Loving the game so far, about 10 hours in on both a co-op realm and a solo realm, but there’s a few major sticking points with co-op that’s making the game feel a bit clunky.
- Friendly Fire - I know I’ve seen a few posts about this, and while I get some people may want it, it feels like at the very least it should be a realm admin toggle for those of us that just plain don’t want it
- Missing Cutscenes/Dialogue - it’s way too easy for a party to not all catch a cutscene or quest dialogue, especially when some just auto-trigger when you get in range. Ideally, I’d prefer if the rest of the party got yoinked over into that cutscene/dialogue so they don’t miss it, but I could also see just removing the auto-play-on-approach or even just a little popup that pauses it ands tells the party to assemble on X player to all get the scene
- One at a time Vendors - Having vendors be locked out for others is just straight up painful and makes maintenance in Sacrament really feel like it takes ages in co-op. I’d imagine the shared vendor stock might be the cause, but at the very least, I’d like to able to look at the vendor’s inventory or do other things at the vendor that aren’t related to item purchases.
- Item Sharing - Once you’re getting into enchanted gear, every piece has a ton of information to read out to make telling what we’ve all picked up hard to parse without looking it over, so having a way to view each other’s inventory to see if there’s a piece of gear we’d like would be fantastic. (This is especially tedious after turning in multiple bounties where suddenly there’s a ton of gear to parse through) Would also be ideal if there was a “Drop” option on items, or a “Send to X player” option. The current method of stand directly in front of each other, then interact, then choose trade, then go through the full trade window just feels like a ton of steps that could be shortened.
- Crucible - Absolutely love the Crucible solo, but it feels really disjointed in co-op right now for two main reasons: First is the insta-boot on death. It doesn’t make sense that you can’t revive someone in the crucible when we can in every other aspect of the game so far in co-op. Second is no rejoining past floor 1. Especially when combined with the insta-boot, and how easy it is to catch an accidental death from falling or even friendly fire right now, getting stuck outside while your co-op friend is still running feels really bad. Ideally, I’d prefer if the resurrection worked the same, and nobody got booted until everyone dies, but I could also see it working well if say you couldn’t resurrect until the floor is clear or until you have enough echoes to buy a dead member back, with dead members spectating any players left alive.
- Mob Scaling after first boss (outside of Crucible) - The scaling playing up through to the first boss felt great, encounters felt meaningful, and we had to respect which mobs were which. But once we hit Sacrament and bought the next tier of gear, the mobs just became a complete non-issue. In my solo run, I still have play a bit tactically just because of multiple enemies bearing down on me, but in co-op every mob suddenly became a one or two hit KO by any mage, and every non-boss or non-bounty encounter is over in the blink of an eye. I’m not sure if this could be solved with higher scaled health pools, or just larger number of mobs, but the game felt very much like it needed intentional gameplay at the start, then it quickly just became us snowballing through everything that stands in front of us, often times without even getting within 30 feet since we’re running with two mages and an archer. Outside of the Crucible, no enemy has really even gotten near us outside of bounties and bosses since we hit Sacrament and geared up a tiny bit.
Overall, me and my partners are very much enjoying the majority of the game, but these few points have been sticking in our craw, so we’re looking forward to seeing how the cop-op gets more fleshed out leading up to 1.0.