How to Rebalance Don't Starve for Multiplayer? Console Commands Yes/No? page 16

[RalphKastro]

I wonder, if one player has night vision(moggles/werebeaver) and the other hasn't, what will the night vision player see when Charlie attacks?

[lucas41415]

How will sleeping in tents work? If I go to sleep will the day skip for all of us?

 

I think all players have to sleep for the night go for the day.

[Ridley]

I wonder, if one player has night vision(moggles/werebeaver) and the other hasn't, what will the night vision player see when Charlie attacks?

 

I am hoping for the nightvision to flicker like a cheesy flashlight jumpscare from most horror games. Woodie might just get some sawdust in his eye at the most inconvient time.

[polygone]

So we are getting Multiplayer. We know it won't affect the single player experience but let's discuss ways how the single player experience can be balanced to make Multiplayer just as challenging and fun to play as a team rather than alone.

Just some random ides to talk about. Feel free to share your own.

Should there be PVP? My view on page 3.

Should there be friendly fire/team killing?

Should monsters be harder to kill?

Should there be larger maps, bigger biomes?

How will we gain aggro on monsters now that there are two or more of us in the same game?

Can we share loot?

Will Vargs now spawn in hound attacks (had to throw this in sorry)?

Will we need more World Customisation options?

How will sanity work? Will we be able to see our friends hallucinations even though we aren't going insane?

How will sleeping in tents work? If I go to sleep will the day skip for all of us?

Will each player now get their own Chester?

Hopefully each party is restricted to max 4 (any more and things get too out of hand). So will having 4 Chesters in game be right?

Will we be able to store our loot in a friends Chester?

If there are 4 Chesters shouldn't there be a 4th new type of Chester?

If things get scaled up in difficulty can Chester have the ability to attack? Maybe a paralysing Gastly Lick attack?

4 Chesters mean 4 of the same thing tanking and distracting monsters.

Should Chester have regeneration of health?

Should Chester come back to life when spawned?

How will death work? If one player dies does the game end?

Can the dead player re join?

What do you think about player health/hunger/sanity bars? If we can see how high or low our friends health is we can share resources effectively without having to waste resources on someone who doesn't need it. Can you really trust someone desperate to survive?

Any ideas/concerns? Let Klei know how you want Don't Starve Multiplayer to turn out. If anyone has made a previous suggestion thread and want their idea to be added in Multiplayer, please leave a link and your reasons why your idea will help rebalance single player for multiplayer. I'll add it to this post.

Haven't read much other than the first page, but these are my thoughts/opinions:

• PVP should be chosen when you create the world/server, and within parties PVP should be turned off. That way you could have servers where PVP is never on and everyone can live in peace if that's what they want, or you could go to a PVP-enabled world and fight over resources. That would turn PVP servers into a sort of clan wars where small groups build separate bases and fight each other over turf and resources, but have the party system so people don't accidentally hit their clanmates.
• Monsters should be harder to kill within reason. Having 200 health spiders just because there are 20 people in the world would kind of be lame. I'd say make them about two and a half times as strong as they normally would be healthwise, and make their damage only somewhat higher. You do have to keep in mind that even in multiplayer people still have to start the game with no armour, so having something common like spiders or angry bees dealing massive damage would prevent people from even gathering flint and such to get a decent set of armour and tools to get set up in the world. Also, either turn off stun or give a chance for mobs to resist being stunned. That way something like a wave of spiders can actually get a hit off on players despite being pounded on by four players simultaneously, even if a lone one wouldn't stand a chance at all.
• Larger maps, definately. Bigger biomes, meh. This should be up to whoever generates the world for the server really...
• Sharing loot=good. If someone drops something on the ground anyone can pick it up. If you make a chest anyone on your team should be able to open it, if they aren't on your team they should have to break the chest in order to get the loot. That'd simulate having a lock on the chest that only your friends have access too. You could also create a chest type with something added to it (something easy like rocks+grass) to lock it so only you have access to it, that way your friend Jeff doesn't take all the nightmare fuel you've been saving and turn his chester into a dark chester when you wanted to do that.
• With chester, you should be the only one allowed to open your own chester. This means multiple eye bones will have to spawn around the map (actually I think they should drop as a rare/uncommon drop from hound mounds ;D) so multiple people can have one. You could also make an eye bone craftable, possibly using bone shards and the Deerclops eyeball, since that's the most obvious recipe. If Chester dies, the bone should crack, and players should have to craft the eye with something in order to fix it and get it to be in the waking up stage again. After that a short period of time will cause Chester to respawn. Keep in mind if you give one person all the eye bones they will have a legion of boxes following them. Also note that with this system you could store things in a Chester, drop the eye bone, and then when your friend/killer picks up the bone Chester's inventory will be restricted to them instead of you, and while he's ownerless anyone should be able to open him like a randomly generated loot chest. Also new type of Chester: Fireproof chester. Just add scales from the dragonfly.
• Vargs spawning in hound attacks sounds awesome later in the game, when there's normally 6-7 hounds spawning. But it is a boss/miniboss, so add something that garuntees it won't spawn two hound waves in a row in order to keep players from getting overloaded.

Monster balance was long so somewhat separate:

Monsters should focus on either the first player they see, or the first player who hits them. If there's a 'swarm' of the same type of monster, then they should have some form of hive mind enough to split up and attack each player. Here's what I mean by 'some form' of hive mind; Say there's four players, and four hounds. It would be completely stupid for all four hounds to attack a single player, since that one player could stay out of attack range while the other three take potshots at the hounds until they all die. Thusly they need to split up. But having all four hounds choose a different target would make them vulnerable, since a good portion of hound strength is that they come in waves so that at least one of them is going to hit you. This means that the four hounds should think to split up and target two or three of the players, that way they can get the group mechanic against the players, without the annoying caveat of letting them kite.

