Time to unveil our reader voted Online Experience of the Year as well as our Editor’s Choice. Click on to find out the winners.
This was ridiculously tight. One of the closest awards we’ve run. But, in the end, there can only be one winner and that winner is…
Reader’s Choice
Destiny
Well there you go. That’s quite the turnaround. Yesterday Destiny was voted in as 2014’s biggest disappointment. Today it’s been voted the online experience of the year. Honestly, I see no problem with this. Considering how borked so many of this year’s big online games have been, it’s almost a small miracle that a game like Destiny managed to run smoothly without a hitch.
Runner-up
Twitch Plays Pokemon
Seriously, how good was Twitch plays Pokemon. Pure genius.
Editor’s Choice
Destiny
Looks like we finally agree on something!
I find Destiny fascinating. Here is a game that, in my opinion, has such a solid, rewarding core that almost nothing else matters. Despite this it’s pretty clear that, for most gamers, Destiny did not deliver on its promise. Destiny doesn’t just split the gaming community in two, it presents very real internal conflict among those who play it on a daily basis. I have a friend who claims to hate Destiny. He’s put almost 200 hours into the game.
What the hell does that mean?
But I think that, in the current climate, Destiny’s online component was as good as any. It worked for one thing. That’s important. But it also felt polished. I loved the way in which Crucible felt like part of the overall Destiny experience as opposed to a segmented, fragmented piece of the game that live over there. I loved that it felt part of Destiny as a cohesive whole.
Runner-up
Dark Souls II
I’m too scared to seriously play PvP, but I continue to love the way From Software messes with the player via the online experience.
Comments
27 responses to “Kotaku Awards 2014: Online Experience Of The Year”
Surprised Master Chief Collection didn’t get in this!
Please read above comment with a blindfold because, much like the online multiplayer of MCC, it looks better that way.
but in all seriousness…no Titanfall? I thought Titanfall was fantastic…I suppose Destiny deserves the cake considering it’s variety of online multiplayer.
Titanfall is my online experience of the year – the fact that they had the balls to say multiplayer only when so many games (mainly Battlefield) waste everyone’s time with tepid single player modes is to be commended
Yes I called it! Destiny biggest disappointment AND best online experience. What a year…
Yep you sure did!
Destiny is the first game in about years where I’ve actually made friends online and enjoyed playing with strangers. I think because of the strikes and raid being about co op instead of versus it’s harder to be a bad sport to each other and they’re a lot easier/fun with better team work (though you could probably say this about all co op games)
Indeed. It’s been quite a while since I’ve consistently jumped online with friends to tackle the weekly rotations.
Plus I have never had a game impact so much on my friends list. Adding at least 30 buddies from all over the globe to help take on the raid as a team. As it takes almost everybody to play their part to get through it. Definitely my best online experience for the year.
Titanfall is a great game but I do think Destiny did the online thing really well. Not really many hitches. Titanfall launched pretty poorly in Aussie for those of us on Optus, probably not the games fault but still. I still give the edge to Destiny.
Why not Borderlands? Playing online with random people taught me an important lesson.
Everybody is willing to work together for a common goal, but the second the loot crate is in view they’ll step on your mother with high heels to get to it.
Man, glad I dont play with randoms @_@
I have to because I have no one to play with.
Ugh. Borderlands is not a game to play with randoms. Join a game and suddenly you’re boosted to max level. Or back in Borderlands 1 you get that bugged quest that always set itself as the active one whener you complete any other quest.
I bet this would have gotten less votes if people knew the weekly strike was going to be locked behind DLC.
How hard is it to understand? If you don’t have the DLC you can’t play it. Would you rather they don’t allow it in the nightfall/weekly rotation?
I think that yes, actually, you will find that people complaining would in fact prefer that it not show up in the rotation if it means they don’t get to do a weekly that week.
Ideally, the game would set the weekly based on whether people have the DLC or not, and if it’s a DLC-map week, non-DLC-holders would get another option to make sure they still get some coins.
In general, and this applies to anything in life, you’re going to find that most people don’t mind someone else having something nice… up until it directly means that they personally don’t get to have something they’re used to having. People are crazy like that, huh?
It’s a persistent online world, if it were an offline game and they somehow locked content off after the DLC then that would be an outrage. Considering you don’t pay a monthly fee, then who do you suggest picks up the tab to split the community onto two servers? And then again for people who don’t get House of Wolves as well?
Far out, people who didn’t buy the DLC still get upgraded gear and weapons and they still complain.
It’s a lobby shooter, not a persistent world, so the server load is identical to what it was. The only difference was what behaviour gets rewarded or not. And another weird quirk of humanity is that no matter what you give people, they tend to get antsy about losing something.
It’s not even that the content’s being locked off, it’s that there’s a reward system in place that they’re not allowed to be part of, which they were once allowed to.
And will be again next week. Still not seeing the issue.
I voted titanfall. Not a single drop out. Zero lag. Worked fine art launch too. Game didn’t last long but online was great
I’ve picked it back up this week as a mate got it just now. Its had a few improvements and it still really fun.
Wait what in the actual fuck? are you people smoking crack? who voted? seriously? OH THIS GAME IS SO DISAPPOINTING, YET THE BEST EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR EVAAAAR!
It’s not that hard to reconcile at all.
The game was promised to be an epic space opera, where you build a character who becomes legend. Instead, you got a glorified lobby-shooter with a lacklustre story delivered almost entirely by expositionbot – a famous actor delivering one of the worst, most confused performances of his career. For anyone hoping for that marketing/dev-diary-promised rich, epic story… Destiny as an abject failure to deliver, a massive disappointment.
But at least it ran well, servers were stable, dropping in and out of this disappointing-ass game with friends was simple, smooth, and easy.
Two different things.
nothing but error messages named after bugs for 2 weeks. stable experience my ass.
That’s a shame. I know the weekly updates always have the tech team talking about the bugs they’re squashing, which always include updates on connectivity (in various shapes or forms), but I’d guess from the voting, the affected are in the minority.
Cannot believe the glut people enjoy nowadays. Oh well yay for boring as grindfest games. People voted for it.
It’s not a grind if you enjoy shooting things – monsters or other players 😉
This purely points out how bad other online experiences have been. I haven’t bought an Xbone yet so didn’t try Titanfall out on that, or a PC, so I can’t comment really on that one. I’ve played quite a bit of Destiny however and overall the online connectivity has been solid. I have on occasion been dropped from the server, however it’s usually due to the Playstation network sign in randomly dropping out which then causes Destiny to question whether I’m a valid user or not. I have spent hours in Raids without dropping though and minimal lag which is great considering Australia’s communications network………..
I thought the level scaling was excellent, and I can’t think of another game that does this off the top of my head. That allowed Destiny to become a lot more friendly to newbies.