When I laid my money down on BF3 for PC, I knew that I had no intention of playing the single player. At this time of year there are loads of games coming out and so I am picking the ones that compliment each other.

BF3 for Multiplayer, Skyrim for Single player and... Sonic Generations of a bit of mindless platforming.

Considering that the single player must have taken up a huge amount of Dev time, and most people see it as a side thing, would the game have been better received if it had included more (better) co-op missions and more maps instead? More to the point, how do you think it would have sold? I was just wondering how everyone felt a couple of weeks in.

Well I might be wrong, but I guess dev guys who can do SP can also make maps, I do think that a BF3 MP without a SP would be a better MP. But I am sure the EA guy have run the numbers, and made the call command DICE to make a Single Player.

I think EA is measuring by Call of Duty standards. They sell like 10+ million copies day 1, I bet 1/4 or more more are buying it for the singleplayer. 1/4 of 10 million is over 2 million units sold at premium day-1 price. I bet it's been over a million BF3 copies bought for singleplayer. I just hope some of them try and get hooked on Battlefield multiplayer. Because once you see the light, you're in it for life!

I don't personally know anyone who would buy such a game for its single player content. Even me, as a mostly single player gamer, would buy Battlefield 3 because the multiplayer looks a lot more fun than other "Contemporary Fighting: War" shooters. But I can't say for sure if it would have affected sales. If so, I can't imagine it would have been by enough to offset dev costs.

I've also had my eyes shut on the Battlefield series since 2, though. I guess precedent for the series having single player content was set by Bad Company. That might have also been a factor in their decision to include at least something, besides going directly up against Modern Warfare 3.

Probably, but I doubt it was worth the money they spent on it. They should have just made more maps. At least I hope it wasn't worth the money they spent on it.

Yeah probably, there are still a fair number of people who play these games just for the single player.

I think not.

Battlefield 2 was a long time ago. There are quite a few gamers that only know the spinoffs, some then only on console. A lack of campaign would have probably hurt there, if nowhere else.

I just got my settings locked in and went C4 jeepin', though; single player FPS has never been my thing.

Yes totally, because they would have to had put a big 'ONLINE REQUIRED, MULTIPLAYER ONLY' sign on the front of the box. And everyone who doesn't already appreciate Battlefield would have seen that as a big minus and maybe looked elsewhere.

The single player is mostly on rail set pieces that make for cool trailers and commercials, thus helping market the game, thus helping sell more copies.

Single player may not be as open as you'd expect in a Battlefield game but a multiplayer trailer is far more chaotic than anything that happens scripted. Why game companies don't market that, I don't know.

I think DICE feels console players expect to have a single player with games they are paying 60$ for so they tossed it in to justify that price tag.   While on the PC,  veterans know that it's been multiplayer exclusive for a long time until BFBC2 came out.

Just like games such as Skyrim opt to be a singleplayer, Battlefield should simply opt to focus on their multiplayer. It obviously was a mistake to venture into the scripted world of singleplayer FPS campaigns.

Absolutely and so would CoD. Even if it isn't the primary attraction for a lot of people, it still adds value for the vast majority. If they thought they could ditch it without losing sales they would have done so already.

Every FPS you like that has a single player component is at least partially scripted. I don't get the sudden anti-script hate; if you did it in raw AI it would bug out even more.

I think DICE feels console players expect to have a single player with games they are paying 60$ for so they tossed it in to justify that price tag.   

@AhmadMetallic said:

@Marz said:

I think DICE feels console players expect to have a single player with games they are paying 60$ for so they tossed it in to justify that price tag.

Yep

Interesting question. It actually would. As much as I want there to be a campaign with bots running around the massive multiplayer maps, the single player campaign had a decent showing in trailers. It is probably the component more easily relatable for the mainstream shooter market. I'm not saying Battlefield has gone niche, but judging from the sales of past BF games, it's not selling as well as the straight-forward shoot them in the face CoD. There probably are people less knowledgable in video games who don't frequent gaming sites that bought the game for its single player.

STUPID AI ten years ago has evolved into STUPID AI 2.0 today simply because we're more aware and we demand more of our AI opponents. Scripted events. You walk up to a specific fence in a linear corridor map and 1000 dudes and tanks drop from the sky and roam around like headless chickens for you to shoot. Once they're all eliminated. Step over to the next fence, please. Welcome to gaming in 2011. :)

not sure.; but i kinda doubt it.

I personally loved the "idea of" co-op missions in BF3. Sadly they were a feeble first attempt. The way you can see the retarded AI spawn right in front of you certainly doesn't make the experience any more fun.

I personally would like them to focus just on Multiplayer: More polish and Maps for the game I care about..

Unfortunately Im pretty sure there is a good business reason behind battlefield singleplayer, What you gonna do? its a business after all.

I would've liked to see the singleplayer be a simple bot mode like in BF2 and BF1942. That way I could just fly,swim, run, and drive around the maps and have fun.

As badly as the campaign's gotten panned, I doubt it's a significant number, and I'm sure they'd rather not have captured that audience this time around so they'd have less skepticism to deal with when they actually get it right. Now of course, they *could* have sold significantly more copies if the campaign were good, and I'm sure it wasn't their intention to make a campaign that wasn't good at the outset, so strategically it makes sense despite the outcome.

Yes

i bet they have numbers some where that say yes but i dont think so and hell we could of had some more maps.

I think if it were just a PC game, players would mind as much because it's not that ridiculous a concept for them. There is some kind of precedent for that.

But because it's a console game as well, I think they needed to add it. There are very few examples of successful console games with only multiplayer.

I don't know how much of a difference it would have made, but there would certainly have been a difference in sales. It's probably safe to say that the launch trailer sold some people on the game (Seriously, that trailer was fantastic), and that was all clips from the campaign. Aside from that, I don't think a lot of people outside of the core BF audience would be willing to drop $60 on what would appear to be half a game, especially when you take into consideration the fact that the Bad Company games had a full campaign.

A lot of people who don't play as many games as us jump into single player to learn the feel of the game and then play the multiplayer.

I for one haven't loaded up the single player on my PC but have played around 7 hours of MP. (not as much as my friends, who have played 24 hours already)

With them going toe-to-toe with MW3, they needed to make sure they had feature parity.
So we have:
Multiplayer - Multiplayer
Singleplayer - Singleplayer
coop mode - Spec ops mode
 
And as for any arguments about them making a single player having any affect on the multiplayer, you guys are crazy. That's not how videogame development works. When you are making a AAA title like BF3, you have several hundred people working on the game, so the singleplayer and multiplayer are developed concurrently. Its not like they pulled people from the multiplayer to work on it, they simply hired more people. One could make the argument those people could be working on the multiplayer instead, but again, that's not how game development works. They have a plan for the multiplayer from the getgo, along with how many people they need to complete it on schedule. 
 
As for the actual question, I really doubt it has a huge difference either way. Its mostly a bulletpoint for the back of the box, and any "casual" or infrequent gamers are going to be looking for that sort of thing because multiplayer is impossible for them to get into. I think Call of Duty has set a precedent for shooters having very good cinematic campaigns, and while its nothing new to have a campaign on a fps, they really upped the bar in recent years and earned recognition for it. Battlefield wants to compete with them, so they need to have a cinematic campaign as well.
 
I think most of us know if we care about the campaign or not, but in the end it wasn't really designed for us. I'm sure it helps sales, but definitely doesn't generate more money than what it cost to create. However it is helping to get a bigger share of the market, which is important for future titles. Its definitely a worthwhile investment on DICE's part.

I wouldn't have bought it without the single player, so yes.