Co-op play

Maybe this is not for everyone but I'm big on games that get players to work together.
UO did seem to bring about a strong community and I am looking for more of that.

With that I'd like to see more things in the game that would need at least two players.
And from this chat it sounds like I'm in the right place.
http://tinyurl.com/manjr4v

So yes some puzzle games would work good by needing multiple players.
Here is another game with some great ideas on working together.
http://tinyurl.com/n4p2t4h
I might have to give this one a try.

Another game that comes to mind is Ghostbusters where you need multiple people to catch a ghost.
Maybe there could be some kind of skill that works like that.

One of the skills that might work best for this is herding.
http://tinyurl.com/ls59dj9
It would be great if there were some horses out in the wild that could be rounded up and then trained and sold.

Lost Vikings was another fun multiplayer game where you had to work together.
1st guy could break walls by ramming them and could jump
2nd guy could use a sword or a bow
3rd guy had a shield to block things shooting at him + he could use his shied as a glider
And then the 1st guy could jump on the shield to get up higher

Yea much of SotA is working together already but I'm more talking about at the same time and place.

So am I the only one who enjoys this type of play?
And please post any other ideas you can think of that may work great in a co-op type gameplay.

 

I love when this kind of co-op play is possible, as long as it isn't forced on the players.

Take The Lost Vikings, for example. It could be played either solo, with the player controlling all characters, or with multiple players. Playing it with friends is certainly more fun, not to mention easier, but the player can still have fun with the game even if he is alone.

Or, to mention a MMO (ish) example, GW1 when using NPC heroes and henchman instead of real players to do group content. It is possible to solo group content that way, but it is harder and slower going than getting a group of players to do it, which makes playing as a group the preferred way but playing solo still possible.

On the other hand, I also hope that parts of the game where the player is forced to go solo are kept to a minimum. Forced solo content in a supposedly multiplayer game is just as bad as forced group content, and few things are more irritating when playing with a friend than being regularly forced to go separate ways.

 

I like co-op play, but only on my terms. I really resent it when a game obviously tries to force me into a co-op situation, as in a quest that cannot be completed without grouping with someone. It's clumsy, intrusive, and annoying, so if SotA feels compelled to do things like this, I hope they are better at disguising it than most. Let me figure out on my own whether I need a hand with a task. Don't beat me over the head with it.

 

I'm not sure I can think of enough systems to get my point across.
This is why I'm asking for some more ideas.
The one out of that list that I think works the best is herding.
If one guy on a horse tried by himself I doubt he would catch anything.

As for puzzle games like:
1. Needing two people pressing different buttons to open a door.
2. One person holding a lever to keep a door open while others go through.
3. One person lifting the other up to get to something
4. One person pumping the water out while others use it.
5. One person using a crank to raise an elevator while others are on it

Yea, these can get to be to much but then again if were only talking about a small percentage of the game then why not?
Maybe a skill that can go with this is a player can see traps and know where to step through a maze.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Nightmare09k.jpg

And why not have a few creatures that needs something like the Ghostbusters to defeat?

 

The herding example, I'm fine with. The puzzle example I would find annoying, but then, I'm easily annoyed.

 

I think for any of these things the Companions mechanic would have to be included and the ability to give commands. Remember SOTA is a single player game too, including an offline mode. I would hate to parts of the game to feel lacking just because someone was playing the offline version and had no access to friends. Sort of like Lost Viking in single player mode, you would need to direct a companion to initiate the co-op actions.

I don't have a problem with extra social or RP interactions that require co-op like Music performances, but this is something hard to build into game play. I did like a suggestion on another thread to have chained casting where multiple mages might be required to conduct certain rituals or to make spells more powerful. However, you once again need companions to fill these roles in Single Player.

 

That is a good point.
Do you take control of your companions or do you simply give them commands or both?
Maybe companions could even learn a couple skills if you do get to play them.
And maybe companions could be something to purchase extra if your not playing single player mode.
Single Players should come with them by default.

 

Single player online mode is supposed to be available by default for everyone. It's also supposed to be good enough, for solo players, to convince players that usually play offline to give the online mode a try. IMHO this precludes making henchman hard to get online, or based on microtransactions.

 

I'm sure there is a limit though to how many you can have.
I was thinking if you wanted more you could pay for them and maybe they could even come with a couple skills to work on.

 

I'm not sure using real money to determine how many hirelings a player can have is a good idea, though...

But I agree that there are interesting ways to handle this. In the original Guild Wars, for example, players had NPC Heroes and Henchman (Heroes are NPCs that the player equips and develops, Henchman are NPCs that the player just hire for a while). One of the available microtransactions allowed players to choose a number of their characters to be used as heroes - for roughly $50, a player could take 8 of his characters simultaneously, as a group, to tackle 8-man content. That one was, IMHO, a fantastic idea; it didn't change how many heroes the player could bring, but being able to use multiple favorite characters at once felt great

On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, everything about hirelings in SotA is still in the air. There are a few intriguing ideas - such as being able to "hire" a NPC version of offline friends to help with group content - but the system hasn't been described yet.

 

You could hire npc's in UO, and they behaved like pets, but cost gold instead of investing skill points, which was a point in their favor if you didn't have points to spare to be a tamer. They were generally more trouble than they were worth, but I suppose a mage could use one to tank mobs for him, and to sacrifice to get away from a mob that is too tough, or to act as PK bait.