I'm currently trying to balance multiplayer games for after DoL.
Currently multiplayer games are a lot easier than singleplayer games. For DoL season games the singleplayer win-rate is 13%, the multiplayer win-rate is 50%.
So what is causing this?
Player experience - multiplayer games tend to be played by more advanced players (that's okay)
Yggdrasil meta is way easier to get going in multiplayer games (that's already fixed for after DoL)
Creep count is increased in multiplayer, which means that bosses are a lot easier as you can take them down one after the other
Coop buffs are a lot more effective than simply 2x creep hitpoints
What I've been working on the last weekend is creep count. Why would I start with that? I'm planning to add support for up to 4 player games in the future. And thinking about that shows the current mechanism is not viable. Imaginge 4 bosses coming one after the other. It would be pretty easy to take them down with 4 players.
So I tried to change it to the same amount of creeps, no matter how many players. So on a boss wave, there is only one boss, no matter how many players. This had some pretty interesting consequences!
Experience
Currently the killing tower takes all experience. With more than one player, this will inevitable lead to one player taking the lead while all others gain less and less progress. So I changed the experience gain, towers gain experience from a kill relative to how much damage they dealt to that creep! The total experience of a creep is now multiplied by the amount of players.
Loot
Right now each player has his own creeps. If they are killed, gold/items are granted to the player that owns the creep, no matter which tower killed it. I changed this that whenever a creep is killed, loot is granted to all players on the field. This way even players with a weaker setup are able to catch up. The only exception are treasure goblins, they grant loot to the killing tower's player.
I did a few test runs and it felt pretty decent. I believe this change alone will make multiplayer games more interesting and challenging!
What do you think about these changes? I'm excited to hear your feedback.
I absolutely love this. I'm really excited to try a 4 player game, but the chance to actually be useful in multiplayer even when your low lvl and new to game is so much better.
This sounds good, but it still seems to allow one player to still power level and carry everything. I guess that's ok - just something to think about.
Making the boss a single creep with 4x health will make it a bit more challenging, but will make slows and stuns more effective again. Currently the double boss or double challenge is the hardest wave for co-op, in my opinion. Stuns and slows will affect the first boss while the second gets to stroll through the map without a care in the world.
It is working well now and I'm sure it will work well later. Those are just some thoughts to consider.
Eh.... maybe make crowd control effectiveness scale with sqrt(players)?
@Kami, yes it would also affect singleplayer
@FuzzyEuk that remindes me I still need to write that immobilize post! Yeah, maybe I need to adjust that for more players..
@TheMarine I haven't looked into that yet. Either that or different hitpoint equations depending on player count. I will try the hitpoint equations first. I feel sharing auras/buffs is a pretty nice thing going for coop :-)
