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Co-op / play distinction


Mirh
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I was just writing UT3 coop guide now and I gave a look to my previous works with source games

 

And this came to my mind: why are we even making a difference between game modes? :/

I mean the entire guide in L4D is called "Local co-op", but it's valid for versus too.

 

So I was just going to post this in the Local Multiplayer Games thread... when I realized that this also applies to online and LAN

It's not like this is some useless information (of course everything should be specified in the notes) but coldly speaking, competitive or cooperative are merely convenience choices.. I guess you could even decide to suddenly turn yourself into an enemy in some games

 

I recall I already had this doubt once.. but I somewhat forgot the conclusion.

 

And then, what are hot-seat and asynchronous if not nuances of the same thing? Something we may just call delay between everyone's turn to play? (Simultaneous ==> hot-seat ==> asynchronous)

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Agreed with what Soeb said with regards to hot-seat/async.

 

As for the play/co-op distinction, I think the distinction is useful for people looking for games specifically supporting collaborative or versus gameplay, rather than leaving it ambiguous. At the same time, this could be relegated to the Notes column and work just as well without the baggage that the template currently comes with. I'd support merging these as long as we try to retain the versus/co-op distinction in the template's Notes.

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Agreed with what Soeb said with regards to hot-seat/async.

Mhh indeed, if I think better they don't even apply to the same things. I mean, hot-seat is just doable in local play, whilst asynchronous could just apply to online games (TBS usually) afaik

So hot-seat should already be fine as it is.. but maybe asynchronous should be moved as a note for local and lan play (i don't think that if a strategy game uses it, it would support even other modes)

 

As for the play/co-op distinction, I think the distinction is useful for people looking for games specifically supporting collaborative or versus gameplay, rather than leaving it ambiguous. At the same time, this could be relegated to the Notes column and work just as well without the baggage that the template currently comes with. I'd support merging these as long as we try to retain the versus/co-op distinction in the template's Notes.

Yes, the distinction is obviously important, when it's possible to make it.

 

For example yesterday I wrote the instructions for GTA:SA and I really couldn't figure out whether that could be considered cooperative or competitive.

You could be shooting cops a second, and then the following moment you might be aiming to your friend.

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  • 2 months later...

So there would be three rows: Local play, LAN play, and Online play.

 

Not having co-op as a definite row would also mean versus could be covered better (which right now isn't supported to the same degree) and this would also fit better with games that make no distinction between co-operative and competitive play styles (e.g. Minecraft). If the play styles needed to be accessible for semantic queries this could be handled through a parameter that accepts comma-separated values.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Very nice.

Even though, wouldn't it look better if "modes" and "notes" were not on the same line?

I mean, instead of the hyphen you have a newline

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

The update is now live. The deprecated rows have been retained during the transition period, so existing pages will continue working as usual.

​

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I think the modes available should be in a separate column entirely. It looks awkward mixed in with the notes.

 

Also, how am I supposed to distinguish the max player limit for multiple game modes? Adding them via the players field squishes everything and delegating it to the Notes field completely defeats the purpose of the players field.

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The players field is only approximate - so if the max number of players is 4, that's what's supposed to go there.

 

It's not pretty, but there's not much to be done about it - unless someone has an idea.

Well, the previous layout handled all these issues quite fine. All this new layout is doing is making the table more complicated and sloppy. There was literally no good reason to "fix" something that wasn't broken to begin with.

 

And the players field should never be approximate. It needs to be exact as all modes have different max player limits. Again, all it's serving to do is make the table sloppy.

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Guest

What did the old tables look like before?

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What did the old tables look like before?

Something like this:

{{Network/Multiplayer
|local play           = 
|local play players   = 
|local play notes     = 
|lan play             = 
|lan play players     = 
|lan play notes       = 
|online play          = 
|online play players  = 
|online play notes    = 
|local co-op          = 
|local co-op players  = 
|local co-op notes    = 
|lan co-op            = 
|lan co-op players    = 
|lan co-op notes      = 
|online co-op         = 
|online co-op players = 
|online co-op notes   = 
|hot-seat             = 
|hot-seat players     = 
|hot-seat notes       = 
|asynchronous         = 
|asynchronous notes   = 
}}

It's a layout that just works. Each game mode has it's own row, allowing to easily distinguish between the various modes.

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Guest

Yeah I don't really see much point in this new change, it was fine before.

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