As pretext, I like the game. It's fun, it's challenging (far harder since early days, too, good job) and it feels rewarding when you get far in a run. Nice game. Also, this is all just my opinion obviously, I'm not so delusional to think I know what's best.

But man, co-op is a mess when it comes to team management. Every co-op game I've been into now: 90% don't have a mic and 10% have other players on mute. The 1% who do have a mic have often muted themselves because the game has no push-to-talk and who the heck wants to be constantly heard.

TL;DR, suggestions:

1. Add push-to-talk. I believe this has been mentioned previously, so it may already be in the works, not sure.
2. Add a team chat. This is a multiplayer game standard, no idea how ED didn't roll out with one.
3. Make the ping system better. Allow us to ping spots on the map when it's up, rather than only pinging where we are.
4. Add a map labelling system. This would do wonders for coordination, and help players remember specifics on the map.

So let's walk through my typical game, the pain-points, and the possible design solutions:

1. When the hosted game starts in the saloon, immediately people will want to coordinate. Which characters to bring, which floor to start on, what challenge to run, etc.
   1. Pain point: beyond a mic, there's no way to do this. In-game emotes don't work in the saloon, there's no chat functionality, it's pretty isolating;
   2. Solution: at minimum let's bring in-game emotes into the saloon. It's a paltry way to communicate but it's something. Ideally there'd also be chat functionality, as most team games do.
2. When the host picks the first floor and level 1 loads, immediately the lack of preparation in the saloon becomes obvious, and without fail there will be at least one player who just starts opening doors. Sometimes logically, sometimes randomly, but always without pause.
   1. Pain point: This is a turn-based game at its core. You have X turns to maximize before you're threatened. Being able to tell others 'yeah no, don't open that one' is critical. And again, the vast majority of players don't have or don't listen to mics.
   2. Solution: Same as above, a chat box would go a long way. Beyond that I would love to see the ping system expanded. Currently the ping is limited to where you are, forcing you to run around to designate spots. When we open the map, we should be able to ping at specific locations on the map without having to travel to them. A step up from this would be map labels. They'd function the same as pings, but not disappear, and come with iconification that tells other players more than just 'here's a POI'.
3. When a player inevitably drops from a game, their character is made an NPC which is great, love that. But as far as I can tell, the NPC is then glued to the host, and the host doesn't seem to be able to switch between the characters, nor tell the NPC to stay in a specific spot.
   1. Pain point: A less-useful NPC compared to single-player. It's better than just losing a body, but not by much.
   2. Solution: Provide that same switching and ordering functionality in co-op games. Heck, let any player switch to and order the NPC if they want. It's a team game, but it feels very solo at this point, with another player tagging along.
4. When resources start getting tight, and other players start building/buying/upgrading seemingly at random, though the resource pool is shared.
   1. Pain point: It can cause a great deal of confusion and frustration when you go to place something only to notice your resource pool is dry. It can even kill a run if the player doing it isn't even aware they are.
   2. Solution: Realistically, this is just about communication. Again, a chat system, a better emote system, and a map-pinging and labelling system would do wonders. Ideally, there'd be a better way to share resources, because right now one player will be spending them far more aggressively than the other two.

I agree with all the tl;dr solutions. Text chat would go a long way with a better ping system.

On the resources part, I think another good idea would be to just use dungeon of the endless system, where everyone gets a separated amount of resources, without sharing a pool of resources and then you can share them if you choose to.

Just adding a team chat would make things so much easier to communicate. The player absolutely needs the ability to mute ones pings and messages tho as there will always be people raging constantly.

Something which could come in handy would be a vote kick system to force trolls out of your game if that isnt a feature already.

Being able to vote or at least set a preference for maps like deep rock galactic does is something I think the game would only benefit from.