My Idea Of Coop/Multiplayer


UwUMachine

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Now before you berate me, hear me out. I know that multiplayer/coop is not a main focus of the game. You are meant to feel alone and I like that feeling, but I think you could still capture that feeling of being alone with Coop/Multiplayer. Now, on to my idea.

I believe that Coop could help add some more fun features to the game and make it a bit more enjoyable. I don't want 3-5 person COOP, I believe multiplayer should stay as a two person type of ordeal only. I believe that you would have a world set up for you and a friend, either of you could get on at any time and play and another could join at anytime. However, you each have to spawn in a completely different region. This could be pre selected or randomized. So one of you could spawn in Forlorn Muskeg while another is all the way in Hushed River Valley and so on so forth. If you are not using Discord or don't know the layout of the game, the first few hours/days could be spent playing alone trying to find each other. Whenever you do find each other, then it's just a neat little COOP experience from there. I believe Voice Chat would be useful, but only in a local area and not globally. If you don't have VC, then maybe a set amount of words you can say? Like a "Hello', "Follow Me", etc etc. Nothing to big but not small enough to where you would be handicapped without VC. Now, if one of you die, then that's it..that person is dead. You could either stay in that world as a singleplayer world or just restart.

This is all coming from my mind as I speak, so I'm sorry if some of it is a jumbled mess. I hope it's a better idea than some server list or whatsoever!

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@UwUMachine

The idea has certainly been proposed and discussed very often and in a variety of ways... however almost none of them never really consider what I think is the main problem.  The mechanics of this game in particular make Coop/Multiplayer kind of a "no go."  Simply put... the thing that would be the biggest challenge is the fact that there are many mechanics (that help form the foundation of the game play) that utilize "time compression."  When you have situations that mess with "time" it becomes a problem with multiple players interacting in the same space.

For example... if you have two players and one is out chopping wood (that compresses 45 min - 1 hour of time) then the other player either has to also accelerate or they get "out of sync" so to speak.  If one is spending 5 hours fishing (that is normally compressed), what happens then?  Does the fishing then go in real time?  In other words because this game is filled with mechanics that compress time (sleeping, "passing time"/"wait 'till ready", harvesting, fishing, breaking things down, using the forge, crafting, milling, and so on) then you can't really have two or more players interacting and still keep them synchronized in terms of the time of day... you'd have to force everything to happen in "normal game time" - which for some long tasks, I think, would really suck.

I hope my examples help to illustrate why I don't think coop/multiplayer would not work in this game just from the standpoint of fundamental mechanics.


:coffee::fire::coffee:

Edited by ManicManiac
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Player One is exhausted and wants to sleep for 12 hours.

Player Two is fully rested and wants to go hunt a moose.

Care to describe what happens?

Does Player One stare at a black screen with a status circle for one hour real-time?

Is Player Two forced to miss 12 hours as the game suddenly compresses that time?

As @ManicManiac says, the time dilation used as a core mechanic of the current game means you simply can't experience The Long Dark properly outside of single player. A multiplayer game would need to be a completely new system, which is only going to happen if Hinterland releases a new game.

 

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Time dilation issues--that's the core problem.  The only way to make this work in practice would be to have the player that's doing the time-accelerated action lose fatigue, thirst, hunger, etc proportionate to the action they are performing, while the sun in the sky does not move an inch.  Meanwhile the other player is entirely unaffected.

Totally immersion breaking, but it would enable cooperative play.

I personally would not be interested.

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Actually, I think the time issue is workable and even, hear me out, adds to the coop experience. To support coop the game would simply only speed up if both players were speeding up time. This WOULD suck if one player wants 12 hours sleep and the other wants fun. But that's the coop op bit - you have to plan how you spend your time together. (Aww. That sounds so sweet). Cooperate or be a bit bored. 😀

The bigger issue for me is that coop just undermines the key aspects that make the game - risk, self reliance, loneliness. But still. I'm sure coop would be fun. It's just not what the games about thematically.

Edited by Stone
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On 2/16/2020 at 7:52 AM, Jimmy said:

Player One is exhausted and wants to sleep for 12 hours.

Player Two is fully rested and wants to go hunt a moose.

Care to describe what happens?

Does Player One stare at a black screen with a status circle for one hour real-time?

Is Player Two forced to miss 12 hours as the game suddenly compresses that time?

As @ManicManiac says, the time dilation used as a core mechanic of the current game means you simply can't experience The Long Dark properly outside of single player. A multiplayer game would need to be a completely new system, which is only going to happen if Hinterland releases a new game.

 

Dream game time!

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