I’m going into this as heavily playing multiplayer only with friend POV. I have cleared the main story and end game (crucible + pestilence) with friend all the way through and I’m quite not happy about it.
The loot need to scale and distribute between everyone by default instead of one person getting everything because he’s standing in the front line
The first problem, the guy in the front looting everything, is not really a problem coz we can share the loot. It’s inconvenient that no one keep track of stuff it would be nice that you can set “loot share option” like in MMO that auto give item to people in your party randomly regardless of whoever loot it. It’s a nice quality of life.
Second problem (early/mid game problem), the real problem #1, the loot look like it was customized to be for a single player run. We played with 2 players and we are starving we can’t even upgrade our main weapons as time went on. We only solved the problem coz I just went and play single player along with the multiplayer to feed myself resource I’m needed but this should not be how to fix it. At launch it’s very likely I will have party of 4 to play with and I can’t think of what will happen about the resource sharing. I’m not gonna ask for double the drop (or quadruple with 4 players), but may be, combine with the suggested system above, every player would get auto distributed materials enough so they can survive on their own (may be about 75% of single player amount for each player). You guys can figure out the system but I think that 75% each end goal would be a nice result.
Third problem, real problem #2, and the part that I’m the most not happy with. We are at end game grinding now and playing multiplayer is the most counter productive thing ever. The amount of drop on anything is for one player and we both can blaze through everything, there is no reason to ever play multiplayer coz the drop does not scale with how many player joining the crucible or pestilence run. Loot gears part aside I could not care less about it, the embers drop amount for only a single player is my real concern here. Everyone need embers and having one person hogging it and redistribute after is very awkward and unnatural because no one ever have enough ember.
I feel like everyday I’m playing with my friend for 4+ hours is a waste of time because I never see any ember. I know I can ask for it, but the amount we should get is supposed to be double of that if we farm on each our world, so what’s the point of playing multiplayer? and it’s such a shame because we’re having a blast playing together. It’s just the reward at the end of the day it feel like one of us just be there and get nothing. Again this problem will be a lot worse when we have 4 players now 3 of us gonna feel like we didn’t get anything from playing together. Reminder that this is not the problem about the dude hogging or being a loot goblin, the problem is about the drop amount is for 1 player in a 4 player session game. Let’s say 4 people, playing a game for 2 hours together, should get a combined amount of drop of 8 hours worth of playtime (can scale down a bit if you think multiplayer make thing become easier, so may be scale down to 6 hours worth? but definitely not 2 hours worth of loots). 4 players playing a game together each of us should feel “Man, that was fun and I have a blast! Can’t wait to play together again tomorrow!” instead of “Ugh, I want to break out from the group and go solo runs coz playing here is a waste of time” and it’s not my friends’ fault that I feel that way. They cannot fix this problem.
This problem getting to me last night after we just ran 10 crucible runs together and I realized I got no drops (I didn’t ask for it) and no embers (coz he said he has no ember left so he want all of it, which is fine, but I would gladly give MY portion/amount of embers to him so he can get embers 2x faster)
Here is my suggestion :
- For non-essential resource (enemy drop, wood, fish, digging, gear drops, whatever), it would be nice if it auto share to everyone randomly if they are in the same area/vicinity. Extra amount (of dead enemy parts) to compensate multiplayer part are very welcome. But if it’s not, it’s not the end of the world.
- For essential resource (aka resource that you never want to share with other because you never have enough, for example, every embers, especially the essense and radiant embers) when one player get it, it should be duplicated for each player (in the same vicinity), like Plague Ichor. If you’re worry that people will trade and pool these things, you can make them account bound/can’t be traded so each player have to farm that themselves. Account bound (not character bound) so you can still transfer them between your own characters of the same account. But even if it’s fully character bound I’m still ok with it.
- Or at the very least if you really don’t want to duplicate it, make it random distribute to anyone in the party so whoever get it get it, no hard feeling and at the end of the session we get equal amount of embers back home instead of one guy hogging it and we don’t even know how much he get that day and being awkward to ask for a share.
- For end game farm reward like pestilence, you pretty much have to pay sinew to get a chunk of reward at the end, the said reward everyone who join the raid should get it. If you worry about one player pay for it and 4 players get reward, you can add mechanic that “to enter the area, you have to pay the same amount of sacrifice/sinew” so whoever don’t pay cannot join the raid and get the reward. I think that’s fair that everyone pay the entrance fee and after killing the boss everyone get their chunk. This same idea goes to Crucible echo knight when we down him, everyone should get their own chunk of reward/gold chest at the end (4x gold chests at the end of the run if 4 players survive to that floor). I don’t have a way to justify this one coz it has no entrance fee, so it’s basically 4x drops if play with 4 players lol, but I think everyone deserved their chance to loot if they survive to see the end.
tl;dr; Playing multiplayer feel like a waste of time because the loot amount drop as much as playing single player. At least should duplicate the “essential (embers)” loots for each player to make it worth their time. End game mode rewards should always duplicate (can charge entrance fee for it).