Hi,



I would like to share with You a few thoughts about Multiplayer and some suggestions.

As for the current state of the game we start having 2 heroes. I hope that you plan on making it so that 2 people join one game. As for me i would prefer to have an option where i can opt for my friend or have someone outside from my Steam friends list join me also known as some random dude .



Also upon finding hero inside dungeon i would love to have an option allowing 3rd and 4th player join my game when he/she is needed. And again to have an option of filling his place with friend or letting the game find someone for you.



From technical side of programming it... Maybe inside Multiplayer screen you could implement different lobbies etc.



I think such option would greatly benefit the game and make even more interesting and random and unique!



Nidit

I'm sure this will seems just out of topic for a lot of people, because it perhaps seems that too much of the game will have to be re-written, but a local coop with split screen should be just absolutely awesome in such an atmospheric game. (and the game already got a kind of zooming mechanic, that should allow any player to set the view he wants).



Because the way this game works if just exactly like a Descent, a Gauntlet, a Dungeon Fighter, a Space Hulk or any table top game. And a split screen should fit really well because I feel so much playing Hired Guns with DotE : simple game mechanics, really intuitive gameplay, and really fast learning and fast launched games...



This game is a jewel of simplicity and to share this ambience with friends during a party could just be a really cool experience.



And I think, both local or not multiplayer, an option to permit friends to at least take place with an already hired character, would give a nice feeeling of openness.



PS : concerning the sharing, I think food should be shared aswell as the others ressources, it is just to the group to learn how to manage this (or to players to choose better their teammates...)

Hi,



The idea is cool but as you assumed, complex to do technically.

But we'll keep it in mind

I'm glad to hear that

(In fact I should paid the same price as the founder pack just to get a "4 players local coop DLC")



...et un ptit resto pour fêter ça :P

I would envision vs. mode completely differnt!



Both players spawn on the same map and have to find each other.

To prevent one of the players from just camping there should also be a timer of let's say 1 minute after which, if he hasn't opened a door, a door gets opened autmatically. Once the players have met there is no automatic healing anymore.

There should be selecteable monster-strengths for that. From no monsters (where you could basically try to just be as fast as possible) to very strong ones, where you will want to be very carefull like in SP.

I've read a nice and simple idea to add into DOTE, sadly I couldn't find it at the moment of making this post to add as a reference.



This guy just pointed that it would be nice to have some sort of Dungeon of the Endless Daily Challenge (idea taken from The Spelunky Daily Challenge), where a unique generated dungeon is available for everyone to play with only one chance to solve, finally scores goes to a leaderboard.

Well... definately a coop mode comes to mind. Though I don't really know if it would work. Having a few players control their own hero could end in a chaotic turn of events but I for one kinda like the idea. If someone wishes to do something pretty dumb (opening a few doors at the same time) it would undermine the whole party. It opens up the trolling option, I know, but you can never fully prevent that I guess.



Another game mode that could be fun is a sort of 1v1. And here I have two ideas. One is a "party vs party" mode where two players compete against eachother in a orderly DotE fashion and rush for the exit (and if they meet on the way... well that's one way to declare the winner).

The second one is a bit more tricky due to the randomness DotE is based on. The idea is to have one player be a dungeon overlord of sorts and prepare traps and mobs in rooms for the player to face. If the player gets to the exit they win. If not, the overlord wins.



And, of course, what's been mentioned in a different thread (was it in "course of the game"?) and now by arguser, and that's this Daily Challenge.

As Kreeth said, a coop mode first comes to mind. That is what I am waiting for.



It might be difficult to settle. Maybe a system like left for dead, where only one guy has to finish the level to make everybody goes to the next.



Are the ressources shared or not ?



Is everybody able to build towers ?



There is probably many other questions that has to be answered.



Anyway, I don't have all the answers, but i really want to play with my friends.

I'm a big fan of co-operative multiplayers--but I also think this game opens itself up to the idea that the characters are desperate, and might not co-operate.



This is what I thought up when I considered multiplayer. Obviously it's just one brainstorm out of many in the community, and some of these ideas some folks'll not like as much as others.



