Play with your friends!

[Cosquake]

So I've really enjoyed playing this game so far and I can't wait to see how it develops over time. One of the major things that I think the game is missing is some form of multiplayer. I feel the game could really benefit from adding another survivor or two into the world. I don't know what that means as far as developing and implementing this into the game. However, I'd imagine that the games popularity would increase If users saw that they could play with their friends. 

To be clear, I'd hate to see this game go the way of Rust and turn into a kill-happy murder fest. I would be content with PVE and a very minimal amount of survivors able to join.

[Joelle Emmily]

I'd also like to see some form of co-op or competitive or something.

[togg]

I've thinked about this as well. An online thing that bring you close to someone during the aurora...

[Ovation]

Yea I agree I feel like this game would be much more fun if I could share the experience with someone and a suggestion if y'all do want to add multiplayer the players spawn in different maps and they have to survive and find each other at the same time that would be pretty fun

[Ape88]

Ovation, that sounds fantastic. I've been trying to get my future husband to play more, but it's too solo for him.

[rla1974]

For me part of the appeal of the original concept was the lonely, last man/woman on earth type of feeling.  The whole atmosphere seems to support this experience (and do so very well, if I may say so).  Coop or (gods forbid) online massive multiplayer would turn it into really cold camping with wolves.  I can see what you are asking for and recognize that not everyone wants the same fun as I do, but if this feature were to delay story mode I would be very peeved.

[EternityTide]

There is an issue with this idea, and its a big one, so please forgive me for shooting down the  multiplayer idea.
-deep breath- [looks at prepared statement]

About three months after I joined the forums, someone suggested that a multiplayer be added to the game. This was during a point in the video games industry where everyone was adding multiplayer functionality to their single player games in order to sell more copies at higher prices. Naturally, because of the current attitude gamers had towards this practice, it was rejected by the large proportion of the community. 
And since then, multiplayer has been suggested numerous times by various people over the past two years, hence why I have a written memo of all the reasons why multiplayer wouldn't work.
Point A: Time
Passing time. Numerous actions require the accelerated passing of time, from cooking, to fishing, to sleeping, to crafting, to mending, to researching and harvesting. Granted, some aspects of this are going to change, such as Hinterland's allusions to real time cooking and melting, but this still leaves tasks which take ages to complete, and require you to be there and paying attention, namely, fishing for a number of hours, or sleeping through the night, those are things that simply don't work with multiplayer because they need an accelerated timeframe.

Point B: Environments
Whenever you change region, or enter a house, the computer has to load that environment and all of its contents, with the positions of those objects exactly how you left them. Loading two environments at once would be incredibly taxing, loading three or more environments would turn your computer into a very expensive barbecue grill. The average rig cannot handle this, and thus this leads me to point C.

Point C: Servers
In order to support a decent and functional multiplayer game, developers have to invest in servers. Lots of them. Not only are servers expensive to purchase, but they are also expensive to maintain, and power and pay the guy who fixes them at 2 in the morning because they've gone down. This is a serious drain on the developer studio resources which could be better spent elsewhere. Put simply, its not an economically viable feature for what it brings.

Point D; base code
This is the point where I get to the limit of my knowledge regarding game development, as it's not my field, however from my experiences with other alpha games, I can tell you this. Single player and Multiplayer games look fundamentally the same, but under the bonnet they are very different beasts. Different code architecture, different systems, the thing has to be optimised for linux based operating systems (go on, run a stable server with near constant uptime on windows, I dare you. You'll be weeping blood by the end of the week) and then you have to mess about with networks.... basically its a horrible, horrible job to optimise a game for multiplayer. If you don't believe me, go have a look at Keen Software House and their game Space Engineers. Every new update breaks a hundred and one little settings that were fine tuned on the last update. Its a nightmare.

In short, for what it brings, multiplayer is far more trouble than its worth, and unworkable in other instances previously mentioned. There are some issues which can't be resolved even with major reworking of everything, which means the Hinterland dev team have to go back to square one and undo all the work they've been doing for the past two years. Its truly a herculean undertaking. Its like taking a 6m (20 feet) fishing boat and trying to convert it into a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

I truly am sorry for being a nay-sayer and being the bearer of doom and gloom, but its just not feasible.

/rant;

 

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Ovation!

