Multiplayer Progress Update - December 2021

Developer Blog
41

I think it boils down to…

  1. Easy direction - you only had three things to do: bounties, rifts or greater rifts, and the game was tagged with what you intended to do. And no communication was needed since the game showed you what was done and what had to be done.
  2. Simplicity - for any of the farming (bounties and regular rifts) the game was easy enough that there was no need for coordination. You would just run a regular solo build and blast through it.
  3. Reward - running bounties was literally four times as efficient in a group compared to solo. Rifts not only had higher clear speeds and individual loot, but you got major loot and XP bonuses.

I really just don’t want the last in LE as it means that playing solo in D3 was just a waste of time.

42

Thanks. I think the insights you share make sense. And I understand the frustration of (3) for solo players.

I dont really care for (3) if EHG can sustain an active MP ecosystem without relying on that. My burning desire for MP (so burning that I asked point blank to Judd to confirm that LE would be MP focused before I backed the game in kickstarter) is for a couple things which I cannot find in modern POE anymore and I really hope that the next big ARPG would address it.

I want to see systems that bring players in the same online world together. Global chat is one thing, of course. But I also want to be able to see other players, and play with other players. In the memorable games I had played in the past, these encounters with other players are what made me some solid gaming friends where the friendships had last to date. These connections are some of the most powerful things an online game can do.

These same systems, I believe, would also give a richer experience with friends and guilds (when we get them in LE). In POE, it really doesnt make sense to play with friends and guildees (see my prev post on why I think POE MP fails). It is so frustrating to be logging in every day, to be in discord chat with my friends and guildees, but everyone playing their own game because it doesnt make sense to map together (unless you play with a very specific configuration to abuse MP play).

The whole point of online games to me is this connection to other players. And I just find it such a missed opportunity if this game end up as a de facto solo game.

43

Actually one of the biggest rewards of MP is leeching and doing absolutely nothing

When I was young I would get carried by public games in D2 all the way to Hell and could never actually move forward solo as my character was trash and had zero gear due to this so I realised this gaming behavior is not only lame its just bad for the player long term

Fast forward to when I was pushing D3 ladder - the ONLY reason I joined public games was the faux motivation of playing in a group, I didnt want to talk to anyone or discuss my build or why I was even there, it was just much easier to grind rifts in a group to get your end result which is just keys to do more GR’s.

I dont have that anymore and LE isnt competitive so I dont really care anymore. I dont have FOMO unless its work related these days

1 Like
44

this is going to be a huge multiplayer release…with the amount of work EHG has done, and will hopefully continually strive to, this game could become a titan in the arpg industry.

45

The problem is balancing single player and multiplayer. How do you make it appealing to group up without making it necessary? Diablo 3 leans too far to making multiplayer mandatory since you’ll be way behind in terms of loot and experience efficiency if you play solo. But a lot of games that people balk at as “de facto solo” games like Grim Dawn actually have a reasonable balance. Playing with another player can speed things up but only if you’re coordinated.

You seem to want it to be a multiplayer focused game even at the cost of single player, and I’m sure there are many that agree. But there are plenty of us who would rather have multiplayer be optional and would prefer that multiplayer be sacrificed if it hinders the single player experience.

Not having played POE, is it truly much less efficient to play in multiplayer? Or is it just not more efficient?

46

It’s more like Path of Exile’s gameplay is utter trash and is on the level of COOKIE CLICKER game. I’m not even joking. You literally try to move as fast as you can and if you can’t instantly explode the entire screen in seconds… You die… That is the game. You keep doing that to farm currency to BUY your gear from a website through trading. You don’t even get to look at LOOT. You literally cookie-click screens as fast as you can to farm money to buy gear in an ARPG. It’s so bad.

1 Like
47

I think picking Grim Dawn as an example is missing the point, and reinforces my argument. I am not discussing about solo or MP balance. I am making a point that a game that is technically built as an MP game, should have good MP gameplay experience. Because otherwise, why bother building this whole infrastructure instead of making a solo offline game?

Grim Dawn is intended to be a solo game. And we can tell this by the developers design of the game - it is primarily an offline game and their MP option doesn’t include server authoritative MP. MP is an afterthought in Grim Dawn.

