About multiplayer experience in ARPG's and why LE could beat them all

Hello!

First off, I’m quite new to Last Epoch, because it just wasn’t on my radar, but since i found out about and bought the game I’m absolutely amazed by it.

What i just want to talk about, since i experienced the game a little, is the big potential, not only for the game as a whole, but especially the multiplayer.
I played many different ARPG’s, preferably with friends and mostly Path of Exile. But the multiplayer experience with PoE isn’t good in my opinion. Thats mainly because the game is too fast and the builds tend to have extreme discrepancies between clear- and movementspeed, aswell as powercreep.
So most of the time me and my friends are playing solo while chatting in discord and occasionally running a unique map together.

Last Epoch’s approach to builds and pacing in general seems to compliment multiplayer much more. And then there is the Arena. While in PoE everyone zooms through the map trying to find the mobs before everyone else, which is just stressful and not fun imho, the Arena of LE would be the opposite. And thats, in my opinion, a key feature to deliver an amazing multiplayer experience. Synergizing builds and fending off wave after wave, always trying to beat the last record, would be my arpg’s dream-multiplayer-experience come true. In the game Warframe, the “defense” missions would also be the most enjoyable mission type playing with friends, which are also wave based. This alone, makes me believe, if done right, Last Epoch’s multiplayer could outshine the competition by far.

Me and three of my friends (which I of course convinced to buy LE too :P) are really excited in the further development of the game.

I would appreciate to hear your opinions on my assumptions.

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100% agree on everything you said.

As you said games like PoE and even Warframe, are really fast and sometimes are just enjoyable in MP if you play very specific content, but most of the game’s content is not really fun and playing “together”. The “most” cooperative thing in PoE would be a aurabot i guess, which is not very fun and interactive for (most) people. And same goes for Warframe, most of the mission types everybody is just doing his own thing while occasionally meeting each other inside the mission. I think in warframe the “most coop” thing would be eidolons which will be done by most groups in very specifc “meta setups”.

As you said LE has a very very strong FOUNDATION, even in it’s current state with no MP implemented. There are tons of interactions with allies(be it skills changing nodes like heals, buffs, auras, choice of targeting other allies etc.). The game’s pace is also very “slow and tactical”, with alot of telegraphed abilities and (very) limited movement abilities(which is a good thing).

As good as PoE is as a game, the pure speed and having the ability to clear and move multiple screens(2-3 screenwidth) in mere seconds is just not fun when playing “together”.
I think i already ranted about how bad PoE’s MP part is dozens of times and i really don’t wanna say it is a bad game, because it isn’t and i did enjoyed alot of the time playing PoE, but the last aRPG game that i really had FUN playing cooperatively was Grim Dawn, especially the Shattered Realm content.

I really want to have “fast and zoom zoom” builds to have a place and exist, but it should be a build decision and not the meta. I really can imagine the rouge calss to have multiple movement related skills and that would be fine.

But the way LE currently handles movementspeed and movement abilities is really good(with moderate cooldowns and just 1-2 max per class that don’t scale with cast/attack speed[because of the cooldown})

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I know what you mean, but I don’t think it’s possible to have a game balanced such that the “zoom zoom gottagofast” builds are comparable to the slower tankier builds. The faster builds will always get more stuff quicker because they kill more mobs in the same time period. An alternative is to push more of the loot to the boss but that just means that a ranged build will be more likely to do better since they can do damage at range & potentially while moving compared to melee (Warpath notwithstanding).

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I wish you were right, and that Last Epoch succeeds in occupying that unique place, that of the ARPG offering the best multiplayer experience.

Right now, that’s just a wish. :slight_smile:

Agreed, it is indeed hard to balance, but i think especially last epoch with it’s unique skill system could make it work. It might take alot of balancing and tweaking.

If you don’t give movement skills very much power choosing to go with 2 or 3 movement skills(if that would be possible on the rogue class for example) you either miss some damage skills or utility/defense skills.

For me personally such build should have a hard time scaling very high, so the "early-/midendgame) is doable/farmable but you can’t get into the really hard endgame stuff.

I think you’re right also with the comparison to Warframe. I really enjoyed that game in coop with strangers and clan play. It’s right that some gamemodes don’t need you to interact and coop with each other. But the endless wave modes scale in difficulty as you play longer what at some point forces people to regroup and play together again. And I don’t mind that there is not a real combo gameplay with exact tuned and timed skills. For me a good multiplayer experience is when playing together alongside each other is fun.

Arena defenitely has that potential. 5 people in a relatively small area with uncountable waves of enemies… This is going to be great.

This leaves huge potential for my squishier builds that then rely on people giving me backup and prevent me from being surrounded.

