There is also another option: allow offline characters to play with friends (who also have offline chars, obviously). Something similar to D2 which allowed local characters to play via LAN. This way, people that have social anxiety or some other problem with MP towns could play on their own and still join with friends. They wouldn’t be able to trade or any other MP feature, but they wouldn’t be excluded to party up with friends. Seems like a simpler solution to please everyone and, at first glance, doesn’t seem like something that would be hard to place in game.
That being said, even if that was the solution, it’s not likely it will be around 1.0, considering the time restraints. I doubt any change will be made to this by then, tbh. Maybe for 1.1, though.
I think the devs have said before that LAN play isn’t happening, neither is a p2p style mp & they really aren’t going to let offline characters have access to the mp servers.
Yeah, offline characters having access to mp servers wouldn’t make sense. But, especially given the game is on steam, some sort of offline mp could be done with steam invites. It would probably be a lot of work and maybe not worth it in the end. But it’s an alternative.
Ultimately, what it will boil down to mostly is the effort it requires to place a system in-game, and to maintain it, vs the amount of players it can bring in or keep in. Considering towns are a very small amount of the time you spend in the game, especially once you start doing monos and endgame stuff, I doubt anything will be changed.
I cannot express how much I agree with this. I loathe dealing with the forced town idea. This is NOT an mmo, so I should not have to deal with things like this. I play online, like you, so I can have the OPTION to play with a couple specific friends, period. I’d much rather see the horrible loading times addressed rather than time wasted on this feature.
In my experience, MP cities don’t exist because of any network or server resources. They exist that you can see the other players. Players with MTX armor, weapons, portals. MP cities are simply advertising areas for the in-game shop.
MP cities exist because of network and server resources.
Edit: this information was posted in this thread 16 days ago with a source cited too.
That feels like a very metaphysical reply.
I cannot possibly agree or even beg enough to have this option. I absolutely loathe other people crowding up my screen. Now, I have to go to a Monolith to get to my chest without other people clogging up the screen. If I wanted to play a game that feels like an MMO, I’d return to WoW.
Yup. This feels right.
Seems like you missed the answer Mike gave that it absolutely is about server resources.
That’ll presumably have been why they turned it off, Miami was talking about why it gets turned on.
What do you mean? Miami said mp towns were because of exposing MTX and encouraging purchases, Mike replied and said that no, it was because of resources. So it’s not likely we’ll have towns without mp.
When did they turn off mp towns?
Shortly after 0.9 was kicked off 'cause of massive lag & them not working properly.
And yes, I’ve just worked it out. By consolidating more players into a single town instance they can have fewer servers running all the town instances required thereby reducing costs.
Yeah, it’s completely ruined online play for me. I only play offline now, even if that means I can never play with friends.
If it’s truly to reduce server costs, they could at least give us the option to purchase a premium package with solo town instances included.
+1 - I absolutely loathe having to contend with crowded towns full of cosmetic bling and a million people standing in front of the chest. Why is this needed? Does it really create the feeling of community?
If you had bothered to read the last few posts, you’d see it’s because of server resources.
I meant as a game concept - no need to be rude.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude but I realize I was.
It doesn’t change things, though. MP towns, as a concept, are in the game to save server resources.
At least it’s good for EHG that it wasn’t about selling MTX cosmetics and stuff, because that would be a huge backfire - I was super hyped for this game all the way from alpha until MP towns started happening. I’d have been one of the first to grab the Ultimate Edition and any MTX cosmetics I thought were neat, but see no reason to spend a penny now because of this ruining the online experience for me.
I’ll likely rack up several more thousand hours in the game, just in SP mode where I can play in peace and without any further financial support for the company until/unless we get an opt-out for this “feature” (which, I repeat, I WOULD pay for, in case the devs are reading this).
saw it, after I posted again. That is my bad. I am not technical enough to understand why this is an issue with LE so, I’ll accept that. It should also be said, I love the game, so while I do not like it, I’ll just keep trying to find work around for the things that frustrate me. There is quite the list, but again, those are me problems, not LE problems.
Keep up the great work EHG…