Why add multiplayer in when so many other things should take priority?

One would think that making what’s already in the game function properly would prioritize adding new functions. QoL improvements to make the game fun and keep people around longer would also seem like it should be a priority. I don’t know if you know this, but those things actually matter to the PLAYERS.

1 Like

nothing about the recent multiplayer announcement made it sound like multiplayer is the priority or the next thing that will be added to the game before anything else. they merely said that multiplayer and patch 0.9 will both be coming out next year. that could mean a year from now. that leaves plenty of room for 0.8.1 through 0.8.99 (obviously, this is an exaggeration, i sincerely doubt we’ll have 99 patches over the next year) that can include other things, like QoL features such as tooltip dps.

bug fixes and optimization happen all the time, and there’s not going to be some magical patch that solves all the problems at once. these things will be gradual, and hopefully reach a better place for more players as they approach 1.0. even after release, bugs are a normal part of software development and optimization is a never-ending pursuit.

6 Likes

EHGs track record for updating and refining stuff has been pretty damn awesome. Im confident with this and have no doubt that when they do release mp it’ll be ready for solid testing. That is what a beta is For.

5 Likes

Yeah. Nothing easier than that tooltip calculation.

C’mon, dude! Implementing Multiplayer doesn’t mean that there are features missing. This still is EA and a beta. The order EHG implements their core features is up to them. I don’t think there are huge QoL features missing currently.

Missing is content (items, subclasses and endgame modes as well as a story chapter. Rest is polishing.

Multiplayer will eat up a lot of time when it is implemented. Not only the stable netcode and social features, but balancing and skill interactions as well as performance. So there’s a lot to test for us beta testers and give feedback about.

The sooner we get to test this in a testworthy state, the better the quality will be at release.

We had this discussion exactly the other way round where people made their arguments like “We need MP tested as a priority to ensure the quality is good and not have to release with broken MP”.

In the end I learned that EHG has a great understanding of project management. Maybe there is no right time and it will always be too early and to soon at the same time. But as always I trust in EHG to make the right decisions.

This game is extremely stable and already has a lot if content, already. Rest is WIP. This post seems more to be of the category “Mandatory post that needs to be created just for sake of being created.” But I don’t share any concerns of that MP preview altering game or development quality. It’s not like EHG just have decided to also add multiplayer to the game and want to rush the game out with that feature soon.

Who knows how many patches still will come before 0.9.0.

4 Likes

Does EHG have a development timeline anywhere for people to see so they don’t ask questions like i just did then?

2 Likes

There is nothing wrong with asking questions and offering suggestions. Just dont present them as the “obvious” thing and that everyone else is wrong.

1 Like

Yeah well I guess im just one of those oldschool gamers who must have gotten pampered with sega and snes games that worked properly 100% out of the box after you payed for them. But ok, im not gonna argue with fanboys anymore.

1 Like

Last I checked. SEGA and SNES games weren’t labelled early access games.

In any case, not arguing. Just having a conversation :wink: cheers :slight_smile:

2 Likes

While LE has a very strong and close community, especially for a game this early in it’s development i would argue that there are not alot of diehard “fanboys” here.

We all want this game to succeed and become the best it possibly can be.

But i just have to say: EHG always underpromised and overdelivered and practically each and every major patches was a huge success and contributed to this game becoming better.

I have all the trust i have in EHG’S decisions to prioritize their stuff internally.

And we end up having a awesome video game that we all can enjoy together, once MP hits.

On this note.

Merry X-MAS everyone!

3 Likes

You beat me to it.

While last epoch is the first ever game ive played in early access, I look for early access more often now. I found early access on amazin prime video and each movie i watch im jist waiting for it to end abruptly or something to go wrong lol. Perhaps this is where peoples confusion lies

1 Like

Team-work is often divided among roles, which are played by certain persons of that team. Developing a game is the type of work that is ALWAYS divided among roles. Those roles are: sound artists, visual artists, engine programmers, level designers, NET-CODE developers etc. And every single person is often / always unable to play any other role except his own.

It means that implementing multiplayer may be done simultaneously with many other features.

