Multiplayer scaling in this game is god-awful

[BlueRaja]

The game is pretty easy to beat on normal mode with one player. With four players, it's extremely difficult. This seems to be because the same amount of money is distributed amongst four players, meaning every player gets less than one-fourth the number of items as in single-player. I'm not sure if enemies have damage/health scaling, but if so that only makes the problem worse.

I would expect multiplayer to be the same difficulty, or possibly slightly easier (since it's hard to get four good players together).

I'm sure I'll get lots of "git gud" comments, but I play multiplayer games to have fun with my friends. This game is not fun because it's really built to be played with only 1-2 players.

[gachi is manly]

I don't know where you're getting the idea that you get one fourth the items. You're missing some pretty key pieces of information to that little puzzle:

1. Initial difficulty is higher, so more enemies spawn right off the bat compared to SP

2. Everybody is killing monsters vs one guy killing, so you're earning gold quicker

3. More chests spawn, so there's more items up for grabs compared to SP

Playing with randoms in multiplayer tends to be a lot harder most of the time but that's usually because it's hard to keep everyone around the same power level and the ones that lag behind can't pull their weight anymore.

[Vrynn]

best way to solve it is shared loot or something like that but it depends but right now its designed as 1 person boosting everyone

edit: share loot only down side is the blue item wich meens that is 1 of the few item that should not need to be shareable

[Batteryb0b_TTV]

doing the artifacts and getting the artifact of command is how you want to play the game with 4 players! you can choose which item you get from a chest of the rarity that pops out. It lets you build your character to what you need. Surviving late game is virtually impossible without this artifact and sky meadow will be beatable if you can build your character well enough

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by BlueRaja:

The game is pretty easy to beat on normal mode with one player. With four players, it's extremely difficult. This seems to be because the same amount of money is distributed amongst four players, meaning every player gets less than one-fourth the number of items as in single-player. I'm not sure if enemies have damage/health scaling, but if so that only makes the problem worse.

The Stage Directors are given 50% more credits per player, so on average, there will be half as many extra chests as there are players. It's not ideal, but I actually don't tend to notice.

The game scales faster with more people. 31.95% faster, to be exact.

Boss health is also multiplied by the number of players. This seems pretty fair. If I could do a 2100 HP boss solo, everyone should be able to do a 8400 HP boss together.

[Jayballsoffire]

I play 2 player multiplayer all the time. Really, most of the time.

We actively find each other synergetic items and use voice chat. It seems pretty reasonable. At first Drizzle was cake walk and rainstorm was hard and monsoon was impossible. Now drizzle is never ending unless we obliterate, rainstorm is easy and monsoon is possible. With the command artifact unless we get horde of many with 2 or more mountain shrines we can get through a couple loops every time on monsoon.

[ArtemisHunt]

Scaling for 3 or 4 people is unreasonable, especially considering limited items. 1 or 2 people is fine.

The price of chests goes up for each person so you wind up spending like $75 each for one or two common rarity items on 4 people. It's like why even bother it'll take you too long to farm that early and and the difficulty will have scaled on too fast past stage 1 for your dps to keep up.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by ArtemisHunt:

Scaling for 3 or 4 people is unreasonable, especially considering limited items. 1 or 2 people is fine.

The price of chests goes up for each person so you wind up spending like $75 each for one or two common rarity items on 4 people. It's like why even bother it'll take you too long to farm that early and and the difficulty will have scaled on too fast past stage 1 for your dps to keep up.

Yeah but the cash reward from enemies is changed so it doesn't really matter
Math could be wrong here

Stage 1 w/ 1 Player:
Chest: $25
Reward from a spawned Lemurian: $4+

Stage 1 w/ 4 Players:
Chest: $55
Reward from a spawned Lemurian: $8+

Now, although you will have to kill more Lemurians to get the money you need, keep in mind that every Director receives credits based off of the Difficulty Coefficient, which is given a flat bonus from player count. This, for the most part, means that for every extra player, 30% more monsters will be able to be spawned.

[ArtemisHunt]

Originally posted by Evil:

Now, although you will have to kill more Lemurians to get the money you need, keep in mind that every Director receives credits based off of the Difficulty Coefficient, which is given a flat bonus from player count. This, for the most part, means that for every extra player, 30% more monsters will be able to be spawned.

The problem is you need the items to get through the midgame and the number of chests doesn't increase enough. So when you're on stage 1 with 10 chests it doesn't matter how much money you're getting, someone is going to be item starved, possibly everybody if you didn't fan out character archetypes enough.

Plus your example is 2P. 2P is fine. 3P and 4P are the issues (especially 4P).

