Wow, I guess I assumed that I misunderstood something before launch because it was hard to believe they would make a multiplayer game that needed 3 people but wouldnt work with two but here we are. What a move.

I made the same assumption, but I believe they stated it officially shortly after the game was first announced. Still dumb as hell though.

you can queue with a single friend, you'll just get another random player. which is not ideal, but probably not back breaking either, unless there is some stupid way to grief other players.

some of the steam reviews made me think that i literally can't queue with a friend unless we are three people.

I guess they couldn't balance the experience around two players, but I still would prefer the option to try it.

I'm not a huge Elden Ring guy, haven't even played the DLC yet, but watching a streamer play Nightreign, I kinda wanna try it myself, even with these problems.

My friends aren't into these types of games anyway, so it always would've with randoms (solo supposedly isn't that good).

I wasn’t planning to get the game because of the 3 player thing but I already knew that… why are people buying it then getting mad about it? Is the steam store page just not clear enough about it? In which case, fair.

I have two friends and we've all be playing the souls games on and off for about 10 years, this game is hard and pretty different. It may just take getting used to, but without comms, it was rough random queuing. Us 3 in discord made significantly more progress, but it was absolutely a great time.

I don't think it's obtuse or anything, this stuff isn't hard to find out before buying. I think it's probably closer to people being afraid of fromsoft doing something different, but don't have words to articulate it, so they express it in other ways.

Same here. Elden Ring was my first souls game. I would never have beat it without the seamless co-op mod. I just don't have skill, time and patience for it.

Night Reign seems to me like an arcade version of Elden Ring. It forces you to move faster and make snap decisions (that blue flame closes in fast!). We got to Day 2 last night but I could see us pouring lots of hours into it.

After playing last night, it’s not back breaking to queue up but it’s full body cast inducing getting a “bad” third player because there’s no forfeit method and you can’t even intentionally spike the run until the first boss.

Different is good. I'm not a FromSoft-gamer. Elden Ring is the only game of theirs I really ever got into (and it's not for lack of trying), so I don't really care it's not the same game again.

Also, you're right, what I've seen doesn't look easy, and no real communication at all is a bummer (only set a marker or jump and crouch in front of something), but it still looks like fun.

I was one of the ones to test this game back in March I think, I thought it was a lot of fun. And at that point there were only three classes and one final boss. I only played with randoms, as none of my friends got the invite. I’ll be picking this game up at some point for sure, maybe when it first goes on sale.

Yeah that death wall needs to slow down a little, either in when it first comes out, or just the speed of it. Once in, you're not coming out with any heals at all if you even make it.

I wouldn’t hold it against them. You and I are in a place where we know the value in looking this stuff up, and we know the industry. There are a lot more people out there who don’t, and others who still haven’t made the mistake they need to in order to learn it.

I don't see the game getting either of those things.

Duos, you can already do, you just have to take on a rando as a third. They could scale the difficulty down for 2 players, sure, but Elden Ring's mutiplayer scaling is notoriously terrible, in part because no amount of scaling can account for the lost potential for splitting aggro, in a game where splitting aggro is king.

Voice chat is something that FromSoft has INTENTIONALLY never included in any prior game, despite there being co-op in all of them. Making players coordinate with each other with very limited communication tools is one of FromSoft's signature design choices. The fast pace of this game compared to prior games makes the lack of communication tools hurt a lot more, for sure, but it's still very much playable. Anyone who dislikes this design choice is absolutely free to, but it's not gonna change.

They said there will be a duos mode in a future update. I'm with you on voice chat, it doesn't seem like it would ever be added.

Oh for sure, I don't think less of people for these kind of situations. More at the state where it's unfortunate but also interesting. We keep seeing these situations happen with varying amounts of justification from people, it's interesting to try to understand what's happening.

The map pinging has been sufficient communication for me. Other players can "confirm" your pings, which is a great way to show they agree.

I find lack of multiplayer to be an improvement.