Friendly-Fire, People whining about it, What can be done?

Wicked Feedback
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Friendly Fire is what makes the game more tactical, organized, and cooperative.

It is a two way feature, meaning players have it, BUT, also enemies have it too (and it can be used often at your advantage, provoking larger enemies to attack)

People is complaining for a feature that make the game great, because without it it will become really a mindless brainless “keyboard smash” where everyone attack at the same time without any reason to coordinate, planning, ecc..

I am TOTALLY against it to be removed, BUT i am willingly to accept the idea of it changed only if a rebalance is done.

If Friendly-Fire is OFF then the game NEED a rebalance for those scared of it, so if you are going to change how FF works and add a way to disable it:
-Enemies need to have FF off too.
That is very obvious to why..

-Enemies need to have 10x the HP.
To compensate for the FF off and the fact that there are 4 players mindlesly smashing their keyboard and 9190239023402323 skills at the same time.

-Enemies need to have 4x the attack power.
Same as previous point.

-Enemies need to have poise disable or AT LEAST the resistance on it is 20x times higher.
Since there are 90239023234902309 attacks all together, they need to resist stun and stagger or they’ll become harmless.

-Enemies need to have 4x they normal attack speed.
Since there are up to 4 players attacking without any risk, they need to be faster to counterattack the “skill spam”.

-Enemies need to have 20x the resistance to elemental effects.
Same as the poise reason. Without FF it will become really SO EASY to stack elemental effects.

And that is all i can think for a game that doesn’t have Friendly Fire and become a mindless-brainless button smash.

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If the enemies can hurt each other, then we should have the same situation to deal with.

Personally I quite like it as it requires finesse and strategic movements over button mashing…

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I created an account today to suggest something similar. I think we are going to turn off friendly fire, we should increase the difficulty of the enemies.

The result of button mashing will be complaints about never having enough stamina, so next up should be.. if we decrease stamina cost across the board - we increase the enemy resistance to stagger.

I actually hope changes like this get implemented via a toggle/warning.

< By turning off friendly fire, enemies will be harder to take down. This is to maintain the difficulty of the game. Do you accept? >

Perhaps one other thing I would add is increase the cost of revive as well - whether it’s time or health.

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id be ok with a friendly fire toggle like this, it’d make the game more of a diablo in coop where you have to focus enemies and still keep some tactics involved

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Friendly Fire is important for combat balance, but if they ever consider removing it from the game, I hope they keep posture damage on allies and at least allow them to feel the hits (without taking actual damage).

Alternatively, having spells that disable Friendly Fire could be interesting body-enhancing magic that makes other members of the realm immune to your attacks.

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As a general rule, I believe giving players more options over their experience with the game is a good idea…but sometimes you also have to protect players from themselves, and you also have to protect the game’s identity.

This is the first game I have ever played where I want friendly fire. But if I was given an option for it in the beginning, I would have turned it off without even thinking about it, and lost out on that experience. Because on paper, friendly fire is almost always a non-fun way to play a co-op game. So not letting me change that actually did a service. Sometimes players need to be pushed out of their comfort zone for their own good. For a game that is as demanding as this one is (and I mean that in a good way), it is perfectly in line with its design philosophy to force friendly fire.

To do otherwise would change what the game is. Even for its own sake, as a work of art, compromising on this would kind of make it lose its artistic integrity/vision. Because playing this game multiplayer with friendly-fire off would turn it into another Diablo clone, which it is trying so hard not to be. Because the suggestions you provided would probably be the easiest way to balance the game for “no friendly fire,” but turning enemies into damage sponges (meaning the overwhelming strategy for most combat encounters is for everyone to gang up on one enemy at a time, removing even more tactical gameplay decisions) means losing out on what make this game’s combat so special. Playing without friendly-fire would be like playing a completely different game, and at some point Moon Studios needs what it wants too, and that is clearly not the game they want to make.

So I don’t think it should even be an option to turn it off, anymore than I think From Software games need difficulty settings. If people don’t like it, oh well. No game can cater to absolutely everyone, and I think the priority should be catering to people who like the combat as-is.

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I have not played this game yet, but I was going to say the fact that there is meaningful friendly fire is one of the most compelling reasons I see to play it. It’s unlike anything else I am playing, and I do sometimes get bored by the lack of realism in combat.

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Nope. Hate it. It should be optional. If you love it, super! Keep it on. This isn’t a competitive, MMO, or PVP. If we don’t want FF while playing with our peeps, it shouldn’t be forced on us.

