I want to start by saying that I'm really looking forward to this game. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, both single-player and multiplayer. However I do have a few questions/concerns about the competitive multiplayer mode. So far I really like the design for deckbuilding a specific character. There has been less information release around putting a team together, so I'd like to hear more about that. I'm sure you want to support as many competitive multiplayer variations as possible. However as you probably already realise, to avoid fracturing the player-base it is usually better to focus on 1 or 2 modes, especially at first. So I'm curious as to whether you have narrowed down the field of potential competitive variations and what those variants are. What character level which be the focus? How many characters on a team (I've heard 3 mentioned a few times)? Will there be multiple game modes (ie. deathmatch and capture the flag) and will you focus on just one of these for tournaments/ladders? Custom game modes/varieties separate to the tournament or ladder systems can be used to facilitate the love of variety that many players crave, while also providing a place for people to play against each other with no pressure to win. The popularity of custom game modes may eventually inform what game modes to support with tournaments and ladders in the future. There is a vocal proportion of the competitive games community that believe that competitive games must provide players (no matter their investment of time) an equal chance to win given equal skill at a game. Will your competitive multiplayer mode be designed in such a way that a brand new player can a) play the same modes and tournaments that a long term player competes in and b) have an equal chance of winning against as a long term player assuming they have equal skill at the game? I'm sorry that the format requires me to spell out things that you probably already know much better than I do myself, but I look forward to hearing more and eventually playing more.
That would be awesome. I tried to use the search tool to the best of my abilities, but wasn't able to turn up much at all that was useful or relevant. If you could point me in the right direction to answer any of these questions that would be greatly appreciated.
Part of the problem with Search is that many things have been discussed but relatively little hard information is available for multiplayer. I think this is about the best complete summary of official news: As for building a party, what I've gleaned form the dev diaries is that there are taverns on the map. You hire a group of three characters initially to play the first few tutorial missions. (At one point, it was indicated that you get one of each class, but may be any race.) (Since you are allowed to name and choose portraits, "hiring" may involve a creation screen more than a pre-rolled selection. (?)) Later you can visit taverns to pick up more characters, presumably in any race/class combo, and back at your home base of Startington Keep you can choose any three from your roster to be the current adventuring/multiplaying party. Taking characters into multiplayer temporarily equalizes them to very high level for determining HP and equipment Talents, so anybody can enter. We had quite a conversation here about whether and how beginning players could acquire high-level items to be competitive.
