I don’t inherently have a problem with friendly fire, but after a bit of time playing it has become increasingly frustrating. Our party has 2 melee and 1 ranged, and all of us feel incredibly prohibited from playing together for a few reasons:
When quivers are equipped, bow shots damage, stagger, and knock back allies who are in melee range of the targeted mob
The most of the focus abilities available to our INT tank player are unusable due to the size of their effect radius
STR build has the same problem, and can’t use standard weapon combos when INT tank is nearby because their effect size
There have been instances where player A has a focus skill charged, player B kills the original target, and player A’s skill targeting automatically snaps to player B. Because there isn’t a way to cancel or hold the charge, it gets automatically used on player B
We feel like the only way to play together is to take turns between boss attack patterns, which makes the game feel really passive
Not being able to resurrect other players in the crucible leads to long periods of sitting and waiting for some players, especially if deaths are caused by fall damage
This is especially frustrating when the death is caused by a single arrow with a quiver effect on a nearby enemy
So that said, there are a few suggestions here:
Friendly fire should only be applied to projectiles, skills that leave terrain effects on the ground, and/or attacks that do not affect an enemy unit
In Crucible, provide a method of reviving other players, whether it be normal resurrection or currency-based
Remove AoE knockback and stagger effects from bow attacks that benefit from a quiver
Played with a friend who only had Paddle available equipped and it made playing my gauntlet build unplayable. I was getting chain staggered by his long reach, wide normal attack sequence.
I shouldn’t be forced to play with a bow if I want to play alongside people using long reach melee weapons.
I think honestly friendly fire should only apply to rune attacks and leave regular attacks out of it.
I play with a 4 stack, 109 Hours of gameplay, never have had a problem. We have a dedicated tank, mage, archer, off tank parry build. I have never interrupted my teammates unless the ran infront of my fully charged rune attack. I use a full ice build Endless winter complete with beam, charged rune balls, and big circles. Teammates you trust and complemets your build lowers frustrations. Also sounds like the quiver is the issue. Take it off and infuse your bow with a gem. Quivers are more for solo farming/staggering mobs if you know it staggers teammates dont use it. Trash mobs/non-bosses, run past the first mob knowing your teammate is gonna fight and target others. It doesnt take 2 people to kill anything with any build.
I’m sorry for being that guy, but the whole list of problems sounds like a skill issue.
Playing coop requires a little bit of team coordination and understanding how one’s runes work. I do not use huge AoE strikes when a teammate is close, but when the teammate is out of stamina and stepping back to recover it - that’s a prime opportunity to hit the enemy hard.
The only real issue I see in the list is that time when the game shifts target lock from enemy who’s just died onto another player. That doesn’t sound like a thing anyone would be planning to do deliberately.
I understand the point of view that it can be solved by changing your skills and build, but my counterargument is that players should not have to intentionally nerf their characters or make permanent alterations to their loadout just to play in a realm with friends. If that’s your thing, then fine–make it a realm option and give me the ability to increase the difficulty to compensate.
Foregoing the use of large AoE skills (which is most of them) is fine in normal encounters, but the window to do damage is too short in boss fights to justify that kind of push-and-pull. As mentioned, we shifted our playstyle to that degree–but the end result is that players spend time sitting back and/or holding onto unspent focus just because someone else has a divine scimitar or a paddle equipped.
Is it possible to play around these issues? Yes.
Is it fun? No.
Especially not early in the game, where players don’t have that many gear options.
you’re not “nerfing” your character when coop is already a massive buff to player power if you were willing to engage with coop mechanics.
yes you can’t mindlessly mash down an enemy and overwhelm them, that’s the point to get you to think about angles of attack, using your full moveset for optimal animations and communicating your attack windows with your teammates.
if someone has a divine scimitar equipped their sprint attack and charged attack are vertical overheads which are free to use on any perpendicular angle to your teammate, check your movesets thoroughly and develop a strategy instead of blaming the game. focus is also not exclusively spent on offense but utility buffs and healing which can be aoe and support your teammates while they’re on offense
to me the game in coop IS fun bc of ff. it’s a very novel experience and makes us all think and engage to the fullest with the combat system. fanning out at the start of a swarm fight to have our own aoe windows then regrouping to converge on a tougher miniboss is super tactical and engaging and a completely unique experience.
do not homogenize this game and sacrifice its individuality on the altar of your own incomprehension
Incomprehension isn’t the issue. The issue is that we have a different idea of what fun looks like in a multiplayer experience. Like I said before–it’s fine if you want to play that way. But I think it should be a realm setting so that players can decide.
No reason to be a dick about it just because we disagree.
I get your argument but it sounds like you want to play alongside your friends rather than with your friends.
What’s the difference?
