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Entering a multiplayer game of Dungeon Siege will present players with a familiar,
yet enhanced, version of the single player game. The host can choose options to
allow players to form up as teams, and then play either cooperatively or competitively.
Team play and Player vs. Player (PvP) modes provide for up to eight teams to
play through each world either cooperatively or competitively. To identify teammates
each team can choose from 16 different shields to signify the group. With team play
and PvP both enabled, all players in the same team will have green names while the
rest will be red. If team play is enabled and PvP is not, then teammate's names
are green and others are blue. This helps to easily identify friend vs. foe.
While in multiplayer mode the players can bring up a leader board at any
time by pressing the "\" key. This screen displays the number of kills, player vs.
player kills, and the number of times each player has died along with the time remaining
for timed games.
You can chat both before and during the game in progress. While in the game,
the player can bring up a chat window by pressing the Enter key. Players can then
choose to chat to everyone, to just their team, or to a specific individual.
Death is handled specially in multiplayer. The host has an option to determine
which items will be dropped upon death including: drop none, drop only equipped
items, drop only inventory items, or drop everything! When characters die, a player
may hit Esc and chose to become a ghost. A resurrection timer begins and a tombstone
is placed on the ground where they died. Before the resurrection timer expires they
may continue to play as a ghost and seek a shrine or object to restore their life,
or another teammate may resurrect them. As a ghost, the player may freely move throughout
the world in search of the shrine, but may not fight or interact with NPCs or stores.
Upon resurrection, with full health and mana, the player can journey back to their
tombstone and pick up any items that may have been dropped.
The difficulty of a multiplayer game can be determined by three factors; the
world difficulty, the game difficulty, and the number of players in the game world.
The host sets the world and game difficulty levels. The Siege Engine will automatically
scale the difficulty of monsters in the world based on the number of players. This
is done on the fly such that if players join or drop the world will automatically
adjust. In this way two players playing a multiplayer world on Elite and Hard can
have a vastly different game experience than eight players playing on Veteran and
Normal levels.
Dungeon Siege has a secure in-game trading system in multiplayer. To initiate
trade, a character can open their inventory and select items or amounts of gold
to trade, and then click the other player's Character Portrait. To complete the
trade, both players click Accept or either player can click Cancel. If the trade
is cancelled, the offered items return to the player's inventory.
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