Mass Effect is set to feature a four-player co-op online mode, according to various sources.
Eurogamer reports that the much-rumoured multiplayer feature will include "competitive elements" and "will not compromise" the single-player portion of the game.
Our mole added there would "only be a handful" of co-op missions which have been created with the intention of being "played and played again".
Reports have suggested that the online offering will come in the form of a Horde-style mode, but our source was quick to play down the notion.
Bioware's Montreal studio is said to be behind the co-op side, and was seen to be recruiting for "multiplayer" staff last year.
"Mainstream penetration is a major goal for Mass Effect 3 and those high up feel online co-op is the answer they're looking for," our source said. "EA's keen to push the multiplayer side of the game to help spread word of mouth - so it's not just going to rehash stuff from the campaign. It's going all out."
Officially BioWare's refusing to confirm the Mass Effect 3 online antics, but when pressed on the matter last week, co-founder Ray Muzyka told CVG that the studio is "exploring" multiplayer for all of its games.
Comments
37 comments so far...
ingy on 16 Jun '11 said:
Imaduck on 16 Jun '11 said:
I'm actually excited about ME3 multiplayer now
in other news: hell has frozen over and Bobby Kotick lowered prices.
Moorpheus on 16 Jun '11 said:
Well at least it's not FFA
photoboy on 16 Jun '11 said:
Not interested. Not every game needs to have multiplayer tacked on.
Moribundman on 16 Jun '11 said:
Fish bicycle integrates unique fin/pedal interface. Up to 4 fish will be able to have a race in which none of them particularly want to take part.
Because of giving the fish bicycles, the highly anticipated fish swimming in a river will be delayed from Christmas 2011 to March 2012...
El Mag on 16 Jun '11 said:
Could be something similar to Uncharted 2's co-op mode. Take some parts of the levels from the main game and team up to take them on.
Or make your own characters up and have small story segments that fit into the main story. While Sheps fighting them off in space you're clearing Blackpool of the Reapers.
Moribundman on 16 Jun '11 said:
I suppose I am in favour of the AC:Brotherhood multiplayer in principle although having milked that game dry, I've not touched the MP once 9 months on...
What ires me is that ME3 will now have a chunk of its achievement/trophy allocation sucked up by a stupid MP option which will doubtless annoy 90% of hardened Mass Effect nerds (like me). The only achievments I am missing on either game are the insanity ones, which I'm half way towards in both cases... If they f**k over 1/3 of the achievements for such an epic game on "last 5 mins in hoard mode" or "50 co-op victories" type achievements I will be f**king annoyed.
flash501 on 16 Jun '11 said:
They really do have to include multiplayer in every game nowadays, don't they?
Four player co-op could be interesting though, I suppose.
Moribundman on 16 Jun '11 said:
ps. "comprOMise", I believe CVG...
El Mag on 16 Jun '11 said:
Hopefully it will be like Uncharted 2 in that way. That only had two online trophies and they were simply finish a competitive game and finish a co-op game. Yeah, i'm dreaming aren't i we both know it'll be 2000 kills and have your character rank up to level 50.
Moribundman on 16 Jun '11 said:
EA Q2 2012 RELEASE SCHEDULE:
"EA Solitaire: Deathmatch edition."
"EA Masturbation: Now with Circlejerk co-op ."
"EA Having a s**t: So much more fun with friends." *
* Coming soon: EA online functionality - log your logs with EA servers via iphone/android app and compete with your friends to see who can produce the most faecal matter over the season. Take part in online tournaments with other players and see if you can do a bigger s**t than EA Sports' Peter Moore!
f**k off with multiplayer-everything EA; we're not all spotty little cock lickers with Codblops withdrawal ADD whose only source of social interaction is gifted through online gaming. Some of us have girlfriends and social lives which ironically means the gaming side of things needs to be metered out as epic single player experiences played on and off over a long period. If I want to play a multiplayer game, I'll play Left 4 Dead. If I want to play a single player game... Well I can play 2/3 of Mass Effect 3.
budge on 16 Jun '11 said:
"Mainstream penetration is a major goal for Mass Effect 3 and those high up feel online co-op is the answer they're looking for," our source said. "EA's keen to push the multiplayer side of the game to help spread word of mouth"
A sign of the times i afraid.
YCshinobi on 16 Jun '11 said:
Something like co-op wouldn't be bad, but at the same time not necessary for a game like this. I just hope they're right when they say it won't compromise the single-player mode.