What if multiplayer's core mechanic was to compromise or compete? Maybe the crystal for powering the ship starts out broken into . Each player can still gather dust/power rooms, but it costs more to power each room than it does in the single player. Players can work with the other players to jointly power different rooms which'd reduce the cost of expansion, but everyone is trying to protect their own slice of the crystal--which means player 2 and player 1 might have a direct conflict of interest if player 2 wants to open a door to expand outward, but player 1's defenses are weak on that side.



Crystal shards could be combined with enough expenditure of Science/the blue resource we can eventually gather--but in the process of combining, one player loses autonomy over the means of production. That frees up the player without the crystal to run the front line for exploration with his 4 heroes, so long as the player controlling the resources is making smart moves with tower development and the whatnot. Conversely, this allows the player with control over the means of production to cut off the player without the crystal--but what happens when you've got a bunch of rogue heroes kicking down all the doors and summoning waves of monsters focused on an attacking on your structures?



Alternatively, players who pool their resources both retain control over the means of production, but are suddenly sharing their food, industry, science, and dust across 8 different characters. The more players you're allied with, the more resources you're going to need to manage together--meanwhile, the enemy waves are only growing stronger.



And then there's factoring in hero psychoses: what if player 1's heroes and player 2's heroes have deep seated issues with each other and won't play nice? What if they can't be in the same room without being liable to attack each other? Is it worth taking on the additional burden of a new group of survivors if they don't seem trustworthy to your heroes?



Like I said, these are just some thoughts on how multiplayer could work. I'm not married to the ideas, but I am curious to see what other folks in the community think/want.

Co-op, but i think it will be very difficult. Maybe first player will manage technologies, modules etc and second player will control characters. But need to add something fresh for both roles.



1 vs 1 mode, like Space Hulk board game. One player will spawn aliens (and upgrade it).

Hi. I'm the "daily challenge" guy (glad to see the idea is liked ^^). Here's the topic :



/#/dungeon-of-the-endless/forum/46-general/thread/17041-a-daily-game-mode



It could be great, even if it's not a real multiplayer mode (cause the players does not have interactions).



There was a start of a discussion about versus mode in this topic :



/#/dungeon-of-the-endless/forum/46-general/thread/17038-versus-mode



Personaly, I suggested three things :



Versus ideas :



1/ A race to the elevator, with a players turn-over : the winner (first to join the elevatar with his crystal, like always) continue the game, the other loose the game. So it would be a random encounter with another player at each floor. But it can be hard to set-up, I'm aware of that. The mode needs a system of matchmaking between floors, to find a opponent at the same floor as you. So it would be a passive matchmaking : you could play on an other game mode (solo, I presume), and as soon as the game find a match, your actual game is automaticaly saved (after a fight if you were in middle of one) and you're joining the other player.



2/ Another option is just an entire game with the same mate, with special "two elevator" maps (cause two players can't be at the same beginning spot, and it would be strange to have one elevator which lead to two different places). An elevatar can only be used once. Problem is : one player could have more lucky to find quickly his elevator than another. Well, not in the actual random system, but maybe later, when the room randomization system will change (just as said in this topic : /#/dungeon-of-the-endless/forum/46-general/thread/17050-extraction-spawned-right-next-to-the-crystal). Maybe just one elevator but two different destinations with crystal socket? Weird, but it’s an Endless science, after all! Endless elevator are mysterious! : D



Although it’s more easy to do than my first proposition, this mode is hard to balance. If one player is in far away, ahead on an other player, it could become a boring game to the two players. The game should slow down the winning guy to maintain some challenge, or help the other player.



An other problem (the main problem, I think) is it could result in a lack of room to explore for a late player. If I’m late in the race, and my actual floor is already empty, with all doors opened, I can’t find items, characters, I can’t stock food, production, science, Dust. So a game mode like that needs to have some major change in the mecanisms, I think.