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Yeah that’s an excellent example. When there is enough potential for different “roles” like a buffer or a tank (i hope there will be a functional and useable aggro system once MP is implemented), you could have people in a party that rely on their teammates in certain aspects.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a “meta” like in mmo’s where you “need” tank and healer, but there should be enough specialisation space for people to invest in something like heal or buffs that really noticeable impacts the groups performance.

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I get your point. And it’s defenitely possible to achieve. Many loot shooters have that action focused combat similar to an ARPG and get it done that coop is fun while not forcing people into that hard roles like tank healer or damage dealer.

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Im completly on your side here. The systems with healing and taunting are already in the game and i assume that this is meant to be used in party play too. I like the idea of being able to specialize a character to fit into a specific role in a group. But also, as you said it, should be an option and not mandatory. Solo and group play should co-exist but be equally viable and fun, if possible.

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Move skills shouldn’t be implemented with the intention of replacing walking/running. They shouldn’t be “move” skills, but instead “evasion” skills. Skills that quickly move your character across the screen to avoid large telegraphed attacks. Put very high cooldowns on them and have them hold a few charges at a time.

To the original topic, it has been discussed in length. I wish for a game that is as good an aRPG as POE/GrimDawn/D2 etc., but has multiplayer content almost similar to MMORPGs. Battlegrounds, 4/5 man group dungeons, etc. I want there to be content that is exclusive to multiplayer (but no loot that is exclusive). Allow PUGs and put a system in to make that easy. Stay away from hard set class roles so that people don’t get screwed out of playing multiplayer because they are a certain build.

I would also very much like multiplayer dungeons to throw back to old NES/SNES type rpg/arpg puzzle games. Games like Zelda and Alundra where dungeons have puzzles that need to be solved to move forward. Puzzles that force the party to split up for a little bit.

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I agree with everything in OP and the potential for proper multiplayer is definitely there in LE. My dissatisfaction with POE multiplayer was also one of the key reason that pushed me to back LE in these early stages. That said, it all still boil down to implementation. I can’t wait to see what the devs have in store for multiplayer.

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One thing I’ve always disliked in the multiplayer experience of other ARPGS is the fact that the screen becomes an incomprehensible fireworks display with a large number of players. I hope the devs keep that in mind and give us a way of toning down the lightshow of other players’ skills, so I can focus more on what I am doing.

Would likely help our FPS as well :slight_smile:

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Yes thats something i wouldn’t like to see aswell. ARPG’s tend to become screen-clutter-fests really fast. I hope that Last Epoch will go a less “fireworky” route, so that visibility of important
telegraphed effects or even the beautiful landscape isn’t 100% obscured by effects all the time. But as this is mostly a visual problem, tweaking and playing with effects might not have priority over other, more important features right now.

My friend and I pretty much gave up on the most recent PoE league because of how party unfriendly it was, so to say that we’re anxiously awaiting Last Epoch’s multiplayer would be an understatement.

I very, very much hope that a lot of thought is put into what being in a party gives you - I think it’s absolutely fine for monsters to be stronger in a party, but I’m not really okay with them just doing more damage and having more health. I think it’s fine for monsters to have more HP to make up for the second player, but having them do more damage isn’t really fair since it isn’t like you get tougher when someone else is there.

I’ll be very curious to hear what the developers say about it once they push it out for testing.

I’d like to see cleaner FX in general. It’s easy to lose oversight playing solo right now. MP will take this even higher.

I’m curious if this is work in progress or intended because of the art style.

Some skill effects (especially of enemies) are very dominant. They look cool when only a single enemie is on the screen. E.g. Beetle Queens AoE attack. It overlay everything on the screen. It would be better to just have a transparent effect in a certain colour with some light animated effects, imho. This would propably reduce the immersion but would have a huge effect on reducing screen clutter.

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We internally tried (in our game, not LE) to tone down effects and particles, so game is more readable when more and more effects are on the screen and what we ended with is instead beautiful and flashy fireworks we had very ugly fireworks.

Some things, in my opinion, are just not possible to fix. More players will always make huge mess. Some games are fixing this by removing some effects altogether, but you just wont see all skills in use, or are transforming skills into these “rings” on the ground with icon, but it’s also pretty ugly. You have rings and icons on the ground.

Yes, effects can be toned down and it can improve visuals by a lot, but I don’t think isometric ARPGs will ever get to the point, where screen is perfectly readable in multiplayer scenario. One of the best approach for skill visuals has Diablo 3 - by far, and even here, when you put 4 players together, it’s starting to be too much - but still, if they will manage to make effects as clean as D3 has them, it would be huge win.

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I really like seeing all the colors and effects from everyone’s skills in multiplayer, it’s so priddy!

The first thing I did when I got the game was try to find the class/skills with the most visual effects.

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