Hi Everyone!

I have no doubt that everyone is extremely excited about the recent addition of CO-OP and PVP to the Dying Light Dev Tools, and though this is great news, there also comes a whole new host of challenges.

As some of you may already know, I recently produced a PVP map 'Don't Drown' and while most of it was straight forward, I was presented with a huge new issue: Multiplayer Balance

Multiplayer Balance brings with it a host of new problems that us as Dying Light Map Developers have not tackled before (Unless you guys have some background experience with Multiplayer that I am not aware of).

• How Many Enemies to Place
  
• Making a Quest Challenging Enough
  
• PVP: Weapon Placement, Dammage, and Amount
  
• PVP: Map Size
  
• PVP: Player Spawns and Respawns
  
• Making it Fun for Everyone

Previously as a Developer I would place enough enemies for me (as the player) to deal with, without taking more that 25 damage per fight. (I figured this would be a good way to account for challenging both skilled and non-skilled players). But now as I noticed with the recent testing of a CO-OP map that I am working on, when I play the same scenario with a friend or two we come out of it with barely any combat and no damage what-so-ever. Which is not really that fun. However when one ups the enemy count, it works well for co-op but messes with the combat balance I had previously. So the Question I am asking is: How do we balance the amount of enemies we place with the amount of players playing so that in all scenarios (1-4 players) it is Challenging but fun?

*This ties in with "How Many Enemies to Place"
Usually when designing a quest I would build the areas, challenges and enemies in a fashion that was challenging for me, but only just... to account for skilled and non-skilled players. But now when designing a simple hallway quest (go from one end to the other) for example, you would have to account for how many players are playing, as well as design the hallway in a fashion that it would be cluttered enough for one player to see it as immersive, but with enough space and freedom for 4 players to go ape. So the Question I am asking is: How do we make Quests Challenging for 1 player and for 4 players without excluding one or the other?

This is a whole other Ballgame, and there is plenty of things to take into consideration here. My experience with PVP is very limited, but what I can tell you is that Map Size makes a huge impact. During initial tests in 'Don't Drown' myself and my 3 buds discovered that the map I thought was small, was actually way too large for PVP. I didn't even think about how long it would take one person to get from one corner of the map to the other, especially considering that I placed the spawns far away to avoid Spawn Killing. We realised that we spent more time looking for eachother than actually playing. So I introduced the little idea of Flooding the map, Thereby reducing the actual playable area to almost 1/9 of its original size.
How do we find the appropriate Balance in PVP?

I have noticed that there is a sort of divide in the Playerbase when it comes to workshop maps, and this makes sense, because different people like different things. As an example: People who enjoy a good Horror Map will go subscribe to 'Repetition' by Joluk, and people who prefer the more Trippy FarCry Experience will go take a look at 'Delusion' by Lord Calamari. Now I don't know about you guys, but I think Techland really nailed the whole Diversity of Main Quests and Side quests. Which is why so many different types of players like Dying Light as a whole. Now with the Introduction of CO-OP we have to start thinking like Techland. When the players play CO-OP together they all want to be getting maximum enjoyment out of the mission. So how do we create Missions that are for Multiple players?

I'd love for eveyone to get involved in this discussion, I am sure we could learn a lot form one another.