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[Corwin]

I've been slowly working on a game project for the last few months, but these days I'm mostly writing down all of my ideas and designs for it since my current situation doesn't leave me with much free time. I've encountered a conflict in the vision and have been pondering on it for weeks without managing to take a decision or finding a suitable solution, so I figured I'd ask for help from you knowledgeable people.

My initial idea was to build the game around the cooperative aspect (1-4 players) and I built all systems so far with that aspect in mind. However, the more I brainstorm and come up with lore and events happening in the world, revolving around NPCs and scripted events, the less it seems compatible with the coop aspect.

I don't have a justification for forcing players to stick close to one another like most games do, or to make one player the main one with the others just assisting him. So 2 players could be doing two very different things at the same time, in completely different locations, and since exploring the world and discovering its locations and lore is the main focus of the game, with a story to unfold as you go, I wonder if it is really compatible with coop that much.

While of course I'm not aiming for that scope, imagine if Skyrim had a coop mode, and was more discreet in the way it delivered backstory and lore to the player. How would you make some of the most advanced quests work both in solo and coop? How would you keep the world coherent (e.g. avoid silly and immersion-breaking things as much as possible)? What would happen if some players went to beat the final boss while one was doing something completely opposite? How would you handle one player becoming hostile to a faction, while the other players are friendly to it? How do you make it work when dialogue with NPCs can't pause the game anymore? All that without relying on MMORPG's tactic of watering everything down to fetch quests?

To sum it up, the choice I feel I have to make is to 1) keep the coop aspect as the underlying basis, but cut/sterilize many of the quests and events which could really make the world deep and interesting, or 2) cut altogether or relegate the coop mode to a secondary mode with its own content (e.g. coop 'missions') to keep all the events that enrichen the world and make it only available in solo. (basically, solo mode = lore and rich world to explore, coop mode = mechanics + a challenge)

My dilemma isn't helped by the fact that half of the mechanics/events I want to implement are well suited for coop, and would feel a bit moot for a single player (e.g. AI with interesting behaviors that are best approached together), while the other half is better suited for solo play and seemingly incompatible with coop (e.g. scripted events, actions that change the world, events requiring smoke and mirrors). Both set of ideas are things I really want to explore and build, and I would like not to have to cut one side of it. Both are also quite specific to the world I'm envisioning, so I can't just keep them for the next game.

I'm also not 100% sure what the majority of coop players actually expect from coop games they play. In my experience playing in coop, the lore and backstories and npcs are sort of ignored and skipped in favor of the player-player interactions and going up against challenges. I've seldom read a mission briefing in coop and would always skip NPC dialogues to get to the gameplay, whereas I'm avid of those things when I play singleplayer games. So even those events and lore that I could make work for both coop and solo with some work, I don't know if it's worth doing so if most players skip over it in coop. Let's say some quests can only be discovered by hearing rumors from NPCs and investigating those rumors; would anyone give a shit about those in coop?
 
My experience is mostly doing singleplayer mods and games so I have to admit I may miss coop design philosophies and tricks that others find obvious. I'd be interested to hear about other games I may not know of that have managed to keep coop and exploration/backstory/scripted events in an interesting way (or totally failed, for that matter), or from designers who have attempted similar things in their own games and have learned lessons from their successes/failures. Anything really that could help me merge those two aspect of the game satisfyingly or, failing that, help me decide where to put my focus.

TL;DR: How do you create a game where a deep world full of lore and backstory and exploration are the main focus while maintaining full compatibility with coop (1-4 players)? Have some games done it successfully? Do some people around here have tales from the trenches to tell about their own games and how it worked out for them? Any research/findings about what players want/enjoy in coop games, and is a deep world not actually one of those things?

Thanks!

[DanglinBob]

There's two ways I see doing this:

First, for any of this to work, the two players need to have their relationships tied together. That is to say, you make them from the same... faction and make them (story wise) so well known that everyone knows they're together. In this way one player's actions will impact the other players'.

There's no issue in letting players "fight" with eachother by having different goals. You can even tie it into the mechanics, where one player may benefit from pissing a group off and the other may benefit from befriending them and let them create their own dialogue/deal as to how to sort that out. Sounds like fun to me... just because it is co-op doesnt mean you have to work as a team!

Second, you have to tie the plot into the mechanics. I am with you 100%. When i play a game co-op we skip dialogue because nobody wants to sit and read a book while the other guy is sitting there waiting for the killing to start again. However, with short and punchy dialogue and impactful decisions for character development/reputation on the line, we'd do it - ESPECIALLY if you have the potential to screw with your friend

That brings up a third, more complex, item that isn't really a requirement in my mind:

Which is you'd end up needing 2 dialogue sets for each encounter. You have the person who initiates it and the person who may be nearby. If a player is nearby they can join in (and influence) the dialogue. If not, you can't... so staying together means you can potentially temper the craziness of your partner, but staying apart means both of you get full control over a dialogue.

Then you tie the whole thing together by making key events/quests require two people to complete (and a system to quickly move to another player's location). In this way even though you may be out adventuring solo, at key moments the team will unite to take on a problem.

[Corwin]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Pushing your first point further, maybe players could be twins or clones or dressed the same way with hoods/helmets/gas-masks over their faces, so that NPCs couldn't tell them apart. Something to consider, although of course you may lose something else in the process (character personality for instance, and the ability to have different relationships with different factions, as you mentioned).

It's another good point that players could have opposite goals. The way I am designing the game right now, the players can either ignore one another and do what they want, or work together. But having NPCs or events try to split the players up, making them target one another for potential rewards is a very interesting idea that I'll have to explore further. Especially with online coop, where players may not so easily become aware of another player's secret intentions (harder with split screen if you can see the other player having a chat with the 'enemy')

I definitely try to find any way of deepening the world through anything but written dialogue (it being the last trick to resort to), and if absolutely needed, to keep it to the point. The dialogue system I envision is way simpler than say Skyrim's and I don't actually plan on giving the players a 'voice' except through their actions (e.g. you don't actually agree to do a quest, you just hear about the opportunity to do so, and choose what to do with that information, ignore or act upon it) so I think the dialogue part may work okay with multiple players as long as they can't all speak with the same NPC at once.

Your idea for 2+ player dialogues is still interesting, and I may consider having variations in the lines of characters depending on proximity of other players for instance (if anything, just using the plural where applicable). I wonder if the idea of a player being able to temperate the 'damage' that another player does can be applied elsewhere in my designs, like for instance a player being able to calm down a faction (e.g. bribing) that another player pissed off, etc.

Finally, your point about giving the players a quick way of getting back together is something I needed to hear I think. I was caught up in the plan of making it a sort of punition if players drifted off one another, as they would have to gather back. I was going to even try to make it tricky for them to find one another, or rely on items they have to carry to do so, thus encouraging them to stick together. But it's worth exploring the alternate idea of allowing them freedom to wander and shortcuts to get back together easily. Food for thought!

Thanks again

[JohansenIndustries]

I think the reason you might skip story and dialogue when playing co-op games are because most co-op games simply aren't made for story and lore to be important rather than a natural trait of co-op. Although, it might be the case that wanting to play co-op and wanting to explore lore aren't itches that need to be simultaneously itched often.

One thing that it made me think of was the LOTR trilogy where Frodo and Sam destroyed that big dad thing while the rest were on the other side of the border. A better example might be Game of Thrones with a bunch of people with differing agendas etc still effecting and cooperating with each other in one cohesive story.

For gameplay, I think you'd just have to check the number of players in an area and alter the obstacles or opportunities to account for that.