Co-op PC Gamers

Cafe Society
1

We’ve got to have some here, right?

I know we have a decent amount of people who play games on the PC, and an even smaller amount who play online (if **Senor Beef’**s perpetual threads are any indication!)

Everything recently has been (for the lack of a better term) deathmatch or something close to it.

I’m sick of trying to shoot other (real) people. I want to go through a mission/campaign with some friends and kill the evil computer/AI.

I’m thinking of something like the original Ghost Recon for the PC. Good tactical gameplay, having fun with friends flanking the enemy, etc.

My question is this: what game is out there today that can accomplish this?

If we can find enough people to play I’ll pony up for a server rental so that we can all get together. The problem is finding the people and the game.

So, since the SDMB can’t do polls I’ll ask for inputs from anyone who is interested.

Any love for the original Ghost Recon plus expansions?

How about Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter?

Also: Rainbow Six:Vegas

In the RTS genre we have Company of Heroes

I’ve heard that Brothers In Arms is good, but there are no servers active now.

If we do this, the deal will be that the server will be open to SDMB folks anytime (as long as you control the password). I normally fly 12 days/month so I’ll be gone weekdays for a couple of weeks each month. I should be available every weekend, and if not I’ll let everyone know. Heck, if someone becomes more responsible than me then he can manage the matches on the server.

So, how many Dopers have Ghost Recon installed? Or anyhitng else I mentioned? :slight_smile:

2

Heh.

I designed the original Ghost Recon. :slight_smile:

Sorry, I don’t have any recommendations for you though. I moved on to other projects and I haven’t been paying much attention to the tactical shooter market the last few years.

3

Well first of all thanks for making a great game!

Secondly, I’m more interested in a good co-op team experience. If that happens with a 5-year old game then that’s fine. I’d be very proud of a game that I designed that still had active servers 5 years later!

4

You’re welcome! Thanks for saying so … you’ve made my evening!

There’s actually a group of fans out there still playing the original Rainbow Six which was released in '98! One of them tracked me down a few weeks ago. He’s trying to reverse-engineer the tool set that we used to model the levels. (I’m afraid I wasn’t much help – Red Storm’s production practices were pretty shaky in the early days and none of the essential info was documented or archived.)

But, to your original question – I really don’t have any suggestions. I’ve been at Sony working on console games since 2002 and I haven’t even played many shooters or coop games since I left Red Storm. Hopefully someone will come along soon and give you a decent answer. I just couldn’t let a thread that mentioned Ghost Recon go by without sticking my head in. Pure vanity, you understand … . :slight_smile:

5

Swat 3 & 4 were both quite good, and probably in the neighborhood of what you are looking for.

6

Heh…just look at any GQ thread about flying and you’ll see my ugly mug in there at some point!

And again: thanks for designing a great game!

I’ll also use this as the weekend shout out.

Actually, it can be the week-long shout out.

If you have a co-op game in mind that you can/will play (ie you have it installed) let me know.

I’ll gather all the responses and try to come up with a consensus.

This poll is not scientific, and I make no claims at all. E-mail me in my profile or post in this thread; either one will count as a vote. Votes with reasons will count for more, though.

Rich

7

I’d be up for whatever SDMB gaming I have. It beats playing with random people.

I have ghost recon, and played it as recently as a year or two ago. It’s still a solid game.

As for suitable co-op… I wonder if any of the half life 2 co-op mods are out yet.

8

Were you thinking of renting a general purpose server, as in you had full control of a fast machine on a dedicated fast connection, or one of those pay-per-slot systems where you rent someone else’s server space for a particular game?

If you want to host Ghost Recon, it has to be the former - there’s no dedicated server program, at least none I could find, and you’d have to run it off a box you had control over.

Pay per slot systems are cheaper, but that’s all you get - that one particular game. Renting your own server, you could run multiple game servers, a web server, whatever you wanted. That’s what I did, back in the day - I ran some ghost recon servers, a battlefield 1942/desert combat server, our SDMB CS:S server, and whatever I happened to feel like at the moment. So if you go that route, you could have several game servers running at the same time.

By the way, Half-life 2 deathmatch is extremely fun. I know you’re looking for co-op, but I was thinking how cool it’d be to have an SDMB deathmatch server going. I didn’t discover the joys of hl2dm until relatively recently - I generally get bored very quickly by deathmatch games, but hl2dm is just awesome, in terms of pace, weapons, physics, gravity gun, etc.

9

I was thinking of doing a game-specific thing if there was a consensus on a game. I did it with Battlefield 1942 back in the day.

Agree on the HL2 Deathmatch. I’ve been having fun with it since the game came out. I even have a T-shirt! (Ordered from the Valve store, it depicts a stick figure about to get brained with a toilet).

My buddy and I would get on an empty server and do grav-gun only deathmatch. It changes the whole dynamic and can be a lot of fun.

