Vintage Story Wasn't Designed With Multiplayer At It's Core

[Mindframe]

I'm sad to post this honestly because this game could have been so much more than what it is. Why don't the classes give any specializations? As it stands, none of them are really attractive to pick over commoner. Classes don't limit you enough or specialize you enough for it to make sense to "be" one of them in a multiplayer setting. Everyone can farm, everyone can potter, everyone can smith, etc etc etc. 

Trading between settlements - why would I do this when I can just "do everything"? 

Food Spoilage! - Most players cannot login every single day ( jobs, family, kids, life). You, therefore, cannot prepare for winter and spend most of your multiplayer time "just gathering food" so you can play the game if you are gone for a few days. 

I hope the devs will change how the game is.

[l33tmaan]

I just play with my friend a couple times a week and the multiplayer works great. You should try doing that instead of playing on a 24/7 server.

[Streetwind]

If you configure the server correctly (for example using 30 days per month and tuning the spoilage modifier to account for it) then you will have fewer issues.

And as l33tman said, consider playing on a server that matches your schedule, together with other people with similar schedules and timezones. The server stops progressing time when nobody is on it, meaning that if everyone only logs on in the evenings, then the server remains paused for the majority of the day, and nothing spoils. If you hop onto a server that has players from around the world, including adolescents who have time almost around the clock, then the server will never pause because someone is always online.

18 hours ago, Mindframe said:

Classes don't limit you enough or specialize you enough for it to make sense to "be" one of them in a multiplayer setting. Everyone can farm, everyone can potter, everyone can smith, etc etc etc.

This gets suggested every now and then, and every time it is suggested, it is still a terrible idea that whoever is suggesting it has not thought through all the way.

The game needs to be able to support gameplay with an arbitrary number of people. It must be playable alone, with two people, with three people, and so on, in any combination of concurrency.

VS currently has six classes. Let's limit them so that there are six major things that are class specific. Only the Commoner can farm and breed animals, only the Blackguard can smith weapons and armor parts, only the Tailor can make anything that's worn including armor and backpacks, and so on. Congratulations, you have now made the game impossible to play with less than six players. You could make a special singleplayer class that can do it all, but that doesn't solve the problem. A pair of friends who want to play together cannot, unless they all pick the singleplayer class that can do it all. Neither can three, or four, or five people. And what if you have seven? Every role is already taken, and no matter which class you choose, your one special thing won't be special anymore. Guess what the solution to this problem is? Yes: the solution is everyone picking the singleplayer class that can do it all. Which is the model we currently have.

Also, imagine that you have a busy life, and you can only play every couple of days in the evenings. You need to set time aside specifically for the game, sacrificing other things you could be doing in that time. You log on, having a precious three hours that you want to make use of, and a plan what to do with them. Within ten minutes of gameplay, you figure out that you really need something from another player, without which you pretty much cannot do what you planned to do today. Unfortunately, that player isn't online right now. He was here yesterday, he was here earlier today, and he'll be there tomorrow - but you missed him, because of your busy schedule. Also, your class is blocked from doing the thing yourself. Congratulations, your entire plan for the evening just went up in flames, and your precious three hours will be wasted. Guess what the solution to this problem is? Yes: the solution is everyone picking the singleplayer class that can do it all. Which is the model we currently have.

Perhaps the developers actually do have a little bit of an idea what they're doing?

Now, I'm not saying that there are no solutions to this. Though rare, there are games that successfully implement a personal specialization model in an open world freeform survival game. Eco is such a game, for example. But if you wanted to use that as an example, you'd also have to understand how drastically different Eco is from Vintage Story. In Eco, there are no classes; specializations are built dynamically, through an experience-grinding and levelup system. Meanwhile, VS is built from the ground up with the idea of player progression coming in the form of player knowledge, skill, and access to resources. In Eco, the worlds are tiny, so that you can reach any point of the world on foot in fewer than five minutes, enabling you to easily visit any player's homestead at the drop of a hat, and there is no story or exploration whatsoever. Meanwhile in VS, the worlds are gigantic, and exploration and background lore are a key game design pillar. In Eco, there is no combat, neither PvE nor PvP; there is only one single danger, and that is the looming meteor impact 30 days after world start, the avoidance of which is the goal of the game; and after the destruction of the meteor, there is no further goal or challenge or reason to keep playing. Meanwhile, VS seeks to make you fight for survival on a daily basis, both against the environment and potentially other hostile players (if that's your thing). It does this without a time-limited goal that arbitrarily decides whether a world is still worth playing in or not. In Eco, the whole game is set up to be a collaborative effort against that one single final goal, where every single player's base is basically a shop front that offers their specialized goods for sale while they are offline, which while useful also leads to a lot of multiplayer gameplay devolving to interacting with store fronts rather than interacting with other players. Meanwhile, VS seeks to immerse you in a world where you, or you and your friends, feel like you are really there. Where you are presented with a variety of possible approaches to a variety of different problems and can set your own goals and game plan without a time limit.