~

Another way of dealing with kiting comes from how the hounds already act, the baying. When kited, a hound will periodically stop chasing in order to start barking. After it finishes it will target the closest entity, even if it wasn't the person it was chasing. This could be used to have the hound target closer players rather than the one who is running away, and it would be difficult to watch every single hound in order to make sure you aren't being targetted. This could be somehow implimented to all swarm enemies, including bees and spiders.

~

Another little problem is allowing players to lure away mobs from a nest. One player goes in, whacks a beehive, and runs off. Another player finishes the hive. Same goes with both spiders and hound mounds. Bees have a natural instinct to be able to tell when their hive is under attack, so in-game they should automatically re-target anyone who hits their hive, and the same should work with spiders and hounds. Also along with this is what was stated previously that they should use a hive-mind to automatically split the groups up (aside from hounds, who spawn alone from mounds. possibly make it 2-3?) and attack multiple nearby players at once rather than just charging at the one guy.

~

Minions (bunnies/pigs/etc) won't know that your friend is your friend, or that your friend's minion is a friendly minion. So if for whatever reason (such as them having meat in the case of bunnies) a minion decides to target a friendly, they should be allowed to. Pigmen are stupid. The only person they classify as a friend is you, and that's just because you gave them food five minutes ago and they're going to leave you in the morning. Likewise spiders follow you because you look like a queen and bunnymen follow you for carrots. So that's about how that should work.

