2 player online/co-op

[YungSleazeMane]

You and a friend can spawn one as Astrid one as Mackenzie and have to find one another and take the dual survival route, only drawback is it takes away the lone wolf solo survival feel that the game is know for.. food for thought? 

[J.W.P]

I want this to

[odizzido]

Even if it was horribly done I would be interested in playing through the story mode with someone else. From what I recall though they said it wasn't going to happen.

[xanna]

Interesting idea. I wonder how you can make passing time work? What happens when you want to sleep but the other player doesn't?

[ManicManiac]

On 10/9/2023 at 9:52 AM, xanna said:

I wonder how you can make passing time work?

Precisely the real heart of the matter... the time compression mechanics.
As I've discussed previously, I think this is why real multi-player just isn't really feasible without addressing all the actions that compress the passage of time: passing time (both standard and for cooking), harvesting, mending/repairing, fishing, sleeping...

For example if we want to chop a limb that takes an hour... and we have another player there with us, then how do we keep the time of day synchronized?
Do we disable time compression?  In which case in order to chop that limb we have to sit and look at a progress wheel for 12 minutes of real time.
(real world to in-game time is 1:12... where 1 minute of real time equals 12 minutes in-game... therefore 1 hour in game is equal to 12 minutes real time)

**On the flip side... do we just make both the players experience accelerated time if one starts an event?  
Well then, we risk the other player being stopped in their tracks and suddenly losing an hour of time, if they were out and exposed to the elements at the time... they might end up freezing and losing condition at an alarming rate because the other player choose to chop wood.  Probably not the game play experience anyone would want.

This gets worse if we start talking about sleep.  

Some of those previous discussions:

On 2/15/2020 at 11:33 PM, ManicManiac said:

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 or an 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

On 2/10/2021 at 10:21 AM, ManicManiac said:

Still the same problem with the "time compression" mechanics (as I described in my previous post).  Specifically both players would still need to be synchronized with respect to the time of day (this is where the time compression becomes a problem).

I will leave a reference to my previous comments further explaining what I'm very briefly summarizing/reiterating.
Multi-player is just kind of a no-go, because the use of time compression is built into the foundations of the game.

Maybe there are mods out there to address it... and you know what... if so, great.
For those that want it, then there it is.  

But frankly I'm not a fan of the idea of ever making TLD multiplayer.
I think it undermines the lonely isolation.

...also, I don't usually want to get away to Great Bear Island, only to still have to deal with other people's non-sense.  
When I do feel like dealing with other people's non-sense, I feel like that's what story mode is for (and then at least those "other people" have the good decency to be scripted and there for the purpose of advancing the story ) 

Edited October 10, 2023 by ManicManiac

[Leeanda]

I've thought about this for a while..  it does look fun on the videos I've seen, but it also looks like there are a lot of issues with it.

Maybe as a challenge it could be done similarly..  will starts in desolation ,Astrid at the opposite end of the map.. you choose which you want to be,and which difficulty, same as survival,and you have to get to the other.. 

Or something like that anyway😁

[hozz1235]

HL has pretty much said that TLD will NOT be co-op/MP.

[Leeanda]

Well mine was more a challenge /story kind of thing....  

I wonder if the trader applies to that?

[YungSleazeMane]

On 10/9/2023 at 8:52 AM, xanna said:

Interesting idea. I wonder how you can make passing time work? What happens when you want to sleep but the other player doesn't?

Just line Minecraft you'd wait till the other person went to bed maybe??