Single Player or Multi Player? What drives you to purchase first person shooters? JediKnightII.net's second mail bag question is asking just that about JKII. Send us your thoughts regarding Jedi Knight II's single and multi player features. Once you finish sending us an e-mail, be sure to add your vote in our current quick poll. We will post your comments in two weeks.

Question:
What should have more emphasis in Jedi Knight II, Single Player or Multi Player?

JaDe writes: "As many have said before, the factor that initially drives people (and what drove me) to purchasing games is the single-player factor. In recent years, it would seem as if games such as Q3A and other clones have valued multiplayer over single player which, in my opinion, is a bad mistake. I purchased Jedi Knight for its single player story and action - not even knowing, at the time, that there was a multiplayer option. It was only after I played and beat the game that I found out about the many possibilities for multiplayer gameplay.

I think that Raven and LucasArts understand (hopefully) that the computer gaming market is constantly evolving - many of us who played Jedi Knight as a kid are finding less and less time for games as the challenges of college life and a career start to become factors. Much of today's gaming community will, in ten years, be a mere fraction of the future's gaming community. As a result, I believe that the gaming companies need to understand that new gamers will buy games for their single-player options and will only later branch out into multiplayer. Making a game strong in multiplayer but weak in singleplayer will hook the experienced gamer, but will most probably intimidate the new gamer. Many multiplayer games are violent towards "newbies", which makes a lot of these "newbies" turn to singleplayer until they feel comfortable with the game. Being intimidated in a game where multiplayer is favored will cause the "newbie" gamer to move on to another game where they can practice and have fun offline before they feel comfortable playing online. Having a weak singleplayer option but strong multilplayer option will cut off much of the future's gaming community. As a result, the game would not be nearly as timeless and successful as Jedi Knight is.

Due to these circumstances, I hope that the game sports a very robust single player portion with an addicting, yet not overpowering, multiplayer feature. I look foward to having fun in the singleplayer campaign, yet also continuing the experience in multiplayer. If the game is able to attract many people with its single player campaign, this will most probably lead to an increase in the number of people that play multiplayer online. I, personally, would enjoy a large amount of people playing online, but I believe that an addicting singleplayer option is the key to this result. Both facets of the game are equally valuable, but I believe that singleplayer would be more important than multiplayer - singleplayer naturally leads into multiplayer, whereas it's not very likely that someone would begin playing the multiplayer option of a game while totally ignoring singleplayer."

Buff writes: "I beleive that Raven and LucasArts should put as much emphasis as possible on both Multi-Player and Single-Player game functions. However, if I had to decide one of the game modes that the JK II Team should put more emphasis on, it would be Single-Player because some gamers may not have the ability to access the Internet or dial a friend via modem. Furthermore, Single-Player games can be played without tying up the phone line for those who have only one phone line. So, even though both game modes are important, Single-Player, in my opinion, deserves more attention."

To my surprise, the majority of people who responded to our mail bag wanted the single player portion of the game to shine. Sorry we didn't get to post everyone's comments. Thanks for those who wrote in, we'll have another mail bag in the near future. -- zX