Board 8 > What game does asymmetrical multiplayer the best?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't normally enjoy them in their entirety, but I can dabble with some...thought I'd ask what the highlights are in this genre of game.

As a full game: Evolve (never could grasp being the monster, but the humans were cool)

As a mini-game: Conker's Bad Fur Day - Beach (hitting the button to destroy the attackers was satisfying)

Gonna hard-disagree with Evolve. My experience with it is that its just flat out awful-feeling, which is a shame because some of the hunters are neat in concept (standing out in my mind is one of the medics - I am a sucker for healing grenades in shooters, even though I dont care for Baptiste in Overwatch.) The hunters movement feels extremely constrained and the monster either feels extremely damn weak for 10 minutes - longer if the trapper knows what they're doing - or overpowering with absolutely no middle ground.

Currently gotta go for Dead by Daylight. Yes, it has its constant share of problems, mostly related to half a dozen overused perks and the burden of knowledge for solo players, but the variety of playstyles of slasher hide-n-seek on both sides is gravy. Wanna be stealthy Albert Wesker? You can do that. Want to constantly attempt to blind and stun the killer? You can do that. Want to fulfill the ultimate tryhard fantasy and master, then spam Nurse? You do you, king.

Mini-games what immediately springs to mind is any number of the 1v3 games in Mario Party.

Pac-Man Vs.

Came in to say Pac-Man Vs, probably the most fun I ever had on the GameCube.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
>_>

That would be Root. both the videogame and the boardgame.

Honorable Mention Spy Party

Nintendo Land

Alien Vs Predator 2

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes came to mind first

Dead By Daylight. It's been going on 7 years, with no signs of ending. It's definitely got its issues, but it has a formula that's yet to be beat. And what other game can you play as Ellen Ripley, getting chased by Pyramid Head in Racoon City Police Department alongside your teammates Nicholas Cage, Laurie Strode and Bill Overbeck?

Root's pretty good but I think of that more as a boardgame than a videogame. In general, I think boardgames do asymmetric gameplay better than videogames, but I can't really think of many videogame examples.

Honorable mention to Mario Party 10. While the game itself may have been mediocre, the actual implementation of the 1v4 mode within the construct of the game was quite good, and shows how it could be done again (except not really because there won't be any more consoles like the Wii U, so the chance is gone). But it was there.

(Edit: I guess "formula" is the word I was missing. The formula in Mario Party 10 was good.)

Yeah the NintendoLand game on Wii U had some fun games like the ghost game or one where everyone is hunting Mario while he's on the gamepad.

tons of great asymmetrical board games, but for video games I'm still playing Dead by Daylight a ton

Board game arena

Mario Party games, at least 2 and 3.

Dungeons and Dragons

Evolve might have not worked out but what inspired it was awesome. Left 4 Dead with players as the monsters may not have been quite balanced but it was just a ton of fun.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Honorable mention to Mario Party 10. While the game itself may have been mediocre, the actual implementation of the 1v4 mode within the construct of the game was quite good, and shows how it could be done again (except not really because there won't be any more consoles like the Wii U, so the chance is gone). But it was there.

(Edit: I guess "formula" is the word I was missing. The formula in Mario Party 10 was good.)

this is a good one. I pretty much only played the Bowser vs All mode, good fun.

We should play some Board 8 Root Digital games sometime.

That google game from a few years ago on halloween

If this includes 2player co-op, then It Takes Two is pretty much untouched

jcgamer107 posted...

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes came to mind first

A good answer here.

Johnbobb posted...

If this includes 2player co-op, then It Takes Two is pretty much untouched

I really liked what I played here, but I didn't play much.

If a game is only 2 players wouldn't that make it symmetrical though

Snake5555555555 posted...

If a game is only 2 players wouldn't that make it symmetrical though

No because each player has different gameplay experiences

so starcraft is asymmetrical multi-player if one person is Terran and one is Zerg?

Sub-Zero VS Scorpion is a rivalry best known for their asymetrical'ness.

More seriously, there's room for two-player modes to be asymmetrical, but the gameplay has to be functionally different. I wouldn't call Mario Kart asymmetrical just because someone picked Bowser while someone picked Toad. That said, if someone makes a level on Mario Maker and then someone else plays it? I'm...not certain that is multiplayer, necessarily, but I think it gets at the point of gameplay-based asymmetry.

NFUN posted...

so starcraft is asymmetrical multi-player if one person is Terran and one is Zerg?

It takes two has entire game segments that are totally different depending on the character that you pick. I never had a fighting mini game when i played it, for example, because of the character that i played as.

You could make the argument that moba's are asymmetrical based on the character that is played, similar to your starcraft example. But that feels like stretching it.