Play alongside friends means you don’t care about what the other player does and you just wanna spam your abilities / attacks, you want to be in on the action at all times rather than coordinate with your team on how to go about the fight.
Playing with your friend would be communicating live, saying you are running out and they can unload their stuff on it, saying you are going in for an AoE, telling friends to dodge your big charged attack.
You shouldn’t need to nerf your build to play with a friend, you should understand how your build works and how their build works and coordinate accordingly.
Playing a paddle and gauntlet on buddy should really not be an issue as paddle you can only do very few attacks that take forever and you can’t spam it as you would get interrupted by the enemies, while the gaunts have quick attacks that exert stamina rather fast due to attack speed, there is no reason you guys cant coordinate your move sets, what it sounds like to me is that you both jump on the target at the same time trying to blow it up rather than taking turns on your rotations.
The passive feeling is viable but that’s what you would usually get in a 2v1 situation, you will have moments of downtime which are reduced substantially if your coordination increases with experience. Try to think less about nuking someone with 2 players attacking and more about coordinating and pingponging the enemy
It’s odd how I’ve never player games with friendly fire in co-op and yet somehow we all cared about what the other was doing and managed to coordinate. It was still fun and tactical and we managed to play WITH one another or else we’d get wiped by mobs and or bosses.
We also always play live…. not that this is something everyone can and or wants to do, but yeah, definitely helped us tactically without there needing to be friendly fire.
But then again, maybe people should be able to play in whatever way they would enjoy the game the most. Especially starting out, especially with bugs being a thing, and balancing issues, etc. Maybe it’s not a good idea to force people to have to deal with this as a first impression and maybe it will lead to fewer people buying/.keeping the game that otherwise would have loved it.
So yeah, maybe it doesn’t sound like what you’re saying and it isn’t necessary to be judgmental, need to categorize others, and or define what they like to do.
Not everyone wants to cater to this type of play style. It’s such a minimal presence of the co-op system that is always controversial. There are tons of people that just don’t like this kind of mechanic and that’s fine, difficulty for realms are already configurable. It should be an option to either toggle off so that others that don’t enjoy the same experience as you can fine tune it for themselves to enjoy or it should be refined to have some sort of middle ground because it definitely has its flaws. I think it’s weird that so many people want to gatekeep everyone into playing the same way. FF does not define the experience of the game. 90% of its life cycle didn’t even have it. Adding a toggle for players that don’t want it, will not hurt you.
Also in regards to tying the FF option to easy mode, this is just an unnecessary association I feel like. It makes no sense to not allow players to have it as a separate toggle, as that would only deter players that may feel like that difficulty is too easy but feel like FF is an inconvenience. More realm customization means more players are playing how they want.
Agreed. The superiority complex in a lot of these responses are wild.
Juggling aggro and timing skill uses aren’t exactly novel multiplayer skills, and their presence in this game is not unique. What is unique is the requirement to just not use attack combos that are native to the gear and rune setups that are not easily modifiable after heavy resource investment requirements to get them there. That, to me, is not fun.
Teams should be rewarded for building synergistic kits and timing skill usage well, sure–but the current implementation leads to a bunch of people sitting around and doing chip damage until a boss drops. I’ve had a ton of fun doing a backstab dagger build with a str shield player in a duo, and I would run a realm with the current friendly fire implementation in that scenario because we can coordinate effectively. In larger groups, it just gets too passive.
Going back to the example I laid out initially, there are only a couple fire rune skills on two-handed staves that aren’t massive AOE strikes. If the other melee player has to dodge out of my damage it means they don’t get the payoff for the 5-hit combo from the divine scimitar, and it feels really unsatisfying. In this context they need at least four of those hits to get a lightning buildup off. So the solution is that either we take turns (so we collectively stand around and wait more) or one of us gives up a core element of our build. No matter how you slice it, the payoff for the whole experience gets blunted.
Additionally, unequipping a quiver and/or swapping for an enchantment is nerfing your build. A large part of the game’s endgame systems are in optimizing stats and percentages on your gear to min/max, just like many other major ARPG’s. Forcing players to undo those optimizations for the sake of team play runs directly counter to that gameplay loop. In my opinion, if you want both game experiences to exist under one roof something has to give. For me, I would rather do away with the monotony of punishing slight openings than do away with the equipment optimization loop for the group servers. It’s not a skill issue, it’s a gameplay choice.
At this point (at 90 hours of gameplay), the duo I’m running is still playing great, but the 3-man group now hops on discord and plays on individual servers because we don’t want to sit through this push-and-pull. If we could change that server’s settings, we could go back to that Unspoken server and do group raids like we wanted to in the first place. I don’t have huge amounts of time to spend playing, so when I do invest it here I want to hit the payoffs that I’ve built up my characters and gear for.