Farming/Cooperative Play

[TanzakuStars]

Growing crops, to using them, to making meals. 

Solo play is fun, but Ive always wanted to share my experience with a friend. Maybe were they start at coastal highway and you start at mystery lake and ofcourse death is permanent for both players. A game like the long dark where it’s really meant to feel like your alone and no ones out there, maybe sometimes you don’t have to be alone. I just hope it wouldn’t ruin the base game. 

[ManicManiac]

  On the idea of growing crops/plant life "regeneration"...

On 3/14/2020 at 3:55 AM, ManicManiac said:

As for plant cultivation... I'd imagine that would be rather difficult.  Most plants are dormant in the cold seasons, so I'm not sure how much I'd like to be able to "grow things" given the circumstances.  Considering the deep cold, I'd say it's reasonable that we can't farm or that wild plants don't "re-swpawn."  I like that aspect because it makes it important to be careful how we use the limited resources we find/forage.

  
On the idea of Co-Op/Multiplayer...

On 2/16/2020 at 10:03 AM, ManicManiac said:

The idea has certainly been proposed and discussed very often and in a variety of ways... however most of them don't 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 work in this game just from the standpoint of fundamental mechanics.

Edited September 2, 2020 by ManicManiac

[odizzido]

Plants don't grow in the winter. At most you could have some window plants inside but you would need to keep the house warm for them to not die. That sounds very challenging for very little payoff and it would mean that players could never leave that little area.

 

As to coop, I've never seen a game that was made worse by coop, ever. I would welcome it, especially for story mode. Even if it was done really poorly where only one player can interact with NPCs and do the quest items I still think it would be nice. Like the magical teleporting mule isaac in Dead Space. Coop in that game was done really badly but it still made the game better.

[TanzakuStars]

I agree.  Maybe not this time around.. but I always thought it be cool to see hinterland studios make a desert theme title were they possibly could fit those types of futures into their game.

[UTC-10]

Just keep in mind that Story mode is paramount though that does not mean that the devs won't try to keep survival players somewhat mollified.  Cooperative play would be a huge change probably easier to tear the whole game apart and rebuild it with that in mind (not going to happen) and the scope of Story mode would not allow for any kind of cultivation (it is winter time), at least not without a host of new game mechanics which would divert effort from Story mode. 

Once Story mode is done, Hinterland can go where it wants and take the game where it will.