FPS without singleplayer: Would you buy it at full price?

No one buys those games because of their singleplayer campaign, everyone is in it for the multiplayer, so I got a couple of questions.

If a company were to axe the singleplayer mode and still charge the full price, would you still buy the game?

Would you make a big deal out of it, even though that probably means that they didn't waste development time on a game nobody would play?

Edit: by full price I mean triple A game price.

Edit 2: I'm not talking about taking SP from every single FPS game, I'm talking about modern military shooters with focus on MP.

i bought quake 3 arena so, if it good sure... why not

I wouldn't personally. But if they sold the SP or MP sections at reduced prices I would probably take the plunge here and there. Especially for CoD. I still dig the bombastic, ridiculous SP campaigns they tend to have, but there's no way I want to pay full price for a 5 hour campaign. I would probably pay something like £15-20 for a well made 5-6 hour campaign sans MP.

I'm pretty bored of modern FPS though. If something like this were offered 4-5 years ago I'd have been much more enthusiastic about such an idea.

@JCRamires said:

No one buys those games because of their singleplayer campaign, everyone is in it for the multiplayer, so I got a couple of questions.

That's a pretty big assumption there.

@doobie: How much did it cost back then?

Also, we didn't have a lot of those games years ago, now every single FPS game has a multiplayer mode.

@FlarePhoenix: Sure, some people get those games for the singleplayer campaign, but would you agree that they are a small percentage of the sales?

Considering that some amazing multiplayer-only FPS games exist and are free to play, no. I mean, TF2, there is an example. I've purchased multiplayer only games for less money (I recently bought Counter-Strike GO), but in this day and age, with so many fantastic games at killer prices, $60 games have to be pretty sweet in order for me to justify spending that much money.

I played Modern Warfare 1 and 3 for the campaigns and didn't touch the multiplayers.

So nope.

I wouldn't but I'd buy games that are only multiplayer like TF2 and Killing floor at a lower cost.

I don't buy any games at full price.
 
 
That being said, I don't care whether a multiplayer shooter has single player or not.

I generally dont enjoy multiplayer FPS games except for a select few such as Counter strike and the upcoming Black ops 2. There are FPS games that have good single player campaigns such as Borderlands 2 and hopefully the upcoming Colonial marines game. I just think multiplayer FPS is getting boring for me. I also forgot halo 4, hopefully the multiplayer in that will be interesting but i will probably get bored eventually, Im only getting it for the campain really.

i bought tribes back in the day so i guess it depends on the game.

probably not though

depends on the game i guess. i bought TF2 but i probably wouldn't buy a call of duty game if it didn't have single player

I bought Battlefield 3 at full price (reluctantly) with no intention of touching the single player, so yes (again reluctantly).

I'd rather get a good SP shooter than an MP one. Why? Because the SP stays good for as long as the game exists. 90% of MP games die within one to five years and gets their servers shut down.

@PillClinton: What if EA said that the next Battlefield game will come out without SP and the price will still be the same?

Well, I have 0 interest in MP FPSs, so that would be a pretty big bummer. Although it seems a like a number of games are going the opposite direction and heading towards single-player only (ie. Bioshock Infinite and Metro: LL both announcing that they won't have any multiplayer at all.)

I rarely buy first-person shooters on day one anymore regardless. So, no, I guess? By default?

@JCRamires said:

@doobie: How much did it cost back then?

Also, we didn't have a lot of those games years ago, now every single FPS game has a multiplayer mode.

@FlarePhoenix: Sure, some people get those games for the singleplayer campaign, but would you agree that they are a small percentage of the sales?

Possibly, I wouldn't be able to say for sure. However, I believe you're mistaken when you say nobody plays the single player campaigns, or that nobody would miss them if they were gone. I believe a lot of people play both, and a lot of people complain when a game offers up a lackluster single player campaign because the developer assumes everyone will get their fill of the game in the multiplayer.

@JCRamires said:

@doobie: How much did it cost back then?

Also, we didn't have a lot of those games years ago, now every single FPS game has a multiplayer mode.

@FlarePhoenix: Sure, some people get those games for the singleplayer campaign, but would you agree that they are a small percentage of the sales?

Possibly, I wouldn't be able to say for sure. However, I believe you're mistaken when you say nobody plays the single player campaigns, or that nobody would miss them if they were gone. I believe a lot of people play both, and a lot of people complain when a game offers up a lackluster single player campaign because the developer assumes everyone will get their fill of the game in the multiplayer.

I would not. I'm a person who buys a game for it's singleplayer campaign exclusively. I've never had much of an interest in multiplayer shooters except Halo and even then I still buy the Halos for it's singleplayer.

@FlarePhoenix: I didn't mean no one plays singleplayer FPSs in general, I meant those modern military FPSs where the focus is the MP mode. I, personally, don't buy those kind of games, in my country games cost WAY too much so I would never pay 200 bucks on a game that has 4 hours of singleplayer gameplay.

I have a logic exam tomorrow and that first sentence made me smile. You argument is deductively valid although it is not sound. As for the question, I bought MAG for the PS3 and it is my favorite FPS that has come out so far. If the content there is worth $60 then it is ok for publishers to sell the game for $60.

I couldn't care less for the SP. Shooting noobs in the face online is what's fun. I think it's bullshit that MP only games don't get to sell at full price. It's the MP that makes these games last for a long time.

I buy shooters for both, I don't even touch the multi until I've finished the campaign, and I regularly replay campaigns. 
That being said I would buy a multiplayer only game if it provided enough multiplayer content to replace the campaign, so it'd probably have to have twice the maps the average COD or Battlefield game ships with, and perhaps some sort of co-op mode like the Special Ops or whatever they were called from MW2. 
 
