Co-op parties are a great feature and definitely put a new spin the game. Lyranica and I are having a mostly enjoyable time with this game mode. After a couple days of playing this mode with her, I want to bring up some observations we found for consideration.
- Team Feedback (What is my party even doing?)
In Co-Op mode, each player in the party is assigned an intial opponent to face. But who is fighting what opponent? This becomes an issue at the end of the run when trying to coordinate fighting the final opponent, which is scaled to “boss-like” based upon the number of players in the party. The encounter is designed to tackled by everyone at once, but if one player gets there first and is all alone for a significant length of time.
Is it possible to get some pips/dots under the enemy UI icons to designate which player is on which opponents?
- Reviving (The Infintite Death Loop)
When a player is knocked out in Co-Op, they are revived in a given number of seconds (which extends with each additional knock out). However, when that player revives, they are revived with a quarter health/armor/resistance and mana completely drained. This results in situations where all the player can do is some basic chip damage to the opponent, and then the opponent auto-attacks back for an all but guaranteed knocked out on that player again… and again… and again… for an infinite death loop. Not fun.
Please consider reviewing revival mechanics in Co-Op. Allow players to revive with more health/life/armor to survive a single blow, or allow player to retain their mana upon revival.
- The Full Party Dilemma (Or how a level 7 character in that fourth party dooms everyone for Co-Op failure)
So, a funny thing happened last night. As more players are entering the game, more of them are seeking parties. Great! The more the merrier, right? Well… not so fast.
The problem here is that while normal opponents match the level of the skirmish/dungeon chosen, the final opponent’s level is scaled up based only on the number of players on that party. So that level 7 player that joined the party tacked on a very significant level boost to the boss of the run. Imagine the experience for that level 7 player against a scaled up level 32 orc (full party = boss scaled to 2x rated difficulty level). Extremely not fun for that player and those in the party.
Needless to say, I ended up having to kick everyone that joined in future runs that were not equivalent level to the rest of the party per-emptively to minimize out of control boss level scaling. Kicking people out of parties to keep enemy levels manageable is not cool.
Please review the steepness of the level scaling curve for Co-Op when adding additional party members, perhaps adding a gentler curve for players under a given level? Maybe consider the average level of the party when determining the base level for boss level scaling?
Does anyone else have any additional insights in their Co-Op experiences that they want to share?