[2021] Question regarding multiplayer philosophy

Heyo!

Our most recent post regarding multiplayer can be found here, and another can be found here.

To address your questions;

• As stated by Judd in the first post linked to above - we want multiplayer to be potentially easier, but not automatically so. A group that doesn't know each other, doesn't communicate, and all wanders off in different directions is probably going to have a bad time, but a team of people that use chat occasionally and work together will typically have an easier time of it than if they were playing solo. We won't up the monster density - at least, not much - as that creates a different experience somewhat artificially. Enemies will scale. To speak to our approach at a high-level, when you play solo we can only really test your experience & knowledge of the game and its mechanics, when you're in a group we can also test its coordination.
• This hasn't been locked in just yet. I'm quite sure that personal loot will be available - at least as an option.
• We've tried group play in other ARPGs where the systems really didn't facilitate each member of the group progressing through their goals at the same time, and we definitely didn't think it felt great. There will be limits due to time & technical constraints, and the occasional decision made to prevent abuse - but where possible, we want your in-game progress to be recorded & acknowledged regardless of whether you're in a group.
• We're not going to invest an inordinate amount of time & resources into trying to make group play feel good if there are huge gulfs between the character level of the various people involved. On a personal level, I am very fond of Guild Wars 2's approach where higher level characters are dynamically scaled down in level. That's a bit MMORPG-centric, however, and would have a large opportunity cost for us as an indie team.
• We'll share more details along this note soon.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

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