Well, I could ramble for hours on just how much I _ADORE_ coop games and how it's a shame that it has all but dissapeared on PCs (one of the only reason I am more and more tempted to get a console, in fact).

But let me point ONE aspect that I find annoying, mostly because I still haven't seen it treated properly yet:
What to do when your buddy dies?
I don't know if you have played Operation Flashpoint (which is the first title that comes to my mind in recent FPSs, when talking about proper coop mode) but having to restart because your buddy just died is a rather common occurence. Having to do it several dozen times, after a 3 minute walk to the zone of combat... let's just say the mind gets numb... :-P

I liked, in part, the solution used in Hunter: The Reckoning (XBox, AFAIK), and which I have seen in other games, where the Continues are shared in a common pool, although they are marked separately for each player. That way you can brag about how good you are, and more importantly, you can bitch about how much your mate sucks when they start using the Continues YOU have collected :->

But what I would really would like to see is a game that would implement the death/KO of your mates as part of the gameplay.
That is to say, when your mate get knocked out of the game, instead of basically having to now finish things on your own, you would have the option, through gameplay, to revive them, bring them back into the game, somehow.
A good example of this is Medics in class based FPS. It's a good start, but we could go further than this, or rather in a slightly more original manner.
What about, if your mate dies, his memory/personality gets imprinted in a crystal that he carries on him, giving you, if you collect it, the opportunity to go and put that crystal onto some construct that would allow your mate to join you yet again, although in a lesser form (well, I was thinking a dreadnought power armour, actually, but then people would all die as fast as possible just so they could "upgrade" to it... so that's counter productive).
You could possibly have a limited amount of such imprinting possible, the crystals might be one use only and hard to find, they could be destroyable, or the imprinting wouldn't be permanent and only give you a limited amount of time back (think the one day limit in the movie _AI_).
Also, the constructs could have a very different role than when you are a "normal" player. Maybe you could inspire yourself from the phenomenon where players who die and end up in spectator mode can't help but play spying bitches, by implementing this! The construct becomes a spy drone of varying maneuverability/resilience (depending on how much you are willing to invest). Your dead team mates now become your spies, but if their construct gets destroyed, you now have to go and recover their crystal if they want to keep playing, and that's if the enemy doesn't recover the crystal first and use it for some other purpose like energy! :)

Anyway, that's just one aspect I was thinking of, let's see what else you guys can come up with!

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Original post by ahw Well, I could ramble for hours on just how much I _ADORE_ coop games and how it's a shame that it has all but dissapeared on PCs (one of the only reason I am more and more tempted to get a console, in fact). But let me point ONE aspect that I find annoying, mostly because I still haven't seen it treated properly yet: What to do when your buddy dies? I don't know if you have played Operation Flashpoint (which is the first title that comes to my mind in recent FPSs, when talking about proper coop mode) but having to restart because your buddy just died is a rather common occurence. Having to do it several dozen times, after a 3 minute walk to the zone of combat... let's just say the mind gets numb... :-P

Halo II solved it. Hate on MS all you want - this game is more than just a pretty face. They changed a lot of tiny little things that other games take for granted that make the fun factor incredible (no hunting or backtracking for health - just hide for 5 seconds straight and your shields pop back up to 100%).

Things they did for co-op:
1) The game has frequent checkpoints. When you arrive at the next checkpoint (which is usually only open once all enemies in the previous zone are dead) your teammate is automatically teleported up next to you.
2) 10 second wait to respawn at the last checkpoint when you die. A little annoying, but no biggie.
3) Halo weapons are all "easy come, easy go" so you don't have to stress over respawning with just your rifle - you'll get more shit fast as hell.
4) Unlimited lives/continues, I think - or at least enough that its not a problem.

Really, these seem like making it too easy, but compare that approach to the "hit quicksave every 5 seconds" that people do with older FPS games and I think Halo II has found a more intelligently integrated idea.

imho, Halo II has solved the Co-op campaign conundrum, at least for linear action FPS games.

Other good co-op multiplayer experiences: Serious Sam (but Sam has seriously annoying monster placement). Unreal Tournament and UT2kX have some excellent co-op mods. For UT'99 there's Monster Madness: Us vs. Them, U4E: Gauntlet, Monster Assault, and the extremely popular Defense Alliance, and personally I just like playing vanilla Assault in co-op. For UT2k4 there is "defend from monsters" game mode whose name I forget. Try that stuff on for a size.

