Yeah I agree. This game is great so far and the Devs have communicated a good amount on most things except multiplayer. This is obviously taking some time, and that’s fine, but the complete lack of any foresight or insight into what is going on is very disheartening and concerning. You can only say multiplayer is a top priority and something you are working on for so long before the whole community gives up on the dream. I can wait for this to happen with updates but without any communication on this topic from the Devs, it might be a surprise that comes out next year at some point but by then I, and many others, may be over the hype/waiting and not have the itch that is currently here. Obviously this is a personal opinion, I just wish they would shed some light on this a little…not even asking for a specific date even though I believe this community is owed that at this point.
if they had a specific date im sure they would share, but just sharing an update on it would create alot of hype for something and even more questions when there just doesnt need to be. Im sure when MP is close you can expectt to get a full blog on it and everyone will be talking 
I understand what you’re saying, but the hype is already there/that is what a lot of people are waiting for. MP should already be here and that’s the issue. It is now delayed indefinitely and I feel like the Devs owe the community to explain why. Not give a specific date and not apologize or anything like that but to be more transparent. As an example, put out quarterly updates like Diablo 4 is doing. I also understand that they have been putting out a lot of good info which I have obviously been following but there needs to be some mention with multiplayer at least saying what they are working on. Because like I said before, having it be delayed multiple times and for this long already, and then to just keep the whole community completely in the dark feels bad. I think avoiding to put out information to avoid questions is not the right answer at all.
Where did they say it was delayed indefinitely?
It better not be, because without multiplayer I have zero interest in this game.
It’s not, we never said that.
Which is what I thought, given your statement further up, I just wasn’t sure if something had been said on Discord & not posted here (though that would be very odd if it were as significant as that).
MP has been delayed for an unspecified amount of time which, by definition, is indefinitely. My only point is that I wish they were more transparent on the progress of MP rather than just saying “sometime in the future at some point, we promise.” Again, I don’t need a specific date or anything but even something like “we’re working on ports this month” or “we’re trying to balance levels right now” or whatever it is, that’s all.
The problem is you assumed multiplayer should be here already (something cannot be delayed if it didn’t miss a promised deadline). My question is on what basis are you making that claim?
Ahh, I see what you’re saying, good point. I guess I am conveying my thoughts unfairly and I do apologize for that. Basically, I have seen and read multiple posts that multiplayer is in the works and will be here at some point and all I would like is some sort of information beyond that. Not much, but reading “multiplayer is a top priority” for years at this point, is definitely unfortunate and concerning to me. I am sure they are hard at work and they obviously said they are not stuck on anything, but it would be nice to see something, anything, even a one line sentence at the end of patch notes, saying what they have done or are working on relating to MP. I hope that makes more sense rather than the word vomit I posted earlier.
This is a very similar discussion like the “we need a lootfilter” topic.
It’s ok, that it isn’t in, yet.
But also if there still is no eta, what about some teasers? This thread here is explaining a lot. Now devs state “it’s outdated and some things have changed”. What things have changed? In what direction did it change?
Tease us. Give us some info on the current state. I think this is all that is demanded. I don’t get why EHG goes this completely silent on this topic.
Because if they tease you with something thats not even close to finished and is subject to change it causes a bunch of issues such as
1)Creates unnecessary HYPE and just more questions of WHEN WHEN WHEN which distracts the team from just working on it more.
2)When something inevitably changes over the course of its creation people get mad that something that was teased 6 months ago isn’t there anymore
We dont get a date for MP cause they dont know… We cant even get a date for the next patch because there literally trying to get it to us in a polished form ASAP and they just dont know what QA/Problems/Bugs Pop up last second.
Would You be happier if they gave you a specific date and then just had to keep delaying it?
EHG is BUSY BUSY BUSY, look how much content there trying to put out every 2 months for every patch, why would they stop what there doing and focus on something thats not coming in the next immidiate patch just so we can drool and then go back to naggin. Just let them be, we will get the teasers and MP when there ready to give it to us. ITs coming. Patience.
Honestly I don’t think they have to stop working or delay any content to just tease us or answer some questions regarding multiplayer.
I don’t think that multiplayer content and implementation is so vague that there is nothing they could show or tell us. This dev blog started early 2018. Back then they had a plan and a lot of info to share. And I really doubt that they cancelled all of this and have actually no clue what it should look like.
Small updates and infos are appreciated. No shiny concept presentation or preview. Just state of the current system.
But they do. A dev blog doesn’t just appear out of thin air, it probably takes whoever writes it several hours to put together (say half a day) then another couple of hours to review it with someone else, thrash out their questions and update it with the agreed changes in wording. So that’s probably a days worth of manhours from a small team that could have been spent on something else.
