As long as it has separate online co-op missions like the last game

It's always the "it's impossible to do that and maintain our high quality game" excuse. That's such a cop-out. Saint's Row does it just fine, and still maintains its quality, thank you very much. There's no reason a co-op player can't be a "buddy" that tags along in the story. Hell, I don't even care if they're never referred to in cut-scenes or dialog. Just let me play with my friends!

The Rockstar version of co-op -- one-off missions -- are fun for a day, but have no longevity.

Such a shame.

Same excuse we´ve seen so many times

Hopefully they expand on the idea of multiplayer from Red Dead, while not as good as the SR co-op play it at least is a step in the right direction.

Darrken,

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm sick of the divisions when people say they don't want devs wasting type on coop. Coop and single player can essentially be the same build.
Hell, I'm going to be waiting forever for a elder scrolls coop too.

--- Replying to tee_bag242 -----

Just curious — have you ever developed a game, or in fact programmed anything significantly large at all? Because the idea that adding co-op has minimal or zero overhead is absurd. I'm not saying the absence of co-op isn't sometimes disappointing, but there's a very unrealistic idea around here that it has virtually no costs.

--- Replying to Macrocephalus -----
But are those costs significant? You could argue that instead of a flowerpot being X number of polygons, X amount of functional code can be diverted toward co-op.

The straight addition of co-op to a game in its current form might not be budget friendly...but there is always, always, always a worthy trade-off.

--- Replying to txshurricane -----

Actually, yes, the costs can be very significant, and it doesn't at all amount to just reducing the number of polygons in a few flowerpots. (And most games already have pretty crappy-looking flowerpots anyway. There's not necessarily a lot of available margin at the bottom.) The developers need to write extra input-handling code. State tracking becomes much more complicated (MUCH more complicated) with two (or more) players affecting state information instead of just one. Play-testing and quality assurance need to be much more extensive and complex, because the number of interactions that can produce error states and involve bugs doesn't merely grow arithmetically, it multiplies. And in an open-world game like GTA V (or Skyrim, since many of the same people here complained bitterly that Skyrim didn't have co-op in its campaign) the number of interactions and state variables are already astronomically huge. Multiplying all that complexity several more times over could be crippling.

I mean, jeez, look how buggy and messed up and just plain broken Skyrim (and all other Bethesda games running on that engine and its relatives and antecedents) already are. Do you really think it would be a simple, straightforward, cheap, and easy thing for them to multiply the complexity of their games without just releasing an even more tragically borked mess? Let alone on current-gen hardware, with all its profound RAM and other limitations?

Obviously it's possible to budget for co-op when that's part of the design and spec of the game from the beginning, even when dealing with a relatively large-scale effort like Saints Row 3. But that franchise has been co-op all along, or at least for a good long while. (I have no idea what the deal was with the first one.) Its developers didn't have the legacy of tech and public expectations to deal with that Rockstar and Bethesda do when it comes to their flagship franchises.

And I don't say this as some big GTA fan, either. I seriously doubt I'm even going to look at GTA V after the craptastic time I had when I tried GTA IV. And Skyrim… well, I respect what they were trying to do, but until they do a ground-up rebuild of their engine, I think I'm going to avoid future open-world Bethesda RPGs. The bugs are too damned infuriating, and the design concepts are showing their age anyway. I'm just saying it wouldn't be trivial, or even necessarily commercially feasible at all, to graft co-op onto those games.

--- Replying to Macrocephalus -----
The thing you have to understand Macro is that it's not complete ignorance that makes us co-op purists talk like this. It's equal parts ignorance and dreaming of awesome games becoming even more awesome through co-op. I for one invite you to join us in this dream, abandon logical thinking and dream the dream of co-opsomeness.

--- Replying to Macrocephalus -----
No, it wouldn't. Not at all. People are modding co-op into these games, for cripe's sake!

--- Replying to txshurricane -----
Yes — imagine that, I have some game development experience. (As I've mentioned before.) Nothing that ever came to market, just some side projects and then a startup that fell apart due to an unfortunate case of malfeasance, but I do have some passing idea of what I'm talking about.

To address the rest of your point, though, Economics 101 suggests that Rockstar and Bethesda know their markets better than you do, since GTA and Elder Scrolls games sell tons and tons and tons of units. You can insist that they're leaving lots of money on the table because they're not making fundamentally different games, but so far you haven't offered any actual evidence.

fun and interesting and free, and they go into the experience understanding that they're likely not getting commercial-grade work. Not exactly a recipe for commercial viability.

And more generally, I wouldn't call myself pessimistic, I'd say I'm realistic — about the feasibility of hacking co-op onto an existing engine and design after the fact. I also don't think a well-designed single-player experience is the anti-christ. I love well-designed single-player experiences. I also love well-designed co-op experiences. But that's the thing — to be great co-op experiences, they should be designed that way, from as close to the beginning as possible.

--- Replying to Macrocephalus -----
You can call yourself whatever you'd like. At the end of the day, one side of this discussion is a group of consumers speaking out about what they want, and the other is a guy who puts words in developers' mouths.

sigh, yet another battle in a thread in which both sides are going to be too stubborn to stop posting and thus, ruin a perfectly good read.

Can we just agree to say, Rockstar in this time and age is not a great coop game developer. Nor will they probably ever be. And saints row will always have a better well, everything due to the fact you can play with your friends while hitting people with giant di*do's...

--- Replying to Shazoo -----
Red Dead Redemption is one of the best co-op experiences I've had.

--- Replying to txshurricane -----
It's because the co-op areas are more sectioned off. The biggest issue with open world games is a lack of focus. This issue gets exacerbated by having other players tossed in. Yeah it's fun to goof off and mess around, but structure is good too. In RDR the co-op has specific goals. You work together to accomplish those goals. When you have a game built essentially just for goofing off, like Saints Row or Crackdown, it's not a big deal. I don't know how Elder Scrolls Online will turn out, but I would hate co-op in Skyrim. I like being able to explore at my own pace and not have to worry about what other players want to do. Co-op in GTA5 would work great if there's specific game types and objectives like what RDR did.

--- Replying to Raines -----
GTA IV did have that. It's safe to bet that GTA V will, too. What this article is about is the lack of a co-op campaign.