Miyamoto on why Mario 3D World lacks online co-op

I thought the puzzles were pretty decent, especially the anti gravity ones at the end.

I just don't have much patience for quite so blatant reliance on trial and error. It's why I never really stuck with the Splinter Cell series. Apparently not many other people did either, I'm not sure I saw one single thread for Blacklist when it came out. That was pretty telling.

Nintendo will do what Nintendo wants to do and 95% of their remaining fans will take whatever Nintendo gives them and vociferously defend Nintendo's choice.

Online co-op like any other human interaction, is only as good as the person one is interacting with, but clever designers can minimize the possibility of disaster. My youngest daughter sometimes plays a game named Poptropica, in which players communicate using a pre-scripted chat system.

Another notable example is Journey, in which character communicate by singing but players couldn't talk to each other directly or see each other's user ids. After every Journey playthrough I've gotten a friendly e-mail from the other player which supports the maxim that good fences make for good neighbors.

Of course, Nintendo could offer the option of choosing between a system which limited interaction in some way (for the safety of kids or just for people who didn't want to risk dealing with jerks) and a free communication system. Not that they will.

Of course they could, and it's just plain silly that so many Nintendo fans just assume that if it had online it would be like Call of Duty with Mario characters, and some 12 year old would pop into the game and start cussing and playing music into his head set while slinging homophobic slurs at everyone. It's amazing how little faith so many Nintendo fans have in Nintendo to competently do this.

What would it matter if they enabled voice chat or not? Either way griefing would be all over the place. It's pretty much why I avoid online game modes like the plague on consoles. It's just not a good experience, if they ever polish it up enough so it works as robustly as it does on a PC I might give it another go on consoles but until then I'll stick to PC for my online play.

The only person I'm likely to play Super Mario 3D world with is my girlfriend and the vast majority of the time, I imagine I'll be playing it in single player. I genuinely couldn't care any less about the omission of an online mode. It's not that I think Nintendo couldn't implement it, it's that it's not a feature I care about, at all.

And if Nintendo implemented a system with no voice chat people would still complain.

Online gaming is only as good as the people you play with, barry. :)

I have a vibrant enough network of good people more times than not that what your describing is just not an issue for me in most games I have played online.

Well yes if you stick to just your friends instead of public matches it's a little better but then you still have to contend with rubbish networks, constant disconnecting issues, match making systems that just don't work and clunky console interfaces. It's still pale in comparison to the sort of online experience you can find on PC.

Until consoles up their game in the online space I'll just keep on choosing PC for my online games. It's why I'm glad Sony have moved their online MP features behind a paywall like MS. I can just not pay for it to voice my own frustration at their inadequacies.

Online co-op in a Mario platformer? No thank you. Not to say the recent Mario platformers haven't been fun when played with others, but the majority of the fun comes from the banter you get from playing in the same room as your friends. Outside of a select few genres online co-op can go and die for all I care.

Those were the only good puzzles in the game. Everything else was terrible.

I can understand your personal preference. If the option is there, in keeping with your preference, you could simply choose to not use it. I could choose to use it, and we could both have the ability to actually use a major feature of the game, and both have fun in our own way. Wouldn't that be a good thing?

Choices, options, they are always a good thing.

I really am sad when I see Miyamoto taking Nintendo games very slowly into the online age. I just wish the man would embrace it in a meaningful way. That isn't to say that online co-op in a Mario game is necessary, but I just wish he would integrate online communities a lot better in his games. The Miiverse was a wonderful first step at this on the WiiU.

Well sir I disagree! But to each their own.

@GodModeEnabled: You guys are not allowed to just disagree. You have to fight about it for the next three pages in a circular internet slap fight of get the last word in. It's written in the rules of the internets! :p

Out of all the online experiences I've had with consoles and handhelds, none of them have ever been totally positive or without errors/cheaters/team-killers/griefers/lag/rage-quitters/liars/racists/perverts/annoying kids/idiots etc, and half of that behavior has come from so-called online friends.

