I’m sure when the testers get their hands on it they’ll do their best to “load/stress test”, I’m thinking 2 Necros with 100 Wraiths & a few Void Knights with maxxed out Devouring Orbs (& future strikes) all hitting a large pack of mobs with Bone Curse…
It’s pretty clear that there is development with MP in mind, as you can see skill nodes which can be cast on “allies.” So there’s a distinction already between AI companions and presumably human ones. That’s certainly a good sign. But it’s plausible what looks great in gameplay is not working out technically for whatever reason(s). Things that are fantastic in single player like the 100 wraith example may not make sense in a MP environment. It’s interesting they were so specific about 5 players so early on; it leads me to think they had some sort of MP code and determined the limit already. But maybe something changed?
The thing is there’s no shame in admitting you have bitten off more than you can chew. Maybe they can’t do 5 players, or maybe they can’t make the server thing work without lag. Of course many of us would be disappointed if things were scaled down, but I’m sure we’d get over it. I remember when that happened for Titan Quest (or was it Grim Dawn?), and it was just kind of a blip in time. The worst thing is to keep allowing people to purchase the game imagining it’s going to be something and then not delivering at the last minute. Overpromising in Kickstarter is not a big deal, but as a “real” release, I’d say it’s much more risky in terms of longterm reputation.
Maybe I’m too optimistic on that part. But if I look at other games with much better graphics maybe even 3D and bigger fx - they get it done with more players. Ok, this may be a matter of the engine. But is Unity really that clunky and stiff?
Yes ^^.
I think it’s great to point out concerns on MP and its interaction with current game design and balancing. But until EHG shows me otherwise, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and trust that they have this covered.
I hope they plan on doing PvP still… was one of the main reasons why I got the game. Need me a game with some good PvM and decent PvP. Something like D2, but with a little more structure and better endgame PvM. Hopefully they address MP and PvP soon.
I really hate to quote older posts from devs that wanted to give us some stuff. But here we go
That was before 0.7.9 and we still haven’t got any new infos.
I would really like to dev insight on what the intend to do on MP, don’t has to be super detailed.
Just some comments about one or a few of those topics?
- Economy (Gold? Bazaar? Trading?)
- Loot Allocation in Party (instanced loot/shared loot)
- Party Size (still 5 players intented?)
- Scaling of Mobs (Health? Damage? Mob Density?)
- How much did devs consider performance issues/lags?
- Social Hubs? (Can you see other players in Town/HUB areas?)
- More insight on “Cycles”
A dev blog about it would be great too.
I really don’t want to have multiplayer right now, when it’s not ready, i just would like to get a feeling of what the intend of EHG will be in some regards.
Nevertheless i am super pumped and i have alot of faith, you guys at EHG did show several times that you put alot of thought into new features/design!
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I assumed this had morphed into the “before the end of the year” communication on MP by Judd when he spoke about LE release timeline.
It is later than I would have assumed based on Mike’s response you quoted. But I don’t think at this point we can expect anything sooner.
edit: “Cycles” is quite a different beast from MP though. So I’m not expecting their communications on MP to address that.
Ah yeah, you are right, that update to 1.0 was posted shortly after. Damn.
I should have known, but i am just too excited to get infos about that stuff, even if it’s nothing detailed yet.
Yeah i just re-read Mox Update to 1.0 Post and there he states they want to do an dev blog about MP before the end of the year.
Should have not quoted Mike, dammit.
I am just to excited >.<
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What are you referring to exactly? GD had multiplayer and in the 2500 hours I never ONCE entered a game with another player but it definitely existed and there was active trading if you wanted to do that, and Grim Dawn sold over 1 million copies and had 2 Expansions. I wouldn’t call that a ‘blip’ and they never lied and failed to deliver - I played GD from early access on/off to the second Xpac release and there was nothing of the sort
I cant understand this at all. aRPGs are terribly designed in a group and even when the skills accommodate being in a team its usually unbalanced and leaves your group woefully overpowered to the point you eventually run around doing nothing holding arms open waiting for monsters to shit out their loot while 1 person DPSes everything.
Devs would probably agree, they don’t really get anything but vast amounts of problems in a multiplayer environment and for someone like me…I don’t even WANT multiplayer. I personally feel the people who want to play multi almost all the time literally cannot be bothered to kill monsters and treat their party companion players as Minions, they are basically roleplaying a King.
Theres a few PoE players who play nothing but support characters for 5 years straight - they kill NOTHING and just stand around providing buffs and looting items and they are a bit of a joke to me - they also screw with the balance of single player due to % increase of drops for being in a team
Yeah, but its before “end of the year”, already. No need to wait for December 31. 
I personally would want a bit more precise feedback. I also get that this is also kind of pandoras box, because at the moment EHG gives a rough overview about the actual state it will solve some questions, but raise even a lot more new questions. But this knowledge can’t prevent me from asking# sorry EHG 
Yeah… It’s propably better to keep you away from social interactions, as it is obvious from your posts that you don’t like anything or anybody. Maybe there should be a company designing a game just for you, alone. I’m curious how this would look like.
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You did state your opinions on various topics more than once, which is fine and that’s what the forum is here for.