 

~~~~~

I have more for the other questions but this post is really long and I'll just do those in another post. xD

[polygone]

Continued from before. Also I've read a few of the other threads of what people have suggested, just not this one particularly. Anything with a strikethrough was already answered.

So we are getting Multiplayer. We know it won't affect the single player experience but let's discuss ways how the single player experience can be balanced to make Multiplayer just as challenging and fun to play as a team rather than alone.

Just some random ides to talk about. Feel free to share your own.

Should there be PVP? My view on page 3.
Should there be friendly fire/team killing?
Should monsters be harder to kill?
Should there be larger maps, bigger biomes?
How will we gain aggro on monsters now that there are two or more of us in the same game?
Can we share loot?
Will Vargs now spawn in hound attacks (had to throw this in sorry)?
Will we need more World Customisation options?
How will sanity work? Will we be able to see our friends hallucinations even though we aren't going insane?
How will sleeping in tents work? If I go to sleep will the day skip for all of us?
Will each player now get their own Chester?
Hopefully each party is restricted to max 4 (any more and things get too out of hand). So will having 4 Chesters in game be right?
Will we be able to store our loot in a friends Chester?
If there are 4 Chesters shouldn't there be a 4th new type of Chester?
If things get scaled up in difficulty can Chester have the ability to attack? Maybe a paralysing Gastly Lick attack?
4 Chesters mean 4 of the same thing tanking and distracting monsters.
Should Chester have regeneration of health?
Should Chester come back to life when spawned?
How will death work? If one player dies does the game end?
Can the dead player re join?
What do you think about player health/hunger/sanity bars? If we can see how high or low our friends health is we can share resources effectively without having to waste resources on someone who doesn't need it. Can you really trust someone desperate to survive?

Any ideas/concerns? Let Klei know how you want Don't Starve Multiplayer to turn out. If anyone has made a previous suggestion thread and want their idea to be added in Multiplayer, please leave a link and your reasons why your idea will help rebalance single player for multiplayer. I'll add it to this post.

• Chester be a popular subject. He shouldn't attack normally, he's just a cute little box with legs. He should probably run away from things trying to attack him though. Just make it a priority that if he gets too far from his eye bone then he'll turn around and try to run past whatever is chasing him. Like I mentioned earlier, monsters should have hive mind. So the things you'd generally want to let Chester tank would split up to attack the rest of you as well as him. And having him run away/monster re-targetting systems I came up with will also solve this, since anything attacking him but slower than him would change to target the player instead of Chester since they're closer.
• Chester should still regenerate health. Attrition is fine for the player, since we can see our own health bar. For one I don't believe you can heal chester at the moment, though I'm sure that can be changed. Second is that we can't see his health, so even if we could heal him how would we know when he was low? I wouldn't want to waste my nice healing salve on a fully topped off chester, or one that only has a tick of damage off of him. And adding in some health bar over his head would look kind of funky, I've seen health bars over mobs in some mods I've used and I'm not a big fan. I'd prefer my health indicators out of the way so I can focus on surviving, and just glimpse at my health/hunger/such every once in a while to make sure I'm not dying.
• There's another thread on players dying, and the best solution I've seen is that players can be revived by others through some means. If you run out of touch stones/meat effigies players can either drop their head to be buried in a grave/revived by lightning on a full moon like how Webber's animation is, or by placing a life-giving amulet/some similar item on the corpse in order to revive them that way. I did not however like the idea of player's stats getting lower each time they revive, since in single player that doesn't happen when you revive. (and actually you gain health technically if you used meat effigies) There could also be a 'hardcore' server/map type in the worldgen where players just die forever, and can't be revived no matter what.
• There could be a simple pop-up GUI for teammates along the top-left of the screen. This'll show the health, hunger, and sanity of players in your party, but not players of different factions. Optionally this could also include a little set of icons next to it to show what followers a player has, whether it be chester/spiders/etc. That way you know to stay away from friends who are herding something that would want to kill you for whatever reason. It should look something like this:

• Mind you I'm using a mod to show the exact values in numbers of what the health/such are, so that won't really be shown. The square for the image of the character is the same one that shows in the main menu when you're creating a world, so modded characters would automatically be integrated into the GUI simply by having a picture for that screen. The 'kick' buttons are shown only when you're the party leader, and thusly you can kick whoever you want whenever you want. (the other option is /votekick in chat but with a max of 4 you'd really need 3-1 to kick someone that way and meh) The thulecite crown is only shown when you are not the leader, and it shows up under the person who is the leader of the party. Of course I show both the crown and kick buttons in the same photo here, but that's only for demonstration purposes and would never actually happen ingame.
• This system would work using chat commands. /invite -username- will invite someone to the party, and they have to use /accept to join, or /deny to not join. Once accepted, players will be added to your HUD at the top and pvp with them will be disabled if applicable. If at any point a part member wants to leave a party they must simply type /leave in the chat and they will disband from the group. If the leader decides to leave, the person who was in the group the longest out of the remaining players will become the new leader.
• A little addition to groups would be a slight sanity increase while around teammates who are sane, and a slight sanity decrease around teammates who are insane. This will eventually level out all player's sanities, and then stop being applicable when they're about the same. That way it balances itself out. This will be in place to help with what I have in mind for insanity...
• Sane players should not see or be attacked by hallucinations that insane players see. This to me is a given. Pigmen don't see your hallucinations, and neither does anything else in the Don't Starve universe. Because they're hallucinations, not physical creatures. So to someone who's perfectly sane, the mad people are flailing around and swinging their spears at the air. Between that and the animations it should be easy to tell who's insane and who isn't, along with having teammate's sanities be displayed in the GUI at the top. However, there is proof that the monsters are in fact real in another dimensional plane rather than being purely hallucinogenic. The ruins. In the ruins you can be perfectly sane and still have to fight the nightmare creatures, same thing happens if you put on a nightmare amulet. So if multiple players are driven insane (either by natural means or standing near a raving lunatic for too long), then they will be seeing the same nightmare creatures and be able to help each other fight them. That said, nightmare creatures are an exception in that they shouldn't be buffed. Instead, just have the spawning for them be per-player. Two players are insane, then spawn two crawling horrors. Three insane, three horrors. If everyone is raving mad, four terrorbeaks...so be wary when going to help your insane friends deal with their dilusions since you will also have to deal with your own insanity as well.
• Killing nightmares makes you more sane in single player, so it should do it in multiplayer too. However, if it's done on a last-hit basis then one player will become sane again while another is stuck fighting the remaining nightmares alone. That's no good. Instead, killing a nightmare creature should grant a slightly smaller sanity boost to anyone nearby who is insane/can see them. This way groups that are extremely mad will have to fight off more as a group to become sane, rather than slowly becoming sane one by one killing the nightmares. This could also be used as a weapon, since if you put on a nightmare amulet to summon a nightmare, go over to an enemy player who is already insane, then take off the amulet then your enemy will potentially have two nightmare creatures to deal with on top of fighting you, and you could easily take them down. Strategically using insanity to fight your battles for you? Sounds like fun to me. Players should also take a mild sanity loss when a teammate dies, though seeing some random person die shouldn't really affect them since you could be the one who killed them.