3/ An other potential good versus mode could be a co-op/versus game, where players could play together during one time, making the game a lot more easier, but in the end, there is only one winner. So the players know at one time, one of them will betray the other. ^^ The winner could take the resources of the looser, so it would be more advantageous to work together for a long time, but also more temptating to backstab the other, cause the more he lives, the more his stuff, technology, resources, are good. ^^ It could be a good paranoid mode. : ) There could be a sharing resources system. It should add some benefits for the two players, making the game more easy, but the two of them have to be agree about what to do, and they know they have to stay cautious, cause sooner or later, they have to fight each other again.



Co-op ideas :



1/ Two teams coop game : Each one in a different part of the dungeon. Several options to the game : - they have to find them before they can collaborate, or they can just see what the other one see.

- The resources/items are sharing, but only when the two players are connected by opened rooms (they have to find them first!). Or the resources are always sharing. Or they’re not at all, unless a player give some to the other (it for the ones who are always disagree or can’t communicate easily!).

- The wave monsters are just spawning to the side of the player who open a door (it’s until the two players find themselves). Or general wave monsters!



2/ One team coop game. The game start with four characters (random or not), and one player control two of them, and the other player the two others. The resources are shared. Two options : free decisions of each player, or an alternated system. On one turn, it’s player A who choose the powered rooms and what to build, and the next turn it’s player B. Of course, it doesn’t prevent the players to be agree, but it could solve some problem for the ones who can’t be agree.



You could also do a special adventure mode coop/versus : 4 players (or more! maybe 6 should be good), each playing a single character they could choose at the start of the game. And it would be a more RPG style experience, but not just that. I have in mind an other paranoiac mode (I like suspicion and backstab, I have to confess ) which seems fit well with the SF and the “mysterious facility” background of the game. It’s a special mode with a different goal as usual : it’s just a huge floor, with fog war for each player (you can not see what the other see if you’re not in the same room), where the players have to find an alien creature hidden in the facility and destroy it. The thing is, the creature can infect other players, which becomes allies with the boss creature and the aliens, and can infect other players too. But the other players can’t see it, and the infected one can continue to pretend to be one of the good ones, until he has an opportunity to do a lot of damage, like infect another player (with some hard conditions, cause it would be too easy otherwise you know!), destroy a generator or opened some door with monsters behind. The good ones could find/craft/develop technology to discover the infected ones and some ways to cure them (like kill a “queen”, find a “serum”…). The players could spy each other (without saying to the one you suspect you spy him with a nano-camera or something like that who prevent war fog if you are separated, but he could know one day!).



Yeah, I know, it’s absolutely not relative to Dungeon of the Endless. Sorry for that, I just saw The Thing and Alien a waaay too much. : )



A long post. I hope it could be a good summary of few options we could have in the game for multiplayer.



I like the proposition of fepriest about multiplayer! (Obviously, we have some ideas in common. ^^)

I would love to see co-op be the main focus of MP. I can see how each player controlling a hero would be an obvious choice of where to go. I'd also like to maybe see an alternate game mode where 2-4 players all start with their own ship on a very large map, their objective will be to all survive until they can find each other, and then use the power from all 4 ships to open the exit and escape.

I would love to see a dungeon creator mode that go under 3 categories: Short play, Long play, Endless play that can be shared with high score tables for each map hosted on a server.



Short play: Same length as a regular game of DotE where a scoring system between time and high score are calculated

Long play: Time is not taken into account, just scores.

Endless play: Score is not taken into account, just the length of time you survived for.



This would probably require its own SDK tool so I'm guessing it wont happen.



________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



As a side note I really like the idea of a dungeon master against 2-4 people.

I'm all about the "paranoid" multiplayer mode. I dunno if the game designers are familiar with the Prison Guard experiment , but if they could capture that tension in the multiplayer, I think it'd be really cool.

