Thanks Sarno very much for the update, it is very encouraging for me, particularly to hear about the testing with various server partners.
For the sake of discussion, though, I do think it’s worth discussing the concept of “A Mage casting Fireball doesn’t really care whether they are alone or part of a group.” From a performance standpoint, I would think you might need to worry about 5 mages spamming fireball, each with 10 (or whatever the absolute max is) balls at maximum cast speed. (Coincidentally I’ve been playing a fireball build lol.) From a design/gameplay standpoint, now add in the potential for someone to have additional buff auras that may increase fire penetration and fire/elemental damage, and my guess is there’s a balancing issue waiting to happen. Perhaps the solution is then to simply limit the max number of fireballs - which in turn changes elements of the single player game and requires more testing to re-balance - which has exactly been my point. I would argue every skill (and many nodes) all have the potential to be affected by a multiplayer implementation. Especially when you multiply the possibilities by FIVE simultaneous people playing. At bare minimum it’s something each variation may require thinking about and looking at (and at worse requires yet another rebalancing cycle), and frankly there’s no better way to expose these types of issues than in real beta with a mass of crazy testers.
@Shrukn Regarding your GD question, I think you misunderstood. The “blip” I was referring to was when they announced they would be doing a scaled down version of Multiplayer, i.e. no dedicated servers/economy/trading, etc. Prior to release fans were hoping for at least a Diablo 2 style multiplayer implementation to reduce cheating, have ladders, etc.
Thanks for the information Sarno, despite the fact you planned this for a later date initially
Iam really glad that multiplayer is still in the works since i really want to play this with friends instead of seperatly in the same room
@Sarno Rereading your post, I was wondering if/how much of the decision to not test with multiplayer is financial? I was looking at that Project Diablo 2 mod and noticed they had a Patreon thing to help fund servers. Just thought I’d mention if it were a matter of more funding required, I suspect a lot of us would be willing to put money in to get the MP rolling sooner. Never hurts to ask
I think itnis a more technical thing that they are working one and trying to get in a good state that rather something financially. From.my understanding while being fully crowd funded and always welcome and good to get financial support. EHG is doing well in the financial department. Granted I can’t speak for them or do I know thier actual situation. But just somethings that I have picked up on and noticed.
Servers are expensive though so I hope this stays and is true. Bc I wish EHG all the success and believe the MP launch with be more crucial than any other launch other than 1.0
I know some people might find my pressing on this annoying. I am honestly just invested in this game succeeding because I really care what happens. I joined the kickstarter the moment I read through the description, you can say I was sold from day one.
Anyway, I’ve been involved in many (MMO)RPG alphas and betas over the past 20ish years. But I believe this is the only game that promised a major MP element that did not alpha/beta test this extensively with MP not enabled. Internal testing with 3 players on a server this far into the game development just seems way too conservative (not sure if that is the right word choice) for a game that may eventually need/want to have thousands of concurrent users playing.
Now perhaps this new approach will turn out to be a really smart new paradigm in game development strategy, I hope so. It’s just difficult for me to see logically how it can be efficient to do it this way. If it were pretty much any other feature that more or less stood alone, that would be one thing. But for better or worse, MP (in my head anyway) is a fundamental part of the game, both from a technical and gameplay standpoint.
Bumping this for recent interest in other threads.
Over the past month I’ve started and stopped many additional responses to the info in this thread. There are certain things that just seem inconsistent and a little perplexing because of it.
I still maintain that by any logical development procedure, it is inefficient to test a multiplayer game without multiplayer enabled (I had written a long analogy about testing a cel phone without an antenna but it got too long and boring).
I do understand the concerns about first impressions/reputation - but at minimum, it seems like there could be MP testing using the Community Testers who are presumably under NDA. Perhaps that’s coming after 0.8, I really hope so.
It sounds like your assuming multiplayer isn’t getting released until official release. That’s not the case. Multiplayer will be tested before official release and it will be tested when its ready to be tested.
Im sure cellphones under went a lot of testing before getting an antenna. Battery testing. Program infrastructure. When they were ready. They were released. Obviously selling a cellphone with no intenna would be pointless. Why would ehg release multiplayer while they know it isnt finished jist so we can complain about it and tell them what they know?
@boardman21 I am definitely assuming MP will be tested well before official release. I’m also not implying it should be released to the public, but I’m questioning why not at least expand the testing to a larger (and not solely internal) userbase at this juncture, especially since the infrastructure is more or less in place with the Community Testers.
As far as the cellphone analogy, the point is, yes, things like battery, UI, etc can all in theory be developed/released and tested independently. But in all likelihood they will need to be modified - and then should be extensively tested again - if they were developed and optimized without the antenna. The antenna(s) will affect virtually every part of the phone design, whether it’s direct (like call quality) or indirect (like power draw from wifi). Even a company as huge and meticulous as Apple found that out the hard way with the iPhone 4 “antennagate” issue 10 years ago. An issue that should have been vetted well in advance of the phone being released to the public still happened. It likely would have been caught had they tested it early enough, and with a wide enough tester base.
All that is just a long-winded way of saying multiplayer (to me) is and should be a fundamental and core part of the game design, and as such should be tested as extensively as possible, and as soon as possible, to avoid redundant retesting.
After reading the developer post, I have very little hope that this will be a good MP game.
It sounds like it will be another Grim Dawn or PoE, there is MP, but most people won’t touch outside of trading & some carries.
Sometimes, the obvious need to be stated. You need to design a game with MP in mind for MP to work. It seems the dev team think MP is just solo, but with more people…
A good MP experience is when the strength of a group is stronger than just the sum of its member. Group synergy, support, buff/debuff & each member has roles to play.
PoE is so bad at MP because the game is design with a single player in mind, with MP as a technical possibility.
Can the developer as least clarify, if not already that Last Epoch is a single-player experience, that supports MP, or that Last Epoch is designed with MP in mind. But I think we already got the answer.
Great question. I hope the upcoming post from the devs on MP will answer this. I’m still hopeful that the answer is the latter. I share the same disappointment about MP in POE as you. And I also personally feel LE has the best shot to succeed if it differentiate itself from POE on this front.