Your takeaway here should be that what you really want to see - an engaging multiplayer experience with meaningful personal specialization - takes far, far more of a change than just limiting what classes can do. It takes so much of a change that, potentially, the changed game would no longer be the Vintage Story you are currently enjoying. So this is a very, very difficult topic. Considering that the game isn't even feature-complete for singleplayer yet, there are probably other things higher up on the dev team's priority list.

[Rhyagelle]

Yes it was, and it functions just fine and is very fun. I think it's important we don't confuse multiplayer in Vintage Story with needing to have MMORPG like restriction mechanics. 

[Davis]

On 2/20/2023 at 10:43 AM, Mindframe said:

I'm sad to post this honestly because this game could have been so much more than what it is. Why don't the classes give any specializations? As it stands, none of them are really attractive to pick over commoner. Classes don't limit you enough or specialize you enough for it to make sense to "be" one of them in a multiplayer setting. Everyone can farm, everyone can potter, everyone can smith, etc etc etc. 

Trading between settlements - why would I do this when I can just "do everything"? 

Food Spoilage! - Most players cannot login every single day ( jobs, family, kids, life). You, therefore, cannot prepare for winter and spend most of your multiplayer time "just gathering food" so you can play the game if you are gone for a few days. 

I hope the devs will change how the game is.

I hear you on these things, but as Streetwind has mentioned, the game is not designed for massive multiplayer communities and therefore a lot of suggestions for multiplayer aren't applicable or needed for the core game. 

I think if you're patient, you'll see a large group of players banding together with modders to make this game a truly great MMO experience. There will be heavy modding involved, but in the end, Tyron has designed the game with modders in mind so it should be completely possible for us to shape the game to better fit an large scale MP experience. 

[ATHARRA]

I am currently working on a TRUE multiplayer client/server project,as i also want a MMO server experiance.

i have asked for Tyron's approval, and am currently waiting on that before fully committing to the project.

I need his approval because i don't want to take on a MASSIVE! project without some official support.

 

[ATHARRA]

On 3/14/2023 at 10:27 AM, ATHARRA said:

I am currently working on a TRUE multiplayer client/server project,as i also want a MMO server experiance.

i have asked for Tyron's approval, and am currently waiting on that before fully committing to the project.

I need his approval because i don't want to take on a MASSIVE! project without some official support.

 

Well i got the approval lets see what happens lol wish me luck!

[Thomas J]

On 3/16/2023 at 12:06 PM, ATHARRA said:

Well i got the approval lets see what happens lol wish me luck!

Good luck! In relation to your talk of "MMO server experience", the community as it stands seems to prefer gated communities of lightly-modded vanilla above all, which frankly is a testament to the quality of the core gameplay loop

Spoiler

(up until you hit steel, then most people get bored and leave unless they're buildaholics)

and to the type of player who particularly enjoys it. It's interesting that minigame and gamemode servers have, thus far, not managed to gain a foothold.

Spoiler

(some would say a small playerbase prevents it, but minigame servers can be small AND enjoyable if the minigame itself meets the playerbase's tastes)

Civilization servers of various types have lived and died,

Spoiler

(I have an unfortunate passion for some types of civ versus civ gameplay myself, but "THE" civ server is too grindy for my taste)

as have servers with interesting (though not always fun) gimmicks or server settings, but I have never in all my days seen a minigame server. I probably just missed its coming and going, if it ever came and went at all. I've also never seen hide nor hair of adventure maps, let alone servers that host them on rotation. If I'm ignorant on any of these servers, or if you or anyone else knows an interesting type of server that strays from good 'ol vanilla, I'd be very curious to hear about it.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Thomas J