Can someone please explain the appeal of a million multiplayer HL2 mods?

[Andy]

Now I'm not saying that multiplayer mods are a bad idea in principal. It's just that, for a game without a release date or an SDK, everyone and his dog's mother's uncle is making a mod.

The majority of these seem to be heading in the multiplayer direction with frightening rapidity and I can't understand why.

As I see it we gonna have a million ww2/ww3/cyberpunk mods with:

- Reduced Physics, smaller levels, less detail
- More coding work (at least it used to be)
- No building up story
- More repetative gameplay
- No alteration of pace


This is added to the fact that to have a couple of servers of people playing 24 hours a day, hundreds of people are going to have to download, play and most importantly of all enjoy the mod.

And you were gonna charge ... how much? :hmph:

I'm not saying that all these projects are wasted, in fact I sincerely believe that a few will turn into quality pieces of entertainment. But these are the good ideas with the headstarts (think source) and/or the well balanced, dedicated and highly skilled and experienced mod teams.

Mod Database:
Halflife 2 Single Player Mods: 49
Halflife 2 Multiplayer Mods: 174

At the risk of this turning into a rant: People! Arn't there enough multiplayer mods already! If you're burning to create, don't waste you talent and ideas that most people will never play. Surely you should channel them into an exisiting mod. A hundred and seventy four! There must be one that is slightly similar to your idea. Maybe taht way we'd get less "in limbo" mods and a few coherent ones coming through.

Or even do something that a person can enjoy without having to convince eight of his mates to download it too. :x

As I understand it, singleplayer can have:
- More complex physics, bigger levels
- Deep story and rich plot
- Complete control
- More cinematic qualities well suited for Half-life
- Characters
- Different atmospheres


Arn't there enough total conversions too? An overhaul does not always a good mod make. With a few new maps and some face and voice acting you have a new mod, and with the time you spend can't you be so much more creative? :cheers:

Think about it!

 

[Dalamari]

Who said SP doesn't have

- More complex physics, bigger levels
- Deep story and rich plot
- Complete control
- More cinematic qualities well suited for Half-life
- Characters
- Different atmospheres

I like the assumptions you've made that MP will have to be dumbed down to accomidate the client.

 

[blahblahblah]

I agree with you a 100%.

On a side note, having a smaller multiplayer mod (from 2 to 8 people) would be a nice change of pace too.

 

[Dalamari]

I agree with you a 100%.

On a side note, having a smaller multiplayer mod (from 2 to 8 people) would be a nice change of pace too.

Sven Coop

10charlimit

 

[blahblahblah]

Sven Coop

10charlimit

[sarcasm] Wow, 1 mod. Thank-you for the over abundance of those type of mods. [/ sarcasm]

[Edit]: Stupid sarcasm tags...

 

[Andy]

you did only ask for one

but seriously, Sven Coop will be great just becasue it has originality about it from a proffessional team there are precious few like that

 

[Finger]

A million or so sperm, all fighting to get to one egg. Ridiculous! Can't they all just join together, and form one, huge, penetrating sperm?

Seriously though, these mods will weed themselves out naturally. I bet only a third or less actually make it to a playable beta version. The good ideas will stand out. The best artists, programmers, innovators will gravitate to the interesting/successfull mods, and the fluff mods will dissolve themselves. I don't see a problem here. The more people trying, the higher our chances of getting a few real gems.

 

[Varg|Hund]

Finger is spot on there.
Mods die out and teams dissolve. A whole lot of mods don't make it past the initial stages.

 

[Andy]

agreed 100% ... but in the mean time, all that wasted energy and pointless recruiting...

anyway the main point, which I think I lost, was:

why multiplayer?!

 

[Dougy]

Put it this way...

You either have

Hundereds of mods with 2-3 ending up great ones with regular gamers playing it 24/7.

or

a dozen mods that stagnate and die with nobody playing anything but vinnila (original)


99% of mods are simply put crap, even if those mods stopped what they were planning and tried another version SP for instance it would still be crap.


Take a look at any of the big online games that have been around for a while, i myself can only speak for HL and BF1942 mods... but i am very willing to say that the majority of games follow these two...

