No Online Co-Op For Halo 3 At Launch

CVG has the disappointing news, originally reported in the pages of EGM, that online co-op play will not be available when Halo 3 launches this September. In the game the second player would play the part of the Arbiter character, but fans will only be able to complete the campaign cooperatively via LAN or split-screen. Bungie stated the possibility still exists online co-op could be patched in at a later date, but significant hurdles stand in the way of the feature: "'We're not dumb,' says Bungie's Frank O'Conner. 'We know that people want it and we're trying to make it happen. I think the biggest problem for us for online co-op is that we have a situation where you can be in a Warthog with five troops, almost a mile away from the other player. That's a significant challenge. And there's lots of design things you could do to prevent that from happening, but they would make it not feel like Halo anymore. If we can make it happen in a way that works well, we will - and if it works badly, we won't.'"

Comments

well...

[Is0m0rph]

Well better to not have it at all then it be half assed and read the endless whining that will occur on forums as a result.

Halo shouldn't have Co-op.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I enjoyed the Halo SP campaigns because they gave a sense of "one man vs. the universe". Playing it co-op with some whiny kid would not add to my experience.

Re:Halo shouldn't have Co-op.

[XenoRyet]

Ah, but the key factor is that you disagree with the way the developers think the game should be made, and they do have final say.

Personally I like their stance: We know you want it, but we're not going to just cram it in so we can say we tried. We'll do it right, or not at all.

Huge Disappointment

[loteck]

They have been promising this since before 2 came out, just one of the many places where they dropped the ball on 2.

I don't understand why they can't just do they same thing they do in LAN Co-op.. when one player reaches a certain spot it "transports" the other player automatically to that point. That "felt like Halo" enough for 1 and 2...

Sounds more like poor excuses to me. Halo is flirting with solidifying itself as a source of undelivered promises. In-game "vaporware", one might speculate.

Re:Huge Disappointment

[AlexMax2742]

They have been promising this since before 2 came out, just one of the many places where they dropped the ball on 2.

I'm calling bullshit. Show me someplace where Bungie specificly said that they were 'promising' online coop. I really highly doubt they ever did, and it was just something the entire fanbase wished they could do instead of something they could actually do.

And I'm sorry that Halo 2 left you on a Half Life 2-esque cliffhanger and didn't have a 3 shot pistol in Multiplayer, but the rest of the world is still enjoying the hell out of Halo 2 as one of the most played Xbox Live titles ever and is eagerly anticipating Halo 3.

Well, yeah

[rob1980]

That'll be the $30 add-on you buy after the game's been out for a year.

Re:This is Halo

[Thyamine]

I completely disagree. I'm sure there are lots of hardcore deathmatch fans out there, but part of what makes Halo great is the storyline and how they carry it out. That being said, I'd also rather have the online co-op rather than deathmatch. I enjoy beating the snot out of my friends in deathmatch at a LAN party or just a get together, but I have no urge to play against random strangers.

Teleport users together? LAN but not XBL???

[necro2607]

Umm... why is the situation so different in Halo 3 as opposed to how things were in Halo 2? You can play co-op via split-screen in Halo 2, and the exact same issue is still there (players moving far distances away from each other), yet they somehow handled it just fine: when one user is getting way further ahead on the map, the game will just teleport the lagging-behind player forward to the other player. Why wouldn't this be possible when playing over the internet? Why will we be able to play over LAN but not Xbox Live? Especially considering one can just set up Hamachi or similar software to create a simple VPN over the net anyways... This really feels to me like we're not getting the full story here.

Re:Teleport users together? LAN but not XBL???

[Broken scope]

The average idiot will then accuse them of releasing a broken feature and the at then all the review sites will dock them points, despite there repeated attempts to tell people that they can't provide any type of Quality of service.

I mean come one, people blame devs for network problems even when its just their shitty connection or their shitty hardware causing the problem. Do you somehow think console gamers will be any less bitchy about it?

My guess? Bandiwth or possibly a side effect of how they load the levels.

Re:Teleport users together? LAN but not XBL???

[Sibko]

Umm... why is the situation so different in Halo 3 as opposed to how things were in Halo 2? You can play co-op via split-screen in Halo 2, and the exact same issue is still there (players moving far distances away from each other), yet they somehow handled it just fine: when one user is getting way further ahead on the map, the game will just teleport the lagging-behind player forward to the other player. Why wouldn't this be possible when playing over the internet?
 

They have been promising this since before 2 came out, just one of the many places where they dropped the ball on 2.

I don't understand why they can't just do they same thing they do in LAN Co-op.. when one player reaches a certain spot it "transports" the other player automatically to that point. That "felt like Halo" enough for 1 and 2...

Sounds more like poor excuses to me. Halo is flirting with solidifying itself as a source of undelivered promises. In-game "vaporware", one might speculate. Okay, first of all Halo 1 and 2 did not teleport the second player when they got too far from each other - they teleported the other player at checkpoints, when the game saved, so that if you died and had to restart from a checkpoint, both players would be close together. This is not so obvious in Halo 2 due to how railroaded the levels are, you pretty much *have* to travel in a straight line through all the checkpoints. However, if you take a map like Silent Cartographer in Halo 1, which is a giant island, you can have both players go out several hundred meters into the water on opposite sides and not have them teleport to each other.

And I'd like to ask you, Mr. Loteck, just when and where did Bungie promise Halo 3 co-op? Or promise anything else which they haven't delivered? I certainly haven't seen backtracking on any announced features, the closest is our current discussion: online co-op; but Bungie never said they were putting it into the game. Until now, they've never even said to anyone they've wanted to. It's mostly been implicitly expected by the community. But when it comes to crunch time, and you're looking at the immense problem of implementing online co-op, and you've only got another month to figure out the problem before launch, I think the best, most honest way of going about this is announcing beforehand that no, co-op won't be available for launch, but yes, we'll still try and add it in later.

What did you want them to do? Wave a magic fairy wand and finish the development with their large supply of pixie dust? Or perhaps you'd have preferred they kept this nugget of information to themselves until game launch? So no, Halo is not 'solidifying itself as a source of undelivered promises', this is just one instance of one thing that you won't get in Halo 3 at launch, and you cry bloody mary over it.

well...

[Pojut]

really it isn't that big of a deal. I mean, come on, much like the 7th harry potter book being leaked onto the net, I don't think this is going to impact the success of the game very much...would it be nice to have co-op over live? Hell yes, if done right it would be awesome.

would it be a travesty to do it improperly? Yes it would be. I would MUCH rather they spent time on polishing and tweaking the game rather than continually pounding away at a stone with a toothpick.

Re:I don't understand

[Broken scope]

Um trading data between 2 instances is harder than running 2 things within one?

Re:Well, then I won't be buying it.

[enderjsv]

You were gonna buy the console, buy the game, and pay for the online service JUST to be able to play the game co-op single player with your friend?... You sure you're just friends?