• For maps, players should for the most part have to explore the world on their own. Teammates can show up as map icons, but non-teammate players shouldn't show up the same way a random pigman wouldn't show up. Remember that earlier I said your enemies had to hammer your chests in order to take the loot, so if you build a bunch of random dummy chests/spread your loot around it will take them a long time to get through everything. And since chests show up on maps, all you have to do is glimpse over at your base to see if all the little chest icons are still there. If some are missing, or are going missing, then someone has been to your base and you should return home asap. There could also be a new item in science that acts as an alarm using magic that lets you know when someone is in/near your base. Combine that with a telelocator staff/focus and you could quickly get home to stop the invasion, as well as setting traps. Another quick thing is that traps shouldn't go off for teammates, since it would make sharing a trapped base very difficult.
• Sleeping should only be allowed at night. Doing so will protect you from the night terror, and give you an option to wake up at any point of time as well as automatically waking up when day breaks. While sleeping players will not suffer sanity/hunger degen and will take the effects of the sleeping item whenever they choose to wake up. If another player tries to sleep in the same sleeping item as you they'll recieve a notice that 'that bed is occupied'. If another player hammers the bed you're sleeping in, you will automatically wake up. (with the exception of the rolls, which will allow other players to attack you directly since you're sleeping out in the open, which will also wake you up but leave you vulnerable during a short startled waking animation) There should also be a system in place so that if a player wakes up for whatever reason, they will be unable to get back to sleep during the same night in order to prevent people with large amounts of food farming free health/sanity/such.

Misc:
-If a player is hiding as a bush hat you should have the option to 'pick' the berries, which when the action is completed it would give you berries and change the hat to a picked bush hat, which would eventually regrow at the same rate as normal bushes. This'll make the hat actually useful in PvP scenarios, since players can hide from player danger. Of course, if a player knows you're wearing a bush hat all they have to do is hold ctrl (the key to force attack rather than examine/pick), then the text would change to attack rather than pick and you could catch the hiding player off-guard rather than the other way around.

-It'd be hilarious if the ham bat drained sanity of other players that are hit by it. If not there should be some way of attacking your opponents by making them insane.

-In the case of nuetral mobs such as the beefalo or volt goats, they should only attack the player that provoked them rather than automatically re-targetting between all four players. If some of the other three join in the fight, then the nuetral mobs will change targets accordingly to match the number of player they're aggressive towards.

-Abigail should know better than to target teammates, she used to be human too and will see who her sister is friends with and recognize them as passive.

-Woodie's axe Lucy shouldn't be heard as talking to non-Woodie players. Woodie's secret should cause area sanity loss for all other players.

-The Codex Umbra should be the only character-specific item that isn't usable by other characters, given the nature of the item...

-Krampus can't recognize who made what base, only that some player was being naughty. They will steal from whichever chests they happen to find, and like insanity can be twisted to work against your enemies by slaughtering your sack of bunnies near an enemy encampment. Unconventional fighting tactics in PvP makes for a more fun experience. ;3

-Lureplants shouldn't attack each other, whether in single player or multiplayer. But in multiplayer they should spawn in clusters nearby each other so that the eye plants somewhat overlap, possibly creating entire minefields/blocking off large sections of land that players could need help getting past due to the rapid regeneration of the eye stalks.

-MacTusk camps could spawn in villages of 2-3, and they all go out hunting together the same way a group of players might when searching for something big to take down. This would definately not a possible fight solo though, considering MacTusk's ranged attacks combined with the ice hounds can be devastating with just one hunting party.

-Possibly adding a way to 'tame' a slurper by feeding it? Getting a slurper to full hunger will put it to sleep, and while asleep you could have the ability to pick it up and see it's hunger level. If it get too hungry, it will free itself and deal damage to you when it leaps out of your inventory, where it will then try to jump onto your head. This could be used to drop a slurper near/in an enemy base in order to assault their hunger. And of course you could feed the slurpers in your inventory the same way bees/moles work.

-Tallbirds should stick closer to their nests, and spawn in clusters of nests more often to help protect their eggs from players.

-Batalisks should attack one player at a time rather than splitting up due to their circling overhead fighting style. They should also be more aggressive and attack with more bats per wave and do so more often. They should also instantly turn aggressive on anyone who hits them without sounding a war cry first, to prevent other players from standing around swatting the bats as they circle around.

-Trierts should more commonly spawn with more than one at a time.

-Woodie/Moggles/anything that grants a player vision should protect players within that plane of vision from the night terror, regardless of whether or not that player has a fire or not. This is because the night terror is afraid of being seen, it is not afraid of the light. That is why moggles/such work. This means that all players have to do is gather around one spot and have one person with night vision and they will all be protected from the night terror. However, standing in total darkness already has a massive sanity loss rate, and players will suffer the consequences if they try to abuse the system as they will not be able to see nightmare should they go insane.

-Broken clockworks should not attack teammates, since if you're repairing a robot you'd probably think to program it and tell it who your friends are.

-I have more to say on Chester while I'm saying things to add/change to the game, but it's more a general thing than specifically related to multiplayer so I'll just go over to the normal suggestions thing to say that.  (click me for link)

 

e/ Doing a bit of research on gems for my idea on Chester, and apparently the telelocator staff causes it to start raining when used. This could be a great weapon of attrition against WX due to his being damaged by rain. Not sure what to do about that other than to disable rain from the telelocator, since that's kind of a cheap way of taking damage. I'm fine with unconventional war tactics, but all the others I've mentioned you could easily negate in one way or another. You can't stop it from raining, and this could potentially be a huge problem with people who like to play as WX. All someone has to do is have constant use of a telelocator whenever it stops raining, and WX will eventually either take a lot of rain damage or otherwise lose out on resources by having to carry an umbrella/ other rain negator. This would make him an easy target from PvP-happy players, and possibly get him booted from groups for being a resource drain.

e// Obelisks should appear to the player however it would in single player, much like how the hallucinations only show to insane people. This would mean that if you're being chased by a player of opposite sanity to you, you could pass through the respective obelisk gate  and they can't do anything about it because they aren't the correct sanity and it registers as a wall to them. Yes this means you get to see people walk through walls. More fun that just having them respond to the closest player's sanity, don't you think? ;P

e/// I don't think Webber's spider friends should be nice to his teammates. The reason being is that pigs will see Webber as a monster and anyone who befriends a pig can be just as much a threat as Webber is. Pigs are rarer, yes, but they're also a lot stronger than spiders are and can both tank and deal more damage before dying. Webber could easily be useful in a team situation however, since he can eat the cooked monster meat and give all the normal meat/veggies to his teammates, which makes food gathering easier. He can also easily gather silk, spider glands, and monster meat for his team, since he can walk onto the spider's webs to set up a field of traps. Once that's done, have another player touch the edge of the web and the spiders will walk out to see what happened, thusly falling into the traps. This would also stop anyone from losing sanity from the spiders, since the person touching the edge could instantly run off and in larger dens get away with plenty of time to not take the sanity penalty from a spider's aura. Plus he has the whole silk beard thing.

[J20hawkz]

@polygone Just read these. Awesome contribution mate.

[polygone]

Hi one last post since I read through the whole thread and am responding to stuff as  such. ^_^