I dont care for multiplayer much at all but EHG have a big task to balance the game, they need to release MP so they dont double-triple-quad handle their future skills updates or it wastes more time

The same devs who works on netcode for MP wouldnt be the same devs who does the tooltip UIs etc

im sure EHG is fully aware of Wolcen and what happened, they have already stated they want to make it right as they dont want to ruin reputation

This is my take on it too. What if they continued on and finished the game and then released MP in the last few months, only to then have it break everything they had done over the last few years?

Some skills that work perfectly well in SP may completely bug-out in MP and break the game, so I can understand why MP needs to be released ASAP.

Unfortunately, the industry has “moved on” a lot since then. Games are a lot larger in scope, more complicated in design (which makes them harder to program & more prone to bugs) and cost a lot more money. With the increase in cost comes requirements that the money isn’t being “wasted”.

The industry has grown up from awesome games being made by a handful of people “in their basement” to massive companies with hundreds of employees with all the joyous corporate oversite & risk-aversion that entails (FYI, I’m an accountant that has worked in some large corporates as well as some small companies, I also grew up with the A500/600 and relatively early PC games such as Civ 1, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Wolf 3d, Doom, etc).

Says the die-hard fanboy. :stuck_out_tongue:

We do, but everybody (especially the “die-hard fanboys”) needs to understand that people are going to have differing opinions and that one person’s “totally not arguing, just having a conversation”, is another person’s white-knighting/suppression of alternate ideas.

I’d be more concerned about balance in MP than skills breaking it. Besides, you know you want to get those Sacred vibes going with Bax & I in MP again…

Exactly, imagine if the very next patch was the new Masteries (Falconer etc) they tune the skills but only for solo play, then they release MP - they will potentially have to go back and retune all the skills again. Whereas if they had the capability with MP earlier they can do a hopefully a release then slightly tune it later

The other thing as well regarding Wolcen/Umbra - I didnt play the game at all because it never had controller support but looked at it on release and didnt it have some obscene amount of players - and the devs were probably shocked because they didnt expect the sheer number of players to be playing at once tearing into the game finding all sorts of unfinished business - this would be a nightmare for any dev - Wolcen went from Hype to a joke in 2 days.

Gamers are savage now, Cyberpunk was ripped apart, probably make any developer scared to release a game these days unless its somehow bug free

Yes, people on the internet can be complete ####holes & jump on the bandwagon to bash things/people just because they can (old-gen console performance of Cyberpunk notwithstanding, that’s a totally legitimate reason to be pissed).

What I don’t get is that companies continue this behaviour on and on. It must pay off in the end to rush out a game and fix it later.

CP is just an unfortunate (I personally did not expect CDP to make this fault, too) example of a row of recently released games that are not ready for going public.

Small indi studios can make the excuse that they did not have the resources. But the big studios don’t have this kind of excuse.

The risk management of these companies seem to come to the conclusion that it is better to release a bugged game than to delay the release.

There’s no way that devs don’t know about the state if the game on release.

I’m working in the automotive sector and it’s the exact same thing here. Quality is one core pillar on paper but when it comes to release dates and timing plans, it’s absolutely low priority.

This sucks!

1 Like

I suspect that it’s a tiny bit different in the car industry. If a game crashes because of a bug, that’s slightly different to if a car crashes…

Most people don’t really know what they want or why. The interactions between our conscious and subconscious minds are an evolutionary mess even before considering that our brains are wired for moment-to-moment survival in the wilderness rather than the relative safety, comfort, and luxury of the modern world.

The majority of pre-online console games did not work properly 100% out of the box at all. They just worked well enough that they were playable as-is, and the processes behind most glitches were opaque enough to be overlooked by casual players. And the PC games of the same time weren’t any different; I love Diablo 1, but there’s still plenty wrong with that game in terms of major bugs.

I’m also someone who hasn’t played other games in early access, though I did follow Darkest Dungeon and Dead Cells in their early access days. If anything, it seems like people argue more during early access, maybe because they feel like they’ve got a shot at having an impact on the state of the final game.

Same here. I have zero interest in playing MP, but I want EHG to do a good job with it because nobody benefits from the opposite situation.

I won’t go into ranting on CDP as developers, but it’s the same thing with quality in my slice of industry (environmental protection and waste reduction, primarily for mining/metallurgy/fertilizer plants). Ultimately, the corporate hivemind is almost always most interested in maximizing its guaranteed profits, and it’s up to individual workers to actually think longterm and do a good job.