In your opinion, was the multiplayer release a success?

General
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of the three people I got to play the game, 2 of which are PoE players I play with, as well as one who is PoE/Diablo.

One played purely mp, he went bowmage, got some gear, then went “this is boring” and quit. We also could barely play with him cause his character made the MP experience lag out from too many particles.

One played rip blood lich, and he still plays online(alone) a decent amount. He is the type to not need a game to really provide him 600 hours a week, he is fine just chugging along playing here or there, he didnt really like the MP experience. MP in campaign has disgustingly long load times, and when you do monos, the “not party leader” is just sorta along for the ride, they dont have much to do, they just kill monsters, they dont get to pick rewards, just choose between two random ones. They dont get to travel an echo web or make modifier choices etc. Also when I click an echo, his screen gets frozen with an “echo loading” thing that prevents him from looking at his stash etc, even tho after its done loading he does not have to jump in right away. Finding a way to make that loading of echos take place in the “background” so he can still work on his stash etc, would probably make him more inclined to play MP atleast for endgame.

The third player is the diablo/poe guy, he got to level 100 and geared out a smite hammerdin. He enjoyed the game, but I think again the MP was only okay, PoE multiplayer allows players to share resources much easier without having to play together all the time. My best way to explain this, is if you play a raid game a “Static” is the X number of players you always raid with. its not a guild thing, its just always THESE players. Vs a guild thing where everyone collects gear in a shared space/goal and its about the community aspect.

I think that once trade gets put in way more people will be willing to mess around in MP because you will get that Guild/PoE vibe where everyone hangs out, and maybe helps out with tough bosses or rewards etc, but can also have a shared gear pool to experience a sense of community.

So from my point of view, the problems with MP are right now

Stability; its not smooth at all when you have a 4 man that makes lots of particles or summons etc.

Loading times; Loading isnt seamless enough and there is so much just waiting around for shit to load. They need to figure out how to make this more seamless and background focused.

Agency for players not the party lead; If you are not the party lead in end game you miss out of so much progress/agency, you are just like a hireling getting a chunk of gold/items for being along for the ride. I dont know how to fix this. Cause PoE has map objectives. So often times at leagues start my friends all group up to share maps and we all gain objective progress. I dont randomly just get nothing but items for my trouble, im actually progressing my atlas and moving towards a goal.

tldr; the reason I find it was not a success isnt because the product does not have promise. But more so that there is so many pain points that need to be smoothed out as they all hurt and push away potential players. Like the guy who plays online from time to time still, he does not care about graphics, balance, whatever. He just wants a smooth gameplay experience; For example, he has actually muted basically anyone who talks in global chat. Because he does not wanna see random politics or other game talk or even LE talk. But the chat being unable to be disabled has actively stopped him from playing in current weeks. The sheer amount of bugs and painpoints is turning away the casual masses imo.

2 Likes
102

Multiplayer release brought new players in, and old players back, therefore, objectively, it was a success.

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Yeah, I havent tried MP much purely because of lag, but just playing online alone I have experienced at least half of the same issues and a few more besides. I usually give up playing online after a little while and then play perfectly happily for a few hours offline.

So would you guess that 1/3 of your friends is unlikely to return, while the other 2/3 may try again provided the stability and features more mp-friendly are added are improved?

And no, I dont work for EHG :crazy_face: , I am just interested in understanding what things actively chase people away never to return or if people are willing to come back and try again. Usually for me its stability/bugs so its interesting to hear what other peoples breakpoints are.

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pretty much. I hope 1.0 is a banger

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They wait for the release and give it another try then. A few will instantly leave again if the loadingscreens aren’t much much muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch faster. Others will play some levels but most likely will gmove on as well because they think the skill system is trash. A lot of skillpoints that don’t change as much as they want or as much as they thought it would that’s why they think it’s rather generic. Others will play the game from time to time if there is nothing else to do and if they are bored.

Maybe 3-4 of will make it to the endgame and if it’s still same old Monolith and Dungeons we most likely move on at level 70-90.

All these players only tried the game because of the MP part. Still a big part of the people who already said “I’ll buy the game at release!” turned away from it after EHG first announcement on trading because they think that EHG is just a new studio and they don’t know what they do and don’t know the genre all that well to make a game that will be good and last a long time.
Others had even less nice things to say when they heared about the shop prices and they openly advocate against LE because they think very unpolite stuff about the devs while “They are a greedy bunch.” is by far the most harmless stff that was said.

Maybe they calm down but a lot of high hopes have been shattered by EHG for a few random plebs from the internet. I’ve already played so many hour I don’t give a rats ass if LE will be DoA or if it’ll be the new cool shit the kidz play day in day out. I think the trade discussions sucked every last bit of hype for LE out of me :smiley: .

This is just a short overview and while the people I play with sound like a bunch of morons all I can say is their hopes to get a good hack and slash after D4 isn’t… that good… was destroyed and disbelive and anger took their toll. I hope EHG does some genius move and everybody will be hyped and happy again.