I'm responding to these keeping in mind all the changes I talked about previously, so yeah~

(Also I have more ideas/such in here that I got from the quoted stuff so kinda continuation of the other two posts I made I'm so spammy right now wow)

Along with the points I raised in the original post, how will continuation of your game work if a friend is missing? Time zones will greatly influence when people are online to play each other.

Obviously this isn't a huge issue, but not to sound selfish here, if I played while a friend went offline, does that mean I'm left to do all the work while he/she chills? Also what if I leave and someone decides to do something I don't like in my absence? Like kill all the beefalo or eat all my dragon pie!

I won't be happy.

If someone leaves, then their chests would remain locked/unlocked to whatever they had. If your chest was locked and you leave, the chest should turn into some form of 'nightmare chest' and become unbreakable to non-admins on the server. This will solve your problem since anything you're willing to let the team use will already be in a 'public' team chest, and anything you don't will be safe from griefing while you're gone.

 

In addition, if a teammate leaves/gets disconnected their stats should be frozen on the HUD and their picture greyed out, so you can easily tell they're on your team. When they rejoin, their stats will start updating again and you can see their picture as it was before. This means every server must keep a list of all the teams, and who is on what team. If all players in a team are offline, the team's 'public' chests will also become shadow versions, and only unlock once a member of the team rejoins the game. So you never have to fear about people taking your loot from containers while you're offline!

 

As for Chester, he should be saved/removed from the world when you are and load back in when you rejoin so noone can kill him while you're gone.

 

Ok seems as if we have sharing loot covered. Still though feel free to add to what we have said.

In regards to revival stones. If Player A activates a stone does that mean Player B can't be revived at that stone? So are we forced to fight for these? Again if they are shared it comes down to party issues. Do you sacrifice a stone because of a weak party member?

Revival stones should only revive the first person who touches it. Imagine being Wilson, and using a touch stone. Now you'll be thinking that it's slightly okay to die since you have a point of revival. But then your arch nemesis Webber falls prey to one of your cleverly placed booby traps, and respawns using the stone that you activated. And what more, not knowing this you get a little careless and die thinking you'll revive. But no! Because stones break on use, you have no way to revive and Webber gets to steal all your hard-earned loot! That wouldn't be very fun to me. Same goes for meat effigies, they should revive the person who built them and the health penalty only apply to the person who made them. Got someone in your party who's new to the game? Let them use the touch stones. You won't need them anyway if you aren't dying.

 

I have a question.

 

How you will save the game?

Will be like a server 24/7 or something like that or will be only online when the owner keeps in their server?

(My fingers are freezing/aching from so much typing omg)

This depends on the server. From running a Minecraft/Starbound server I can figure that there are a few ways servers could work:

 

First off is private servers - These are servers that are run on your computer that you'd like to play with your friend. This would require some connection between you two such as Hamachi or Evolve, but you will have full control of mods/world gen/spawning rights/whatever. You have the most freedom, as you run the server and not Klei.

 

Public dedicated servers (Epic) - These are servers that are either run by Klei or some third party that have maps that constantly play all day every day, and allow anyone to join who has the ip to the server. These servers will feature long timelines, with worlds that last probably into a hundred days or more. The great thing about this is that it'll build up as a community and people will get the highest tier loot and be able to do whatever their little hearts desire. The problem with these is the way death works in Don't Starve. People would constantly need to be revived over the course of hundreds of days, between the people on the server there is no way everyone can go without accident for that long. Then there are people who would get bored of the server, after having done everything in the game that there is to do. This is not a good option in my opinion.

 

Public dedicated servers (Timed) - These are run by either Klei or a third party, and have maps that rotate after a set number of days. With this, players will keep their inventories when moving to the new world and it'll be similar to going through a teleportato. The problem with this is fairly obvious. If you leave the server, you'll come back the next day on a new world with no base. The pros are that depending on the length of the world you could have people do what they want with it, but if people end up dead forever then they can just come back to the server whenever they feel like it. Still not recommended, but it's allright for one-off games if you really want to try out the multiplayer.

 

Public dedicated server (Worldly) - Run by Klei/third party, these servers would need to be very tanky. They'd be quite a bit more expensive to maintain, and wouldn't be capable of being run on a personal server. Here's why: These servers are world-based. When created, the server will be in world 1 just like in single player. There will never be an adventure portal in these, the generation would have to be turned off. Once a player activates the teleportato, or all players who have played on the server have permadeathed, the server deletes the world and makes a new one for players to play on. The real difference between this server is the others is that the only way worlds will be deleted is if all players who have played on that world have either died, or moved through the teleportato. New players entering the server will show up at the youngest world, so if the server has maps 3-6 loaded, then new players will be on map 6, and of course older players will only be able to bring an inventory of items through the teleportato, but as a team that's a lot of stuff. In addition, a new world will be created for new players if the day counter exceeds say 50 days. This will prevent players with absolutely nothing from having to deal with eight hounds and a Warf on their second day of playing. It also means that if a player dies, and really wants to keep playing on the server/is impatient about being revived, then they can just click an option to permadeath and move onto the latest world on the server. There will also have to be an afk system integrated into these servers. If a player does not come online for about a week or so real-world time, then they will automatically be moved to the latest world, that way ghost players won't keep world 1 loaded forever. In my opinion, this is the best option. Unfortunately it's also the most expensive option of the group, since it'd require servers with large amounts of memory to store all the worlds it would be creating/keeping.

 

On the bright side, this would also allow for large amounts of players (and I mean large, like up to 40-60 players on one server large) to play on the same public server without having to worry about people flooding the world and eating up all the resources, since as long as not everyone is a total moron and dies constantly, then the people on the server will be spread through multiple worlds and they can move from one to the next to meet new people and see new things. The people at the front of the rush will get to explore untouched worlds, while people at the back will see ruins of leftover science machines, farms, etc that other players have left behind. Both of which actually sounds really cool to me, since you could loot the grass someone left behind and try to guess whether or not people made it to the teleportato or died trying. Perhaps have some form of server-side high score board to see who can use the teleportato the most without dying? Or add something like slightly increased max health for adding items onto the teleportato, so that anyone who has the parts will go find it just to add the pieces. Of course, this brings the problem of people disconnecting with the parts. If this happens, the parts should fall out of a player's inventory at the place they logged out in, and if a chest becomes a shadow/locked chest they will 'spit' out the things. That way anyone on the server can find the things and add them, and noone can hide away a piece of the teleportato to prevent anyone from moving on. Gotta add the parts to the machine when you find it, or else you'll just drop it. And at that point anyone can find it who owns a divining rod, they just have to get near it. ;P

One last thing these would need is the option to 'skip' worlds using the teleportato. Say you're tired of exploring the ruins that people left behind and want to play on a fresh map with untouched resources, then when you use the teleportato there will be a GUI of some sort that allows you to move straight to the spawn of whichever maps are currently loaded in the server, assuming you're not on the newest map. If you want to explore people's ruins, just survive long enough to have people pass through the teleportato. :3

 

