Multiplayer feels lacking...

    I'd like to preface by saying YES, I am AWARE that this is an 'early access' title, but let us stop pretending that this term exists for any reason other than for legal loopholes. However, now that the game is actually offering a pass, and asking money of us for content, as well as the amount of time this game has been in development and playtesting I think it's fair to at least expect the multiplayer to work in this persistently online world?

    You've stripped Skate of it's personality and content, and yet you'd think there would be at least a polished online experience to replace it. Pre-season 1 I had hopes most of these issues would be fixed, and some are even being mentioned in the upcoming updates which leaves me slivers of optimism. Pre-season 1, me and my friends were always invisible on each other's screens, and had roll-of-the-dice luck with crossplay servers. Thankfully, I haven't experienced any of these post season 1, yay! But somehow problems pop up elsewhere.

    Currently if none of these problems plague your game, one that will is the 'waiting for players' glitch inside of every single challenge I've tried to play multiplayer. I dunno if this is an advent of making a god-awful last-gen port or simply the 'waiting for players' bug others have experienced where everyone has to wait at least 1 minute before the challenge starts even after everyone is loaded in/skipped, but what it has done is successfully stopped me and my friends from joining each other's parties so we can make meaningful and timely progress without a possible bug interfering. This is a problem that is killing the game's multiplayer for us, and stops me from playing with anyone in a party in a persistently online game that hinges on multiplayer interaction to make it's world feel alive.

    Yet somehow, even if this system did work without bugs, it still doesn't inspire players to join each other. There's almost nothing to do in the open world together. Throwdowns are such a limited range that you'll never be satisfied with your circle. But once you've had enough of those and decide to do challenges, your party better have all the same challenges to do otherwise the guy who's already completed his today is making no progress. It leaves me no reason to join other player's parties because I'll always be doing my own challenges, and by the time I'm done with them and someone random invites me I have no reason to help them with their own challenges. Pre-update there was more incentive to do challenges together, as the co-op reward was actually comparable to doing it solo if not even doubling your gains from the lesser challenges making them feel more worth it with a party.

    Even if these numerous bugs get patched and the game is working as intended, in the current iteration there is little to no incentive to play with others, and even if you wanted to there isn't any matchmaking to connect you so you'd better have some friends if you wanna experience the 'joy' of playing this game multiplayer. I really hope the game focuses more on improving the base package, rather than putting all it's eggs in the live service basket which is what it feels like thus far.