Panzer Dragoon has always been a single player license.Would it benefit if a multiplayer mode was introduced?
What kind of PD multiplayer gameplay would you like to see?
No; rather than wasting their time on a multiplayer mode, the developers can waste their time on creating an awesome single-player experience.
In general, I’d like Sega to first satisfy our single player needs more before attempting things like that… If there was an overflow of quality Panzer games then I would like seeing a multiplayer game or mode introduced in one or more of them. After all, KFC’s Battlefield 1942 modification idea sounded very fun…
But I wouldn’t want this to become the trend in the series… Just a side project or something, letting us mess about in the Panzer setting in different ways before the next big adventure that will further expand characters, storyline and questions raised…
If they decided on attempting something, at first I thought a co-op multiplayer online RPG a-la guild wars (but better better better, a LOT better) could be good.
On second thought I don’t believe they could ever tell a story as good as in the single player games using that sort of gameplay so it would probably be best to go for a full on MMORPG that does not in any way attempt to tell a story and instead just throws you in the Panzer Dragoon world to do as you wish as an imperial, hunter, seeker, merchant, common folk, whatever you pleased. With absolutelly no attempts to introduce the dragon in the game at all.
Perhaps it could take place before the events seen in the PD games where you play the role of people like kyle, but of course never get to meet a dragon so just continue your daily life. Or even after the series allowing you to visit places that would be impossible to do so before without ruining the timeline as I don’t think any kind of player or group of players would be able to explore towers infested with pure type monsters and meet with their guardians…
The Panzer Dragoon world is certainly a lot more enticing to me than the likes of Star Wars Galaxies or Everquest II even if the story of the dragon and dragoon is not included as anything more than the memory of the other Panzer Dragoon games while you see familiar places and hear fairy tale stories from NPCs…
And, as mentioned earlier, action games like the battlefield 1942 modification KFC was going to create would also be fairly cool to play.
The possibilities are endless really, most any kind of game could work as long as it was done right with respect to the series and its setting and not just a rehash of already released games with a thin Panzer Dragoon “skin” thrown on them.
Actually I’m putting som affort into learning Unreal Engine 2 right now, the battlefiled engine is really hard to mod and doesn’t give me the graphic quality and creative freedom I wish to have. during my year in japan I had hardly time (an no private PC at all) to do any personaly things, but as soon as I’m home I’ll try to create some demo gameplay experience…
I really couldn?t see it working.
I guess it would be kind of fun to having LIVE ranking modes for number of shot downs and even Dragon racing through the levels.
Also would be cool if Online players were able to pilot the Empire ground and air vehicles ect. With all the LIVE players teaming up trying to shot down the Dragon. ORTA 1st level would exspecailly cool in this mode.
But for me those should be extra?s to the game. Panzer Dragoon as always been about you (The Player) and the Dragon talking on the world on your own . Well for me anyways. So it should always be a single player game.
Though I guess a MMORPG would be cool, but boy talk about a massive project
I’d like to see a future PD first.
You guys are avoiding my question it seems 
Of course PD has always been single player focused and I hope/know it will remain so.I’m just asking IF there was a new PD game (primarly single player of course) would you bee keen on seeing a multiplayer mode?
Well… It depends on what the multiplayer would be, I don’t know how the would even be able to do multiplayer with something like that. Well, there could be a deathmactch type thing, but I would probably hate that lol.
mmm, it’d have to be an evolutionary new Panzer Dragoon then. XD I mean we have on-rail shooters and RPGs, neither of those work well with a tack-on multiplayer mode.
