Is it Time? Focus on MULTIPLAYER

[rittchard]

I have high hopes after this from Judd during the recent AMA:

Learning from those that came before us. There’s been a lot of hiccups when releasing server-authoritative multiplayer and there’s plenty of information on what issues have occurred so we’re taking into account how we can avoid the same mistakes
Ensuring that multiplayer is not released before its ready. We’re very excited to launch it but we won’t do it before it’s stable, enjoyable, and where it should be.
working with consultants and engineers from the AAA space that have developed this for very popular titles
testing, scale testing, testing, testing, testing.
Even with all the precautions we’re taking it’s likely that there will still be some hiccups here and there but we’re very serious about getting multiplayer right.

I’m certainly enjoying the latest patch, but I can’t help getting back to my obsession with lack of multiplayer. There’s been so much emphasis on endgame content, UI details, etc - it would all be fantastic on a completed game that needed polishing. But for me it was already in a fantastic state before this patch, while there is still a massively glaring hole when I think about potential changes that may be required after multiplayer is released.

And I know it’s not just me. Every time I login I see someone ask about MP, multiple times. I have a small group of friends who I convinced to buy into the game, but about 5x the amount more who are waiting for MP. I 100% understand the caution to have a strong release for reputation, etc. - but now it’s slowly crossing into the reverse territory where the game is getting the rep of being “that arpg that can’t get multi done.”

If it were up to me, I would put all possible resources on getting MP ready, make it the absolute number one priority moving forward. My concern is if there are 7 more 0.8.x releases before we get to 0.9. It would be really nice to see something before the end of this year.

[Llama8]

No, it’s not time, also, there can be an infinite amount of 0.8.x releases (0.8.9, 0.8.10, 0.8.11, 0.8.12, etc) if they want.

I’m sure they’re working hard on MP & will roll it out to the nameless elite team of community testers as soon as they can to allow them several months of hard play testing!

[Albinosaurus]

@rittchard

but now it’s slowly crossing into the reverse territory where the game is getting the rep of being “that arpg that can’t get multi done.”

I haven’t heard this anywhere. Seems almost everyone understands that there’s an order to things and you have to finish taking the steps right in front of you before you get to take the steps a mile down the road.

[meesterg]

I think its time when its time for them.
I also have friends who quit the game because of no multiplayer. Every friday evening i play games with them and now were gonna check out Last Epoch together again. Its not really together, were in the same room playing our own LE game which s*cks.

I would love to play together but i rather have a really good game for the longterm. So i hope they wait until its ready and until the base game is ready for it.
Those changes that they just made were really really needed in my opinion.
If you had multiplayer already then they would haved sink in there time into that. With releasing things you could have problems on the way.

Those problems needs fixing especially in Multiplayer. I actually think it would hurt them if they 1: didnt had a better endgame system yet and 2: didnt had enough time to fix multiplayer when its out.

I cant tell with how many people they work on this game. I think aswell that multiplayer could be on the cards now, at the same time there are still things that needs changing in my opinion. There is body gear that needs to look different when you wear it for example (in my opinion).

Schedule wise they did say that Multiplayer is planned in this phase. They actually worked on a few things that they had planned in phase 4 (they are in phase 3 now i saw on steam).
I think that was the good discission.

Anyways i also hope multiplayer is on the horizon but only if its tested properly and only if they can still work on the game itself aswell beside multiplayer.
So m any games fail nowadays because they push things to fast. Good games take time just like a good wine or whisky. So lets be patient.

[Heavy]

@rittchard

but now it’s slowly crossing into the reverse territory where the game is getting the rep of being “that arpg that can’t get multi done.”

All the people that say that (I never heard some say something like that TBH) would be the first people complaining that MP experience sucks, when they do have some hiccups.

So let the people talk.

This is one of the topics that gets raised again and again and again and again.
The devs know this, but all the pressure of the community will most likely not change the plans of EHG: Ready when ready.

@rittchard

It would be really nice to see something before the end of this year.

The last update we received is still, that MP is coming by the end of the year.
If that changes I am sure we will receive an update as soon as they know they can’t make it this year.

[Shtrak]

@rittchard

now it’s slowly crossing into the reverse territory where the game is getting the rep of being “that arpg that can’t get multi done.”

I never saw that. Never.
This may happen eventually, but it’s too early.

[Llama8]

Yeah, given the game’s performance in single player, it’s got quite a long way to go before it’ll be able to cope with more than 1 Necro on screen.

[meesterg]

If you lag to hard online because of multiple necro’s with big army’s you asked for it IMO

[rittchard]

Maybe it’s just among the gamers I associate with, but we are mostly older folk so maybe we are just more jaded and grumpy lol. But… the first comment I generally get is “shouldn’t a multiplayer game be tested with multiplayer?” Which for many of us (again maybe it’s because we are old, I don’t know) is the logical path to follow.

I try not to hype the game unless my friends ask about it, but over the past year I’ve had multiple inquiries and they all seem to ask me about it. So I just tell them I love it as a single player game and try to steer away from MP discussion.

[Albinosaurus]

That would be true if it was a completed game. It’s still in Beta and by quite a bit too. There’s no point in trying to test MP before the base game is in place.