Real friends you invite into your home and family members are really the only way to have enjoyable multiplayer matches. I believe the people that say otherwise have never experienced a group of friends playing in the same room together, and think that the awful group of online gamers they play with online is as good as it gets. Well I can tell you the difference is night and day.

@ Bigboi500

Indeed. Lol ironicly my best online experience was me and my boyfriend playing Gears 3 in Splitscreen against other people online.

I think people underestimate that moment in Portal 2's co-op campaign where you solve that puzzle after 19 minutes of trial and error followed by that god almighty flesh on flesh high 5 or bro fist bump. Theres nothing online that can touch it.

Next gen is looking bleak, no word on local multiplayer features, still only get a single controller as standard. Not jumping in until I see the next generation of screen splitting porn !

You seem to be making a lot of baseless assumptions in this post. That and the anecdotal evidence really doesn't explain to me a reason why it's a good thing for Mario 3D World to not have online co-op. Because, again, you could avoid experiencing any of those issues in a possible online enabled Mario 3D World by simply choosing to not play online. I've played plenty of games with lots of other people in the same room, but people and situations change, and that's no longer possible for me with any regularity. If you are getting cheaters/team-killers/griefers/rage quitters/liars/racists/and annoying people etc. from among your online friends then you need to rethink your standards for making someone your online friend.

I also dislike this idea that online friends are not "real" friends. Some of the best people I know, I know from a distance online. I've reached out to and helped these people in any way I can when they needed me, and many of them have done the same for me. When my mom passed three years ago the kindest most comforting words were produced from online friends of mine, so I very much regard them as being about as "real" a group of friends as can be.

Well everybody's situation is different, and my assumptions are no more baseless than anyone else. I understand your frustration, but is it logical to expect Nintendo to make an exception for your specific situation and cater to it as a majority? I don't know the answer.

When a company has as one of it's mission statements to get more people playing games, I do expect them to actually follow through on that. One way to do that would be to have online co-op as an option in this game, by not having it, they are going against that mission statement because they are limiting the potential audience that can actually take full advantage of the games feature set. They didn't say it would be too expensive, they didn't say it would possibly take away from some other aspect of the games development. They said, point blank, that they could have, but simply preferred not to do so.

Miyamoto recognized it was fully possible, he simply decided to impose his personal preference on the game that people play it in person together, ignoring that such a thing is not possible for a wide variety of people, again, going against his own companies philosophy. Is it truly to much to ask a company widely praised for taking risks to take a risk? Is it too much to ask for a company that wants to get more people playing games to implement features that would help more people play their games? I really don't think it is, and I have yet to see any credible rebuttal to my position.

Well one thing that would possibly have a negative effect in trying to implement that would be a possibility of a delay until next year when the Wii U desperately needs software releases this year. That might have played a role in the exclusion of online multiplayer.

Rayman Legends is a very similar game with similar features, including ghost data with the exclusion of a viable online multiplayer feature, but I never saw anyone making a big deal out of it, probably because it's not a Nintendo game.

Now, to change the subject a bit, I'd like to warn you about these online "friends". While I have no way of determining whether they're genuine or not, and I in no way want to offend you or anyone else, but kind words are easy and convenient as long as they don't put people out of their way. Not ever having the opportunity to meet these people face to face, eye to eye, and getting to know them in a truly personal way is a great distance from a true friend and often nothing more than a convenient aquaintance who will stab you in the back, or turn their back on you when it becomes a bother or requires a real effort. They're fine for long distance comfort, and if that's all you want from them, then there's nothing wrong with it. Just be on guard with people that tell you they're your friends while never having ever had to actually prove it to you.

What better next action could Nintendo do other than integrating online with a Mario platformer, their main icon?

@Lulu_Lulu: Enough. Either start being civil or stop posting.

I can understand its exclusion if it's a matter of the game needing to be out this year. That's at least a better reason than, "Well, we could since it was possible, but we didn't because we simply didn't want to."

