Multiplayer Quests Thread - 3089

I bought the game for me and my friend and I love it... but currently the biggest game breaker for me is the fact that you and your friend can't actually be on the same quest and both get the rewards. I tried the request button when you open the menu on your friend... but it only gives me a quest similar to his, not his.

Its difficult to play with your friend if have to bounce between your and his quest, it just pretty much ended up both of us playing single player occassionally bumping into each other when our quests were close to each other...

Am I doing something wrong? Or is there no way to be put on the same quest...

The problem with you both being on the same exact quest and both getting the rewards means the quest difficultly drops in half while the rewards stay the same. If you both can team up to do the same single task, and both get the rewards for it... then that is unbalanced. Right now, you can both work together on a single task (since the other player knows where your tasks are), but only one player will get the rewards for it. You can each take turns helping out in each other's tasks. Does that make sense?

What if the rewards are lower if you do the same quest? Like only 60%

It makes sense. But it feels tedious... Id much rather have the rewards lowered and the difficulty higher with both people being able to get the rewards. Cause right now after playing the game for like 40 mins. We find it kinda annoying to have all the dangers of helping someone doing a quest but not geting anything out of it. Like for the protect quests, I helped my friend kill like 8 ships and 15 robots (At the begging, like this was the 4-5th quest we did.) and nearly dieing, just to get nothing.

I guess what Im saying is, if we get nothing for helping out a quest, then it feels kinda tedious. Yes we can bounce between each others quests, but it quickly becomes each of us doing our own quests cause our quests would be in opposite directions and we just wanted to get enough skill points to actually be able to take on the first boss ((Well bosses since we don't share quests.))

I mean I completely understand why your do it. You don't want the game to be too easy for Co-op. But to me it feels like you are punishing the player who wants to help the other.

For Example, me and my friend decided that we would play in a way that supports each other. Me being a sniper/gunner, and him being a Stealth melee user. Were I'd give him cover why he stealths around... but the problem is that only really works on his missions, since he can't actually DO my missions, only kinda sorta assist me by killing things... So for missions that I get to let say spy on a target, I have to be the one spying and really he can't assist me in spying only just kinda be there. If we shared quests I could sit back and do my covering fire while he spys.

Im not like raging mad or anything, its just right now we don't feel like we are playing a co-op game since we are just hanging around while the other person does his quest. So we currently just stopped playing. And I thought I'd mention why we stopped playing and ask why its that way, and suggest ways to fix it.

Thats for the reply and trying to make sense of my horrible collection of thoughts on this post...

I understand the desire to get some skill points when helping with a shared quest. However, another complication... How do I know the other player actually helped complete a task? Take for example your spy task. One player does the spying while the other "sits around and snipes". Let's say the sniper doesn't shoot anyone. Does the sniper deserve points? If so, how is that any different than a player doing nothing? I want to avoid situations where one player does most (if not everything) while both get rewarded for it. It is a fine balance between having fun mechanics and mechanics that can be abused...

Hmm.. Then make it specifically so that Co-op quests are harder and give less rewards. Maybe make it an option somewhere so that only the host decides if he wants shared quests or not.

Also, why does it matter the potential abuse. I mean I guess I understand for random people joining your game. But me and my friend are playing the game SPECIFICALLY cause its coop. Thats actually the reason I bought it. I looked at the game saw it was pretty good but knew I wasn't gonna want to play the game alone. I saw that the game was coop and decided to buy it twice and pass one copy to my friend so we can play coop.

And whats the problem with a mooching player? Just make it so that the host of the server can kick the other player if they are mooching. Then again the mooching being a problem really comes into play if you play with random players. Though this game by design isn't meant for you to play with randoms. Its deffenatly a "play with a friend" type of game. So why punish us for the potiental of mooching if mooching comes down to a player problem not a game problem.

Its kinda like if you play Halo co-op with your friend. Lets say you never played halo, but this is your friends 12th time playing halo and he knows everything. Then he decides that he just wants to beat the game as quickly as possible and abuses every little trick in the book to get to the end. While you just try to play the game normally. Yes hes technically abusing a system that shouldn't be there, but its up to you to say, "Hey please help me play the game normally don't speed run through it." Its not up to the developers to make it so that if the 2nd player beat the mission before the 1st player gets to the end. Then the 2nd player sould advance into the next level on his own, and the 1st player will continue to play on the first level untill he reaches the end then he will go into his own intance of the next level.

Do you understand what I am saying? I mean I understand you point, Im just trying to get my view and point across. I love the game don't get me wrong, I just wish I could play the game without having to teeter back and forth between duplicates of the same mission just so both of us can get the skill points.

Once again thanks for the reply, Im just trying to help you understand my thought process and how I play or want to play the game. So that you can ponder about it and help you develop a game that reaches a wider audence.

I'm trying to find a solution that will make co-op questing more fun while also not opening up any abusive mechanics. If you can get skill points without working for them, it reduces the value of those skill points, so I'd like to avoid that if I can. I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'm more open to giving a few skill points as a reward for helping a co-op player with their tasks. That way, you'll get more skill points for doing your quest & helping in a co-op quest, than just taking a quest yourself.

Maybe add quest types that require two people then. Things like, kill Joe and Jim to get Key A and Key B. Use Key A and B at the same time at locations 1 and 2.

Or maybe something like. Player 1 must escort Steve and friends to Location Z and protect him, while Player 2 must find and secure the keycard in Location Z to open up the stronghold so that Steve's group can enter and secure the stronghold.

Im not sure how hard it would be to set up a bunch of co-op quests into the quest generator. But you would need to make sure those quests are only inserted if the game session is enabled as a server.

So, I've been working on quest targets spawning much closer to the original "?" location, which has been a very good success. As a great side-effect, multiplayer quest targets now spawn next to each other. So, when you play co-op, you won't have to run in separate directions to get your targets & it is then easy to help out on each others tasks. Let's give this a try!

I think some basic assumptions are a little off here. Getting multiplayer to work is pretty hard at the moment. Experience with port forwarding is required to set up a game, and there are few enough games that it's hard to join someone else's. Worse, there's no in game way to talk (at least not according to the instructions).

With these obstacles to multiplayer in mind, worrying about "balancing" multiplayer by not making it "too rewarding" doesn't make sense. As it is right now multiplayer isn't rewarding enough (I'm biased: I've yet to successfully join a multiplayer game).

If anything, we need harder multiplayer specific quests/towers that are extremely difficult without two players.