For half life youve got your Counter strike Day of defeat Natural selection and so on and so forth....

For BF1942 youve got Desert Combat, Forgotten hope, Eve of destruction and so on and so forth....

both games have literaly hundereds of mods, but if you look at BF's nig mods you see that all the semi talented people from the rubbish mods moved to the big ones and made the bigger ones even better.


Nothing boosts a teams abilities to make something great than a bit of rivarly, you need the countless dozens of bad mods to get the potentialy good ones to keep working hard and not slack off.

 

[cyborgguineapig]

Well Andy, There are trend setters and then there are followers. Most people are followers in ideas. Everyone gets inspiration from things, the post appocalyptic, punk style will hang around for quite some time. Who doesn't like the industrial feel, its cool, but it is somewhat washed out because there are not many new ideas going around. But Andy, I don't understand why you let the # of HL2 mods concern you, the good ones will prevail and the not so good ones won't, its natural selection and your going to play the good ones anyway so again, don't see why it would concern you. The hype right now is over the HL2 engine because it is appealing for a # of reasons, what many mod teams don't realize is the sheer amount of work that goes into making a mod, even if the tools are user friendly ext... It is still a lot of work and even if you bring a whole new idea to the table, the mod team as any professional production team must do in the industry to stay alive, must support and be aware of the players that play their game because its important to their survival. Storyline is often overlooked in Mods because they are centered on one particular idea and they are inspired from some sort of source. I can see though how the multiplayer community for HL2 may and prob will become a little overwhelming, but just remember how many HL1 mods actually became popular in the end. Firearms, Natural selection, DoD, CS, Sevencoop,... Thats like 5.

 

[cyborgguineapig]

agreed 100% ... but in the mean time, all that wasted energy and pointless recruiting...

anyway the main point, which I think I lost, was:

why multiplayer?!

Although it is somewhat wasted energy and pointless recruting, its not a big deal, you would be surprised at just how many games go under even in the industry, don't see why it would be different in the Mod community. The only difference is that game developers get paid for working on a game even if it does not make it to the shelves, mod teams usually do not..

Multiplayer you ask? I guess because a Multiplayer Mod can have a player base community as apposed to a single player mod where one simply plays it through once or twice and its the end already ;( A singleplayer mod made by a few people is a better portfolio imo though, it will prove that you can master game mechanics and story which is important. I don't know really, i just guess
multiplayer mods are more popular.

 

[CrazyHarij]

Will only be a couple of really, really good mods, I suppose.

 

[Orange]

A million or so sperm, all fighting to get to one egg. Ridiculous! Can't they all just join together, and form one, huge, penetrating sperm?

Piggy backing off this idea, its like Out of bajillions of mods, cream of the crop will emerge victorious. Eh, that's been pointed out. Anyone read Galapagos by Vonnegut?

Building mods are good for resumes, and are good practice if your interested in a field that relates to game production

With more mods (yes even a ton of poor ones) you have a higher chance of something exceptional being released.

Though more 1 player mods of high quality would be cool. Esp. if it had multiplayer added later.

 

[snark^]

It's more a case of something for everyone? If Cyberpunk Mod A isn't your cup of fresh creamy latte (perhaps too Matrixy) then maybe the similar Cyberpunk Mod R will be. Other factors will come into it: which mods actually produce a finished product; some of which decline into nothingness because there's a lack of players taking it up; then the odd few which go on to become successful, to a lesser or greater degree, and go on to spawn endless imitators of their own.

Pretty much a model for society as a whole really so I'm not quite sure what your argument is. Sure there's hundreds of them now but only only a small fraction of those hundreds will be played. As with HL1 we'll see maybe three or four classics (eg., TFC, CS, DoD, NS); a dozen more flavours of the month which never quite hit the widespread appeal (ActionHL, SvenCo-op, et al); and others which look polished and professional but which never take off for some reason (eg., the cyberpunkish Public Enemy or randomnine's snark-racing Turbo mod).

 

[Dalamari]

Take 11 or 12 dead mods and you usually get 1 person from each that in turn take the experience from that lost mod to make a kick ass one.