Multiplayer/Co-Op & Frictional Games? NO!!!

[Cryaotic]

Just want to throw some two cents in - I don't believe the engine Amnesia currently uses is designed whatsoever to handle a multiplayer environment.

They would need a new engine entirely - heck I could see someone ripping all of Amnesia's textures, models and what-not and importing them into the source engine to make something like that possible. Though with the engine right now it wouldn't be possible.

[dnb]

Second edit: I realized that absolutely no foundation exists for multiplayer mode, so this will just remain as an idea.


Hi,

I played through Amnesia during the other week, and it left me wanting for more, so I've played through a few custom stories as well.

What I want to talk about, however, is the possible implementation of a multiplayer game mode — Where players could share the same experience. I'm not talking about your traditional co-op campaign, but a specific game mode. I remember this small mode from Warcraft 3 called Tree Tag, where you have a really wide map with 1 bad guy (who is a human player) with anywhere from 2 to 10 'good' guys who do their best to hide and defend themselves from the danger. If the bad guy catches one of the good guys, the good one goes to prison, although he can be freed if another good one comes manually to save him. If the bad guy gets everyone to prison in 30 minutes, he wins, and if the good guys survive for 30 minutes, they win.


I could imagine this to be implemented in Amnesia successfully — First of all, the area:

The play area would be a sizable castle with lots of floors, rooms, corridors and places to hide. The prison would be somewhere in the center of the castle, both vertically and horizontally, with numerous access points from different directions to save any potential prisoners.


Next, the escapees:

The number of these could be anything from 1 to 10 depending on the number of attendees. At the beginning, each of them would have a lantern and some oil along with tinderboxes. More oil and tinderboxes can be found around the castle, although sparingly.
The sole purpose for the escapees is to survive for whatever amount of time that has been set — by barricading the rooms and being aware of the escape routes. The escapees would have their own text chat to plan any potential maneuvers and to be aware in case some of them get prisoned.


Next, the bad guy:

- This would be in a form of the more dangerous brute from Amnesia, obviously controlled by a human player (who enjoys torturing his friends). Let's say his movespeed would be around 30-40% faster than the escapees. This may sound imbalanced, but he has one weakness: He can't open doors like the escapees, instead, he must break down the door by smashing it down like the gatherers in Amnesia. This would take around 4 or 5 seconds, giving the escapee more time to flee (and close more doors behind him).
- The brute would be able to strike objects in front of him with great force as means of getting past any barricades, although it would still take a considerable number of seconds to get through depending on the size of the barricade.
- The brute would one-hit the escapees to death, whereafter the escapees would spawn in the prison, waiting for potential rescue.
- The brute would emit the same effects as in Amnesia — Reduction of sanity and the high-pitch crazzling sound when the brute sees you (which everyone loves so much). Additionally, the brute would emit his monstrous groans and yells at random time intervals to add tension; this would also indicate the position of the brute, giving extra enjoyment for the escaping player in case the voice is especially strong.


Other additional game mechanics:

- Credit system: As time passes, players get a certain number of credits in relation to the time survived. They could use these credits, for example, to rebuild the doors that have been struck down, or fortificate the existing doors to last twice or thrice longer in a case of the brute assaulting it. Another possible purchasement could be some kind of a throwable flash grenade, blinding the brute for some seconds, or a smoke grenade, blocking sight in an area for a half a minute or so. The players would also get extra credits for rescuing their fellows from the prison.
- On the contrary, similarly to the original game mode in Warcraft 3, the brute would get increased performance as the time passes. In the last 5-10 minutes, the brute would have increased movespeed and swifter hit rate for faster advancement through doors and barricades. The ultimate, final minute, the brute would have twice his original movespeed and instead of having to break down doors and barricades, he could simply ruthlessly rush through them with no effort. Additionally, the brute's enhanced presence would strike loss of sanity for the escapees in a greater area (but not too great), ignoring walls and other sight obstacles, after which the brute would additionally sense the whereabouts of the escapees.
- Additionally, there could be several brutes/grunts controlled, although weaker, depending on the number of human players.
- Analogously to the mod in Warcraft 3, the brute could 'hire' computer-controlled mercenaries — in this case, grunts — to patrol the area near the prison. These would also be capable of capturing the escapees. The escapees would have to lure these grunts away from the prison, or alternatively choose a route devoid of these grunts, and then rescue their fellow teammates.


This would be the basic idea of how the mod would work, and since even the Warcraft 3 one was scary, this would definitely be a blast (for the poor rectum) to play with a group of friends. The only problem I see with this is creating the multiplayer platform for this kind of a mod, since I have not seen any of such before. I could be misinformed though, as I have zero experience with modding.

Anyway, I hope you like my humble idea, as this could be modified and developed further with so many improvements and additions.

Edit: After doing some search, I noticed that the Amnesia community is highly hostile towards these kind of suggestions. I'm just curious to hear, if this kind of a play would be possible, why not?

[Kman]

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beat ya to it hunter

[dnb]

beat ya to it hunter

I understand it is a trend of users with high post count to reply with snob image quotes rather than actual coherent responses, but I would still appreciate any insight on as to why the idea of a multiplayer is frowned upon so much. Do people think it will ruin the idea of the game?

[Kman]

beat ya to it hunter

I understand it is a trend of users with high post count to reply with snob image quotes rather than actual coherent responses, but I would still appreciate any insight on as to why the idea of a multiplayer is frowned upon so much. Do people think it will ruin the idea of the game?

1. the reason we do stuff like that is literally every month we get hoards of people coming in and proposing basically the same idea, so of course we're gonna get annoyed by it. and honestly it's just gotten to the point where i figured why not joke around about it.

2. amnesia was created to be a game you'd play to experience, not a game you would play to win. and multiplayer would completely destroy that concept since you'd basically be playing to do better than the other players.

i agree it could be fun and interesting, but it doesn't stick with the purpose of amnesia at all.

[Your Computer]

FrictionalGames publicly declared that they will not be implementing multiplayer. Nevertheless, threads like this pop up.

[Khyrpa]

1. the reason we do stuff like that is literally every month we get hoards of people coming in and proposing basically the same idea, so of course we're gonna get annoyed by it. and honestly it's just gotten to the point where i figured why not joke around about it.

2. amnesia was created to be a game you'd play to experience, not a game you would play to win. and multiplayer would completely destroy that concept since you'd basically be playing to do better than the other players.

i agree it could be fun and interesting, but it doesn't stick with the purpose of amnesia at all.

Pretty much that.

And there are most likely already a few first person hide'n seek/"tag" games out there (not to mention almost any multiplayer game can be made one by setting rules between players), changing the chased to daniels and the chasers to brutes doesn't change much when the actual horror factor drops drastically with multiplayer (fear3).
Tree tag... I have played that map and I have to say it's really boring map

Main reasons of no multiplayer:
We cant meddle with the actual engine (has to be made with a different engine or use magic)
Tons of work
Tons of skill

I don't quite think anyone is willing to take up the task and create a little fun mod. And if they did, it would most likely end up like tree tag for me. Play it a couple of times and then forget.

[Tanshaydar]

I wish I could take a poll from every multiplayer topic creators.

[Googolplex]

Multiplayer games are pieces of crap.

[Gasjockey]

Multiplayer games are pieces of crap.

*facepalm* While I agree with the rest of the people here, Amnesia is definitely not a game that should have multiplayer, this is not necessary. To make such a generalized statement based upon something that is no more than an opinion, is quite closed-minded really... There are plenty of good multiplayer games out there, and even if you don't like them, that doesn't mean they're all "pieces of crap". It simply means you don't like them, nothing more