How to best handle local co-op?

[Own]

The problem with local co-op in Grindea seems to be the fact that it would be extremely time consuming. Every time you hit a shop or find new equipment the 2-4 of you have to take turns buying gear, opening up your menus, equipping things. When leveling up all of you have to wait turns to allocate skill and talent points, browse your options, it's a lot of downtime. And then there's the matter of the characters player 1 isn't controlling. Do they take up normal save slots? If P1 plays by himself and levels up then invites his friends over to play again, are their characters severely underleveled?

These seem to be a lot of issues. The easiest way I can think of to handle is it to let players 2-4 in local co-op simply select classes that automate skills, talents and possibly equipment.

P1 would buy gear, equip it and skill themselves out normally in Story / Arcade mode, but P2-4 would be temporary characters created specifically for that instance of the game that handle all the background work automatically when P1 levels up. They tap in with their controller and are offered a wheel of classes to choose from.

For example, if they chose Ice Mage at the start of the game, they would start with a random point in ice magic spells and a magic rod. Each level allocates additional points at random and other benefits, like possibly upgrading to a red magic rod at level 10 and gaining bronze rank in a spell. Or glasses at level 5.

This seems like it's the only way to make arcade mode in particular non-tedious 4 players. Or do you guys have a better system in mind?

 

[GarlicJelly]

I don't like the idea of getting a "random" build based on what I selected when I first joined the game. Imagine that being my first time playing the game, how do I know what skills I'm going to like? And how does the game tell the player what items he's equiped and what levels his spells are at? Local co-op will always be easier if the players have their own screen. Using splitscreen for local co-op wouldn't require much changes since it would basically be like the normal multiplayer but on the same screen.

 

[Own]

A lot of people despise split screens unless absolutely necessary, and split screen for an ARPG would be especially annoying I imagine. Especially hard to see anything with using pixel graphics.

Imagine that being my first time playing the game, how do I know what skills I'm going to like?

Then you press a button on your controller to tap out of the game and tap in using a different class, simple as that?

 

[GarlicJelly]

Still don't like the idea of a preset build as I mix different elements and skills. To leave the game and rejoin because you don't like the skills sounds more annoying than splitscreen to me. And if it put random points in skills within an element then there is 9 different build for every element because you have 3 different skills and you can max 1 and then put some points in a second skill. Also if you tap in and out to change build wouldn't that be annoying for player 1 that has to sit and wait for his friends to try all the different skillsets since there has to be some kind of menu that pops up on the screen where you select your element.

I can understand that if you have a small monitor then splitscreen would be really annoying. On the other hand most TVs nowdays have HDMI inputs so you can connect your computer to the TV and then having a small screen wouldn't be a problem. Then again some might not have a new TV or a new computer that supports HDMI so it's not a solution to the problem.

 

[Own]

I don't think P2-4 in a local co-op game even 'need' skillpoints or traits being allocated in the background. Assuming they were temporary characters all they would need is to unlock certain things automatically whenever player 1 leveled up to certain levels. Like:

Level 1 Ice Mage: Blue Wand, Ice Spikes.
Level 2: Frost Nova.
Level 3: Snowbuddy.
Level 4: Glasses.
Level 5: +% magic damage.
Level #: Bronze (Spell).
Level #: Red Wand, Witch Hat.

Also if you tap in and out to change build wouldn't that be annoying for player 1 that has to sit and wait for his friends to try all the different skillsets since there has to be some kind of menu that pops up on the screen where you select your element.

Is that more annoying than doubling, tripling or quadrupling the level up / equip time investment in Story and Arcade mode?

 

[GarlicJelly]

Sharing one screen still sounds way too troublesome compared to splitscreen. You would probably have to balance local co-op differently compared to normal multiplayer which might not be very hard to do but I would imagine that it would require some time to do.

Another thing is that the devs have said that they wanna allow for full customization for the players so using preset builds would go against that. Still not a big problem because they can do whatever they want.

 

[Cheynas]

One thing I would like in Arcade mode, would be to set up a 'preset' leveling pattern for your characters skills and talents.
9/10 times I played Arcade, I upgraded the same skills every time... and I'm sure most of you do the same.

Could also help with multiplayer, local and online, since it'll pretty much remove the time spent in menus.

 

[Teddy]

One thing I would like in Arcade mode, would be to set up a 'preset' leveling pattern for your characters skills and talents.
9/10 times I played Arcade, I upgraded the same skills every time... and I'm sure most of you do the same.

I've actually thought about this myself, but I'm not sure how to implement it interface wise. It's pretty trivial to add a recording option usable from the chat command, eg: /record X to start saving the pattern of the current run, and then /autolevel X to enable automatic point allocation following the same pattern.

It's not a very user friendly solution, however, but I wouldn't want to use up UI space and complexity for something so niche, and I'm not too sure where to communicate that this is possible either.

The latter might be the larger problem, because I think those who are hard core Arcade Mode runners wouldn't mind writing a chat line command, but they need to know it exists first

I'm up for suggestions if there are any as to how you think this could be handled most efficiently.

Multiplayer suggestions!

Yeah, that solution would indeed take away some of the major problems, namely the rather intense menu juggling and HUD real estate for the skill bar. It's the only solution I've heard that sounds actually feasible.

There still remains some problems, such as what to do with the camera, but it's most likely possible to make some basic rulesets of how the camera can move, and then add colliders on the edges of the screen (to prevent players from running out of bounds).

I'll have to digest the idea for a bit and think of how it should be implemented. The good thing about it is that it shouldn't require much reworking of existing content, so it could be added now or it could be added right before the game is finished. In either case, a very interesting suggestion!

Splitscreen!

Since this can already be done with the multiplayer "hack" (where you open up multiple game clients and connect to your own computer), we'll probably leave it at that.