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For UT2k4 there is "defend from monsters" game mode whose name I forget

Ah yes, playing a team of Space Marines against hordes of Aliens... shame I never got my mates to try that one :-/

My recent roaming of the World Of Warcraft sites shows they came up with a really interesting way of handling death. Instead of respawning, going to get new weapons, and gear to replace what you lost, you instead respawn in a graveyard as a Ghost. In Ghost form you can only see other ghosts, and you can only /tell or private message people. You can wander and explore for a period of time (though certain key area's are blocked). To come back to life all the person has to do is re-enter his corpse where he died, (you can see monsters near your corpse, so you can choose to re-enter it when its safe), of course you'll only have 1HP when you do that, so you'll have to rest afterward.

This kind of system implemented into FPS Co-Op would be a great way of doing it. Your buddy gets blown away, and you can ressurect him with a medkit, or wait until his "Ghost" comes back and re-enters his body.

(Forgive the length of this post, I felt this all needed to be said)

I completely agree with your takes on death, and I've decided to go with knockouts/wounds rather than actual death. This allows me to drop the notion of a "health" bar/meter.

This means that, mid-battle, a player can have the wind knocked out of him is he takes too great a blow -- especially while his stamina is down. But this will only phase him/her for a few seconds if he's still fresh.

Actual cuts and damage is supposed to heal relatively fast - as the players are all proficient in healing their own wounds. - simply sitting out of the battle to rest a moment can allow the player to rest up a second while his buddies duke it out with the crowd.

Also when your character is tired, your grip on your sword loosens - increasing the odds of getting disarmed. (A very bad thing!) If this happens, your healing abilities will diminish almost completely. (The players are screwed without their swords, as the player will have little more than a wazakashi to defend with.)

If the player is overrun or gets in over his head, then he can be knocked unsconscious. How long depends on how bad he/she got beaten. If a party member can spare a moment, he can do a little healing or maybe "slap" you awake. I'm considering allowing players to pick up your body and move it to somewhere safe to allow you to wake up/heal without getting KO'd again.

Additionally, the game does have horses as the player's method of transportation. I'd like to allow the horses (when available) to be able to try to wake up players, or even perform smallscale rescues. - I'm planning a few chase/fight segments also. (The enemies may have horses at times, but excepting the major villans - they aren't as cool.) One part of the game in particular takes place on the back of one the villan's riding "netherbeasts" (Thinks of a horse crossed with a pitbull, supersized. Anyone familar with "Rifts: Africa" may know of the term).

As an "out" to allow the players to replay parts without abusing the (unplanned) load/save functions - I plan to borrow a bit from the prince of persia games by utilizing a variant of time dilation/control. One of the last swords (one of the only truely unique power-weapons in the game) is the "Sword of Time" (I know, gimme a sec).

Mid-battle at can be used (at slight cost to the players) to slow down enemies in battle. At an extreme cost, it can stop time. However:

* it draws upon *all* of the player's power is controlled by the wielder (usually the party-leader: love your leader)

* it doesn't work on a particular player unless he/she is wielding one of the "star blades" it's associated with. So if you haven't got yours yet, you're outta luck.

* Don't use it while a player is disarmed, the enemy with the stolen star blade will r0x0r you. (note: bosses tend to own star blades.)

* If this sword gets stolen/disarmed - that's a *REAL* problem. The enemy AI will proceed to use it to wipe the floors with you and your buds at this point.

That may make little sense in the way of death, but I hope to allow (at significant cost) small rewinds of time, healing/regrouping almost instantly, and even a (VERY HIGH cost) "reset" - If the players sacrifice their progress and can afford the attention, they can retry a battle a few times.

Within the context of the game, use of the SoT is as morally unacceptable as it gets - however necessary. It's (ab)use destabilizes the environment by allowing rifts/portals to open, and further leads the "Seekers" to the player party (the players can't defeat the seekers until very late in the game - they *must* evade them and run away.)

I plan on causing pretty much any use of the sword's abilities or magic to cause the seekers to arrive sooner (keeps the players from sitting idle too.)--think of them of being like the Ring Wraiths on LoTR - except they ride huge netherbeasts, and weild "copies" of the SoT and Star-blades. The Seekers are actually one of the few units who can kill/banish the players - making for some very dangerous, highly-defensive fights.