Being overly sceptical is something i do understand from people, especially in an Beta/EA title these days, but you are just being purely negative.
EHG did stated they want to deliver MP and if you are not interested that’s fine, EHG also stated in some of the rare statments about MP we know, that they MP experience will not take away any content or experience from pure singleplayer players.
The “only” example you named was PoE, which has the worst MP from all similar games IMO.
So for me that’s not good game to measure how “good” MP in these games is.
On top of that you named GD and that you never played a single time with some1 else, because GD for me has the most “coop” multiplayer experience ever. Mobs do matter even in SP, and especially in MP everybody counts and it’s not just “waiting for the mobs to shit out their loot”
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 offline play. This was an idea I initially had when considering how best to drive online players to try offline play (and also the reverse - online or offline, we want people playing Last Epoch as much as is healthy and responsible!).
We do not presently have any plans for hideouts, player housing, or guild halls. While some or all of these may be included in post-launch updates, they’re very unlikely to feature in 1.0. You will see other players who aren’t in your group while in town hubs such as End of Time.
Loot will be instanced. Group leaders may be able to change this - I’m not 100% sure. I can say that it isn’t presently possible, however I’d advise not trying to read too much into that.
Discussion & Implementation
We recognize that it may take some time to get multiplayer ‘right’ - and I might remind folks that there isn’t presently a release window offered for when Last Epoch might leave Early Access.
While multiplayer will impact balance in ways that only become apparent when the community begins playing multiplayer en masse, at the risk of saying The Wrong Thing™, I do believe the concerns raised by some in this thread to that effect are exaggerated. The majority of skills, specialization tree nodes, and class passives will not need to be changed. A Mage casting Fireball doesn’t really care whether they are alone or part of a group.
One of the most significant factors in whether an online game is considered a success is how well the game servers, databases, and other infrastructure weather the storm of the community first using them. We thus want to be sure that the online version of the game is ready - and we are ready to adaquately support it - before making it available to the community. Fixing these problems after the fact is seldom enough to salvage a tarnished reputation.
Multiplayer Status
Currently, I’d say the most common group size in internal testing is three. This isn’t mandated by any technical limitations - it’s just a product of our team size and how many people we have currently participating in such testing. We typically perform testing with latency values ranging from approximately ~25 ms to approximately ~125 ms. The game feels very playable across this range, although not all of the niceties have been implemented yet.
One example of such a missing feature is the server skipping parts of a skill depending on your latency. We’re likely to cover this system in our Multiplayer-focused post later this year.
There is no difference in stability between our internal multiplayer-enabled builds and Patch 0.7.10c. (Technically the former may actually be better, due to being more recent.)
Our internal testing has involved servers from multiple providers. I believe we’ve decided which company we wish to partner with but haven’t yet signed anything to that effect (it’s possible that my knowledge here is outdated, but I doubt it - I expect it would be big news internally!).
We have not yet chosen a specific server model or manufacturer. To-date the servers we’ve used have been powered by a variety of Intel Xeon CPUs. I can’t promise we’ll announce which hardware we end up using, however I imagine we’d be willing to confirm that the decision has been made. We will be using identical hardware across all data centers in all regions.
P.S. On a semi-related note, we’re totally replacing in-game chat in Patch 0.8 later this year.
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And I believe the most important question is, a cup of what?
I think the majority of the concerns about multiplayer are over stability & lag with certain types of builds (eg, lots of summons or builds with lots of procs that can cause lag at the moment). After that there are balancing concerns/questions regarding how parties will be balanced.
If only there were a group of people from across the world willing & able to make your servers cry.
Good, 'cause for the last few weeks the chat server has felt flakier than a Cadbury’s Flake… Please upgrade to a slightly more sturdier rodent-based PSU for the chat server, I think the current one has issues (maybe replace it with a Labrador or Border Collie-based PSU, they have plenty of energy).
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Thank you very much sarno, some very insightful informations in here!
I guess you did not have to write such a post here, but i am very grateful for that! #sarnothebest
(I hope you don’t get into any trouble 
)
Very much looking forward to the more detailed post before the end of the year.
For the time being, as i said earlier here, i think EHG did prove more than once, that they do put alot of thought into their design decisions and game systems, so while MP is a very difficult feature to do right and do have a lot of trust in EHG!
Keep on rocking guys! 
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Why not? This was exactly what we (or me at least) were asking for.
@Sarno 
I think this will be enough for me for the moment. I’ll stop being annoying for about the next 8-10 weeks (only regarding that particular topic… of course)
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Because as Jerle already correctly pointed out, Mox promised us a MP blog at the end of the year, which i totally forgot about.
That kind of post Sarno did, was like a “in between official statment” posts, which is 100% something that was NOT planned. (judging from the first two lines in Sarnos post lol)
But as i already said, i really appreciate it anyway.
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With a possiblity to link items in chat I guess? 
It’s planned, but I don’t believe it’s currently anticipated to be ready in time for Patch 0.8.
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Yeah, no doubt. But we (you included) asked for a statement. So asking for a statement and directly saying “This wasn’t necessary” when there is one is kinda 
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