PMIKE5 on 16 Jun '11 said:
Nooooooooooooooooooo!
... oooooo...
.... o.
Moribundman on 16 Jun '11 said:
"C'mon guys - lets all head over to Pinnacle station and see if we can top the leaderboards in a cut and paste assault scenario..."
G00N3R on 16 Jun '11 said:
Sigh. I still hope this turns out to be false. In my experience, when a single player focused franchise tacks on a multiplayer mode in a sequel, the multiplayer mode is pointless (compared to dedicated multiplayer games), and the single player is hurt as well because resources (time, money) are taken away. This was true (in my opinion) in both Bioshock 2 and Assassins Creed Brotherhood.
This might not be what EA want to hear, but "mainstream penetration" is not what Mass Effect 3 is about. Mass Effect 3 has been planned from the very start of the series as the final part of the trilogy. By definition, they simply aren't going to get many new players into the franchise with ME3. What is the point of someone playing ME3 if they haven't played ME1 and/or ME2? Those players won't understand the story, which is the best part of the game. Its not like some sequels that are essentially different stories with different characters, where it might not matter if you haven't played the previous games.
The best way to quickly get a ton of new players into this franchise, is just make Mass Effect 1 totally 100% free, forever. Lets be honest, if someone was going to buy that game, they already would have because its been out for long enough. And its selling for about £5 now anyway so that wouldn't be much lost revenue. But it would then become the best demo ever. They might actually save money overall by not having to make a dedicated ME3 demo.
That would do so much more good for the franchise than tacking on some multiplayer mode that many existing fans don't want, and most likely won't compete with dedicated multiplayer games like TF2, Killing Floor, COD, BF3 anyway.
I don't have a problem with Mass Effect multiplayer in general, just save it for a seperate game, that is purely focused on multiplayer from the start of development, where it can be done properly.
/rant
Sammy_bham on 16 Jun '11 said:
Ruined...
im pretty sure, 90% of mass effect fans, don't want this. including me.
humanhand on 16 Jun '11 said:
Mainstream penetration has always been a goal of mine too...
Tom tom tom on 16 Jun '11 said:
I wish bioware never linked up with EA, atleast Microsoft didn't say "ok what we are going to do is appeal to the masses, put in multiplayer, take out aload of stuff and make people who will move on to play cod anyway attracted to our game" You know I'd take kinect over EA's strategies. Dead space multiplayer was horrendous and the campaign was pretty short. Bioware are my favourite developer, casey Hudson just creates classic after classic and I don't want bioware to fail otherwise Il be stuck with overrated Bethesda games that are riddled with bugs, have literally no story and rely on side quests and exploration which if I wanted I would play an MMO.
Crossifixxo on 16 Jun '11 said:
This makes me very sad panda
damoxuk on 16 Jun '11 said:
This is purely so EA can slap an online pass on the game...
Next news Skyrim gets mutliplayer where you can play the dragon's and go in other players games and hound them like the dog's that thine are.. (actually come t think of it).
BenThomasFoster on 16 Jun '11 said:
i've said it multiple times i'll say it again. by all mean have multiplayer so longs as the singleplayer is not compromise. Plus suppose this online mode could set up the next characters in the series without having a cheesy scene in the singleplayer
Imaduck on 16 Jun '11 said:
Why exactly do they want it to go mainstream? It won't, the subject itself isn't mainstream, that's f**king stupid EA. I'm, intrigued to see what they do. But as has been pointed out, this will probably bunk. Waste of time.
Jensonjet on 16 Jun '11 said:
"...those high up feel online co-op is the answer they're looking for."
I've been suggesting for longer than I care to remember that co-op campaign, or in this case a half-assed attempt at co-op would benefit any shooter or action game. With the popularity of Left4Dead and Borderlands, it's about time more of the gaming industry understood that it could potentially mean increased sales. I imagine the Rainbow Six terrorist hunt game type, utilising the campaign maps, couldn't be that difficult or particularly time consuming for developers to incorporate in games.
There is a market out there for those of us who want more than a single player campaign, enjoy gaming with others, but don't necessarily care for typical adversarial online team games. After the abortion (it's the kindest description I can think of) that was Mass Effect 2 I had no intention of touching this series again. If Mass Effect's co-op mode is well thought out and looks fun, perhaps I might change my mind. Now, if only they'd allow us the option of playing in either third- or first-person I'd definately buy this.
