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Braaier

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
13,237
Most of the issues I understand (Especially those coop ones, wth) but did State of Decay 1 really suffer from these? I don't remember having trouble knowing what to do, the game being difficult or buggy, and having a constant loop of exploration and defense.
Yeah, I've played it recently and I thought it was a bit aimless. But I actually liked it that way. I'm not even sure if there's proper progression. I've played it in spurts, going around and gathering resources, killing zombies, recruiting ppl. And that's all fun to me.
 

Orb

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,465
USA
The game just looks kind of dull overall. Like a management sim with a perfunctory mediocre third-person action game laid on top of it.
 

Kilgore

Member
Feb 5, 2018
3,538
depends.....if four people take two cars.....it wouldn't take long for someone to get tethered back. Which at that point the question becomes....do the two players not in the hosts car keep the car when they get teleported or do they just pop into the car.....hopefully they made all vehicles 4 man or this could be a little annoying spawning in the road as the host moves along. Especially with the distance only being a quarter mile.

On the first game I've been with 3 more survivors and I've never needed 2 cars. I really think that is a limitation that "fits" the kind of game SoD is. The quest are really hard and risky, and your characters can permadie, you want have all your friends as near as posible.

I think people simply expected the coop being way different, like 2 or 3 people managing the same base and so, more like a semi MMO, that would need a lot of thinking and would have inherent problems of course. thay kind of multi was never the intention of the developers. I think they must consider adding that kind of multiplayer via DLC at some point.
 

Demacabre

Member
Nov 20, 2017
2,058
Doesn't look bad really. Doesn't look great or wowing me but really not that bad. I'd give it a whirl when back log has been slimmed down.
 

Braaier

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
13,237
Dying Light comes to mind as a large map zombie game with co-op.

Not sure why that's so important to you, but there it is. When I hear open world (or large world, whatever) plus co-op, I don't immediately think oh fuck yeah tethers.
Okay one game. That's all you got? Sounded like you had countless examples. Nope. One game.

This isn't dying light. It's a sequel to state of decay, which was a single player game. This is a single player game first. I'm sorry you don't like the tethering. Maybe play dying light instead?
 

melodiousmowl

Member
Jan 14, 2018
3,774
CT
The co-op limitations could be due to host-client setup (vs dedicated servers). If resources for AI etc are only processed on the host, having other groups of zombies to keep track of might not work so well.
 

SirVilhelm

Member
Oct 27, 2017
393
User Warned: Off-Site Sleuthing
We should be allowed to do it how we want and not have it be so limiting. Just like the OP said, why can't we split up our group? We should have freedom in how we approach the game. It sure would be nice to have people back at the base if we wanted to. Or it would be nice to be able to attack two spots at once. Either way they are LIMITING our choices and forcing us to play only one way. Just because that one way is the way you like it, doesn't make it suck any less.




I played the fuck out of the first game. The game mechanics would not be an issue to having the coop experience we want. Obviously with some tweaking and with some options for us.

So this isn't you?

[Mod Edit: Removed off-site link]
 
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cakely

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,149
Chicago
What games specifically? You keep mentioning other games so I'm curious

Other co-op games without a tether? Let's just name some co-op open world games without a tether:

Saint's Row 2+, GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, 7 days to die, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Monster Hunter World, The Division, Destiny, Destiny 2, Dying Light. EDIT: Borderlands, Borderlands 2.

I think it might be harder to name games with a tether mechanic. Most open world co-op games don't have it.
 
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Dog of Bork

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,988
Texas
Okay one game. That's all you got? Sounded like you had countless examples. Nope. One game.

This isn't dying light. It's a sequel to state of decay, which was a single player game. This is a single player game first. I'm sorry you don't like the tethering. Maybe play dying light instead?
Ok, I'll add Borderlands as one without such a tiny tether. Or Dead Rising, or Dead Island.

You're being ridiculous. I pulled the example off the top of my head, I didn't think you wanted me to list every co-op game with a large map that I've ever played.

I'm sorry you are so defensive about reasonable criticism of a game in the open world co-op genre. Maybe join another forum instead?
 