Sadly, as @EternityTide outlined, it is very unlikely that the Long Dark will see co-op or multiplayer during it's development. It's too big a departure from the current game and neither option are currently listed on Hinterland's road map.

[togg]

Impossible and useless for now but interesting for next project

[Tbone555]

im not as worried about griefers as i am of the points that eternitytide mentioned. granted, multiplayer would be AWESOME in this game. and, like in most survival games (7 days to die being a good example,) you dont normally get trolls who will join just to kill you and quit. take any online survival game, most people try to help eachother or just keep to themselves altogether.

but as of right now, the idea of multiplayer is virtually impossible. i really wish it werent so, however. i'd LOVE to jump on with a small group of friends and survive. especially if it had a feature where it would only pick up your microphone if youre within a certain distance to a player! it would feel like surviving a real disaster with other living breathing people, instead of just NPCs

local split screen sounds a lot more plausible in my opinion, but even that is gonna take some serious tuning to make happen.

[Ovation]

Ok so I see it's unlikely but still fun and I wouldn't want it being a mass multiplayer Just something where me and my friend could hop on and freeze together you know

[vancopower]

I believe that the multiplayer in TLD should go to a maximum of Co-op two player, so at least you could share it with someone you want to spend time with. Otherwise if somehow they turn this into a MM experience they might as well throw in zombies and silly emos like waving, dance breaking and bad jokes at which point I will delete the game and anything related to it.  Also I believe that many would follow my example.

So -1 for more than 2 player experience.  

[rla1974]

23 hours ago, EternityTide said:

There is an issue with this idea, and its a big one, so please forgive me for shooting down the  multiplayer idea.
-deep breath- [looks at prepared statement]

About three months after I joined the forums, someone suggested that a multiplayer be added to the game. This was during a point in the video games industry where everyone was adding multiplayer functionality to their single player games in order to sell more copies at higher prices. Naturally, because of the current attitude gamers had towards this practice, it was rejected by the large proportion of the community. 
And since then, multiplayer has been suggested numerous times by various people over the past two years, hence why I have a written memo of all the reasons why multiplayer wouldn't work.
Point A: Time
Passing time. Numerous actions require the accelerated passing of time, from cooking, to fishing, to sleeping, to crafting, to mending, to researching and harvesting. Granted, some aspects of this are going to change, such as Hinterland's allusions to real time cooking and melting, but this still leaves tasks which take ages to complete, and require you to be there and paying attention, namely, fishing for a number of hours, or sleeping through the night, those are things that simply don't work with multiplayer because they need an accelerated timeframe.

Point B: Environments
Whenever you change region, or enter a house, the computer has to load that environment and all of its contents, with the positions of those objects exactly how you left them. Loading two environments at once would be incredibly taxing, loading three or more environments would turn your computer into a very expensive barbecue grill. The average rig cannot handle this, and thus this leads me to point C.

Point C: Servers
In order to support a decent and functional multiplayer game, developers have to invest in servers. Lots of them. Not only are servers expensive to purchase, but they are also expensive to maintain, and power and pay the guy who fixes them at 2 in the morning because they've gone down. This is a serious drain on the developer studio resources which could be better spent elsewhere. Put simply, its not an economically viable feature for what it brings.

Point D; base code
This is the point where I get to the limit of my knowledge regarding game development, as it's not my field, however from my experiences with other alpha games, I can tell you this. Single player and Multiplayer games look fundamentally the same, but under the bonnet they are very different beasts. Different code architecture, different systems, the thing has to be optimised for linux based operating systems (go on, run a stable server with near constant uptime on windows, I dare you. You'll be weeping blood by the end of the week) and then you have to mess about with networks.... basically its a horrible, horrible job to optimise a game for multiplayer. If you don't believe me, go have a look at Keen Software House and their game Space Engineers. Every new update breaks a hundred and one little settings that were fine tuned on the last update. Its a nightmare.

In short, for what it brings, multiplayer is far more trouble than its worth, and unworkable in other instances previously mentioned. There are some issues which can't be resolved even with major reworking of everything, which means the Hinterland dev team have to go back to square one and undo all the work they've been doing for the past two years. Its truly a herculean undertaking. Its like taking a 6m (20 feet) fishing boat and trying to convert it into a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

I truly am sorry for being a nay-sayer and being the bearer of doom and gloom, but its just not feasible.

/rant;

 

This well-constructed statement should be a sticky on the wish-list sub-forum.