[XLVI_carpo]

Besides the question when multiplayer will get implemented - I’m also with the “when it’s done” fraction - I’d really like to see some more information on the state of MP.

We had a discussion on our German Community Discord about this recently.

The MP question is one of the most asked questions. And all we have is the dev blog from months ago.

I personally don’t need a 5k words blog post every week. But a short summary of the current state once in a while would be awesome.

This was a statement from Mike where he states they want to be more communicative on that topic:

@EHG_Mike

I think that we have probably been a little too tight lipped about it as of late. I think we can open up the dialogue a little more. Unfortunately we are going to put a slight delay on that just until we’re over the patch hump. Once we’re through that, we will take some time to get the community communication regarding multiplayer going better.

Unfortunately EHG did not level up their MP news information skills .

So another thread was created months later and we got a really nice statement from Sarno:

The Great Big Multiplayer Question Revisited

pours himself a cuppa Alrrriiiiggghhhtty then.   Our Plans for Multiplayer At release, Last Epoch will support both offline-only, locally stored characters and online-only, server-side characters played in a server-authorative environment. Competitive aspects of the game (such as ladders) will cater to the latter. While we don’t plan to ever allow previously offline characters to be brought online, we are open to the prospect of allowing players to download a copy of an online character for o…

End of 2020 we then got the dev blog with a video.

Now it’s June (almost) and we follow the tradition we established regarding MP news:

• @rittchard creates a topic, asking for MP news
• People jump in to justify why theres no MP already in and why it is justified to not hear about it (devs have no time and should create content and stuff instead of answering questions regarding a topic they already answered 5 months ago )
• But brave people do not give up and push the topic until somebody from EHG gives some answeres

Imho infos on multiplayer are too deep buried here on the forum. It’s not that people are not able to use the search function. Because if you are a new player in May 2021 and you search for “Multiplayer” the first 2 results are a dev blog from 2018 and an Announcement that is 5 months old. New players propably think that there would/should be a newer info somewhere, so they ask for it.

@EHG_Mike answers questions about MP on his stream several times per stream. But it’s not much info and even if it was some interesting details we need to rely on being live in stream or read a write up fro @AndrewTilley . Currently theres no central spot for that info.

Why not just regularly give some (small) update on the state and make them obvious like pin them on reddit, steam, forums, discord, website?

Also would it be so bad if EHG would say “Hey guys, this is our roadmap [insert link here]. We will most likely release 2 more content updates before the 0.9.0 MP update.”

Certainly somebody at EHG Headquarters has a plan. I doubt that they are rolling dice every patch to determine what comes next.

@Moxjet200 Has offered us in prospect during the recent AMA that they want to give a roadmap update. I’m so excited about this.

So I tagged 2 devs with that post and certainly have used up my credit now (hopefully not!!).

But from my perspective this is a very important and popular topic and (as much as I like EHG and praise their communication with us) might need the promised improvement on information it is still lacking.

Would be really nice and fancy to get some news!

Cheers!

[JCourtney]

I think the end game systems need to still be there for multiplayer. We need things to push, right? Itemization needs more systems as well.

[Jarzuul]

+1
Fully agree!

[xolak]

I’m also in the “ready when it’s ready” group. As much as I want it now, I’d rather it be done right. I definitely agree that it would be nice to get some news. Or even some multiplayer streams - that would be fun to watch. Anything to show us what’s going on with it

[Albinosaurus]

@XLVI_carpo

I personally don’t need a 5k words blog post every week. But a short summary of the current state once in a while would be awesome.

Not dismissing the rest of your well constructed post, but I think the essence of the matter is right here. How do you propose they do these updates when there’s nothing to report? Seems like a waste of time/effort just to satisfy a few people who don’t understand what “When it’s ready” means.

EHG does make great effort to be communicative and open with us about what they are doing, but asking for information that they don’t have available is a bit much.

[HerrPeppschmier]

I agree with most people here, quality for me is more important than speed. So they shoudl take their time, think about certain thinks, do testing and release it, as they have alrdy said, when its ready to be released.

[Llama8]

I wouldn’t be surprised if they implemented the “optimisation improvements” that they’ve been talking about for the past few months then pushed multiplayer out, since I really don’t think LE as it is now would be able to cope with multiple players on the same screen. I think part of the FPS issues people have at the moment now are down to their PCs having to run all the AI & calculate the procs which wouldn’t be an issue in MP since that’s what the server would do.

[muk-as]

today was updated mptest branch
https://steamdb.info/app/899770/depots/

[Llama8]

For the devs. I’d think that they update that every so often whenever they update the main build so their mp test branch doesn’t fall too far out of sync with the main one. We know they’ve been testing mp internally for years.

[Nostromo21]

I for one plan to plonk down for 2 copies the moment co-op comes out, but not a minute sooner. This is the type of game I’ll mainly duo with the Mrs, so no co-op, no $$$s.

I would therefore strongly suggest the devs work on local LAN/TCP co-op first & foremost, as libraries and APIs are readily available with most commercal game engines for that. No need for cloud hosting, managing servers, or dealing with security, databases, etc. I assume LE is already available offline in SP…? If not, and it becomes yet another DRM-infested always-online arpg (for the multi component), I’ll have to re-think supporting it.