Cripterion

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,104
So I just read 4 pages of people complaining about stuff they know very little about.

People keep bringing up what they expected, without playing the first game and knowing next to nothing about how the game mechanics work. People keep bringing up other games that "did co-op right", yet do any of those games have permadeath? I played the first SoD and beat it multiple times, I have at least one playthrough where every one of my survivors live. At no point, do I want some random or a friend who feels like trolling, to enter my game and intentionally screw around. At no point do I want someone to abandon me to getting overwhelmed by zombies, and leave me without a survivor I spent to time building up his/her cardio, shooting and fighting skills. I also don't want said random/friend troll to go back to my base, shooting their guns and honking car horns, drawing hordes of zombies to my base while I'm out on the other side of the map.

There are plenty of reasons why the tethering was implemented. Of course, people who were looking for a reason to be negative about this game will immediately make assumptions that are negative. Where I, who has been looking forward to this game for years, was perfectly fine playing it solo again, and are somewhat relieved that jerks can't enter into my game session and literally ruin a game that has PERMADEATH. There are no real consequences for dying in The Division, Dying Light, and whatever other game that has been mentioned by Era members with little to no knowledge of how this game plays.

For once, can people stop going to their scripted narratives about Microsoft, Game Pass, and indie devs, and just wait until the game comes out before engaging in hyperbole and jumping to conclusions.

Being tethered to the host is just shit and i would not call it a feature. What if our car broke down and 2 of us are sent as scouts to find repairs?
Why can't we hit different ojectives at the same time?
 

Panic Freak

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,583
Dying Light comes to mind as a large map zombie game with co-op.

Not sure why that's so important to you, but there it is. When I hear open world (or large world, whatever) plus co-op, I don't immediately think oh fuck yeah tethers.

Do you know for sure that Dying Light has as many systems running as State of Decay 2?
 

melodiousmowl

Member
Jan 14, 2018
3,774
CT
Other co-op games without a tether? Let's just name some co-op open world games without a tether:

Saint's Row 2+, GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, 7 days to die, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Monster Hunter World, The Division, Destiny, Destiny 2, Dying Light. EDIT: Borderlands, Borderlands 2.

I think it might be harder to name games with a tether mechanic. Most open world co-op games don't have it.

I can think of reasons for all of those th be different.

Saints Row 2 (and the rest of the games like it - gta and RDR) - Static spawns, limited spawns, potentially client trust, static game world

Havent played 7 days or ghost recon

MHW - Static spawns, limited spawns, and whole game world loaded into memory

The Division - dynamic events that have set spawns, static game world, maybe client trust?

Destiny 2 is client server, so no need to go into that

And so on.

Not making excuses for SoD2, but if there are dynamic spawns (which it looks like there are), the game world streams and is not static (meaning, things outside of the host could have changed but the host cant load whats out of already being loaded), I dunno, a ton of other things.

If it was MP from the get go I think they could have engineer it differently, but there you go

EDIT:

gta_online_servers_explained


There ya go - looks like there is no "host" in gta, they probably all share data about whats going on with each other. Why cant this happen in SoT2? My guess is because changes to the world are permanent or that more data is needed when spawning and coordinating zombies that have to appear "intelligent"
 
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severianb

Banned
Nov 9, 2017
957
User Warned: Console Wars
This is probably it. I know Ark uses tethers for that reason.
The co-op limitations could be due to host-client setup (vs dedicated servers). If resources for AI etc are only processed on the host, having other groups of zombies to keep track of might not work so well.
Satonya Nutella being stingy with his Azure servers. Mark Whitten and Albert Panello told me each Xbox One would have access to the power of 6 Xbox One CPUs in the cloud for free. What is going on here?

Trying to get my friends to play this game with me but they are already getting turned off by the negative previews. Same thing happened with Sea of Thieves. Pulling teeth to get them to even try it. This bad press DOES effect things.

I'm personally concerned about Crackdown 3 and it's server-side destruction. It was conceived when "Cloud Powered" was one of the foundations for Xbox One and they really seem to have got away from that. If I can't wreck a whole city with my friends, I'm going to be so frikin mad I may finallly buy a PS4. The horror.
 