CryogenicDead on 16 Jun '11 said:
I'm okay with this, as long as it doesn't hurt the single player then why not? Some people want it, most people don't but lets be honest what can really be the problem if the sigle player campaign isn't hurt?
Even though I'm sure most RPGs like this don't have multi-player. Fable doesn't count.
kmcroc on 16 Jun '11 said:
They are going to screw up ME3 worst than they did Dragon Age 2 & they did that without adding MP to it ,their going to screw this game up so bad . why not release ME3 as is then make a Mass Effect Multi player only a la MAG , were race's fight for minerals or for land Turians, Salarians , Krogans, The Yahg, Quarians, Geth, batarians ,Drells.
monty_79 on 16 Jun '11 said:
I'm looking forward to it, actually! It will be interesting to see how they go with it.
I really hope they iron out all the crap elements of this game. Mass Effect 2 was a sideways step imo, and not a leap forward from the first. They seem to have learned the lesson about not having enough guns and armor and stuff though.
johnafirth on 17 Jun '11 said:
Surely they had enough mainstream penetration when Mass Effect 2 sold s**tloads? People give Activision stick, but EA are just as bad. They're systematically ruining everything that made BioWare great. Sadly, Dr Ray seems happy to let them.
As for not compromising, where exactly is the disc space for all this co-op/multiplayer crap gonna come from? Oh yeah, the main game...
Henbonda on 17 Jun '11 said:
I'm with the folk that say its a bad thing for trophies/acheivements as there will loads of multiplayer trophies that some people won't or won't want to get. I thought the trophies for mass effect 2 wer the best yet up there with arkham asylum and borderlands. They were all attainable with a bit pof hard work n u didn't have to play 1000 online games or complete the game 30 times, they were mostly story related which is the best way for trophies in my opinion
PseudoDuck on 17 Jun '11 said:
But surely a Reaper-infested Blackpool would be an improvement?
fat_tony2001 on 17 Jun '11 said:
Really disappointed if this is true. The strength of the Mass Effect series has always been it's immersion in the storyline and character development as well as the "you against all-odds" mentality. I'm not against a multiplayer ME game per se, I just don't think it should be added into ME3.
They're saying it's separate to the main storyline, so what's the point in having it? Release a separate game for it if it's a separate storyline. I'm buying ME3 to find out what happens with Shepard and the reapers and to continue all the hard work I put in developing my character over ME1 & ME2, not to pick up some other random punk that I don't care about.
I also liked being able to attain all the achievements offline as my broadband's not the best. I've 100% ME2, nearly 100% ME1 I don't want to miss out on completing all 3 because I was unable to get some online achievements!
Spectre on 17 Jun '11 said:
Taken from Casey Hudson's Twitter account:
The previous quote in question is as follows:
I still don't believe that there is multiplayer. Especially not if this is the same "secret source" from last time.
NEO_SUPERMAN on 17 Jun '11 said:
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing?
I can't believe the amount of people crying over this news story.
The single player experience will be epic. MP will be fun afterwards. I can't wait.
Moribundman on 17 Jun '11 said:
Make a separate game focused on MP in the ME universe. Let shoppers vote with their feet. Concentrate on SP for ME3 and allocate the full gamerscore/trophy allowance to SP in that.
Can't help but think MP will end up as the Pinnacle Station holodeck writ large.
johnafirth on 18 Jun '11 said:
If EA do insist on tacking this unwanted crap on (and let's face it, EA seem to have a checklist of boxes that they have to tick for pretty much every game now, regardless of whether it fits or not), stick it on the ME3 equivalent of the Cerberus Network. That way all the disc space is used for the proper game, and they can then use up as much space as is necessary to at least make the effort to do this properly.
anytime on 19 Jun '11 said:
At least it's clear what the extra delay is for now, so they can glue on this tosh.
sepewrath on 7 Aug '11 said:
Don't know why suits believe that multiplayer is some magic button, that will launch their franchise into super stardom. If people aren't interested, adding multiplayer isn't going to make them any more interested. Yeah Call of Duty sells because of its multiplayer, but that's because people want to play that games multiplayer. A 1M seller isn't going to jump to 8M because they add multiplayer, its a crutch that doesn't even make sense. It would be annoying if there is content that could be single player and its made into multiplayer, where people without Gold or internet access cant play it.