Obi said:
I'm not really understanding your second paragraph right now. Can you clarify?
People on this topic are talking about forming GAF SSX group, with the presumption you will compete against people simultaneously, right? Except you can't do it the way you expect - instead all you're really doing is adding people to compete against in Explore Mode through Rider Net, because you can't organize multiplayer events through the game in SSX.
StrikerObi said:
Seems like the MC crew is really self-entitled though, as if the game was being made only for them... which I guess should be expected since it is the SSX fan-site.
On the contrary, my concern isn't for my website or my crew, it's for the game as a whole. I want SSX to succeed in every way so that no one uses some shortcoming as a reason to not buy the game.
No synchronous multiplayer through the game is a major blow to anyone who picks up the game expecting to play friends. This is a common expectation of any game claiming to play multiplayer. Everyone remembers doing this in SSX. There is a system people expect when they do this - a way to message friends and meet them at an event
at the same time IN-GAME, which most games that tout multiplayer have the ability to do. We're pretty sure there's no way to do this in-game.
Right now, it's looking like you can only 'run into' someone else on the mountain. Form a global event, restrict it to friends, invite your friends and then you go to the event and essentially PLAY BY YOURSELF. If someone else is on the track at the same time, you might see them, but you're still only really competing via leaderboards. There is no difference between this mode and Explore except you are limiting the friends that appear on said leaderboard. This is not really true multiplayer.
Arranging something in the game via some OTHER method is completely ridiculous and unnecessary. It's making it more work than it has be - Xbox Live has cross-game chat, but PSN has nothing similar, which means that you are tied to the awful PSN message box to arrange anything in game, which is the same as having nothing at all. Even if I'm online with someone, if I have to be on the same track at the same time to experience actual 'multiplayer' - then I have a one in 153 chance that we'll do that if I don't want to type out a message on PSN.
I'm not pissed off that the game isn't living up to my expectations on a personal level, or even for my community. We can arrange stuff ourselves, and in that we're lucky. But from a game standpoint, I think this design decision is ridiculous when it's very clearly going against what everyone generally expects from a multiplayer game.
soultron said:
The first reason being rewinding.
Not a valid reason. What can happen to you can happen to another player, meaning even if they are ridiculously ahead, they could still wreck themselves and be forced to rewind allowing you to catch up. Rewinding is not a detriment to multiplayer. Wide tracks are not a valid reason either. Burnout Paradise had an entire world to race in, you get to choose the path to the finish line, but did they use that as a reason for not having event multiplayer? No. In fact, they did it well. The fact that SSX doesn't have this is a ludicrous design decision that hurts the game, will cost it ratings points and likely limit the amount of DLC it gets in the future when the game doesn't sell as well as it should.