The difference with Rayman is that it's a two-dimensional platformer. Those never work well online. Any measure of lag makes them unplayable. The co-op mode of Outland (which was online only) is evidence of that. Thing was a god damn slideshow. Rayman probably would have been the same. Polygonal games can handle latency better, which is why they're singled out more often.

It is a very disappointing considering the great first party titles they have, that they still refuse online multi-player. Why? Is it that they perceive it to be an additional cost burden to them? You would think, that in 2013 that they would have embraced this concept.

@c_rakestraw: I'm a total dummy when it comes to things like this, but it seems like 2D would be easier to work with as far as online than a 3D environment.

I understand fully where you are coming from (maybe moreso then you realize, but I won't get into the specifics of how I naively stumbled into the internets twelve years ago), and I've zeroed in (as inconvenient as the new forum makes doing that at times aside) on this part because the people I regard as true friends despite never meeting in person have, in fact, more than proven it to me. Like I said, I have reached out to these people and helped them when they needed it in more ways than just mere words, and they have returned the favor.

If Nintendo made it possible for me to play this sweet looking new games multiplayer with them, and with long time friends I went to school and worked with over the course of my 32 years, I would really appreciate that. I'll buy it regardless because they proved with NSMBU that just because one of their games really emphasizes multi player doesn't mean it is not a perfectly acceptable entry in the single player Mario platformer series, and I'm a huge believer in the Mario 3D Land formula (easily my GOTY 2012), which Mario 3D World seems to be injecting with bullshark testosterone.

It's obvious we both love these games, I just wish both of us had a way to really fully utilize their entire feature set, but we really will just have to agree to disagree on whether or not this is the best way for them to do that, because I think we've exhausted this line of discussion. Regardless, it was a thought provoking talk, so thank you.

I guess what I meant by that is they need to better their online interactions with friends that you know. Kind of like what Xbox Live did with just handing over your gamertag as opposed to a long friend code. Basically they need to implement an online system that is much more user friendly.

Okay. I think if Nintendo takes the risk of making an online Mario platformer and many people play it for the internet features, improvements will be made to their internet service.

@Randolph: Thanks.

@ c_rakestraw

Hey No Fair ! :(

@c_rakestraw: dude, he was just posting his opinion, he wasn't being hostile or anything. WOW.

@Lulu_Lulu: I'm being serious when I ask you to stop being disruptive.

He was in the posts I've been deleting. If you saw them you'd agree.

@c_rakestraw: oh, well, at first i was like "huh how is having an opinion blah blah blah" but yes, he made alot more posts afterward, sorry. i didn't notice you'd been deleting them.

@ c_rakestraw

Well I couldn't be polite. BigBoi already claimed that roled. I was just trying a different approach, you know, just in case. Seemed like a good idea.

@Randolph: Have you played Mirror's Edge?

I played a bit of that one on X360 a few years back, yeah.

What'd you think of it? Reason I ask is you said you hate trial and error mechanics (as do I) and ME is full of them.

I can't honestly remember much about it, but it's on my old gamercard as a game I played. The most solid impression I can recall is that I disliked the controls quite a bit, they felt too complicated. I didn't come even close to completing it, so I'm fairly certain that by and large I just didn't see why it was such a big deal, so by extension, I have no idea why the sequel is a big deal, either.

I enjoyed that game. Probably because I didn't die as much as you :P.

It developed a cult following. Lot of devoted fans for that game who kept asking for a sequel despite the game's less than spectacular sales. I think the sequel's been on deck since before the first game was finished, though.

Never did play Mirror's Edge. Maybe I should.

@c_rakestraw: It's been on sale on the 360 Live marketplace a few times over the years, if it's on PSN I imagine it's just as cheap or cheaper there. Probably the best way to go about it at this point.

@c_rakestraw: great game and dirt cheap if you get it off Steam. Even physical copies are semi cheap, if you can find them.

Local co-op is light years beyond online multiplayer in terms of fun and social interaction. The same way that facebook doesn't replace actual human contact. That said its a feature that is needed for people like me who don't have many friends interested in gaming and still wants to play co.op.