And that’s assuming that, as boardman says, the things they have said they’re planning on doing, their direction for whatever it is they’ve blogged about don’t change between now and when the feature is finally implemented. Other devs (I forget who) have said before that they didn’t like talking about stuff that was too far out because it sets the community’s expectations and if it changes for any reason some part of the community loses their shit.
I’m not a writer, but it can take me weeks to put together a spreadsheet that is my company’s statutory accounts. And those weeks will be spread over a good 2-3 months what with interruptions, other urgent work (month end happens every month and can take anywhere between 2 days and a week depending on the company), random questions from my boss, or her boss, etc. And said statutory accounts are only 30-40 pages long, and most of it’s done already (I don’t re-write it from scratch)!
I know its frustrating as ****, I want nothing more than to get into mp with my friends and pvp someone from here that said they were really bad at pvp.
It’ll be here when its here.
surely it’s not that black and white.
This argument I hear a lot, but I don’t find it very valid. It’s under the assumption that everybody just works at 100% efficiency all of the time, and that every dev should spend 100% uptime on the game. Maybe he spent this time when he was waiting for a build to complete. Maybe he spent this time while waiting for some QA. There’s always some downtime, in any job, where you could just spend the time on writing a small piece about content you’re extremely familiar with. Meaning it doesn’t cost that much time either. At least you don’t have to think about the content. Just about how to phrase it.
I’m sure nothing was ever delayed simply because a dev posted a message. That’s not how the world works. There are so many factors that go into development, that just spending a bit of time on something that’s not development will not be the cause for any significant delays.
On the plus side, they usually maintain an open conversation with the community, which is very, very valuable. It makes us understand the company and their motives a lot better, generally speaking. And then if they do get to delay, simply because things take more time than expected, or maybe they had technical setbacks, or one of 10 other reasons you tend to encounter in development, we are much more appreciative of that decision, because we have a good understanding of what’s going on.
I think the dev blogs provide value and make a lot of sense from a company perspective.
What you (@EHG_Mike) wrote about the multiplayer sounds great to me. I prefer solo play, and with a select group of friends that have a (semi) compatible attitude to how fast to go and how much time to spend ‘chimping’ over the collected loot in town. I dislike public parties, I never had a positive experience with those in any game. 5 party members is already a lot, considering that you want to move together as a group and there is little room to manouver.
PvP being separate and having a ‘gladiator’ kind of fights sounds good too. I’m thinking of Exanima (the game), and their arena system (though it’s not pvp), where you play against opponents, unlock gear and can place bets and so on, that might be interesting for PvP instead of people bringing in their gear collected during solo/party play, but maybe as an option (it would put more emphasis on skill rather than luck/duration of play, so it would be easier for new players to step into the pvp arana to play). It would be nice to have a ‘spectator’ mode, and to be able to bet on your favorite player, or maybe even ‘sponsor’ fights by making an item you found a prize that a contestant can win. This would envolve people that don’t like to PvP but like to watch others slaughter each other
As for loot: it depends on the situation, I like when in a group anyone can pick up an item, sometimes an item drops and I don’t have room in my inventory, so a team player can pick it up, or one persons picks up one item type etc. It’s coop play after all. But that might not work in ‘public’ games of course.
Offline for solo sounds great, though if you ever want to play with others, you are forced to play online always, even if you want to trade items once a months or playe with someone occasionally, so it’s a kind of harsh separation, like HC and SC are separated forever. But I’m very happy you offer the offline possibility, I will definitely play that too.
I don’t know what their resource constraints are, I don’t even know what they do per se (since I’m an accountant not a developer), but broadly speaking, time spent doing task A means you’re not doing task B.
Yeah, maybe Mox/Mike/Sarno/etc have tasks that take a while to run that they can then shift on to something else. I don’t know about them, but I’m not sure I do my best writing/work (such as it is) while waiting for something else to run/compile/whatever. Plus at some point you’d probably want to sit down and focus on writing a blog post.
I also agree that any comments/posts/blogs from the devs are interesting and give us insight into the game.
I’d just disagree if someone said that that kind of thing didn’t have any downside in terms of time taken away from doing something else, or that they were just knocked out in a few mins.
You’re making things much more complicated than they really are. I did not ask for a new dev blog or some other “polished” stuff they have to work out first.
Some teasers, nothing special. Would take about 10 minutes of dev time. EHG takes time to answer a lot of more complicated questions on discord as well as things that get asked over and over again.
If they don’t answer it’s ok, too. I can handle that.
We might need to agree to disagree on that. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my working life in large corporates (which EHG aren’t).
I’m working in a (very, very) large corporate, so I know where you come from, though.
But when I ask you for a small teaser and it takes you two days to put together a presentation with 400 pages, the problem is on your side.
