After having played some 5-6 hours of coop, here is my honest feedback:
The core gameplay is fun / okay. It is fun to run around in the lance of my friend, shooting bad guys, but at this rate I could also be playing MWO, as I do not get to experience anything of the game besides that.
In fact, I am bored out of my skull while my buddy is fiddling around in all the menus, and I cannot even look at things like contracts, market, mech setup to give him suggestions - let alone see what he does. All I get to do is sit there patiently until the next mission starts, either walking around aimlessly in the hangar or staring at the one dashboard with all kinds of buttons that I cannot press.
To make coop actually fun and engaging for guests as well, we should really have:
- Tier 0: Access to all game menus the host has, so that we can check inventory, fitting, barracks, available candidates, market, starmap and potential contracts, intel, etc.. Even if you do not allow guests to actually interact with the world beyond information gathering, it would already allow me to be a more active participant in the game between missions and would actually speed things up, as I could check out missions, while he fixes mechs and stuff.
- Tier 1: Have the guests follow the host around in menus. So whenever I am not free roaming in the ship hangar, I should see the same UI the host is currently looking at, so that we can share the experience.
- Tier 2: Allow limited access to mech customization, so that we can also chip in to refit mechs, or live out our fantasy of having our private mech / mechs in the company that we rule over.
- Tier 3: Have co-op be an integral part of the co-op campaign, with the guests being part of all dialogue the host initiates, so we can actually experience the whole campaign together from start to finish. Currently co-op is more like an aftertought, an alternative multiplayer mode for those who prefer less random AI battles.
Edited by csebal, 11 December 2019 - 12:33 PM.