you know the best thing about single player games
no other players
i primarily play online shooters but i love single player games so i can get away from all the utter c*nts who play online games
Pretty much.
The
idea of online multiplayer is amazing... and then you encounter the reality of the online community. It's nothing really to do with how well the game is made; other than a few matchmaking tweaks here and there to try to mitigate all the crap wrought by hackers, trolls, griefers, gank squads, game throwers, rage quitters, etc. it's kinda out of the creators' hands once the game's been released into the wild. And that's assuming there aren't any annoying issues with the servers and such, and that people can actually get into games without waiting a quarter of an hour each time.
Also, a singleplayer game can set a mood and sustain it, whereas MP tends to get pretty silly pretty fast. Few people respect the tone and spirit of an experience in the online mode, so you'll get honourable knights teabagging everyone, stern-faced warriors doing daft skipping dances, and so on.
On top of that, sometimes you just can't get into it, or at least get into the 'parties allowed' mode to be able to co op with your mates, because the majority of your opponents have been playing basically that and only that every day for years, have assembled a crack team of fellow one-game-obsessed shut-ins, are several hundred levels above anyone in your party, and you just don't stand a chance. That could at first be a matchmaking issue, but if all of those types of players discourage newcomers and less obsessive gamers with the sheer lack of a fair fight, effectively pushing them away, they'll end up being the only ones populating it.
There are things some creative devs are beginning to do with online social gameplay features that contribute to rather than spoil the mood of a game, like
Journey I suppose, but most of the time you have to completely separate the MP from the SP to not risk ruining stuff it's trying to do. I doubt a game such as this needs to take that risk.
It's cool when you get a server full of people who are almost all interested in roleplaying, like being invaded in the
Souls games by some dapper rogue, you both bow in respect to each other and then patiently take your fighting stance and circle each other before any blows are struck. And some games built like that, with such a deeply immersive world and lore, can sort of deal with a degree of shenanigans (a sneaky thieving assassin is unlikely to give you a polite heads up that they mean to smite you, after all) without it just coming across as some modern gaming bullshit. But the twats will always find a way to spoil things for others.
Having said all that, there's nothing quite like getting ganged up on in an ignoble invasion, gracefully wiping the floor with them all with my experienced gentlemanly swordsman, and then bowing casually and pointedly in their death throes.