Kilgore

Member
Feb 5, 2018
3,538
Being tethered to the host is just shit and i would not call it a feature. What if our car broke down and 2 of us are sent as scouts to find repairs?
Why can't we hit different ojectives at the same time?

And why not going all for the repairs, do you fear that a zombie steal your car? Jokes aside, I think yall are thinking about situations that won't be happening much in the real game. You want as many friends as you can near you on state of decay.

I can see that other kind of multiplayer, with a persistent world, where more than one player manages the base and pick quests and so, the thetering would be unthinkable. But in the coop that SoD2 is gonna have, for what it is, is the thetering is not gonna be a major issue.
 

shiftplusone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,401
You and your wife were expecting a $30 indie game to live up to a AAA budget Ubisoft game built by literally thousands of people?

we were expecting a good new co op experience.

Sea of thieves wasn't it, this doesn't look like it's gonna be it either. FarCry was a huge waste of time as well

There are good co op games that cost less
 

Kasey

Member
Nov 1, 2017
10,822
Boise
Satonya Nutella being stingy with his Azure servers. Mark Whitten and Albert Panello told me each Xbox One would have access to the power of 6 Xbox One CPUs in the cloud for free. What is going on here?

Trying to get my friends to play this game with me but they are already getting turned off by the negative previews. Same thing happened with Sea of Thieves. Pulling teeth to get them to even try it. This bad press DOES effect things.

I'm personally concerned about Crackdown 3 and it's server-side destruction. It was conceived when "Cloud Powered" was one of the foundations for Xbox One and they really seem to have got away from that. If I can't wreck a whole city with my friends, I'm going to be so frikin mad I may finallly buy a PS4. The horror.
The cloud destruction in CD3 is a separate PVP mode with it's own map. If you're expecting to destroy the city in campaign co-op, well I'd start shopping for that PS4 right now.
 

melodiousmowl

Member
Jan 14, 2018
3,774
CT
Satonya Nutella being stingy with his Azure servers. Mark Whitten and Albert Panello told me each Xbox One would have access to the power of 6 Xbox One CPUs in the cloud for free. What is going on here?

Trying to get my friends to play this game with me but they are already getting turned off by the negative previews. Same thing happened with Sea of Thieves. Pulling teeth to get them to even try it. This bad press DOES effect things.

I'm personally concerned about Crackdown 3 and it's server-side destruction. It was conceived when "Cloud Powered" was one of the foundations for Xbox One and they really seem to have got away from that. If I can't wreck a whole city with my friends, I'm going to be so frikin mad I may finallly buy a PS4. The horror.

Sea of Thieves apparently uses the cloud to calculate the waves and keep all client waves in "sync". EDIT: if this is the case, I wonder if a lot of the multiplayer tests revolved around this and moving boats in between instances

People fundamentally don't understand the "cloud" in respect to gaming, I made a post that could potentially be illuminating: https://www.resetera.com/threads/clouds-–-do-enough-people-on-era-understand-them.39122/

All things considered, if this was an online only game I suspect it would be engineered considerably differently. EDIT: because you are spawning in to a game world with quests and objectives and shit that empart permenance, not just an MP only affair.
 

Subxero

Member
Oct 25, 2017
611
United States
The the thethering is disapointing. Its annoying in Conan Exiles too. I think that's something they could definatly fix. Ghost Recon Wildlands has a huge world and doesn't seem to have the issue.

If they are doing to keep the group together to keep random from wondering off or griefing it should be a toggle in the menus then. I'll just be playing with family so I don't have to worry about a random not contributing.

The other complaint about not being directed what to do at all times isn't a issue for me. I enjoyed the exploration and risks from the first game. I think it would take away from the game if they told where to go for important items and progression.

As far a the Cloud discussion goes. I would prefer games not rely on it for core game features cause when they shut them down the game becomes usuless for future use. I'm not a bug fan of online requirement for games though. I think you should always have the option to play offline if you want.