(One of the player's main problems in the game/story are these functional copies of the blades being distributed willy-nilly. The seekers just happen to have a complete set, making them doubly dangerous.)

This makes battles a bit more interesting, and dunegons/temples too. Even travelling gets iffy. The players will eventually plan their egress *on the way in* and search for alternate exits in order to avoid detection by the Seekers out of sheer paranoia! If the players have been *really* naughty - they may show up during a fight. (this may be a little less than fair. I'm thinking they should usually show right after or in the final moments. Especially when they are new to the players who haven't figured out *why* they were found.) Any ideas on this?

This is all subject to change though. As the story is barely a mist right now. The original idea was to present it as a magic vs. technology thing. However, the ranged units (guns, robots, etc) don't show up until much later in the game. I'd like to determine the play dyanmics of it all before trying to "wing it" in the design document.

By the way, the other 3 "star blades" in the game. Each is obtained after painstaking trials, and each has a certain weakness the players must augment. (notice it's a 4 player max - we've yet to decide what to do if there are more/less than 4. It needs to accomodate 2-6, IMO)

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The Star of Might - Gives the wielder superhuman strength, even when sheathed! Making the player an offensive juggernaught. The player can move boulders with his hands, and break just about anything with his sword. The user is highly difficult to disarm due to his grip, even with high fatigue. The wielder is a grappling master. But there is next to no defense/speed bonus blocking is hard.

The Star of Grace - Bestows the user with amazing speed/agility. The user can leap over walls, scale even the flattest surfaces, and balance on just about anything. Has an extreme bonus to tucking/rolling with a hit, and can use the momentum gained towards a vastly superior parry. (when sheathed, the parry dissapears - but overall speed is far superior - allowing for extreme stealth, especially with the SoT.)

The Star of Darkness - (this one is mostly in the air with our team, it's a little unbalanced IMO - This sword has potential to be a star of creating co-op strategy) This weapon is different in that it's not (too) big on passive effects. It actually consumes the life-essence of whatever it cuts (a soul drinker) and stores that energy. It can "learn" to cast elemental spells and effects - possibly even projectile attacks. Using it's stored energy, it can freeze, burn, dehabilitate/blind, even heal - all kinds of things. This thing can hold it's own. (Thank goodness it's slow!)

The Star of Time - Obviously, the SoT is the equalizer - the wielder should be a quick thinker. It can be used to assist the other 3 swords in a BIG way - thus bringing all four players together as a cohesive unit with equally important roles.

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This allows for some really creative, but structured, fighting. Say a tough enemy is fire-based (weak against ice), but is also really fast attacker.

The player witht he SoG can engage him in a grapple to try to slow him down(the SoT could acclerate this, making it easy) The one with the SoD can whack him with enough cold - powerful enough to freeze him. Then the (ever so slow) SoM could deliver the finishing blow on the incapacitated enemy (who would avoid the SoM like the plague). That would be the fastest, most efficient way to dispatch the enemy.

The simplest - using the SoT to freeze it, then lay the smackdown with just about any other blade *would* work. Until portals open up with even more enemies. Keep doing it and soon you've got some seekers who don't go down so easy. Are you guys getting my drift? any suggestions?

I forgot to mention that the SoT can "emulate" the other 3 blade types. (maybe, emulating the SoD might be a bad thing, IMO)

It sounds very cool, and more importantly, like you are putting some serious thinking into it. I hope our answers were of some use to you :)

I don't know if you played it but the new Bond game Agent Under Fire, had (IMO) a really good Multiplayer Co-op mode. Granted the shared lives thing was annoying, but the game itself was fun.

Also I think if you could combine some of the squade based tactics from Rainbow six, into a fuedal game of say TENCHU then you'd have some very interesting concpets there.

Bob the ninja is hiding behind a barrel while waiting on Jim. The guard is standing on his guard and has clear view of everything around him. Jim jumps down and grabs the guard's attention. The guard turns giving Bob his opening, who Thrusts his sword into the back of the guard who is now slumped on the ground.

*drools*
Ooooh, ninja team action! Now that's what I call a cool concept :-D

Friday night my design team got together and sifted through all of the info we've managed to gather to make some decisions and write a real first-revision design document and divy-out some tasks. It looks like this project idea is a go!