Another example that Trasochi gave a looong time ago in a simialr thread was something for along the lines of:
Solo 1 add appears
In MP 1 add per player spawns
This doesn’t change the fight completely, but gives it a different feel. Especially when maybe adds are statinary in the corners of the room and you need to active switch targets.
I see it differently.
3 seems to be the optimal approach.
You say you disagree but then reiterate my point. Multiplayer in PoE still exists simply because it provides so much advantage. If it had no advantage at all, not a single person would do it.
If MP in LE doesn’t provide any advantage over solo at all, then the only people that will do it will be small friend groups that just want to hang out together. That will probably die out pretty quick as people get bored and quit among the friend groups.
MP only survives if there is some advantage gained by doing it or if there is something extra that is fun. (capture the flag type team event stuff)
The video commentator is spot on. Public groups and getting together with random people was why i stuck with PoE for so long even after it began to suck.
That has completely vanished from the game.
I don’t think it’s any one thing in particular but a slow accumulation of problems. I keep dropping out of guilds and looking for a new one because none of the guilds i’ve been in have groups that play, and more importantly, are constantly full of gigachads, and i’m a casual-play-to-have-fun person. Apparently we’re an endangered species now. OR . we’ve all migrated to LE 
I really hope LE can avoid a similar fate.
Apart from the people who just want to play with their friends. Not everybody approaches games like a job, the rest of us actually have jobs & play games to unwind from them.
This is the only reason to group as far as I’m concerned. Why the hell would I want to join random people and form a group simply because I am “forced” to if I want better results? That literally makes no sense, and is antithetical to enjoyable game play and player retention.
Plus, I already hate people on the internet, I don’t need to have them in my party. 
My point was specifically about PoE, but LE will get to that point eventually if there is no advantage to MP. Small friend groups party playing falls apart relatively quickly as players get bored or can’t coordinate times to play.
There will always be friends that want to play together. That is not something that dies over time. It will get less after release but so will total player count. So not sure why do you think that is “failing”.
If MP costs more to implement and maintain than the number of paying users it draws, it is a failure.
I seriously think that MP and solo play cannot coexist in the same game properly. One will always take away from the other. Balancing the game for both takes away from both. If LE was only solo play forever, it could be the best solo aRPG ever. Same is true the other way around. Having both means that neither can grow to its full potential.
The closest I have seen is, again, Guild Wars 2. That is because they have skills do different things depending on if you are doing Open World, PVP, or World v World (battlegrounds basically). They can then balance skills for one aspect and not have it change the other modes. A skill is too strong in Multiplayer? Change it, but the solo play equivalent remains unchanged.
I think Last Epoch could model a lot of systems from GW2 and be far better for it. The Achievement system is another one.
I don’t think that’s a foregone conclusion. POE and LE are different games and while there will be overlap, they’re going to attract different kinds of people. For example, POE has never been the kind of game where you can get away with casual planning of your character, but LE absolutely is. That’s a big difference in who is going to be able to enjoy it at length.
Yeah, if what you’re looking at is a group of gamers with unhealthy relationships to games who have spent years being poisoned by bad design into a Best or Shit mentality, it’s true that “nobody” (figuratively) is going to play MP if it doesn’t give them a clear advantage. But gamers who make decisions based solely on where the biggest numbers happen have forgotten the face of their father, and if they aren’t attracted to LE’s multiplayer then I say the rest of us are better off for it.
Also…
There is an advantage to MP - Sharing the experience of a game you enjoy with others. People used to be able to see that as a benefit for its own sake and didn’t need a flashing neon sign saying “You allowed another human being to exist in your digital proximity! As a reward you’re getting bigger pixels now!” to appreciate it.
Yes, GW2 (& 1) did some things exceptionally well and I really wish other games would take a leaf out of their game design book (specifically how they separated skills for pve and pvp and how GW2 handled open world quests, where if you hit a mob you got full credit for the kill so kill-stealing wasn’t a thing and you could just randomly help others if you wanted whether you were partied up or not).
I am afraid that is not how things work in software (and similarly game) world. You can see a lot of companies losing money to support a rarely used feature. Why? Cause you don’t want to make people look for alternatives. Why do you think I will come back to Last Epoch when my friends aren’t playing and go back to some other ARPG when they are? I rather always stay in that ARPG we regularly play together, albeit time to time.
Another thing is your opinion is currently biased because the game is not online. Your opinion is shaped around current player base. I personally think there are a lot of people waiting for MP because I am one of those. I shelved this game for like 2 years after seeing MP is nowhere near and only came back cause I heard they are actually testing it. Just yesterday I gifted it to a friend so we can play together when MP comes.
Finally, they promised MP from the start. You can’t be like “hey guys, we promised but it doesn’t make financial sense anymore, ooopsies”. They already delayed it extra 2.5 years, doing what you are asking.
It’s not technically an opinion as the data is out there somewhere. It will reveal itself when it actually happens. I think the number of people waiting for MP is overestimated and then even of those, many will get in and realize that the game isn’t different at all and still boring.
I put a lot of time into LE and have around 16 characters. I got bored and the little incremental changes they make each patch don’t really fix that. There is something about the grind in this game that isn’t fun for me. This is anecdotal and my opinion.