Also notethat all these servers would also have to remember the different caves maps for each world, so I definately wasn't exaggerating when I said that last one would need to be a tank of a server. At least...not that much.

 

Will Don't Starve Together support mods?

 

I'm hoping I haven't seen this addressed because it's an obvious yes, but confirmation would make me happy

That depends on the mods. A multiplayer game requires a complete rewrite of the code, which means that all the mods will be incompatable with the update. So none of the current mods will work. But modders are sneaky buggers, and it's not hard to open up the game files and change something about it. If Klei releases a client for people to run private servers, (and I see no reason why they wouldn't since they love us fans right? <3) then people can make mods that are capable of running on a multiplayer server. The main problem with this is that the steam workshop wouldn't work for the server owners, they'd have to manually install the mods onto the server before they run it, and from that point anyone with the mod can join the server. This does mean that modders have to make a version for the server client as well as for user clients, which is double the work. So I don't see mods like Wulfe being updated to support multiplayer, since some devs don't particularly care that much/don't have time/don't have the technical know-how to create a server version as well as a client one. But who knows? Klei made a simple(ish) tutorial on how to mod the single player game, maybe they'll impliment a system to easily mod the multiplayer one as well.

 

Now...

How we will down to the caves?

Separed worlds in the same time?

Time in caves and overworld should be synced. Different actual worlds using the teleportato would probably not have the same time, however, due to people sleeping/the server idling while noone is online.

 

This does bring up a point about logging in at night. The easiest way to deal with this is the same way that Klei dealt with leaving caves: Just add a magical beam of light over the player for about ten seconds. If you're gonna log off, get supplies for a torch or something first. It isn't really that hard, and you should have one on you anyways in case you stay out too long and have to fend off the night terror.

 

@Deceiven trust is going to be a massive issue unless Klei have something in mind. I see no solution to stop some random dude smashing everything up and leaving, but then again I ain't a game developer.

Has anyone played Borderlands 2? How does online co-op work on that? You can team up with a friend and play the whole campaign together. Loot that is dropped is obtained on a "who can get to it first" basis. That's all I know. Maybe someone can explain how that works and relate it to Don't Starve, in terms of dying, carrying on playing if your friend leaves etc...

Edit: just reading the comment here shows exactly how much has to be changed to turn Don't Starve into Multiplayer. I can only image the work and costs that went into this project. This is big yo! This game was 100% not meant for multiplayer yet Klei are delivering.

Borderlands 2 multiplayer works how you'd think it works in real life. It's four bounty hunters who are only working together to be strong enough to survive/finish the final boss. The loot is first come, first serve, and everyone works together to fight things. However, there is money in the game and money is shared between the party when collected. There are also duels in Borderlands. If someone picked up a legendary gun off a guy you just killed, challenge them and dual them. Whoever manages to kill the other person first wins, and their health gets reset after the fight. This...wouldn't work for Don't Starve. At all.

 

For the bosses I'd say that they should drop slightly more loot in multiplayer, that way everyone gets a share. Otherwise just leave normal monsters alone other than slight attack boosts/health boosts. Here's a little tip that I've learned from playing tons of tower defense games: 'It's always better to upgrade a tower to a stronger form, than to build a whole bunch of level one towers.' It's the difference between shooting someone with a grenade launcher or a hundred pea shooters. Having twenty hounds and a Warf would be just annoying and laggy, it's better to just buff their health and damage a bit to compensate for the more players.

 

@polygone Just read these. Awesome contribution mate.

Thanks. Aspiring game designer=I come up with a lot of balance ideas/additions to games all the time. ;D

 

Also helps I've run a Minecraft server multiple times and have a fondness for building arenas and pitting people against either each other or mobs within the game, and handing out loot to match whichever scenario I put them in. Gonna spawn a wave of fire creatures? Give one player a bucket of water and have them put out the rest of the team. Gonna spawn a boss? Give players higher tiered armour. Too op is boring, and too hard makes people ragequit. Then there's random games I come up with on my own that I like to figure out how to balance, but kinda getting off-topic so not gonna go into details in that. I think I'mma just go to bed, I started typing around midnight and it's almost six in the morning now. xD

[J20hawkz]

@polygone that's some serious dedication mate. Thank you so much for sharing some sound insight. Trying to balance studying and work right now. Once I'm back home I'll look into what you've mentioned, and probably ask you some further questions where applicable.

Take care.

[J20hawkz]

I think all players have to sleep for the night go for the day.

Go where?

[polygone]

@polygone that's some serious dedication mate. Thank you so much for sharing some sound insight. Trying to balance studying and work right now. Once I'm back home I'll look into what you've mentioned, and probably ask you some further questions where applicable.

Take care.

Ever come up with any questions mate? :3

[J20hawkz]

Ever come up with any questions mate? :3

It's a bit of read

Right now I'm trying to keep up with @TheKingofSquirrels replies and his cannibalism ideas.

Edit: Still at work right. Been really quiet. I'll have some questions by the end of the day, but there are really just to clarify some things.

[Madman666]

@polygone I like your way of thinking and your serious attitude - you worked out nearly every possible issue. The only thing I don't really like - whole conception is based on ability to invite several parties 3-4 head size into one world... Too many people to one world. I just don't see that as DS anymore. That'll probably be some massively multiplayer survival RPG. From complete solitude (besides pigmen of course) to overcrowded worlds and clan wars? That's a little too much. And I am sure the mob of whiners, that criticized adding multiplayer itself will launch a new wave of tears and curses.

 

But nevertheless I still think your idea is a good one, thought out. Nice job, taking your time to work it out and suggest.

[polygone]

@polygone I like your way of thinking and your serious attitude - you worked out nearly every possible issue. The only thing I don't really like - whole conception is based on ability to invite several parties 3-4 head size into one world... Too many people to one world. I just don't see that as DS anymore. That'll probably be some massively multiplayer survival RPG. From complete solitude (besides pigmen of course) to overcrowded worlds and clan wars? That's a little too much. And I am sure the mob of whiners, that criticized adding multiplayer itself will launch a new wave of tears and curses.

 

But nevertheless I still think your idea is a good one, thought out. Nice job, taking your time to work it out and suggest.

Assuming Klei releases a server client like how Minecraft did, really anything is possible due to mods being a thing. I would agree that it'd detract from the horror experience to have massive battles with players, but it'd also make for a really cool server assuming there was a giant map to explore. The current max map size wouldn't cut it, if you want multiple groups of four you'd need a massive map or there wouldn't be enough resources. And you'd have to somehow customize the biome layout so that people could hold monopolies over some things. Like this corner of the map has no stone, or this one has no spiders for silk. That'd force people to either all get along (which in my experience is nearly impossible with large crowds), or everyone will fight over resources, which is definately something DS-ish. But what I mean with my suggestions is that 4 is the max players that can happen, not that it's a common thing to happen. More likely I'd think groups of 2-3 would happen from friends working together, maybe 4 if some random group of strangers decided to set up a big base somewhere. There'd also be a lot of solo players running around trying to gather stuff and either just leave people alone or otherwise screw them over for loot. (also sorry if this lat bit has a typo or two I got something in my eye and i can't see well. >_<)

[polygone]

Hi copying this here from a life-giving amulet/resurrection idea thread thing that I posted on since it solves some problems with respawning that I couldn't figure out earlier. xP