This isn't even factoring in that the monsters don't spawn FAST ENOUGH. So while I usually clear Stage 1 solo in 4-6 minutes, trying to do so in monsoon 4P is suicide because you don't have the items because there aren't enough chests and you don't have the gold because the monsters didn't spawn fast enough and when you get to stage 4 none of you are strong enough to handle the difficulty.

That's not to say 4P monsoon is impossible, just that it tends to require coordination or cheese.

[Apoth]

I think the only problem with multiplayer is not being able to share loot, with random people is near impossible since there is always one dude stealing loot or rushing chests, with friends you can help each other build your survivor ("thanks for the syringe, here take this fungus").
Now with Command is even easier to build your survivor in multiplayer, the only problem I run with my friends is the amount of items we have since you want that everyone is capable enough on their own, for example I got 10 items but my friends only 4, so I let him have the next batch of items and when he can't I open the chests for him, is all about helping each other out.
Also I really like how Sacrifice work since at the start to can focus on rushing stages and then focus on building, and since the loot just drop gold becomes meaningless (aka one thing less to care about)

[BlueRaja]

30% more monsters are spawned, but you get 1/4th the gold per monster. Gold is split evenly between players.

I'm not sure how you can possibly be arguing that it's balanced in 4 players. Have you actually tried it? It's SIGNIFICANTLY harder. Like, it's not even close.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by BlueRaja:

30% more monsters are spawned, but you get 1/4th the gold per monster. Gold is split evenly between players.

I'm not sure how you can possibly be arguing that it's balanced in 4 players. Have you actually tried it? It's SIGNIFICANTLY harder. Like, it's not even close.

No, everyone gets the same Gold. It doesn't mean 16 Gold is split into 4 each, it means everyone gets 4 Gold.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by ArtemisHunt:

Originally posted by Evil:

Now, although you will have to kill more Lemurians to get the money you need, keep in mind that every Director receives credits based off of the Difficulty Coefficient, which is given a flat bonus from player count. This, for the most part, means that for every extra player, 30% more monsters will be able to be spawned.

The problem is you need the items to get through the midgame and the number of chests doesn't increase enough. So when you're on stage 1 with 10 chests it doesn't matter how much money you're getting, someone is going to be item starved, possibly everybody if you didn't fan out character archetypes enough.

Plus your example is 2P. 2P is fine. 3P and 4P are the issues (especially 4P).

This isn't even factoring in that the monsters don't spawn FAST ENOUGH. So while I usually clear Stage 1 solo in 4-6 minutes, trying to do so in monsoon 4P is suicide because you don't have the items because there aren't enough chests and you don't have the gold because the monsters didn't spawn fast enough and when you get to stage 4 none of you are strong enough to handle the difficulty.

That's not to say 4P monsoon is impossible, just that it tends to require coordination or cheese.

My example is not limited to 2P. It's 30% more credits per player, which means 90% for 4P.

[ArtemisHunt]

Originally posted by Evil:

My example is not limited to 2P. It's 30% more credits per player, which means 90% for 4P.

You get fewer than double the enemies and 1/4 the income (split over 4P) and items don't scale.

You've got 1/2 the money with 1/4 the items. Good job proving my point. 4P is broken.

[TrueEvil]

Originally posted by ArtemisHunt:

Originally posted by Evil:

My example is not limited to 2P. It's 30% more credits per player, which means 90% for 4P.

You get fewer than double the enemies and 1/4 the income (split over 4P) and items don't scale.

You've got 1/2 the money with 1/4 the items. Good job proving my point. 4P is broken.

You are not understanding what I am saying then.

Credits doesn't mean money, it means Director Credits. Credits are like money for the Director to spawn enemies, which cost a certain amount of Credits each.

Since the Director gets double the money to buy monsters with, it can spawn more monsters. Monsters drop more gold based off Difficulty Coefficient, which is higher because of more players.

[ArtemisHunt]

Originally posted by Evil:

No, everyone gets the same Gold. It doesn't mean 16 Gold is split into 4 each, it means everyone gets 4 Gold.

It's a net 50% loss. Your own words say that the income scale to +90%. OK. Let's round that up to double the money.

Chests cost ~3-4x as much in 4P. So even if you make 100% more money, you're losing 50% net because you can't convert that money into items. Basically the more people you add to the game, the worse your income gets.

Let's remember that the difficulty also scales faster too. So you're getting into midgame with fewer items and tougher enemies. 2P is manageable because you have someone to cover and if you pick different archetypes you're going to be able to cover each other's blind spots with item pickups. But as you add more people the archetype pool becomes saturated and you can't efficiently spread items if you're coordinating and god save you if you aren't.

Long story short - Only solo is balanced and 2P arguably so but going to 3P or 4P the difficulty scaling accelerating and the lack of gold means that you're going to have a bad time.