Hmmm…he still plays sometimes. Maybe an SDMB HL2 deathmatch server is the way to go.

BTW, sorry for bailing out of The Ship so quickly that one night. I got a phone call that I had to take.

10

Ah, you won’t find GR with by renting a specific game server - it’s a bit of a hassle to run a server for it at all on windows (there might be a linux dedicated server) and I’ve never seen a company offer it as a per-slot server.

Mostly, you’ll find the most popular games - CS:S, battlefield, etc. that way. It can be economical, but you have limited control over your server.

I used The Planet back when I was renting that server - dual xeon system with a shitload of bandwidth (IIRC something like 15Mbs up and down) and a 2000 gig/month limit that could do a LOT, and I had complete control over it, but it runs you $200/month, out of the budget of doing casual/recreational serving unless you happen to have a lot of spare, disposable income, which I did at the time.

11

Not a Doper yet, but perhaps soon.

It’s a tough gaming world out there. Everywhere I go, ppl are disruptive and/or can’t grok the teamwork aspect of games that REQUIRE teamwork. The members of my gaming clan ahave been busy with the holidays, and I’ve been forced to find games in (shudder) PUBLIC servers.

I play a lot of Battlefield 2, but have Half-Life, Half-Life 2, all versions of Counterstrike, both versions of Day of Defeat and Unreal Tournament. I would welcome any opportunity to game with (at least somewhat) mature ppl.

My Battlefield 2 in-game name is DocJon, and I’m an Anti-Tank specialist. I can be found in XFIRE by that name.

Good games, and happy New Year!

12

Would people start screaming “Heretic!!!” at me if I suggested starting an SDMB guild in an existing MMO? The ones that spring to mind are WOW, Guild Wars and EQ2 (I’ve played the first two).

I’m not into tactical shooters but I do like gaming and would do it online more if I knew more non-teenage fuckwits to play with. I’m quite into WH40K if anyone ever wants a match of that with me.

13

If you had the interest, I would suggest starting a Straight Dope clan, which would allow Dope players of many different games to gather and play with (mostly) mature, (mostly) intelligent players. Some ppl will play more than one game, and so the clan could accommodate all their gaming needs within different branches of the clan, rather than just their MMO needs (and only their needs in a particular MMO at that). Judging from the responses so far, however, I don’t see the numbers necessary.

14

Well give it time, it’s not like the thread has been going long. I’m thinking of going back to WOW after Burning Crusade is released and am happy to create a (European server) SDMB guild for anyone to find and join. Any other takers?

15

Well at least the thread hasn’t died completely!

As to the server - I can’t justify $200/month for one of those uber-servers. I don’t have enough time - it would end up being about $15/day for every day I could play.

A high-quality single-game server for $30-50/month is more what I was looking at.

Hopefully the thread will stay alive through the week and we can get a decent idea of how many people would be interested.

Right now I’m leaning toward Half-Life 2 Deathmatch. Good gameplay, not too taxing on newer systems and a pretty large installed base. Plus I would be able to throw toilets and sinks at all of you!

I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow and will be back Friday, but I’ll try to check in between now and then to see if anyone else has expressed interest.

16

There’s an active SDMB supergroup in City of Heroes (and Villains). Chat channel is #CECIL.

I believe there was an SDMB clan in WOW – the Burning Dog Legion, IIRC. I do not know if it’s still active. I think the challenge with WOW is that small clans/guilds are disadvantaged, and that while the overlap between Dopers and gamers is pretty good-sized, the subset of those who are not already affiliated with some other form of clan is much smaller.

Best of luck to you, pilot141. I may well tune in to your HL2 deathmatch, although I’ll suck really bad as my deathmatch skills have atrophied considerably since the days when lunchtime Quake2 deathmatch was a regular thing.

17

It doesn’t help that WOW has about a billion servers and you’re limited to which theatre you can play in (US, Europe or Asia). I’ll ask around, see if it’s still going for when/if I start playing it again - I may not bother, Europa Universalis 3 is coming out around the same time and I have it on pre-order, I can imagine it probably being more my kind of game in the long run too.

18

As a person who’s usually interested in stuff like this, that I can’t usually join in on MMORPGs is an annoyance.

FPSs are another matter, so count me interested in anything along those lines, including HL2.

19

Revenant Threshold - you can join in playing a MMORPG, what’s stopping you? You just wouldn’t be able to play with people outside of Europe (although Blizzard has continually hinted it may change that at a later, naturally unspecified, date).

20

I don’t think there’s anything stopping him, per se, except that he would rather play with Dopers (who he knows to be mature and good natured) but can’t, because of his location; most Dopers are set in the US theatre, after all.

Hell, I know that’s what stopping me. If any of ya’ll are interested in getting an at least halfway serious EU WoW guild going, I’m good to go! WoW’s been on the shelf for 6 months 'cause I can’t bear to start up being wetnurse for a bunch of thirteen year old brats again :wink: