Endgame is bizzarely multiplayer hostile

I play games like this with my best friend, and sometimes some other friends. Have for over a decade. PoE2 worked pretty well for that in the campaign (aside from some act 3 gateway wonkiness which I think is fixed now), but mapping really isn't great multiplayer, especially compared to something like Diablo 4 that does it really well. There's two main problems:

1. The more players you have, the more effect clutter there is and it becomes really hard to see whats going on. This is also a problem in the campaign, but there's fewer effects at lower levels and little in the way of failure penalties, so occasionally mixing up an ally ground effect and an enemy ground effect is annoying (or amusing) but not a major problem.

It's obviously a much bigger problem when endgame builds can cover the whole screen in "stuff", endgame enemies can do huge amounts of damage, and you take significant penalties for dying. It's not that hard a fix, either: add an option to dim or thin out ally skill effects so the enemy ones are easier to see, and everything is fine. I've seen other games do this and it works pretty well.

2. Yep, it's another one portal per map thread. :P

Fundamentally, the whole problem there in multiplayer is that if someone dies, they're no longer playing: They're watching the rest of the group play or otherwise just waiting for the map to finish to get playing again. You can't revive them, and if they drop to go do a solo map, you're no longer playing together.

This strongly encourages just doing easy maps because doing something actually challenging carries a significant risk of not being able to actually PLAY together, which is the entire point of friends trying to play together.

Considering how much server infrastructure there is and how much effort obviously went into making multiplayer work in the campaign (where it was quite a lot of fun!), that the game just seems to not want you to actually do it in endgame feels off. Even more so when you consider that they say they want players to socialize (it's apparently one of the reasons for trading being so prominent despite that being transactional with basically no interaction), but actually socializing by playing with people isn't treated as something they actually want you to do.

Yep. I play a titan with a witch player heavily invested in minions. I need to get in there and hit things, and can barely see them for all the skeletons running around, fire walls, and the summoned skull spirit buff those fire walls spawn. Then, because I can't see anything, I get dead.

When playing in a group, this is the equivalent of being in a timeout chair. I might as well go play something else until the map is done, and if I'm going to go play something else, I have that much less reason to start off in PoE 2 in the first place. This design sucks for multiplayer.

Item #2 (single portal) is the biggest issue with multiplayer in my opinion.

My daughter and I do maps and when one person dies, we usually abandon the map entirely because the whole reason we're playing is to do stuff together.

Allowing all 6 portals is the easy answer (and already has precedent in PoE 1).

Adding revive is a balance issue since multiplayer would have an advantage over single player.

I'm hoping this gets addressed. There's already a triple penalty going on:

* Loss of waystone and map rewards
* Loss of experience
* Loss of anything lying on the ground

Yes, some of those don't apply so much to co-op as your mate can pick up the lootz, but it's still a harsh penalty to die (co-op or not).

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Kozikuru#3127 wrote:

Item #2 (single portal) is the biggest issue with multiplayer in my opinion.

My daughter and I do maps and when one person dies, we usually abandon the map entirely because the whole reason we're playing is to do stuff together.

Allowing all 6 portals is the easy answer (and already has precedent in PoE 1).

Adding revive is a balance issue since multiplayer would have an advantage over single player.

You could add revive until you run out of portals or have limited revives to constrain that some while not making it "oh you got one shot by an effect you couldn't see underneath all the allied effects, go take a timeout" like it is now. That would be pretty limited in a bigger group for how many deaths you can absorb, but it would be an improvement that isn't "I can drag someone through by reviving them 50 times."

"

I'm hoping this gets addressed. There's already a triple penalty going on:

* Loss of waystone and map rewards
* Loss of experience
* Loss of anything lying on the ground

Yes, some of those don't apply so much to co-op as your mate can pick up the lootz, but it's still a harsh penalty to die (co-op or not).

Coop has the added penalty of "you have to wait for your allies to finish or they abandon the map despite not dying", so that's an extra penalty vs single player that kind of offsets "They can pick up the loot" I think.

+1 playing with my husband feels like a chore, playing multiplayer sucks, all the ppl complaining about poe2 is hard never played multiplayer they dont know what real hell is like and plays, they punish you for having friends but make a game for 6+ playes.. make your mind is a single player or a multiplayer. Dont punish me for having friends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Death in maps is my number 1 gripe.

Multiplayer unfriendliness is number 2.

Man i thought the one portal sucked solo, multiplayer makes this issue so much worse. Something should be done, for multiplayer minimum.

I am loving this game so far, but I must admit: party play feels really bad. It feels so bad that it makes me wish there was an option to "Appear Offline"

I am not smart enough to know how it can be solved, nor am I stupid or narcissistic enough to pretend that I know how; therefore, I am not even going to give that any thought. Especially since I enjoy Path of Exile 2 the way it is clearly meant to be played - solo.

EDIT: I think party play would benefit immensely if you could cycle thru your team mates POV's when you die. Commonly referred to as Spectator Mode in FPS games.

Fully agree, party play was a great time through the acts but now we're in endgame and co-op just isn't fun. No revives or retries just means if anyone dies then they can either go look at their phone for 20 minutes, or revive in town and play solo which makes multiplayer pointless. Endgame is great solo so far but my friends and I want to play together and it's just not working.

bump this is important..multiplayer sucks.