How co-op actually works in Returnal

[Rastlaff]

Unfortunately, same as with many games nowadays, Steam page description is misleading and the game is not a true cooperative experience. We were buying the game together specifically because it’s advertised as a co-op one and right now for us it became just a waste of €120.

Don’t get it wrong - the game is good, we do like it a lot, we don’t mind the difficulty, and we perfectly understand the base mechanics. All of that has nothing to do with co-op being misadvertised.

How it actually works:

1. After a short tutorial you gain access to a Chronosis device - a white sphere through which you can create a private session for a friend to join.

2. You can do it only once in that cycle! After you have used the sphere, it becomes locked until you die and start a new cycle!

3. If any of you has an urgent matter to deal with in real life and needs to quit the game - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red and saying ALREADY USED!

4. If any of you disconnects due to network trouble - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red!

5. If any of you crashes - you won’t be able to rejoin, the sphere will still be red! And right now the game crashes a lot: unexpectedly, unreliably, sometimes after 5 mins in and sometimes after an hour when you’re fully geared up and ready to go for a bossfight.

6. The joining player comes with nothing, but default items no matter the progress on his/her own cycle - could have been ok, if not for points 1-5 above.

7. The cycle progress is for the host only - could have been ok, if not for points 1-5 above.

8. It is possible for the client to progress his/her weapon unlocks, but the devs expect you to somehow guess that you need to reroll to make sure the weapon is generated for you - otherwise the progress bar won’t grow and you will have no idea why.


All of this is never explained clearly before you buy the game. And after you buy it, you can easily spend more than two hours before realizing you won’t be able to play it in a proper cooperative way, so you won’t be able to refund it.

Yes, we do know that the game is not new and that it was initially a single-player only experience with co-op added afterwards. Problem is, the game is still sold today and was just ported to PC and is being advertised as a co-op one right here and right now, so the devs must either make the limitations crystal clear or provide a proper co-op experience.

Locking the Chronosis device to one use only is quite an overconfident move. For it to work you need a set of conditions to be true, such as:

1. Your game needs to be perfect from a technical standpoint - 100% stable, no crashes, brilliant network code, no issues.

2. Your players should have perfect network access - 100% stable, no disconnections whatsoever.

3. Your player base should be ideal - no trolls connecting to immediately disconnect, denying the host that help he/she might have been seeking for the rest of the cycle.
If you can’t guarantee all those to be true, you can’t have such a restriction in your multiplayer.

The proper description for the online part of the game would be: it’s a multiplayer game where you can summon another player to help you once per session, it’s primarily a post-game addition aimed at experienced players who finished the game helping the new players to overcome difficulties.

If we knew that from the start, we would not have bought the game seeking a co-op experience. Yet again - it’s still a nice one, but it’s not what we were expecting and to none of our fault as the description is missing critical information.

Help keep this topic on top both as an important information for the other potential players and as a way to raise awareness for the devs to change their restrictions and deal with technical issues NOW and not in two more years.

[OMAR WHITE]

Everyone who plays the co-op bait knows exactly wha thtey're doing and they know exactly what people expect and assume when it's claimed that a game is co-op, so these losers just need to lose all future business from all of us for being douches with no morals or not much shred of human decency -- no different than a common Internet scammer who tries to phish you for your bank account info or something. Pathetic pathetic and more pathetic. At least I got the game half the price on Eneba. I'd be a tad more irked right now if I paid full price. But, hey, always do just a minimal amount of Google researching to make sure a game really is co-op from now on . I swore I'd always do that, but I just done slipped up and fucxed up.