My argument is that Last Epoch was sold as a MP focused game right from kickstarter. While they have indicated there would be both online and offline gameplay, they have indicated that they expect online mode to be the primarily mode to play and are putting the proper infrastructures for this. They intended for social hubs (such as End of Time) to allow for players interactions. They wanted this and this was cited as the reason why Last Epoch will not have player hideouts in the first instance. So I don’t think it is fair to say that I want Last Epoch to be MP focused. This was how the game was sold to me in kickstarter.

And my point is that, yes, EHG can put in all the infrastructure for proper MP in Last Epoch but don’t design the game around that experience (like what POE has become). But it would be, like I said, a missed opportunity. Why put in so much effort to develop all these MP infrastructures if LE is meant to be a solo game? EHG could have released LE long ago if they had followed Grim Dawn and not having spent so much time and resources into MP development.

Yes, it is way way less efficient to play MP unless you abuse specific group dynamics. And you need to abuse it in the same group because there is usually a designated “host”, everyone else dont get progression and you’re basically bricked if your group breaks up. It’s hard to be specific about this point if you dont play the game.

1 Like
48

PoE is only more efficient in optimised groups stacking buffs / magic find and splitting the cost of juicing their maps by 1/6 and then sharing the insane profits

yes an optimised group can earn more currency/xp than a solo player much much more however people only do this ‘seriously’ for maybe 1-2 weeks to earn mega currency and stop - ive never done this before, theres players that do this every league launch to get a mega start. Its like working an awful job for $150 an hour and doing it for 2 weeks straight to pay for somehting…then slowdown

I only play solo trade/SSF in PoE, you NEVER need to play with anyone else for anything. I used to group in 2017 when the game was extremely difficult. GGG has been diluting the games difficulty almost every league for the past 15 leagues to the point I can go weeks without a single death - you lose 10% xp on death

One of the lead developers of PoE actually plays an aurabot - which is why it took them forever to nerf them.

Aurabots break the game - they give their allies things like -

90% maximum resistance, 40+% attack/movement/cast speed. Basically thousands of non decaying Ward (Energy Shield) multiple flat damage aura buffs and then on top of all this they all get scaled by ‘Aura effect’

But the other issue you have people saying shit like:

its not though, thats just if you have a bad build trying to push content you should be in, Most people who get ‘one shot’ didnt get one shot at all, they got maybe 6 shot because they ate 6 monster attacks at once because they have no defence at all and expect to live, doesnt work that way in PoE, you need raw mitigation plus secondary such as evasion/block etc

They probably didnt read the map mods, dont care to learn Aura effects on rares which are EXTREMELY dangerous if you get 3 rares in a room and each has an aura buffing them. You know you need to kill the mob with the Substanial Physical aura/powerful crits as you KNOW they will wreck you, these players dont pay attention, die, then scream the game was unfair

Funny thing is some of LE’s normal monsters are far worse in the ‘unfair’ category of damage - Osprix / Siege Golems / Ice Golem Avalanches / Matriarch Lightning Slam - all do like 3k raw damage in 250+ corruption and this is vs capped resistance and 60% endurance and im still taking 2300+ damage from a white mob…

2 Likes
49

Nah dude. Go load up Twitch right now and watch that MIND NUMBING gameplay. It’s so trash.

1 Like
50

Where did they say online would be the primary mode of play? Looking back at the original Kickstarter there was no mention of that, and it specifically mentioned giving equal weight on online and offline play.

Grim Dawn isn’t the best example of the focus, and I understand the lack of server authoritative play is a big detractor, but I was talking about the balance of progress. It’s more efficient to grind with someone else due to the balance of Grim Dawn, but it’s not so much more efficient that it throws off single player balance.

51

https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/8iwbig/comment/dyv97s4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

If you look through discord history you will see traces of the various points I cited. I backed this game on the basis of MP and have indicated to devs multiple times what failed MP in an online game look like (POE).

53

Looks like they go the old boring but safe MP formula thats decades old.
Nothing really new, maybe more monster density to a minor extent. Last time i saw more monsters in MP was in Tabula Rasa.

More monster life (depending on player count),class synergy,trading,leaderboards,pvp same old,same old.

Give MP at least some different enemies to fight while keeping the same drop table and maybe some special zone wide effects ,like random tornados/void spheres/etc, as well.

This would emphasize party play, give a different play experience vs solo while at the same time not giving any material advantage, only more potential challenges and fun.