I'm still looking forward to playing the game and I'm sure I'll have fun. That doesnt make thethering a invalid complaint.
 
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Kilgore

Member
Feb 5, 2018
3,538
Satonya Nutella being stingy with his Azure servers. Mark Whitten and Albert Panello told me each Xbox One would have access to the power of 6 Xbox One CPUs in the cloud for free. What is going on here?

Trying to get my friends to play this game with me but they are already getting turned off by the negative previews. Same thing happened with Sea of Thieves. Pulling teeth to get them to even try it. This bad press DOES effect things.

I'm personally concerned about Crackdown 3 and it's server-side destruction. It was conceived when "Cloud Powered" was one of the foundations for Xbox One and they really seem to have got away from that. If I can't wreck a whole city with my friends, I'm going to be so frikin mad I may finallly buy a PS4. The horror.
Show your friends the positive ones, for now there are more than negatives! Run before Forbes publish theirs!
 

headspawn

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,605
we were expecting a good new co op experience.

Sea of thieves wasn't it, this doesn't look like it's gonna be it either. FarCry was a huge waste of time as well

There are good co op games that cost less

Gameplay, unique experience, on the fly strategies and management aside; tethering makes it a no good?

What if the game is good regardless? I imagine if you were interested in the first game and liked it, tethering wouldn't be the straw to break the camels back.
 

Freakzilla

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
5,710
And why not going all for the repairs, do you fear that a zombie steal your car? Jokes aside, I think yall are thinking about situations that won't be happening much in the real game. You want as many friends as you can near you on state of decay.

I can see that other kind of multiplayer, with a persistent world, where more than one player manages the base and pick quests and so, the thetering would be unthinkable. But in the coop that SoD2 is gonna have, for what it is, is the thetering is not gonna be a major issue.

We should be allowed to do it however we want. You may want to stay within 450m of the host. Some others may not. It's really as simple as that. You want all players to be close to the host I want 2 teams hitting different points if we want. Both play styles should be accommodated.
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,849
I wouldn't normally post in these threads and just let things take their regular course.. But, it seems that the co-op is primarily just about being together and doing things together with the host in their game. Just that you can boost yourself and your resources for YOUR game. If that is how it is designed to be played, then why should it be given, that you can just say "fuck-you" to the host, and go it alone boosting yourself and resources without contributing to the hosts game? It could easily be possible to play a few days on other peoples games, then go back to yours massively stocked, without doing what you should have been doing.... Co-oping and helping the others in the co-op games that you joined.

Looking at it this way, I don't see a problem unless the tether is incredibly short.
 

Dick Justice

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,542
I guess I'm lucky that I kept my expectations low with regards to how janky this game would be. Loved the first game, would've been nice if this was more polished, but eh, it'll probably still be great.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,289
Gameplay, unique experience, on the fly strategies and management aside; tethering makes it a no good?

What if the game is good regardless? I imagine if you were interested in the first game and liked it, tethering wouldn't be the straw to break the camels back.

From all signs the game is virtually identical to the first one outside of co-op so you can go find out right now how it'll be if you haven't played 1 yet.

A lot of yelling about the co op when I'm sitting here like "5 years and a cleaner looking/better running 1st game is all you could do?" Between that and SoT launching with almost nothing in it after 4+ years I have to wonder what in the hell is going on over there at MS because it's certainly not a lack of time issue.
 

Freakzilla

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
5,710
I wouldn't normally post in these threads and just let things take their regular course.. But, it seems that the co-op is primarily just about being together and doing things together with the host in their game. Just that you can boost yourself and your resources for YOUR game. If that is how it is designed to be played, then why should it be given, that you can just say "fuck-you" to the host, and go it alone boosting yourself and resources without contributing to the hosts game? It could easily be possible to play a few days on other peoples games, then go back to yours massively stocked, without doing what you should have been doing.... Co-oping and helping the others in the co-op games that you joined.

Looking at it this way, I don't see a problem unless the tether is incredibly short.

Those complaining want a fully open, unthethered group based, zombie survival game where we are in it together not just joining someone's game to lend a hand.
 

cakely

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,149
Chicago
I can think of reasons for all of those th be different.