[kripcision]

Originally posted by OMAR WHITE:

Wow. Well, the game does look pretty cool. Nice graphics, sound, etc, but I simply don't tolerate being lied to. It's not misleading-- it's lying, plain and simple, and it's both shameless and pathetic on their part. A lot of games with the 'Souls-Like' tag on also claim to be co-op in their tags, yet that's a bold-face light and is intentional to scam money out of people who are only buying for a co-op experience. In these cases, it'd be nice if Valve would set some rules for companies about lying to customers this way, but since they get 30% from each sale it's doubtful they are against it themselves. This is why I feel stupid right now for not doing my due dilligence like I promised I would when I got fooled with Elden Ring and some others, like Insurgency Sandstorm, which advertises co-op but it's really just a crappy team-based mindless shooter death match game. I'm sure if they were questioned they'd play stupid and pretend that "of course it's a co-op experience!! blah blah bull

if you want the best co op for the game then there is this mod that lets you do the tower while co op
https://www.nexusmods.com/returnal/mods/60

heres another mod that should get paired with it to disable the tethering
https://www.nexusmods.com/returnal/mods/48


that being said, the game is a single player game with 'co op' tacked onto it lol.

[IchigoMait]

Did co-op with my friend from start to finish, you just have to have the time to complete 1 act in 1 session, if you want to keep the upgrades. Including the tower, I was the guest, so I got to enjoy fancy glitches and bugs. Also in co-op the tower parasites effects change every time when a player jumps or lands on ground after a jump, even if you take one locking the other out, that glitch allows you get a second one. Mind that the guest player can't pick up parasites on the pedestal, nor active any portals etc., unless you want to restart the tower.

Also when you do the tower, do get those 2 mods, the tower mod and the fix. But do not disable tethering for the tower, the disable is meant for non tower content, but wouldn't really advise that, the normal content works really well with default tethering values. The tower only needs 2 values, the low value and the lowest value. You can also modify the fix tether values easily, the mod options are rather annoying, all buttons have the default button and then the adjusted value, but instead would be better if one button does one thing, or toggles between values that are actually useful for the tower, instead of having to wonder, hmm is the tethering value now right or do I have to toggle after I travel.

But you can suspend the game and do co-op if you go to another biome without doing co-op there. But yeah the guest player will start with nothing.
Not sure if the level is increased for the guest player when they join midgame.
Also not sure if it's possible to summon a player if you went to next biome while in coop and then suspend the game.

[wasteland_ghost]

It is possible to summon from a new sphere. When you're progressing to a new biome, you've got a new fresh sphere there, so yes, you can quit and then summon. But guest loses everything, only host progress is kept. It's *doable*, we finished the game like this by giving all the life upgrades and all the other vital stuff to the host, but for the client it's not superbly fun to play like this. Since you will die and restart multiple times, take turns hosting. And do remember, that no matter who's hosting, you will have to split and do house sequences alone - they simply won't trigger in co-op. And those are important for story and unlocking certain buff items.

[IchigoMait]

I just farmed the 2nd act water biome with infinite enemies, to get my weapon upgrades as high as possible, most are at tier 2 being unlocked to 3, some are still tier 1 being unlocked to tier 2, some are tier 3.
So in that regard as a guest I provide the weapons. If I reroll or I open the chest or kill the enemy then the weapon will be from my world, and only I can progress it further. If it's the other players weapon it will be based on their world progress and only they can progress it.
Though for the proficiency, we just use the 5x xp gain, before used 2x before the tower. Tower seems to be way harder in co-op, get insta killed basically by everything, after the 2nd or 3rd boss kill, soloing seems way easier. barely take any damage.
Basically just get mods to compensate how annoying it is to do co-op, if you want your buddy to actually play the game with you. After I solo'd the main game, got the ignore malfunctions from items (except from parasites and dmg), obolites stay for much longer, plus with adrenaline 1 activate once, it will suck in all obolites from a certain range (basically room distance), later down the line the 2x xp, and 1 less resin need to upgrade max integrity.
For the sake of my co-op being more fun, if they hadn't done the enemy stat buff while doing co-op, prolly wouldn't need any of those buffs, to compensate the potential annoyance of doing co-op midway, because the game crashed for the host or the guest, never crashed solo, and mods didn't cause it.