Thoughts on Multiplayer scaling

[RSWL51]

Hi, just giving my 2 cents on multiplayer here. I was hyped to play with 2 friends of mine, but current multiplayer scaling is making the game less fun. Let me elaborate:

That's ok:
- Handycapping the higher level player is fine
- Scaling the enemies I think is fine, but they could have a little less hp imo

That's not good:
- Joining a lower level player has no benefit for a higher level character
- As a higher level character you do not get any exp, although you get downscaled so much, that the enemies are essentially your level?
- Enemies just get harder to kill for the lower player character as well, making the game less enjoyable
- In a boss fight there's no window to actually revive your teammate, because it takes way too long, so we basically let ourselves get killed whenever a party member died
- Little to none multiplayer interaction, other than trading. There are skills that support allies but all of them are probably only viable with a minion witch build.


So basically in coop, you gain no benefit of playing together. Progress is slower for the lower level character and there's no rewards at all for the higher level character. If one of our friends plays a bit on his own, there's no incentive to play with us again, other than us being able to hang out but depending on the level gap, there could be hours of him not making any progress until we are at the same level again. At this point to me, it feels more like a single player game with an online chat, than a real multiplayer game.

[Frostbeast]

Even alone. To kill a boss enemy does take some time. It will get better the further you are into the game. But, lets say, the first act boss is frusttrating for many players.
If you are on Cruel difficulty, The first act boss should be harmless.

[RSWL51]

Originally posted by Frostbeast:

Even alone. To kill a boss enemy does take some time. It will get better the further you are into the game. But, lets say, the first act boss is frusttrating for many players.
If you are on Cruel difficulty, The first act boss should be harmless.

I wouldn't say bosses are the main issue, as we were doing just fine with most of them, although they did take longer than playing solo. I wanted to point out the missing incentive for playing coop, especially while having a level gap.

[SilverLight]

Co-op is okay if you're generally on level with the party, but the scaling is aggressively anti-powerleveling, and the party revive system is pretty punishing. These are the main issues I've noticed. I do like that you need to find a proper window to pick up your teammates instead of just poking them to get them back up, but it could stand to be a little more fair to the players.

This has also put a tangential thought in my mind. If the game can power-scale a higher level player down to much lower levels, but they can still bring higher tier skills with them, why are some skills severely level- and tier-locked if their power can be scaled down?