Party gameplay seem too easy.

Let me start by saying I haven’t had the opportunity to play PoE2 much and I’m basing my experience on Act 1/early level gameplay.

My solo experience has been challenging, in a good way. I haven’t run into a scenario where I’ve died but I’ve certainly had moments where I came close. Boss fights are lengthy enough to make managing potion resources something to be mindful of. All in all a satisfying experience that I’ve been extremely happy with.

Tackling the same content with a friend (i.e. a party of two) on new characters has been a completely different experience. Everything is just so much easier, and despite the supposed health increase they enjoy in multiplayer, bosses die in a fraction of the time and with almost no drain to our resources. The difference is starting (and, to me, a little off putting).

I don’t play the game with a friend because I’m looking for an easy-mode. I do it because I want to share (with my friend) the wonderful experience I had solo.

I don’t know if this changes in later Acts, but in the early game I would definitely recommend increasing the difficulty for multiplayer. Increase mob health, particularly for bosses, would be a place to start. I doubt anyone is looking for a bullet sponge, but if a boss takes 5 minutes to kill solo but only 1 minute to kill as a duo, then something is off with the latter.

Mob and boss damage output seems fine in either scenario, but the reality is that when you’re playing in a team there is going to be less pressure on/damage aimed at you as an individual, since the boss/mob is splitting it’s attention between multiple players.

I’ll just refer to Monster Hunter World as an example. I’ve always felt the hardest way to play that game is with a team of two, because predictability makes fights simpler and monster behavior becomes much less predictable in multiplayer. That is a case of a game where multiplayer does not automatically equal easy-mode, so it is possible to achieve.

Hard agree on the difficulty not scaling nearly enough in multiplayer. Some bosses outright melted with 4 players, even when everyone was at the suggested level. Multiplayer will most likely always be easier than singleplayer, but currently the difference is too vast.

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Gyson#3302 wrote:

bosses die in a fraction of the time and with almost no drain to our resources.

This is because when you play solo, the boss only has one target to attack and you spend most of your time dodging instead of attacking, but when you're playing with two players the boss will attack one of you and the other can attack.

If you were able to 'face tank' bosses when playing solo instead of constantly having to dodge and not being able to do damage, the boss would die even quicker than it does with two players.

This is the weakness of PoE2 having all its current 'difficulty' hinge entirely on how much damage enemies can take and deal.

Edit: Just to be clear, before this gets waved off with lame 'I said that already'... Yes I know you mentioned this.

But you don't seem to understand it. Killing a boss solo takes so long because you have to spend most of your time not attacking it. It's not 'difficult' (once you understand the patterns, they become incredibly easy to dodge, provided you don't get bodyblocked by adds), but it's time consuming. And when you have two players so that one can almost always be attacking, it simply takes less time.

Giving bosses more health wouldn't make them more difficult, it would just make killing them take more time.

Parties carry more buffs and should enjoy a faster kill rate than a solo player. It is a multiplayer game. Socialization should be encouraged.

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RobrechtvE#3064 wrote:

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Gyson#3302 wrote:

bosses die in a fraction of the time and with almost no drain to our resources.

This is because when you play solo, the boss only has one target to attack and you spend most of your time dodging instead of attacking, but when you're playing with two players the boss will attack one of you and the other can attack.

If you were able to 'face tank' bosses when playing solo instead of constantly having to dodge and not being able to do damage, the boss would die even quicker than it does with two players.

This is the weakness of PoE2 having all its current 'difficulty' hinge entirely on how much damage enemies can take and deal.

Edit: Just to be clear, before this gets waved off with lame 'I said that already'... Yes I know you mentioned this.

But you don't seem to understand it. Killing a boss solo takes so long because you have to spend most of your time not attacking it. It's not 'difficult' (once you understand the patterns, they become incredibly easy to dodge, provided you don't get bodyblocked by adds), but it's time consuming. And when you have two players so that one can almost always be attacking, it simply takes less time.

Giving bosses more health wouldn't make them more difficult, it would just make killing them take more time.

Just to be clear, I do understand this. I was actually discussing this very same dilemma with my friend while playing together yesterday.

Increasing mob health can help in cases where mob damage is a genuine threat because the longer the encounter lasts the more opportunities exist for mistakes and thus punishing damage. This is the same reason players often opt for more offense over defense, because the faster the mob dies, the faster the fight ends, and the less time your character is at risk. Increases to mob health (whether literal or effective health through damage mitigation) helps to counter this.

I am wondering how much of a health boost mobs get in multiplayer. If it’s something like 10% then that’s clearly not enough. I feel it should at least be somewhere between an increase of 50-100% from solo. And maybe it already is - and if that’s the case then another solution is needed.

Understanding why this is happening is great, but ultimately it needs to be addressed regardless (if the goal is to have a multiplayer experience on par with solo difficulty).

Same experience while playing in 2 with my friend, the game seemed much easier then solo, and because of it less fun.

There are some poeple who write party gameplay is to hard, so maybe its badly balanced/to easy only for 2 persons parties? Dont know.