~~~~~

There could be a system in play to where players who permadeath can respawn with half max stats as a shadow character, and then they have to work their way to finding some way to revive themselves like building a meat effigy, life-giving amulet, or using a touch stone. And after that they'll instantly be revived with their current inventory and their max stats returned to them. That way people who die can still play with their friends while waiting to be 'revived', and it'd fit into the Don't Starve universe lorewise since they're a shadow creature like what's summoned from the Codex Umbra, and mechanically because of the half max stats penalty making the game have a harsh penalty for death.

 

(plus it'd be funny/cool to kill someone and then have their 'ghost' come back to haunt you xD)

[Madman666]

Assuming Klei releases a server client like how Minecraft did, really anything is possible due to mods being a thing. I would agree that it'd detract from the horror experience to have massive battles with players, but it'd also make for a really cool server assuming there was a giant map to explore. The current max map size wouldn't cut it, if you want multiple groups of four you'd need a massive map or there wouldn't be enough resources. And you'd have to somehow customize the biome layout so that people could hold monopolies over some things. Like this corner of the map has no stone, or this one has no spiders for silk. That'd force people to either all get along (which in my experience is nearly impossible with large crowds), or everyone will fight over resources, which is definately something DS-ish. But what I mean with my suggestions is that 4 is the max players that can happen, not that it's a common thing to happen. More likely I'd think groups of 2-3 would happen from friends working together, maybe 4 if some random group of strangers decided to set up a big base somewhere. There'd also be a lot of solo players running around trying to gather stuff and either just leave people alone or otherwise screw them over for loot. (also sorry if this lat bit has a typo or two I got something in my eye and i can't see well. >_<)

 

Nah, don't sweat it - I am russian and so english isn't my native language, I am probably making far more mistakes

 

I admit it probably would be interesting to play on a huge map with several groups of players monopolizing resources, traidng or fighting over them, but for this to work maps will have to be... well, huge, like several times larger than current "huge" maps. And as I said, that would be something more like a massively multiplayer RPG. It'll have a unique atmosphere, but that won't be DS I think. Dealing with monsters and starvation will become secondary problems, primary one will be platyer relations (cooperation will easily solve starvation\insanity problems and the worst problem will be griefing, fighting, trolls and etc.). But well, maybe its not so bad to have 2 different games in one), especially if they are as Klei said nearly independent of each other. And you are right - it all depends on Klei's decision. And somehow I don't think they are preapred to waste huge money on their own big servers for this purpose. Maybe I am wrong though. We'll just have to wait and see)

[J20hawkz]

About death.

If a player dies all party members have their sanity reduced considerably. It makes sense. A dead player can then leave behind two things, a Skull and a Stone R.I.P Slab.

The player has a choice, to either revive his "friend" by burying the skull. Or hammer his R.I.P slab for stone. You lose further sanity for destroying the slab, or gain sanity back for reviving him/her.

If you chose to destroy the R.I.P Slab, your friend can't be brought back and is considered as permadeath.

[Madman666]

