NOTICE: I saw this topic pop up a few times and I just want to point out that it was initially made in early 2018. I’m not going to modify the body of the text as I think it still reflects our priorities but some things have changed in the last couple years.
Hi Everyone, it’s Mike here to talk about multiplayer in Last Epoch!
We know that many people really want to either play offline or online and not having your preferred play mode available could make a game unplayable. We want you to be able to play the way you want and with the people you want. We are building Last Epoch with online multiplayer and offline single player in mind. Our online multiplayer experience will be server authoritative so ensure the best chance of having no botters or cheaters. This blog will be a dive into the different ways you can play online and what the current plan for that experience looks like. As with everything this early in development, many of these features and how they are realized will change before the final release.
The primary form of multiplayer in Last Epoch is partying with up to 4 of your friends online to take down the toughest monsters in the timeline. We will also be offering PvP in the form of a coliseum. The primary reason that we are planning on breaking these two features off from one another is to avoid predatory practices by high level players. We want to foster a respectful environment that allows players to play the way they want to.
The current plan for multiplayer in the final game will have players joining a central town hub in which they can chat, trade, show off their gear and find a party to venture out into the wilderness with. (Oh and sweet dance parties). We are attempting to bring multiplayer experience to Last Epoch as soon as possible. We have preliminary multiplayer modes that we are testing internally.
The final version of this system will feature the ability to restrict what types of players can see and join your games. This can mean restricting by player level, minimum content completed or friends only. You will also be able to set filters when searching for games. You could look for games that have certain words in the title, minimum/maximum number of players or types of goals that the game is centered around. You will be able to save these filters as pre-set options so you can find the type of game you want to quickly and easily.
Once you are in the game world, you will be automatically assumed to be in a party with each other. Because we are breaking PvP off from the regular game world, we aren’t planning on having the ability to “go hostile” and start killing people. We have been discussing a dueling option or having the ability to create a PvP flagged game. Most of us on the team either like to play PvP or not, we don’t typically like to mix the two together. Having said that, if we get enough of a desire from the player base for it then we will look into implementing it.
We want to have the ping between players and the server be as low as possible so by default players will only join games with other players in the same region. You will be given the option to play with players from other regions with the understanding that latency may become higher than is desirable. We plan to keep the community as tight as possible by allowing global and/or server wide chat that can be easily disabled if you wish.
We will be implementing a league/season/ladder style system into our game where characters are all started from scratch at the same time and played for a relatively short period of time before being integrated into the larger population. The duration and specific details of these leagues is still largely undecided and will be expanded upon later.
What’s your favorite way to play? Online with randoms, party up with your friends or pure solo experience?
Edit: I didn’t bring up LAN play because it’s still undecided. We want to have it. We will do our best to have it in the game.