Also, sure, there are games that have “loss leading” things. If MP costs extra monthly running costs and it is losing money in itself, that is one step closer to the game losing money each month overall. Then that is one step closer to the the company just shutting down the game completely. A bit of a slippery slope, but I have seen it happen. A games “community” demands certain things in the game that lead to the game being shut down altogether.
I mean… Yeah? You got 16 characters worth of play and entertainment out of the game. What’s wrong with that?
I think, again, that this is conditioning from POE coming through here. Playing one game for years and years, getting repeatedly sucked back with ultimately minor content updates is not actually the norm. Most games are not this GAAS thing that POE, etc and MMOs do - you play them until you beat them. Maybe you play through a couple more times to try some new class or build, or you dicker around in an NG+ mode for a bit, depending on what’s available. But then you’re mostly done. It isn’t a bad thing to enjoy a game for a time and then move on.
And don’t lose sight of the fact that LE is still a work in progress, and the “keep you coming back” features like Cycles aren’t here yet. People got bored with POE during its Open Beta too. There’s only so many times you can do the same things over and over, back to back, and still have fun with it. But then they came back later when more content was added.
This is a random post back on this thread I started. But I was just thinking about these two big things going on in LE at the moment. I just want to say, between MP and trade - if LE can do the former really, really well, I could see a niche for this game that would compel me to play even if trade is limited.
But at the moment, I’m skeptical if the existing LE systems translate well in a MP environment.
Could you elaborate on what existing systems you are worried about for MP?
Excluding things that dont exist yet (*like trading) and the impact they could have, I can only think of the obvious issues that will come from skill multiplications and things like that. Like 4 sentinels with holy auras or 4 skeleton minion builds or rogues stacking poison into the hundreds of thousands and breaking things. But those I expect EHG to deal with because they are obvious MP related issues.
What are you worried about beyond that?
Split farming monos, the balance between playing solo and playing in a party (mathematically literate players will number-crunch the #### out of that!), optimal party configurations, the death of fun/experimentation as people will only every want to know what is “the best” build for class X (& we get that now in discord), Lagon, certain party configurations being able to trivialise content that gets mechanics nerfed into irrelevance for solo players, people asking the dumbest questions in chat (contrary to popular belief, there are stupid questions), people being unwilling/unable to use things such as a search/google/their own brain to figure stuff out, people wanting to turn LE into insert other arpg here (which they #### on 'cause its the popular thing to do).
Can I get back to you on that after I’ve had a proper think about it?
Stacking 4x of a particular class probably isn’t much of a concern for me.
I am interested because Multiplayer has zero appeal for me. I have tried it many times over the decades in everything from MMOs to first person shooters and honestly beyond the few occassions where it was “fun with friends” (usually at LAN parties or online with real life friends), 90% of the time it has been a rage inducing dissappointment that I attribute to the toxic nature of playing with stranger hiding behind a computer screen.
Interestingly, I never considered the games themselves to be the issue - more the people who behave like absolute morons / a##eholes / have agendas / selfish etc. and the fact that there is little you can do about people that you have to play with. Unlike in real life where interestingly most wouldnt behave like this. (but thats another story entirely).
This has meant that I shy away from multiplayer so I have little experience in the subtle nuances of issues that MP can bring to the party beyond the obvious.
Yeah, so I was really asking for less obvious things that LE could realisitically address (like your split farming issue) than the soft fleshy issues that EHG cannot really deal with.
I think Thanos had the right idea for those issues.
Similar to llama’s response. I am not really worried or talking about things like team synergies or abuse. It’s more of whether I can see the “game modes” are fun MP options.
For example, I think there is a good chance arena might be a fun MP system. But arena is not the core game mode as the devs have indicated. Mono is at the heart of LE. But it’s quite clear the mode/system isn’t designed with MP in mind. Split farming mono is basically a failure of mono in the MP environment when people start leaning towards doing things “not as intended” to maximize efficiency.
Successful systems, as the video segment in the OP suggest, is when there are motivating reasons to want to play together. And that people actually play together (splitting/effectively soloing in a party doesn’t count).
Ah, ok. If I understand you, you are more worried that the essentially single player LE doesnt really cater specifically for things that would make MP fun and rewarding team play. So not changing content for MP specifically is likely to make it a fairly “meh” experience in the longer term.
All thats likely to happen is people are going to “cheese” the content in the fastest/most efficient way they can in MP mode.
Yeah, I can agree with that. Thinking back to MMO days, where a team had to interact in concert to complete quests - those were good experiences from a play/fun perspective (ignoring people problems). I doubt very much that EHG is going to do that - and thinking about it, it will likely mean that MP isnt really going to that exciting to play. MikeW said loot is instanced so even the rewards arent going to be any more lucrative (quantity/quality) in MP mode…
Hmm. Interesting thoughts. I have no skin in the game for wanting or not wanting MP but I think you may be right here. The devs decision not to have content that requires MP to complete could bite them in the arse. Perhaps they will actually/eventually need MP focussed content - sure doing the current content with friends will be ok, but perhaps they will need out-of-band content to optionally do for fun in MP.