Online Co-Op "Story" mode?

[Munchykin5]

I find it a little annoying that the only way to play through the story is in offline sessions, perhaps in a later update we could get a "Story" toggle on the match set up screen that would limit the lobby to the possessions and story progress of the host?

Remote play together can be a little clunky and unreliable when the game gets busy, but I want to enjoy the story with my friends still.

[Hat]

I want to second this, since I want to be a bystander as my friend goes through the story on their own. But after getting through it, I think it must have been intentional design - like a bonus/consolation/incentive for playing solo mode. It gets pretty lonely, otherwise.

I'd still like there to be some way for people to make progress even in multiplayer, though. Even if it was to be restricted to friends only and not the full public lobbies, or something.

[mino_dev]

I really just never could decide how it should work.

If a person who hadn't even started the story joins a lobby with a host that's halfway through, with the story on, which cutscenes should appear? Should they just be different for everyone? Should it be dependant on the host? Should the person who joined get their flags updated for watching the hosts cutscenes (thus skipping story for them)?

You imagine the smooth experience of two friends who are playing the whole story together online, but with different saves interacting, the edge cases get weird.

[GuyYouMetOnline]

Well, there are two obvious solutions. One is to just have story progress for the host, but I'd say a better option is for every player to see story events based on their individual story progress. The vast majority of story events are simply conversations in the shop rooms at the start of each area, so I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to simply have each player see whatever conversations are next for them. As for the actual cutscenes that happen when you've concluded an area's storyline and beaten the boss, I can think of a couple possibilities. First, you could just have everyone get any scenes and other players just get a notice of 'player is in a cutscene; please wait'. Another idea is to have it so that all players get conversations but only the host gets cutscenes, perhaps with other players being given an option to view the scene as well but with a warning that if they're not that far in the story it may spoil things. And then a third option is to allow the conversations to happen online but have the proper cutscenes be offline-only.

[Xersin]

Originally posted by GuyYouMetOnline:

First, you could just have everyone get any scenes and other players just get a notice of 'player is in a cutscene; please wait'. Another idea is to have it so that all players get conversations but only the host gets cutscenes, perhaps with other players being given an option to view the scene as well but with a warning that if they're not that far in the story it may spoil things. And then a third option is to allow the conversations to happen online but have the proper cutscenes be offline-only.

And you just listed the exact reasons why putting the story in co-op is a terrible idea, something that many, many games have discovered. Nobody wants to wait for cutscenes, especially in a game where people can play with randoms. It'll lead to toxicity when people are forced to wait for that one person who wants to see the story instead of running the fights, just like it does in every single MMO that decided putting story in their content was a good idea.

[The Imprisoned]

Originally posted by mino_dev:

I really just never could decide how it should work.

If a person who hadn't even started the story joins a lobby with a host that's halfway through, with the story on, which cutscenes should appear? Should they just be different for everyone? Should it be dependant on the host? Should the person who joined get their flags updated for watching the hosts cutscenes (thus skipping story for them)?

You imagine the smooth experience of two friends who are playing the whole story together online, but with different saves interacting, the edge cases get weird.

I think the least bad option would be; Public Lobbies have story disabled, Friends Only lobbies are based on the Host's save, and only updates the Host's save.
This avoid's the common annoyance of cutscenes with randoms, and doesn't need to worry about desync between players.
The only bad part is that friends would have to redo story content if they're the one that joins, rather than the one that hosts; but that is already the case right now. Because in order for friends to experience story content together, they either use Parsec/Remote Play Together to do "local" play, which only progresses the story for the Host, or they all play solo offline separately.