Saints Row 2 (and the rest of the games like it - gta and RDR) - Static spawns, limited spawns, potentially client trust, static game world

Havent played 7 days or ghost recon

MHW - Static spawns, limited spawns, and whole game world loaded into memory

The Division - dynamic events that have set spawns, static game world, maybe client trust?

Destiny 2 is client server, so no need to go into that

And so on.

Not making excuses for SoD2, but if there are dynamic spawns (which it looks like there are), the game world streams and is not static (meaning, things outside of the host could have changed but the host cant load whats out of already being loaded), I dunno, a ton of other things.

If it was MP from the get go I think they could have engineer it differently, but there you go

EDIT:

gta_online_servers_explained


There ya go - looks like there is no "host" in gta, they probably all share data about whats going on with each other. Why cant this happen in SoT2? My guess is because changes to the world are permanent or that more data is needed when spawning and coordinating zombies that have to appear "intelligent"

None of those large map co-op games that I listed have a tethering mechanic, and I'm sure there are more examples, those are just the first games that I thought of.

The "reasons" you've listed why none of those games have a tethering mechanic are uneducated guesses at best. In any case, those guesses are not relevant to this discussion. Someone in this thread asked for examples of games that don't feature tethering, and I provided them.

For some reason, SoD 2 the developers went with a tethering mechanic. I'm not going to invent a reason why.

I think people either don't understand how the co-op works, are trolls, or were wishing for something and are buthurt they didnt get it.

I thought we were actually having a discussion, but it appears I was mistaken.
 

shiftplusone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,401
Gameplay, unique experience, on the fly strategies and management aside; tethering makes it a no good?

What if the game is good regardless? I imagine if you were interested in the first game and liked it, tethering wouldn't be the straw to break the camels back.

I didn't like the first game, but I like co op more than I disliked it (if that makes sense)

I didn't care about this one at all until like a month ago when I found out it had co op. Didn't really dig into it too much, just thought it would be a good co op thing.

Ghost Recon, to keep with my previous example, is a shitty single player game that I would never want to engage with, but co op makes up for it

I'm not writing this off entirely but I think the tethering is a big enough deal to at least pause. I dont like farcry 5 as a single player or as a co op game,, and the tethering kinda ruined the co op experience for us.


Those complaining want a fully open, unthethered group based, zombie survival game where we are in it together not just joining someone's game to lend a hand.

This, basically. I thought it would be the first game but with some shit fixed and a full co op system. Instead it's more like the far cry 5 "player 1 is the hero guy and you're here to be his friend" and that's not the experience I want from it.

It happens, not a big deal.
 

Bradbatross

Member
Mar 17, 2018
14,196
From all signs the game is virtually identical to the first one outside of co-op so you can go find out right now how it'll be if you haven't played 1 yet.

A lot of yelling about the co op when I'm sitting here like "5 years and a cleaner looking/better running 1st game is all you could do?" Between that and SoT launching with almost nothing in it after 4+ years I have to wonder what in the hell is going on over there at MS because it's certainly not a lack of time issue.
Huh....?
 

Freakzilla

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
5,710
I didn't like the first game, but I like co op more than I disliked it (if that makes sense)

I didn't care about this one at all until like a month ago when I found out it had co op. Didn't really dig into it too much, just thought it would be a good co op thing.

Ghost Recon, to keep with my previous example, is a shitty single player game that I would never want to engage with, but co op makes up for it

I'm not writing this off entirely but I think the tethering is a big enough deal to at least pause. I dont like farcry 5 as a single player or as a co op game,, and the tethering kinda ruined the co op experience for us.




This, basically. I thought it would be the first game but with some shit fixed and a full co op system. Instead it's more like the far cry 5 "player 1 is the hero guy and you're here to be his friend" and that's not the experience I want from it.

It happens, not a big deal.