Honestly though I'd rather have a nice long singleplayer only FPS with a lot of variety and none of the crappy tropes modern military shooters have brought in (moving at the speed of plot being the biggest offender).

I think it is an interesting question: did players start focusing on multiplayer more because the developers guided them that way, or did developers start focusing on multiplater more because that's what the players wanted?

I wouldn't buy it at all, most like, as I usually get into multiplayer.

It really depends on the game. I bought Far Cry 2 and am going to buy Far Cry 3 solely for the single player experience. Same for the Bioshock franchise. But there are games where the single player is just a glorified tutorial getting you ready for the multiplayer, like Red Orchestra 2.

Edit: I forgot to answer your question. I would and do pay the 60$ price for amazing single player experiences without multiplayer, so I don't know why I wouldn't pay 60$ for an amazing multiplayer experience. (Which I guess I have with things like Wow and LotRO. Not FPS, but the same principle applies.)

I would expect a comparatively large amount of content and quality, but yeah, I totally would.

It would have to be a great game though (TF2, for example) and not a piece of fluff like CoD

I've done this before many times. So yea. But it's gotta be really good like Quake 3, BF 1942 or Starsiege Tribes.

Come to think of it, I've yet to play ANY MP shooter that's better than those three games. But I guess you can't beat perfection.

No. TF2 is the only shooter I enjoy online and SP shooters have sucked for a long time.

I would, if scrapping the singleplayer meant that the creators of the game would be making twice as many maps and modes, and that they would update it frequently. But this question has made me think of how cool it would be to have a singleplayer only, modern military FPS, with a great story and characters, and maybe more strategic gameplay than the average FPS these days. Someone send me a link to that game if it exists.

Past call of duty I honestly don't play modern military shooters. Would I pay $60 for a call of duty game without single player? No. I do spend a lot of time on multiplayer, but I always go through the SP too, which I have found consistently enjoyable. If the SP were still included but bad, I still wouldn't want to pay $60. $40 is my price point for a MP-only release. I've paid that in the past and I would be willing to pay it in the future.

I will gladly pay any amount of money that a game deserves. Battlefield 3 had a pretty crappy campaign that I barely touched, but I would still have gladly paid full price for just that game's multiplayer, because it's that good.

Depends on the game. I'd pay $60 for Battlefield 4 if it was multiplayer only. But I won't pay $25 or $30 for Chivalry or War Of The Roses without singleplayer.

I have paid almost 120$ on Battlefield 3, and none of that was for the single player experience whatsoever.

If the quality's there, it gets my cash. That's literally all that matters, single player or multiplayer. A half assed solo offering does not make me decide to buy a game with equally weak multiplayer, and the reverse is true also.

The product is defined by its strongest component, the rest is just chaff.

So the answer is yes.

remember how exciting MW1's gameplay was the first time you heard about it? :(

I didn't play much of the MW3 campaign, but I put a ton of time into the multiplayer. So yeah, I probably would buy a full price mp only game, but it would have to have a good demo and be a great mp experience. I don't know if current cod style would cut it for me.

Imagine MP only and with the next consoles's rising cost to games compared to FTP or cheaper price points like TF2 and CS:GO?

Pretty damn unlikely for me.

If it had enough Multiplayer content to justify $60, sure.

i play a lot of fps, both single-player and multiplayer, especially COD and BF3 and i sure-as-shit would not pay full price for just MP.

@JCRamires said:

@doobie: How much did it cost back then?

Also, we didn't have a lot of those games years ago, now every single FPS game has a multiplayer mode.

@FlarePhoenix: Sure, some people get those games for the singleplayer campaign, but would you agree that they are a small percentage of the sales?

quake 3 arena was a full price game costing as much as Half Life 2 which also had a MP as did HalfLife and plenty of other FPS's back in the good old days

I only buy FPS games for the singleplayer.

No, I find that doubtful, if it had a persistent world where you could interact and construct/modify the world, then maybe. Planetside 2 with Minecraft-esque construction? It would have to be an MMO then probably.

I don't play multiplayer shooters anymore, hell I barely even play shooters at all. So I would never buy such a game no matter the price.

I think most people even when they buy a game for the multiplayer a large portion of them still play the single player and get enjoyment out of it, i'd rather a price point be justified rather than just doing it in such an obvious way to spend less and earn more less they truly were putting all that SP money at the multiplayer, even then if i was interested in a multiplayer only fps i would wait it out for the price drop like allot of other games.

Fuck no, I consider a game a mostly a singleplayer game unless it is totally and explicitly a multiplayer game. To me, almost in all cases, multiplayer is still an addon.

Absolutely. If the multiplayer is good enough, flesh-out enough, then who's to say not shipping with a single player makes it somehow worth less than $60? I bought Battlefield 3 exclusively for its multiplayer, so its lackluster singleplayer just doesn't matter.

@JCRamires said:

No one buys those games because of their singleplayer campaign, everyone is in it for the multiplayer, so I got a couple of questions.

He. No. What a misguided assumption to make.

Not if it's for handheld/Vita. For that, SP must be a major component. Actually I wonder if devs should even bother making online for the Vita. Few people own a Vita, and online rarely worked well on PSP.

I think you're greatly underestimating the number of people who buy those games for their single player. These single player campaigns take a lot of time, development resources and money. If no one bought the game for them, do you really think the publisher would put that much effort into creating them? The single player campaigns are a huge draw to those games for a lot of people. Sure, a few people just skip straight to the multiplayer. A few others just play the single player as a side thing. But for many, many people, the single player is the core experience of those games.

I'm making a lot of assumptions about people's playing styles here, but so are you. I suspect in reality, it's somewhere in the middle.