Hi copying this here from a life-giving amulet/resurrection idea thread thing that I posted on since it solves some problems with respawning that I couldn't figure out earlier. xP

~~~~~

There could be a system in play to where players who permadeath can respawn with half max stats as a shadow character, and then they have to work their way to finding some way to revive themselves like building a meat effigy, life-giving amulet, or using a touch stone. And after that they'll instantly be revived with their current inventory and their max stats returned to them. That way people who die can still play with their friends while waiting to be 'revived', and it'd fit into the Don't Starve universe lorewise since they're a shadow creature like what's summoned from the Codex Umbra, and mechanically because of the half max stats penalty making the game have a harsh penalty for death.

 

(plus it'd be funny/cool to kill someone and then have their 'ghost' come back to haunt you xD)

 

Interesting idea) I have some questions though - can those shadows be attacked by monsters or people? If they can - what happens to those who die in "shadow" state? And will there time limit before shadow "expires"? (To make player more dedicated to ressurecting himself)

[polygone]

I really don't see Klei keeping hosting servers to themselves. They've been really appreciative/responsive to their fans as far as suggestions/allowing community stuff like mods to happen. They might keep the server stuff to themselves for the sake of beta though, that seems logical. But other than that...

 

About death.

If a player dies all party members have their sanity reduced considerably. It makes sense. A dead player can then leave behind two things, a Skull and a Stone R.I.P Slab.

The player has a choice, to either revive his "friend" by burying the skull. Or hammer his R.I.P slab for stone. You lose further sanity for destroying the slab, or gain sanity back for reviving him/her.

If you chose to destroy the R.I.P Slab, your friend can't be brought back and is considered as permadeath.

That wouldn't work because what if you're out resource gathering alone and some other player jumps you and kills you. They're your enemy so they wouldn't want to revive you, they'd just smash your grave and run, leaving you without the ability to respawn.

 

Interesting idea) I have some questions though - can those shadows be attacked by monsters or people? If they can - what happens to those who die in "shadow" state? And will there time limit before shadow "expires"? (To make player more dedicated to ressurecting himself)

They'd be attacked by monsters the same way a normal player would. Essentially the only difference is that graphically you'll appear as a shadowy figure and your max stats would be halved. Otherwise it's gameplay as normal. Also I'd be pretty dedicated to ressurrecting myself if I had half my max sanity/health/hunger.

 

e/ If you die as a shadow I suppose you'd just drop your stuff and respawn as a fresh shadow. Maybe have a constant sanity drain as shadows as well if you still think it's a bit too generous to have half your stuff, but I hardly think that'd be necessary.

 

e// As a shadow of Wes, these would be your stats: 75 max sanity, 57 max hunger and health.

As Wilson it would be 100 max sanity and 75 max hunger/health.

As Wolfgang it'd be 100 max sanity, 75-150 max health, and 150 max hunger.

Wes is lowest stat char, Wolfgang is highest, and Wilson is average.

[Madman666]

e/ If you die as a shadow I suppose you'd just drop your stuff and respawn as a fresh shadow. Maybe have a constant sanity drain as shadows as well if you still think it's a bit too generous to have half your stuff, but I hardly think that'd be necessary.

 

So no permadeath at all? Of course halving all stats is harsh, but Maxwell has 75 hp and Wolfgang or WX - 300-400... That won't be fair at all. I mean I can wack stuff on the head even with 50 max health as long as I have a Spear and Log Suit. "Shadows" idea is pretty good, but still a little bit raw. And I don't really like to have no permadeath at all. That woud be taking all the punishment from the game completely and an another step away from original DS.

[J20hawkz]

@polygone

I added to the idea.

As permadeath in Don't Starve has a big meaning to all of us, dying in Don't Starve Together needs to have that same impact on us as well. So I want to propose an idea.

× If a player dies, all party members have their sanity reduced considerably.

× A dead player can leave behind two things, a Skull and a Stone R.I.P Slab.

× All alive player have a choice, to either revive their "friend" by burying the skull in an open grave, or hammer his R.I.P slab for stone.

× You lose further sanity for destroying the slab, or gain sanity back for reviving him/her.

× If you choose to destroy the R.I.P Slab, the Skull vanishes. Meaning instant permadeath.

This suggestion doesn't necessarily need to include these two things. What I want is to have a choice. Like in Bioshock you have to make that ultimate choice to either Save or Harvest a Little Sister.

I get what you're saying, but that's a choice you need to make. Either lower your sanity further or increase it by reviving. I guess there needs to be a time limit to make that choice, so players don't keep the skull for later use. As soon as you pick the skull up it starts to degrade, quickly.

[Madman666]

× A dead player can leave behind two things, a Skull and a Stone R.I.P Slab.

× All alive player have a choice, to either revive their "friend" by burying the skull in an open grave, or hammer his R.I.P slab for stone.

× You lose further sanity for destroying the slab, or gain sanity back for reviving him/her.

× If you choose to destroy the R.I.P Slab, the Skull vanishes. Meaning instant permadeath.

This suggestion doesn't necessarily need to include these two things. What I want is to have a choice. Like in Bioshock you have to make that ultimate choice to either Save or Harvest a Little Sister.

I get what you're saying, but that's a choice you need to make. Either lower your sanity further or increase it by reviving. I guess there needs to be a time limit to make that choice, so players don't keep the skull for later use. As soon as you pick the skull up it starts to degrade, quickly.

 

Not bad, but I don't really like being fully dependent on another person's decision without even a little ability to do something about it...

[J20hawkz]

Not bad, but I don't really like being fully dependent on another person's decision without even a little ability to do something about it...

How do you mean?

[polygone]

@polygone

I added to the idea.

As permadeath in Don't Starve has a big meaning to all of us, dying in Don't Starve Together needs to have that same impact on us as well. So I want to propose an idea.

× If a player dies, all party members have their sanity reduced considerably.

× A dead player can leave behind two things, a Skull and a Stone R.I.P Slab.

× All alive player have a choice, to either revive their "friend" by burying the skull in an open grave, or hammer his R.I.P slab for stone.

× You lose further sanity for destroying the slab, or gain sanity back for reviving him/her.

× If you choose to destroy the R.I.P Slab, the Skull vanishes. Meaning instant permadeath.

This suggestion doesn't necessarily need to include these two things. What I want is to have a choice. Like in Bioshock you have to make that ultimate choice to either Save or Harvest a Little Sister.

I get what you're saying, but that's a choice you need to make. Either lower your sanity further or increase it by reviving. I guess there needs to be a time limit to make that choice, so players don't keep the skull for later use. As soon as you pick the skull up it starts to degrade, quickly.

That's not the problem though. The problem is that in PvP your friends won't be the ones making the decision whether to bury you or screw you over, it'd be the person who killed you. And they did just kill you, and probably took your stuff, they probably won't revive you. In fact if they aren't afraid of insanity they might even take the slab just so you won't respawn and get revenge, meaning you can't respawn to play with your group of friends.

[Madman666]

How do you mean?

 

Well, I really like polygone's idea of "shadow characters". Just make it so that if you die 2-3 times as shadow - you're out, And since all you have to do is make something to revive yourself - people can participate in this too - either help you building a revival item or trying to kill you as shadow to prevent resurrection.

 

And respawning as shade occurs on the next day, until that you can wander as invisible spirit, allowing you to get away from your nemesis, thus preventing him from just killing your 3 times right on the spot.

[polygone]

Maybe instead of respawning with half health you actually respawn as a completely different 'character'. You'd basically be a Wilson without a beard, and have low starting stats. Just a generic shadow player. And when you revive you become whichever character you were when you last died. That would solve the higher strength characters having less of a punishment for death. Also I do like the idea of dying as a shadow multiple times leads to permadeath, since you did at least have a chance to revive yourself.

 

(Also @J20hawkz, if it were left up to choice of my teammates/friends, I'd me more inclined to allow someone else to decide whether or not I revive. But in the case something drops where I die that's needed to revive, it could lead some stranger deciding my fate which I don't think will be nice.)