this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Not every game needs to be playable forever. Yes, BG3 should be playable indefinitely and with mods it would probably be worth it too!
But there is also space for games that have a design for a shared group experience with a changing world that will result in a limited lifespan. If the world in HD2 didn't chsnge and there wasn't an evolving setting it would probaably grow stale a lot faster as the gsme play itself is repetitive. Events like wiping the automatons off the map and them reappearing are only clever once, and wouldn't hold up on a replay. Without major orders there is less community engagement with the fantastic setting leading to more multiplayer dives once all the unlockable stuff has been unlocked.
It is a different kind of game and there is space for that alongside the other replayable games that don't have a limited lifespan. It isn't like all the games similar to BG3 are going to hold up nearly as long as BG3 either, it stands out as one of the best of its genre.
Why not? Surely after some time, HD2 would be fun to replay, even if the content was the same as the last time. Not every game needs to be continually played forever, but games should be replayable forever. I still replay very linear games periodically even though I'm not seeing anything new, because I want to relive my memories of the game.
Another option is procedural generation, which would work really well for HD2. That's a pretty good stand-in for constantly evolving content.
The HD2 maps are procedurally generated so that they are not identical each time you play.
The overall storyline is set, but they craft how it plays out in response to community engagement, which isn't possible with random generation. We never would have had the mines vs orphans set up in random generation.
Sure, but once the storyline is played out, it could certainly be made available offline, no?
The shared mutiplayer experience available offline?
Ok.
LAN and direct IP connections allow for network multiplayer games to work when official servers are no longer operational.
And self-hosted servers are a thing. By "offline," I mean "not connected to official servers."
That is not what offline means.
If it's self-hostable, it absolutely is. I self-host Minecraft on my home LAN and my kids can absolutely play even if the Internet goes out. That's by definition offline, though you can certainly put it on a public server if you choose.
I can play offline with tens of thousands of other players in a dynamic real time campaign on a LAN?
Neat!
No, you can't. They decided not to give you that functionality. But amateurs are able to get pirate MMO servers up just fine until the lawyers come through, so it's all possible for us to do if they let us.
Cool, so it doesn't matter if the official game is live service then.
I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion from that.
Lost Planet, there's plenty of examples of this working??
Lost Planet has a shared multiplayer experience with thousands of other players offline?
I guess the context of how many are sharing the multiplayer experience needs to be explicitly stated.
Gameplay wise it's very similar, and it's not like adding fake "players" is unheard of in games, like .//Hack or Goat Simulator.
You don't need to act like it's leaps and bounds away
I'm not talking about filling in with bots, I'm talking about a large active community of humans.
Yes it does! To not allow for that is purposely delivering you a worse product than they ought to, not to mention destroying the history of our medium. It would be a damn shame if your favorite movie from 30 years ago didn't survive long enough for you to see it. That these games are designed to disappear is completely unnecessary. If the game gets repetitive after a while, that just means it's the same as every other video game. You had your fun, now put it down and play something else. In a world where your game lives on forever, words like "engagement" are meaningless. People will play a game as long as it's fun. You can play a game multiplayer as long as you have a handful of people who want to play it with you. And if it takes decades for you to boot it up again, that's fine too, as long as you're able to run the server yourself.
Summer sports leagues are bullshit because they don't last forever!
Summer sports leagues aren't a computer program that's capable of being copy and pasted ad infinitum. You can play baseball forever without someone's permission. You can play chess forever without someone's permission. Live service games are basically like putting an expiration date on chess.
Sports are able to be replayed indefinitely.
Summer sports leagues are specificly set up for a limited time engagement based on how the games play out and respond to the player base. It is a perfect comparison to well executed live service games.
Not all gsmes need single player or long term playability just like not all games need online multiplayer.
No, it's not. Because the sport doesn't disappear when the league is over. If you want to run a league for StarCraft: Brood War, you can do that with a Discord server. If you want to run a league for Hyperscape, the game is fucking gone.
You should really complain about how baseball doesn't have a single player mode.
You really should understand what the actual complaint is.
I disagree with the complaint being valid for every single game in existence.
Then go ahead and fight for your forced obsolescence. I personally prefer games and other creative works that don't arbitrarily delete themselves. Meanwhile, Ubisoft convinces people that it must be this way while they decommission one version of The Crew so that they upsell you on a sequel.
"Stop having fun!"
Sure, man. I've just been telling you to stop having fun this whole time, regardless of the problem statement in title of the article we're discussing. I think we're done here.