Was a rough idea and there is probably lots of ways to make it feel good in MP ,you know, something different than playing one man playthrough.

54

Mike had mentioned something like that before - enemie attacks that changes with party play. The example he cited was Diablo bone cage.

Personally, I’m not sure if it would necessarily make party play more interesting and motivate people to hop in and play with pubs.

I think more crucially they need to solve the hygiene factor associated with endgame systems like monolith where there are some serious MP coordination issues.

55

The largest MP issues for me are as follows:

  1. The coordinated consortium gather up and dump all their resources together to create a conglomerate economic stranglehold on what I consider fun. What is fun to them is not fun to me.
  2. Do NOT base the rewards based on the speed of completing the ‘goal/task’. This absolutely trivializes players with disabilities and those who do not have the time commitment to invest in the manner that the professional gamer can. This is the primary reason why PoE trade is garbage.
  3. Keep out the competition, sure have goals like arena ladder, but make that side content not the core of the game. I may be capable of playing in things like PoE gauntlets, but I am not fast, will never be fast so I miss out on those events and opportunities due to being already cut before it starts. Real-life commitments also dictate how much and how often I am able to play. MP should be where the matchmaking is based on several group types, not just the first one up in 5 seconds and off you go without any idea who/what/where/why/how the MP group is going to work out.
1 Like
56

Not going to be possible given trade is going to be a car boot sale (where you don’t get to choose which stalls to be able to buy from) rather than an efficient auction house.

If rewards are based on completion, completing them faster will get you more rewards per unit time, unless the rewards are time-gated (X per hour) rather than completion-gated, and even then there will be slower players who get less stuff because they can’t do X per hour.

57

It’s exactly this kind of people who thinks the whole world needs to revolve around them that causes us not to be able to have good things.

58

will it support local co op?

59

All rewards should follow the same “Risk vs Reward” metric.

Solo play Risk vs Reward is balanced around deadliness of fighting Monos alone, and the modifiers make it more deadly, but increase XP and Loot.

MP should be no different. If “enemies deal 25% more damage” is a modifier for solo and grants X bonus Exp and Y bonus loot, then that modifier should scale with # of players. Loot might scale less linearly. Something like:

  • 2 players: 50% more damage X x 1.5 EXP, Y x 1.5 loot
  • 3 players: 75% more damage X x 2 EXP, Y x 2 loot
  • 4 players: 100% more damage X x 2.5 EXP, Y x 2.5 loot
60

I used to use a probability of kill and time ratio in the loot tables that I generated for games in the past. This example may get long-winded so please bear with me.

A character or team of characters has a set of two variables based on how they should perform against a particular boss/goal/task completion. The first variable was called character rating which took factors of the characters class, current gear, any usable/swappable gear, current stats, current level and gave it an overall character rating. The second variable was kill/complete probability based on the boss/goal/task difficulties based on the same values as the first variable used as a ratio to the first variable. Once calculated this generated a loot table and exp variable that stuck with the character until they exited the area.

An example of an under-geared level 20 primalist in white gear fighting the Emporer corpse to get to the end of time would have a much lower expectation of survival based on the power difference between the boss in this case. The player completion rate could be like 0.9% it says well you really should not be doing this but there is always the chance that your skill outweighs the possibility of you not dying then you can be suitably rewarded based on doing highly impossible content. Then taking an over-geared level 25 sentinel with twink unique items that have a 0.3% of dying into the same fight would not get the juicy special rewards possible due to trivializing the content.

Character A in the example may take 30 minutes of complete concentration to complete properly, while Character B takes less than 30 seconds. Character B should never gain access to the elite loot pools for this particular boss due to making the content trivial, while A can get access by knowing the fight, using character skill, and perseverance to progress in a way few others could, they should get a juicy treat for a job well done.

We used a behind-the-scenes timer that split loot drops into mundane and elite loot tables. This mundane and elite table variable was always reset but logged on the character file. This you can control based on how often character X using account Y is doing certain content and curtail over farming or excessive spawning routines. There is always a respawn timer (except in LE it seems) to areas. You let that player farm it but typically gave up in frustration as their efforts were largely wasted in the manner of trying to corner the market on the particular drops.

61

This won’t be an issue for LE, so I see no reason to prevent someone from farming the same boss 100 times in a row for whatever odd reason they want to (maybe to get better rolls on the boss drop, for example).

1 Like