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The friendly fire does make this game unique. I think removing it would take away a key point of how this game is supposed to be experience. Ranged friends must line up a shot, just as a tree would be an obstacle. Your friends can be too, but not without consequence.

A lack of team coordination or cooperation doesn’t mean its bad or makes is competitive but there is PVP planned for this game, it doesn’t really feel punishing until you get to late game. Mage builds are by far the deadliest thing to get caught up in on accident.

An interesting thought though - what about a utility rune you can cast to negate your elemental damage to friends within a certain aoe range for the standard 60s - 120s? I think physical is important to maintain though.

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The solution is to disable friendly fire on the lowest difficulty. I’m sure none of you “it makes you think and be more tactical” people aren’t playing on the easiest difficulty anyway. Why gatekeep the rest of the game’s experience from more casual players? For example, I could see having many hours of fun in this game with my wife, but she isn’t going to play if there is friendly fire.

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This is genius.

I 100% agree with this idea. This effectively gives a toggle, but doesn’t give the more experienced players the “ah yeah let’s just turn that off” option when wanting to play “the intended way” or “the hard way”.

Damn, what a great suggestion :heart:

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Why not make it so that if you want friendly fire you have to play it on the highest difficulty? Or why not make it something that can be toggled off for any difficulty?

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This isnt the genius idea u think it is.

All this will do is force people that otherwise would play with friends in normal or hardest difficulty to playing in the easiest difficulty just to turn off FF

The best compromise is letting players turn it off no matter the difficulty.

All this suggestion does is gatekeep players. Oh u want it off well to bad go play the easiest difficulty. Even tho said group would prefer the hardest difficulty.

It also does nothing but tell a player hey play this way u can’t play on hard cuz u cant turn off FF

This isnt a genius idea. It’s actually a bad idea. This suggestion is nothing more than gatekeeping. It’s not even a compromise at all

Hell OP suggestion is a far far better compromise than this is

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I understand why some players would like to see Friendly Fire removed or made optional, especially for smoother co-op play. That said, I think it currently serves an important role in how group balance and encounter design work.

Friendly Fire encourages coordination and positioning, and helps prevent group play from turning into simple stack-and-burn DPS scenarios. That added friction is part of what keeps combat feeling deliberate rather than chaotic or trivial.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that the game is still in early access. The endgame builds we have now are likely only scratching the surface of what ARPG-style progression will allow. While bosses will certainly scale up over time, player power in these kinds of games tends to grow much faster, and Friendly Fire acts as a natural limiter on how easily groups can overwhelm encounters.

My concern with a toggle is less about player choice and more about long-term balance. If some players experience the game without Friendly Fire and find it too easy, it could create pressure to rebalance bosses around that experience. Even separating balance by mode adds extra complexity and risks diluting encounter design.

Overall, I see Friendly Fire as part of the game’s intended challenge and identity. While it can be frustrating at times, it encourages thoughtful play and helps preserve difficulty as player power increases. For those reasons, I’d prefer to see the developers stick with their current vision while continuing to refine how it feels.

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Just a thought to throw out there.. perhaps make it a realm toggle?

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While that sounds flexible on paper, I think it introduces its own set of issues.

Because Realms are persistent and hosted on third-party servers, toggling Friendly Fire dynamically could create inconsistent experiences within the same Realm. Players might join expecting one ruleset and find another, or feel pressure to disable Friendly Fire temporarily just to get through a difficult encounter. Over time, that risks turning Friendly Fire into something that’s only enabled when it’s convenient, rather than a meaningful part of the gameplay loop.

More importantly, even an optional toggle subtly changes player behavior. If a system can be turned off at will, encounters tend to be approached with the assumption that it will be turned off when things get hard. That undermines the role Friendly Fire plays in encouraging coordination and careful play.

Given how Realms work and how persistent progression is, I think keeping Friendly Fire consistent helps preserve encounter integrity and avoids fragmenting balance expectations across players and sessions.

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Just like it shows the realm difficulty, it can show the realms FF status.

I hear you on the discrepancy*, though. I wouldn’t join any realms with FF disabled. Any friends of mine who tried getting me to do so would be told to come find the 5 people and the wife in the forums that want FF off.

Unless there’s plan to list realms publicly at some point that i’m unaware of, it’ll still be limited to friends inviting friends, or at least, people they’ve coordinated with to realms. (requires steam friend regardless, yeah?)

When joining, you have the choice to join the handicapped play style or not.

Alternative thoughts. Treat it like hardcore. FF off can only join FF off realms, and vice versa.