Co-op could open up a door of possibilities. I'd like to see maybe 2 player co-op where there's maybe a bigger dungeon and more challenging monsters, but the payoff is each player controls up to 4 heroes. Perhaps the option to draft pick the heroes at the start of the game. I see each player running off the same power core but having their own resources (F/I/S) while the dust gathered by both players adds to the power total. While gathering dust contributes to the room total for both players, each can power rooms equal to the maximum allotment. The catch is, one player cannot power a room off the other players power grid. Again, bigger dungeons would make it a balance, each player is responsible for their own heroes, opening and fortifying rooms while both working to protect the same objective. Doing this would encourage them to work together and move at an equal pace, as monsters spawning in darkness could doom both players. Once the exit is found it works the same as it does in singleplayer. For dungeon creation I'd expect a lot more forks in the road. Perhaps even having each group of heroes spawning on different sides of the ship, where there are connected rooms that have triggers that can only be activated by the other player. like a chasm with a switch.

I'm interested in some of these co-op ideas, but I think the biggest hurdle is that permitting two teams suddenly makes it less of a Dungeon Crawl of survivors and instead a squad of troops clearing the environment. In terms of shared responsibilities, I think the biggest trouble here is keeping the game interesting for both players, because as much as I like strategic elements, I can't imagine having a lot of fun building defenses and researching tech on its own.



So what if we took the co-op ball and ran in a totally different direction with it. What if we distilled the game to its essence and instead made a multiplayer mode where the heroes are reduced to two players which are controlled by humans (theoretically this allows 'up to four' co-op, but I don't think this particular idea scales well as will likely be apparent in a moment). This might mean a bit of a buff for the heroes, but, likewise, an increased intensity for the monsters (or, perhaps, a less forgiving weighting to the probabilities of beneficial events occurring).



One point I'm a little less clear on is how to handle resources. I'm of two minds for it: One idea is to have no generation at all. The players must rely on what they find in the dungeon (this would suggest a pretty significant difference in terms of probabilities now). Alternatively, find some way of inhibiting the effectiveness of the second player if they decide to boost resource production for that turn (my imagination is failing me at this point, but I suppose its simplest form would be forcing a player in place for X period of time to complete the generation before they can assist). The idea here is to make the decision each player makes have a genuine impact on the outcome of the turn: do we play it safe and put two people into the room? Or do we risk it and generate resources?



Hero recruitment could still have a place as a means of mitigating player death (no heroes available for recruitment when both are alive, but the chance of a hero being generated goes up from 0 once a player dies. This also brings an incentive to engage in resource collection, because it's a looooong wait otherwise).



To recap: the idea is mostly to make it much more of a dungeon crawl and take the game down to its essence in order to make sure that both players are active and are making a meaningful contribution to the team's success or failure.

Co-op:

1. Single-ship/team seems easier to implement vs. dual ship/team, also more of a rewarding and cooperative playing experience.

2. Largest problem as stated is how to handle resources: shared vs. split. Shared requires teamwork to succeed but that doesn't necessarily mean it will encourage cooperation, and may in the end just be frustrating. Split would either mean either too many or too little resources. Too many could be balanced by stronger/more abundant forces and larger maps and seems it may be the most keeping with turret-defense/dungeon crawl type games.



Vs.:

1. This seems it would be much harder to implement than co-op but may provide the most interesting and intriguing play.

2. It would have to be in a matchmaking or server type system. I doubt this is something the devs want to devote their efforts toward over all the other things they have planned.

IF they were, I feel something like a tetris-type vs. would be intriguing.



SUGGESTION FOR VS.: Both players would spawn on a copy of the same map and could choose their heroes/ships beforehand. Opening multiple doors in succession would create waves for the opponent even if they didn't open a door. Going too fast through the doors would spell defeat, while going too slow would mean you wouldn't get enough resources to keep up with your opponent's expansion. First player to the end wins the round or the last player whose crystal is still standing, maybe with multiple rounds or elimination in a tournament.

Hi guys,



The Game2Gether is back at last, with two exciting votes for Dungeon of the Endless. Check out the blog post for more details.





LONG TERM PRIORITY









Please, let us know what you HAVE in mind for the Multiplayer mode of Dungeon of the Endless.

I would see the vs mode more turn-based. Right now DotE singleplayer is a mixture of turn and real-time (you fight and run and build and all that jazz in real time, but opening a door is like a turn). Each player chooses the door he wants to open and then presses "end turn". Everything afterwards would be real time just like in singleplayer. If the player refuses to choose a door, the game will randomly open one.