Actually an on-rails shooter could still work imo… though for obvious reasons it wasn’t one of the genres I mentioned in my earlier post… Here’s what I think about that:
smaller characters, no view switching(!), wider looking levels and tons more enemies and projectiles on screen at once;
much faster gameplay with more emphasis on dodging like the old school side or top scrolling shooters - think space harrier on speed perhaps;
a point system that counts both the cumulative (sp) performance of the two players as well as separate their stats for some added competition;
some neat touches like being able to ram each other to take him a little off balance;
this could be used to prevent each other from getting that power up you want or being the one that shoots the final hit @ that boss;
it, of course, it would also work negatively as well since players could accidentally ram each other while attempting to dodge projectiles and end up getting hit;
speed up and slow down like in Orta could still be in but this time (as the game imo shouldn’t be split screen) it would just cause the dragon to propel more inward or outward the screen for a second or two, used to dodge projectiles that shoot in an ark or even the teammate’s ramming attempts;
interaction between players could also exist in other ways, for example when one’s dragon dies, the other player could rescue the dragoon from the fall and end up having two riders on one dragon until a new dragon comes up and lets the second rider hop back on (lives system), or until the next level. Of course, during that bizare act, the rescuer would have the same controls as always and the game would just add a second crosshair with only weapon shots (no dragon lasers) for the second player;
other things could be added like a simplified rpg like system letting you at the end of each level, based on your score, add points to various stats, like berserk, shot attack, laser attack, agility, etc letting you upgrade your characters as you see fit;
perhaps depending on how you upgraded you could earn various class titles such as “berserker” and have the dragon change in appearance to reflect that;
combination attacks could also be added as the two dragons would perform their berserks or whatever together, and, depending on the class combinations it could also have a different effect both visually and on enemies;
perhaps the two dragons could also have a weakness and strength each, so that for example a blue dragon would be more effective against blue-ish enemies and a second red dragon the opposite; a system kind of like in Silhouette Mirage but not as whacky, both dragons could damage both types of enemies (bosses could have some parts red, some blue, or a neutral color alltogether or whatever), just not quite as effectively depending on their color;
the point system would of course take that in account as well so if players killed more of the opposite color they’d get better rankings… again a competitive (or even teamwork-ish, for the total scrore, attempting to beat other paired friends’ scores) nod since you’d yell at your friend for “stealing” your enemies.
Anyway, I should end the rant here, there could be tons of neat touches to make it more fun.
You’ll probably dislike the view switching being gone in this mode but I think this is what it would need to be a very frenetic paced and fun multiplayer shooter. If it was made split screen the interaction between players would be lessened imo (though some of it could still exist) and the game would also have to be somewhat slower paced, after all, imo all the panzer shooter games so far have nowhere near the fast paced feel of some of the better top/side scrolling shooters.
Though I guess it could work nicely both ways, I’d prefer to see the way explained the most above, ie single view, not split screen.
And because many people will probably think about this, storywise they could be very advanced dragonmares instead of dragons, perhaps imperials in search of something… even an evil Orta maybe 
- or just having discovered their emperor’s true self, lies, and huge ambition they could have left - not on good terms of course, they did steal a couple dragonmares after all and will attempt to stop his crazy masterplan
I read this and just recalled the Starfox 64 was largely a rail shooter and had multiplayer. The multiplayer was more of a rounded arena combat though.
The problem I’d have with a multiplayer Panzer would explaining why there are multiple dragons flying around with a bunch of different riders. They’re not exactly a common sight in the world. The most we’ve ever see are two dragons and two riders in the same place and when they are they’re always in conflict with each other. If the multiplayer was a tack-on outside of story continuity (or a simple two-palyer vs. mode) that would probably be okay, but it doesn’t feel right to have more than that because dragons are just so rare.
It’s possible that after Panzer Dragoon Orta, Lagi could have created a whole race of dragons that can reproduce. Imagine 100 to 200 years after PDO took place. The world could have a much higher population of dragons, not to mention leftover dragonmares from the Empire.
I’m sure there could be a way of introducing multiplayer into the Panzer Dragoon story, but I think I’d rather the developers focus on a strong single player game with a deep story in the next game, if I had to choose between one or the other. I think multiplayer could work, however.
To me that would actually kill PD, I think less dragons is more! imagine a multiplayer mode with imperial and mecchania aircraft, that would be so frikkin cool =)
To demystify one of the core elements of a series is the fastest way to piss of fans without increasing acceptance with the casual audience a single bit.
two examples:
- Midichloreans
- the way the agents behaved in Matrix reloaded
Panzer Dragoon is NOT about dragons, it’s about a “boy and his dog” having adventures in a astoundingly believable world and real emotions, hate, bitterness, dispair, not only happyness and joy. I really would like to see more elements and good storywriting in this series, rather than "d00d look, now everyone can hav dragons, we so totally pwn!11!"
If someone would make practially “Nausicaa - the game” and call it PD it would totally rock, even without been able to play a dragon even once!
