My opinion on co-op

[Ethan8r]

So my favorite games are co-op games. I've played tons of them, and with a friend co-op games last so much longer and are so much more fun with a friend. Especially when the game has no story, like sandbox in the long dark. I think long dark sand box could work very well with co-op, if done right. It shouldn't need to change many mechanics. People argue, one gets bit by wolf, needs to rest, what does the other is perfectly fine, what do they do? In my opinion, it's pretty straight forward. You both need to rest so your companion can heal up. When time is "sped up" or "simulated" I believe both players should be sped up at the same time. For instance like minecraft, when both players must sleep in a bed to pass the time. Since you're probably doing this with a friend, it would be easy to communicate and make hard decisions together, such as sleeping the blizzard out or going scavenging as your friend may be starving. Another idea, when one person dies, the other must move on. For instance, in a lobby, when you both connect you have a save together. When one person dies, they have the option to spectate the other person or leave, and that sandbox becomes a possible save for the single player. It creates a story on its own, you and your friend stranded in the wilderness, and your buddy gets mauled to death by a bear, and you have no choice but to run. Now you must carry on with the burden of letting your friend die, or seek out revenge on every damn bear that was related to the one that killed your friend. I understand this is very difficult to do, but if this happens, I guarantee you that I will convince all of my friends to buy the game, and I won't be the only one to do so. 

Please tell me your opinions or thoughts of my examples! I'd love to discuss this as I hope it will get implemented into the game this way!

[SzalonyNiemiec]

I have very similar opinions on co-op. additional to what you said: 

1) economically co-op would be a smart choice, because everyone who owns the game would tell their friends to buy it

2) every game is better with co-op

3) now that skills have been added to the game, it would make co-op even more interesting, because now you could have two players specializing on different skills. For example: while one cooks, repairs and makes fires, the other one goes out, hunting and fishing,

But for some reason most people on this forum seem to oppose the Idea of co-op and multi player. also one of the developers told me that there won't be co-op or MP

[continuity]

Perhaps save coop for a sequel or expansion, worked for don't starve.  Would like to see it at some point though.

[EternityTide]

I'm afraid I skipped over most of the OP, as I have great difficulty absorbing any kind of information from walls of text, however I believe I can shed some light on the issue for you guys.

The game is centred around single player. To demonstrate this fact, I ask you to look at how cooking works, repairing, crafting, sleeping, fishing and butchering.

All of those actions require a time warp. The player doesn't want to wait hours IRL to butcher a carcass, so the game speeds up time, making the game playable. This works great, for single player, but when you introduce a second player, that destroys the ability to speed up time.

You want to sleep for 4 hours. Your buddy Dave wants to get the "One Starry Night" achievement, but can't because you need to sleep. Unless you perfectly orchestrated your actions so that you took exactly the same amount of time to perform tasks, you couldn't do most of the things ingame. And this problem also destroys the opportunity to split up and do exploration or tasks independently. It requires serious reworking of game mechanics to make a multiplayer work in TLD, and multiplayer is not really what Hinterland is trying to achieve.

Turning a single player game like TLD, where pretty much every facet of the game's features and functions are built on the principle of single player only, into a multiplayer game is like trying to build an articulated lorry out of a motorcycle chassis. It's just not possible without stripping down the game to its bare components and rebuilding it to such a degree that you may as well create a separate, whole new game from scratch.

As you say,you've played tons of coop games , so maybe you should stick with them for a co-op experience, and play TLD as it is. I shouldn't have to be the one telling you, however, that multiplayer doesn't automatically improve a game. For a thoughtful , immersive game like The Long Dark, I actually believe it would have a detrimental effect, if multiplayer was added. A core theme of the game is independence and self reliance.