Maybe if it was 2 player coop, one could be hesitant on how the coop system would have functioned, but with 4 player coop, one would expect a fully fleshed out coop system.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,289

Pretty much the whole eurogamer preview is about how similar it is to the first game. It matched all of my impressions when the IGN coverage started on this game. I remarked about how it reused a lot of animations both on humans and zombies, zombie types and even the area they were in looked so familiar I actually thought it was the area around the warehouse base in the 1st game at first. I think it's pretty clear by now that's how this game is going to be and there's not many surprises in store for us. So I want to know how did it supposedly take 5 years to do that?
 

Kilgore

Member
Feb 5, 2018
3,538
We should be allowed to do it however we want. You may want to stay within 450m of the host. Some others may not. It's really as simple as that. You want all players to be close to the host I want 2 teams hitting different points if we want. Both play styles should be accommodated.
like another user said, the coop in SoD2 is a way that you can have help from your friends on your game, and your friends can progress their characters and gain supplies for their base as a reward. In that context tethering is not a big problem. I think you simply expected other kind of coop multiplayer.

Tethering is not your main issue, the concept of the SoD's itself is what you don't like.
 

Bradbatross

Member
Mar 17, 2018
14,196
Pretty much the whole eurogamer preview is about how similar it is to the first game. It matched all of my impressions when the IGN coverage started on this game. I remarked about how it reused a lot of animations both on humans and zombies, zombie types and even the area they were in looked so familiar I actually thought it was the area around the warehouse base in the 1st game at first. I think it's pretty clear by now that's how this game is going to be and there's not many surprises in store for us. So I want to know how did it supposedly take 5 years to do that?
Much larger map, improved gameplay, expanded base building. The game is not virtually identical to the first one. This game being more of the first one, just better, is exactly what this game needed to be and what it was always going to be.
 

Dog of Bork

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,988
Texas
like another user said, the coop in SoD2 is a way that you can have help from your friends on your game, and your friends can progress their characters and gain supplies for their base as a reward. In that context tethering is not a big problem. I think you simply expected other kind of coop multiplayer.

Tethering is not your main issue, the concept of the SoD's itself is what you don't like.
This distinction is so pedantic that it might as well not be brought up. An issue with their implementation of co-op is an issue with their implementation of co-op. Whether or not I'm mad about the mechanic itself or the philosophy that led to the implementation of the mechanic is not worth quibbling over because the end result is the same.
 

OneBadMutha

Member
Nov 2, 2017
6,059
I think the complaints in this case are valid.

Microsoft as a platform with their services and hardware? Right now they're executing at an extremely high level and deserve praise for setting the bar. I give them an A.

Microsoft as a publisher? In other threads I've excused the delay on spending because I understand their strategy. Their execution with what tools they have has been woeful however. Going back through gaming history, you'll be hard pressed to find many slumps matching this. I'm hoping Booty and Gallagher are the answers. Most things under Loftis lately has been bad. These are the inches that determine success or failure.

Loftis and co need the Any Given Sunday speech.

State of Decay 2 has been in development exclusively for Xbox for 5 years. It's one of Microsoft's few published games in 2 years. The biggest evolution of the series to justify 5 years in development was co-op. Co-op currently works the way it would in a linear corridor shooter.

If this wasn't on the heels of the Crackdown unveil last year and recently disappointing Sea of Thieves release, I wouldn't make a big deal about this. The developers reduced the scope of what this game could be due to online technical limitations. This is Microsoft's wheelhouse. This isn't asking Microsoft to support a developer so that SOD2 has a good story and cinematics. This is online functionality. Under the same corporation that innovated matchmaking. We have another Indie that figured out how to allow 100 players to spread out along a huge map.

This is such a missed opportunity because I could imagine the types of Mixer feeds and ongoing streams you'd get with 4 players splitting up and doing creative things within the sandbox.

Hopefully Microsoft fixes this. There should be shit given until they step up and start meeting moderate expectations with their 1st party stuff.
 

Kilgore

Member
Feb 5, 2018
3,538
This distinction is so pedantic that it might as well not be brought up. An issue with their implementation of co-op is an issue with their implementation of co-op. Whether or not I'm mad about the mechanic itself or the philosophy that led to the implementation of the mechanic is not worth quibbling over because the end result is the same.
Ehm, ok?