Online multiplayer has only fairly recently become something that is a must-include for most big-budget games. As such, there’s isn’t much in the way of hard and fast rules about how online play should be implemented. Obviously there’s a ton of different genres that should support online play, so the actual online gameplay will differ vastly from title to title. But there’s some things, mostly in the time the player spends online before actually getting into a race/match/fight, that should be included in virtually every game with an online component. Some of these things aren’t included in plenty of games. So here’s five things that are a good idea to include in pretty much every online multiplayer game.
1. Always show the number of players currently online, somewhere in your online menus.
Seriously. This is always a good idea. Regardless of what the number of players online actually is, players will always want to see these numbers. In a game with a fairly active playerbase, with plenty of concurrent users, this gives a player a sense of community; it lets them know that hundreds (if not thousands) of other people are playing the same game as them, at the same time as them. In less active (or older) games, particularly ones that only have players online at certain hours of the day, seeing the number of online players can let them know whether they should bother searching for a game. If there’s nobody online, they needn’t waste their time in an empty matchmaking queue.
2. If applicable, allow players to party up with friends before entering matchmaking.
Any game that has team-based multiplayer should have this option. If it’s a game people play as a team, they’re going to want to be allowed to pick their own team. It’s perfectly acceptable to limit how many of their teammates they can bring along with them, or only allow full pre-made teams to play against other pre-made teams instead of being allowed to stomp a random assortment of solo players. It’s much less acceptable to not give players any option to group up with friends before they begin playing.
3. Make the option to mute other players easily accessible during gameplay.
As much as we wish it wasn’t true, it’s an unfortunate fact of online gaming that some people choose to do obnoxious things via their microphone. Inevitably, players will encounter someone they simply don’t want to have to listen to. When they do, they’re not going to want to click through three different menus to mute that player while in the midst of gameplay. Put the mute toggle button for every other player somewhere easy to reach from within the HUD or root menu.
4. Punish players for leaving a match/race/fight early, for any reason.
There’s a surprising number of games that allow players to manipulate their own stats or rankings by leaving or disconnecting before losing. Most games give players who hit the quit button mid-game a loss, but a huge number don’t hand out losses to players who “disconnect.” Thus, shutting down the application, disconnecting from the network, or powering down the system have all become ways to avoid losses in online matches. We need to be a little more ruthless in our stats-keeping; if a player exits a game before it ends, in any fashion, they should receive a loss. Period.
5. Give players ways to personalize the way other players see them.
Online games can have a bewildering sense of anonymity to them. The best way to dispel this feeling is to allow players to distinguish themselves from their peers, in a way that all those peers can see. Whether through actual changes to the appearance of their character or through things like player emblems and banners, all that matters is that players are given a sense of individuality that they can show off to the world. Even better are customization options that require particularly difficult feats to unlock, because everyone likes showing off their accomplishments now and then.
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There it is. Five things that the vast majority of players will greatly appreciate in their online experience. Some of these things are incredibly simple to include, others may require much more effort. Hopefully they’re all things we’ll be able to rely on online games to include in the future.