When i posted the first time in this topic i totally thought the topic title was asynchronous not asymmetrical though so

There is a difference between characters being asymmetrical and an entire game being asymmetrical. There has to be a notable difference in mechanics and/or goals. So, Dead by Daylight has one team trying to survive and another player trying to kill them (I think? Haven't played it). Both sides are having a completely different experience. Or on the strategy game side, Root qualifies because each faction has entirely unique mechanics; one player will be playing a three-actions-per-turn game while another will be playing a programming game while another will be playing a shop-keeping game.

So, in Starcraft, the goal on either side is to build an army and destroy the other player, right? There's definitely differences in how the factions work, but I do not think to the extremity that you could argue it feels like you are playing a different game than your opponent.

Or, in other words, most good multiplayer games have asymmetry, but an 'asymmetrical game' is specifically referring to the concept where the two sides are essentially playing two different games. The player count does not matter, as there are plenty of 1v1 games where one player plays offense and the other defense.

What about basketball? Both teams play offense and defense, but at any given time, one is on offense and one is on defense. They're never simultaneously playing the same game.

But they alternate between the two. In games like Root and Dead by Daylight, you are playing a specific role during the entire game.

all this argument and none of it disproves nintendo land as the peak

(unless we lean in hard on social deduction games)

foolm0r0n posted...

What about basketball? Both teams play offense and defense, but at any given time, one is on offense and one is on defense. They're never simultaneously playing the same game.

Tip-off.
Loose ball.

I'm glad basketball is more than just those elements though.

You know, back in the early WoW days there was an experimental RTS called Savage where it was "asymmetrical" in that, while there were at least two teams, there was one "overlord" and any number of other players on the team. The overlord would play like a usual Warcraft/Starcraft game, except the other units on a team weren't (all) AI-controlled - the overlord could only SUGGEST that a player-controlled unit go do a thing (gather stone, gather lumber, go hunting, attack the enemy) and could grant players boons (using the team's gathered resources) if they listened to them. Or if they felt like it.

It failed for one reason or another (probably because keeping as many players running at once was really wonky at the time, plus the usual brand of online cheating - lax security, most notably overlords forcing uncooperative people to move with no input from the worker/soldier unit, but then you would have dickhead soldier units turn on godmode and harass worker players) but as a proof of concept, it would be neat to see that implemented again in a fun way.

Unless such a thing already exists and I don't play it. I'm not much for RTSes anymore.

every game is an RPG because you are roleplaying the character

I genuinely thought asymmetrical multiplayer meant uneven teams this whole time, not different teams play different games.

Isquen posted...

You know, back in the early WoW days there was an experimental RTS called Savage where it was "asymmetrical" in that, while there were at least two teams, there was one "overlord" and any number of other players on the team. The overlord would play like a usual Warcraft/Starcraft game, except the other units on a team weren't (all) AI-controlled - the overlord could only SUGGEST that a player-controlled unit go do a thing (gather stone, gather lumber, go hunting, attack the enemy) and could grant players boons (using the team's gathered resources) if they listened to them. Or if they felt like it.

It failed for one reason or another (probably because keeping as many players running at once was really wonky at the time, plus the usual brand of online cheating - lax security, most notably overlords forcing uncooperative people to move with no input from the worker/soldier unit, but then you would have dickhead soldier units turn on godmode and harass worker players) but as a proof of concept, it would be neat to see that implemented again in a fun way.

Unless such a thing already exists and I don't play it. I'm not much for RTSes anymore.

Oh I think I played this. It was very wonky to play, but it was a pretty fun concept. It was made by S2 Games, which went on to make Heroes of Newerth, one of the first moderately successful Dota clones. Unfortunately, they were way too similar to Dota so the game basically died when Dota 2 came out and everyone moved over. RIP that studio.

It was a lot like Natural Selection, which started as a Counter Strike/Half Life mod. It was basically FPS Zerg vs Terran, where a map would start and as an Alien player, you would be a zergling called a Skulk, and you evolve your little guy into a Gorge which was pretty much a drone and you could look for resourec nodes to build harvesters on and expand the infestation or you could spend resources to become a Lerk/Fade/Onos which were like a Mutalisk/Hydralisk/Ultralisk. So you could just run around and fight or be a little work bee

On the flipside, the marines would have a command chair that one player could get in and be THE COMMANDER and he could assign tasks to build certain buildings like armories or resource harvesting nodes and give orders to players to go set those up, or give orders to go look into areas with alien sightings. So one person kinda is playing an RTS while the rest of the marines are playing FPS, while the aliens have a more decentralized process

It was awesome. they eventually made their own standalone game as Natural Selection 2 on steam. Not sure if people play it anymore.

The devs went on to make a little game called Subnautica, and their most recent game is in early access still called Moonbreaker, which is meant to feel like a miniatures table top game like Warhammer in video game format, set in a universe Brandon Sanderson made up for the game.