I intend to add a more "official" solution where you set up the session on the host and, and then the game opens up as many instances as it needs, position them on screen and connect automatically (as well as locking the input to the selected device). It will work exactly the same but hopefully feel a bit less hacky and obscure!

 

[Cheynas]

It's not a very user friendly solution, however, but I wouldn't want to use up UI space and complexity for something so niche, and I'm not too sure where to communicate that this is possible either.

Give me a month to learn UI design via trial-and-error, and I'll start on drawing a potential UI solution for it.


One way to present it to the player might be a quest that the priest gives you, To kill the third boss using a specific preset made by the devs, that rewards you with the ability to set up your own preset.

 

[KoBeWi]

As for presets, some NPC could provide function to record your skills and then by talking to him you can either enable it, disable or make a new one. Lazy UI solution is just to make everything in message window, like NPC telling your current recorded preset. But it can be done with a simple window with list of skill and eventually tabs for different builds.

 

[Own]

All the ways I can think of to handle the camera:

My World, My Way - Camera focuses only on Player 1. Players 2-4 are given # seconds to get back on the screen after going off of it, before either being turned into ghosts or teleported to Player 1's position. This includes when P1 wants to go in any building. The downside to this is that the other players have to constantly keep up with the adjusting camera angle for precise attacks.

Community Hub - The camera focuses on the middle ground between all players. Essentially Secret of Mana / SD3.

Is there any other?

 

[Rokker]

Non-Splitscreen Multiplayer and cameras:
To be honest i don't feel this is a good idea but a third option for Camera handling would be to zoom out when needed so that all characters fit on screen. The further apart the players are; the further the camera is zoomed out.

Adding local multiplayer without split screen would also open up a whole new world of bug-splatting;

• What happens if one player stands completely still in Flying Fortress for example? Should the passive player be "dragged along" upon entering another room?
• What happens if one player is fishing in Evergrind fields: South and another decides to enter the Evergrind City?

If there should be true support for local multiplayer then split-screen is the way to go since this would enable players to be in different rooms.

Auto-Skill Allocation:
I have to say that i personally don't dig the auto-skill preset idea.
I guess it's all optional if implemented, but it would remove a certain amount of flexibility.

If i kill a boss, gain a level, get a skill point auto allocated in a 2h skill (that i usually would have picked) and at the same time the boss drops a 1h weapon way better than what i have availible as 2h, then i would feel really robbed and stupid.

Is this actually even a problem?

 

[GarlicJelly]

I think the preset thing sounds pretty nice. My suggestion would be to keep the preset building in the skill window in the menu. Just having an option below the "Support" skills section in the box to the left that says something like "set auto skill leveling" or something with a better descriptive name wouldn't be to hard for a player to figure out how to use. If you then select that your window changes to show all skills in a list with one skill per row and going from left to right are the levels marked out as 1 2 3 4 5 and so on. You scroll up and down in the list and press X to select where you assignt your next skillpoint. When a skill point is selected to be assigned on level 1 the cursor/circle/whatever jumps to the next level and the cycle repeats.

Here's an ugly picture of what I'm talking about. To the far right it displays the designated level. It would of course be very helpful to know what the current level is and I'm sure that this system would run into problems since you don't always recieve bronze or silver points. Displaying all the levels would maybe also be hard to fit in one window but it's just an idea.


BTW should we make a new thread for this?

 

[Own]

A few ways to handle UI space concerns for local co-op:

1. Players 2-4 don't have permanently visible bars like player 1 has. Their HP bar appears over their head like the shield HP whenever they're at less than max HP. The same for their MP bar.

2. Optionally, their HP bar appears as a red circle (similar to Elite enemies) around their avatar when they take damage. The less HP they have, the more slices that are taken out of the circle clockwise. Their MP bar is a smaller blue circle within it, only displaying when they're missing MP.

3 . Since they have no use for opening the menu, holding the menu button for a co-op playing displays all their skills around them in a circle and the buttons attached to those skills. So for an Ice Mage you would have Frosty Friend up top, Ice Shards bottom left and Frost Nova bottom right, each overlaid with their button.

This way the UI doesn't need changing at all when you're playing with local friends. Does this seem like a good idea?

I think whatever you do, you're going to have to impliment an "everyone goes where player 1 goes, no matter what" system. If player 1 approaches a doorway, everyone should be teleported to them. If player 1 uses a beamer (aside from boss battle beamers), they all immediately beam after player 1. I don't see how players 2-4 could even use optional beamers without potentially messing something up, or being teleported back to player 1 when they beam off screen.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I think that sounds like a nice idea. Having your HP and Mana displayed under or above your character all the time would probably not cause many problems. Only problem I can think of would be if you're all standing close to eachother since you would overlap eachothers HP bars.

Using the menu botton to display your skills and their designated buttons is not a bad idea. I think it would look cool if the skills show up around the player like they show up in the left corner when you play with a controller. +1

 

[Own]

I'm not a pixel artist by any stretch of the imagination and threw these together to try and brainstorm co-op solutions. To avoid UI complications which of these would work best?

The first option is easily noticeable, the second option makes co-op buddies seem more like summons with their HP/MP bar and is easy to overlook. A health heart / mana star appearing when both are under max or when a spell is cast / character takes damage are immediately identifiable but may be too busy? Are there any other options being considered, Teddy / Vilya?

 

[GarlicJelly]

I don't think that you can have numbers showing for HP and MP because they would probably be to small to read and most of the time you don't really need the numbers IMO.

Having a bar below or above your character is probably easier to use if you wanna see how much HP you have left, I don't really know how you would know that by looking at a ring.

 

[Own]

By draining the circle the more HP / MP that's missing.

For reference, here's Goldeneye: 007 for the N64.