[quote=“lordcraymen”]
Panzer Dragoon is NOT about dragons, it’s about a “boy and his dog” having adventures in a astoundingly believable world and real emotions, hate, bitterness, dispair, not only happyness and joy. I really would like to see more elements and good storywriting in this series, rather than "d00d look, now everyone can hav dragons, we so totally pwn!11!"
If someone would make practially “Nausicaa - the game” and call it PD it would totally rock, even without been able to play a dragon even once![/quote]
That?s one of the best posts I?ve had the pleasure to read on this board. Because I whole heartily agree , so much its not even funny.
For me that’s why I love the Panzer Dragoon series so much and love to this very day the 1st is my fav in the series
It was you and your boy taking on this huge and strange world.
So much so that I even called my Dragon in Saga after my beloved Staffordshire Bull Terrier (he died just before the Saturn came out :().
Still to this day miss every hair on my boy body. Used to be really touching to hear that camping music and pet my boy :).
BTW, Great post craymen
I agree a lot of dragons would probably feel a bit wrong but like KFC mentioned there are other ways of implimenting that.I wouldn’t be shocked to see 20 dragonmares (or dragonmarish in concept) tho.
There would be maps (maps would tend to be quite big) like Georgious (I always pictured a multiplayer battle in Georgious) or some other cool PD location (mind you this was one of the areas were Orta dind’t fail) …
The controls would have to be seriosuly changed tho.Something that would work for the next PD singleplayer experience too.
I’ll post my ideas on the controller later.
Why would the controls have to be the same as for the single player? Orta already has a mini game with much different controls even though not multiplayer. And Rune Lai mentioned Starfox64 which, while an on-rails game, it used a free flying mode for the multiplayer - though the free flying was also used in a few of the single player levels if I remember right.
Because I don’t see a sequel using rails 
Note : This is a control scheming I thought up for the single player dragon navigation/battle mode.It might actually be appropriate for multiplayer.I spent more than half an hour typing this and only in the end did in come to that conclusion :(.
Imagine the Xbox360 controller with the added shoulder buttons.
Basically you would have one of the analog sticks to go forward or backward with the dragon but you would also be able to strafe if you already had flying momentum (this would serve as a sort of dodging movement like you said Al3x).The other analog stick would serve as your aim.
[You would be able to aim 360 horizontally and you would no longer need trigger to look left or right or back.Instead if you press IN the analog stick and while doing so choosing the way you wanted to look.]
So in terms of navigation you could flying up and down left and right pretty reallisticly.I’m not saying which analog (left or right) does what because some people would prefer aiming with one or the other.
But with both thumbs occupied you would need something else to actually fire.
This is were the shoulder buttons come in.You would use one of them as your basic PD “shoot” button (menaing you could both fire your weapon and home-laser) and the other one would be to activate the sellected berserk attack.
The face buttons would serve to morph your dragon in real time.Yould be able to have 5 morphs pretty mcuh like in Saga.So pressing Y would (assuming your were in Normal class) would morph if into Defense,B into Spiritual,X into Attack and A into Agility.
As an example (altho it’s simple to figure out what I can’t be bothered to type) if you were already in Agility and say you wanted to morph into Defense.You would press two times Y.If you wanted to moprh into Spiritual you would pres Y and B etc etc…
As a means to help in epic battles and chases yould would be able to use one of the triggers to enable a semi rail on mode.While holding the trigger your dragon would maintain the course he was headed enabling you to pack a better punch when fighting enemies that weren’t necesserilly in front of you.
The D-pac woul serve to cycle between berserk attacks.I hope there is a fine amount of them in a future PD game!
That’s pretty much it.This is what I would like to see 
For goodness sake NO!
That would commercialize it, and the great panzer dragoon spirit would be lost!
I wouldn’t like to see them trying to force it into the main story, as up til now the Dragon/rider thing has emphasised how unique they are from the world around them. As a non-canonical game though, I’m all for it! The MMORPG idea had me drooling - imagine banding together with a group of friends trying to raid ruins for ancient technology without setting off the security, or choosing between helpign the Seekers or the Empire. wishes really hard Sega are looking at this thread
A two player on rails shooter could also work; why not have one rider controlling the dragon and the other with the handgun? I think that could work.