4-Player

[Simplicity Lost]

I'm pretty new to the ACG but played a crap load of the Lcg. Now that multiplayer is out and release is right around the corner, are we expecting 4-player or just locked to 2?

[Immortalits]

I can't say anything about it for sure, but based on 2 player co-op, 4 player version will be closer to a disaster, than an improvement. The co-op is already hard to balance, a 4 player version would be even harder, not to mention the time it would take to finish a single quest. Co-op can easily tripple, but at least double the time of completing a quest, with similar rates, 4 player ones would almost take a whole afternoon, which is not that good in my opinnion.
It probably mainly depends on programming difficulty and balance issues anyways.
The game also don't have a large enough playerbase for now to support both a 2 player and a 4 player version, this might change in the future.

[shoreless]

I mostly agree with Mr Immortalits, but I would add that i see a lot of potential for something like epic multiplayer from tabletop. In these games one group is playing parallel to another group and their games effect each other. This way the game stays two player but the two game states interact in interesting ways.

[Stonedog]

Steam Spy estimates 20K + owners of the game, just most not active and waiting for the game to be in final release state before they start . A all time peak of 619 players active at once is the Number. Thats actually pretty good , as it relates to % of potential owners. Right now see about a average of 25-30 players on at once , but this will surely rise much much higher on release. Game has had some growing pains , but is worth peoples' attention and time if they are LoTR fans, or Adventure Card game fans.

[Linty_Lohan]

Yea I think the devs are focusing on getting the game out with the modes we have currently, but they will likely explore more modes after the game releases. There are so many possibilities as Shoreless mentions. I’d personally love an endless dungeon mode or even a 3 player mode where two players fight against a Sauron player. That being said, this is all wishful thinking at the moment since the devs have not revealed any plans for additional play modes so far.

[Immortalits]

Originally posted by RansomMan:

Yea I think the devs are focusing on getting the game out with the modes we have currently, but they will likely explore more modes after the game releases. There are so many possibilities as Shoreless mentions. I’d personally love an endless dungeon mode or even a 3 player mode where two players fight against a Sauron player. That being said, this is all wishful thinking at the moment since the devs have not revealed any plans for additional play modes so far.

I've made a n endless mode suggestion months ago now based on existing game mechanics, like the fate bar and travel.
In short, you should have ~1-3 turns to finish a phase efficiently (in terms of threat) with a normal deck and the fate bar provides -threat events for you, that could be at each phase or 'milestone'/'boss' phases only (3-4 normal phase and 1 'boss' phase).
After boss pahse travels or at boss phases, there could be a fate event (a costly one, like 8-12 fate) to recover part of your cards from graveyard back to your deck (the mechanic already exists in 'House of Healing' for heroes to recover stuff from graveyard, it's just needs minimal rework for a deck refilling mechanic instead of the active board. There's also a preparation card to recover lost allies, when they would die into your hand; so the mecanics for card recovering exists, it only needs to be linked to fate bar events with a balaned cost.
And naturally after each boss phase, the survival difficulty increases (starting boards getting stronger, Sauron's cards in geenral getting stronger, they could get cost reduction, Sauron could get more resource income, etc. to challenge your existing board, so you will truly need ways to handle everything efficiently for a long game.
And naturally you would get rewards for completing each boss phase, stuff finalizes maybe at 4-5 boss pahse, then stays at the 'max difficulty' for normal rewards, but could still increase in terms of challenge for either ingame troophy rewards or Steam achievements.

Like immagine if the mechanics would be, that after each boss phase, Sauron gets +1 resource/ turn and after each boss phase, his minions get a bit stronger (more HP) on top of that and after maxing out the base difficulty, you get card cost increase or resource income penalty. Sauron could get unique high value cards to play (like 2 in each phases decks) and increase their number after boss phases, etc.

The encounters could (should) simply be randomized, but follow a certain theme, like vs orks, vs evil men, vs spiders, vs trolls, etc. or some combinations of 2 occasionally with certain regulations of Sauron's deck randomization to always have a good balance of every kind of cards.

There are so many things, that could easily be programmed into a random encounter generator for so much fun and challenge for this game, the most difficult part being creating the randomization code's regulations, since the other things are mostly already in the game; and the rewards to be motivating enough.
Like truly unique Hero card markings, effects, animations, that you can collect for your own entertainent or to show off with in co-op mode. Or maybe some unique mechanic including cards, that are only available from hardest difficulty or even only after that, like maxed normal rewards will be after 5 boss pahses and the unique mechanic cards would be after every +5 boss encounters, where you are suffering from negative effects, that you have to deal with and Sauron has lots of buffs. There could even be a permanent buff, to make you not being able to draw cards normally (Faramir or other continuous card draw providers are required at that phase), but also reduced card recovery effects, etc.

And I was just brainstorming a little in this post, it's nowhere near of the possibilities for random encounter rewards, challenges provided's true possibilities.

The debuffs could also be random, that you get after every 5th boss phase, there could be stronger debuffs after every 10th or something boss phases, etc., etc.

There could be a Steam achievement to complete 50th phase or even 100th.... where you would practically generate no resource, have no card draw, Sauron summons boss creatures every 2nd turn and you face 2-3 bosses at start after every travel and face 5-6 bosses at boss phases from start. For those, that want to truly challenge their decks limits.

Normal and 'unique' rewards could be farmed from 5th-10th boss phases, but there still could be single time rewards for the truly insane difficulties, like Avatar titles, for example 'challenger of Gods' for completing 50th or 100th boss phase.

[En9a9e]

Originally posted by RansomMan:

Yea I think the devs are focusing on getting the game out with the modes we have currently, but they will likely explore more modes after the game releases. There are so many possibilities as Shoreless mentions. I’d personally love an endless dungeon mode or even a 3 player mode where two players fight against a Sauron player. That being said, this is all wishful thinking at the moment since the devs have not revealed any plans for additional play modes so far.

A type of "Endless" and "Saga" have both been confirmed as modes they intend to release. It's not written down, but noted by myself from streams and discord. Key words being "a type of" and "intend", as I'm sure it's subject to change but at least we know they are working on them. We don't know anything of what those modes might look like for this ACG as of yet. Unless there is some big and unexpected surprise, both those modes will be a ways down the road... post launch.