Before all that people had high hopes and the only common complaint was the lackluster combat that felt underwhelming compared to other hack and slash games on the market. Well hit detection, fludity, animations… the whole combat was problematic for them (as well as for me to some extend) but they only watched streams and never actualy played the game so it might be a pro rather then a con if it was better when played then watched.

Then again with the state the game is in and with the announced launch later this year in one of EHGs last videos from roughly 200 people who were intrested in the game 12 are left who don’t give up on the title. That’s a good cut after all if you compare it to the overall playerbase of Hack and Slash games.

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Gifting came with MP, gifting is most definitely not trade…

That depends on your view on trade. Some people don’t like trade and wouldn’t want to “enjoy” the reduced drop rate that is required for trade (assuming the current drop rate is roughly what the devs want for gearing). The proposed solution is pretty elegant as it adds trade without fucking over the people who don’t like trade.

Player count isn’t the only metric though.

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They came in and apparently didn’t like what they saw, because they were all gone again in a couple of weeks. Nearly nobody stayed and LE is back to <1k average players. So I don’t think it was a successful (first) impression for most.
I guess many will give it a second chance at release, as they already bought it. But I think many and substantial changes will be needed to hold them, and I have my doubts that EHG can/is willing to provide them.

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On patch that keeps players playing for a couple of weeks is a big thing. Look at D4s Season one and what kind of a joke it is. It will keep people playing for a couple of weeks. It’s an EA game and people look if something has changed and if they like it they stay and if they don’t like it they leave. Not many people stay and play the same static old content again and again if they have to play the same content again and aagain in the future.

It’s a good thing they get it done. it’s meh in what state the game is right now and it’s rather bag that they want to release this year with a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed, implemented or balanced.

The player numbers right now are the least problem ^^.

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The same kind of thing happens with PoE.

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What you are referring to was the release of Diablo 4… lmao, that’s where everyone went.

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Multiplayer released way before D4.

Patch 0.9.0 was released on March 9th.
Diablo 4 released on June 5th (with a couple of days EA for pre-orders)

You are probably refering to Patch 0.9.1, which released a couple of weeks before D4 on May 25. Shortly after that update dropped a lot of people immediately turned to D4 instead fo sticking to LE.
But Patch 0.9.1 didn’t even have any significant peak in players to begin with.

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I <3 you Heavy. When the rest of the world simply cannot bring them selves to keep their subjective feelings out of their posts, and everything needs to be spun for MA TRIBE!!!, we can rely on you.

No spin. No bullshit. This is what it is, this is what happened. What conversations are supposed to be like.

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Some context about me - I have 2k hours in LE. I’ve been playing since 0.8.2 or something like that. I quickly fell in love with LE’s skill, crafting, and passive systems as well as the in-depth monolith grind, build diversity, possibilities, etc. So much so that I told my friends about it - to which most of them asked: “does it have multiplayer?” - to which I answered (once we knew) “March 9th”. At the launch of 0.9, I played multiplayer with a few of my friends…for a time. So, that being said…was multiplayer a success?

Overall, generally, I would say yes. Servers were stable enough for players to log in and reasonably play together. MP brought some balance changes to the monolith system, classes, skills, passives, and a slew of other things. The 0.9 update was sorely needed and there was a huge spike in players playing the game.

I myself am primarily a solo-player. However, if I was someone who TRULY cared about playing with a party (especially - knowing myself, with a competitive aspect in mind) and you ask me if multiplayer release was a success? The answer would be no. Bugs, bugs, rubber-banding, disconnects, player-to-player connection issues, massive loading times, and bugs. All these things made (and still make) partying up with friends an arduous, almost painful process. To this day if you play with friends - you almost have to go through an algorithm of teleporting or “well you go here and then I’ll go here” in order for you both to get in the same area to actually go through a map together. AND YES - EHG is currently working on all these things, which is great. We are blessed to have EHG who is extremely responsive and ingenious with their designs of LE game systems. However, as a very smart and good looking friend of mine has said many times - EHG can fix the game but you only get one chance a first impression. Now this is “beta” so nothing is set in stone - yet.

But as I’ve said, I love this game…a lot. And I won’t stop playing it. BUT, because I love it - I want LE to be EVEN BETTER - which we all see it can be. If EHG prioritizes the right things LE can be the greatest ARPG ever. Period. The combat is already second to none, IMO and all the game needs (at least in the IMMEDIATE future) is MAJOR bug squashing and balance. If I sound critical or “negative” it is because I want this game to be better, the best - to put it exactly. I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on (times infinity) about ALL the things EHG has done marvelously - they’re freaking geniuses. BUT, as Mike actually just said on the last dev stream - that wouldn’t result in them making a better game - in fact it would be WAY worse.

So if any of you forum-mains see me giving “negative” or “critical” feedback - it’s because I love this game. Let that sink in. Lets make LE the greatest ARPG ever.

Not sure how this word-vomit got so off-topic…but yeah, lol.

2 Likes
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Don’t worry, Heavy can get quite tribal.

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Oh man, that’s exactly my feeling and why I’m constantly harassing the forums with posts :sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

And as a solo player many of the most annoying problems didn’t affect me playing , but even as solo we get some of them ( long load screens, rubber- banding …)

Amen to your feedback.

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Thank you friend.

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