessary to the enjoyment of the main story/campaign. Take the more recent Batman games. I loved the campaigns but am i f*%k going around trying to collect the four million riddler trophies.

Retr0gamer

A few new games seem to be making a trend of it. Ubisoft ones require you to do a certain amount of side quests and Dragon Age Inquistion is particularly bad with it gating off the next story section until you do x amount of side quests.

Varik

People are less likly to wait for multiplayer games, your friend are playing now so most will but sooner rather than later. If you wait a few months to buy a single player game cheap it doesn't hurt you in any way bar the odd spoiler.

Driveclub

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

To be fair, that kind of stuff is usually in no way necessary to the enjoyment of the main story/campaign. Take the more recent Batman games. I loved the campaigns but am i f*%k going around trying to collect the four million riddler trophies.

I liked them in Batman, you had the riddles in asylum and then the puzzles in the later games.

Audio logs are also good.

Mal-Adjusted

Varik wrote: »

I liked them in Batman, you had the riddles in asylum and then the puzzles in the later games.

Audio logs are also good.

Weather people like or dislike them isn't really the issue. it's the fact that they're optional as oppose to mandatory like the games Retro is talking about. Imagine beating the Mr. Frieze boss fight but not being able to continue until you get an arbitrary number of trophies, then again after the penguin fight. It would turn something that might otherwise be fun into padding.

Generic Dreadhead

I got all the Riddler Trophies..... I'll see myself out :pac:

Stone Deaf 4evr

Retr0gamer wrote: »

A few new games seem to be making a trend of it. Ubisoft ones require you to do a certain amount of side quests and Dragon Age Inquistion is particularly bad with it gating off the next story section until you do x amount of side quests.

I don't mind doing one of each type of sidequest as a way to let me know they're there (which in fairness is generally the way they're handled) or even if they actually have game functionality such as revealing the map. but pointless collecting just does my head in.

i have to hand it to far cry 4, if you are trying for achievements, you really only have to do a minimal amount of collecting - i.e. find 10 of an item as opposed to all 100 - something you'd do whilst playing the game normally.

Lemlin

I know we keep hearing that Ireland's broadband is beyond diabolical but until broadband develops and the online networks can support online play, single player games are going to continue to be the mainstay for gamers. Every second post in the PS4 Megathread seems to be people asking if PSN is down.

Personally, I live in a house I built in Cavan and the broadband is atrocious. Every evening while I'm playing Far Cry 4 I can see the internet dipping in and out. Online gaming on it would be impossible the way it is.

I got my PS4 at Xmas and so far I've enjoyed both Far Cry 4 and The Last of Us. I still have GTA 4 sitting there and am getting Shadow of Mordor next week.

Mal-Adjusted

Lemlin wrote: »

I got my PS4 at Xmas and so far I've enjoyed both Far Cry 4 and The Last of Us. I still have GTA 4 sitting there and am getting Shadow of Mordor next week.

How long has it been there for! :eek:

ShooterSF

I actually think we're seeing the opposite. A return to some fantastic single player experiences with no silly afterthought multiplayer tacked on. And I think we'll see the reduction of those bloatware collect everything games. And all because of Digital distribution and the inability to sell on games (as much as I disagree with it in principal). Publishers don't have to worry about you being finished with a game in a week because it won't mean gamestop's used aisle is filled up.

Lemlin

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

How long has it been there for! :eek:

Since Xmas day. It's still in the wrapping. I finished TLOU first, have been playing Far Cry 4 since and, as I've now arranged to swap it for Shadow of Mordor, I will probably play it next.

I've two young kids so playing time is limited, therefore I'm only playing one game at a time.

Kiith

I think he asked because GTA 4 has been out for 8 years...and it's not on the PS4 :P

john the one

The newest wolfenstein is sp only and is one of the most playable games I have ever played.

Lemlin

Kiith wrote: »

I think he asked because GTA 4 has been out for 8 years...and it's not on the PS4 :P

Oops