A question about multiplayer

[Rainbow Fresh]

I know it says question in the title and is still not in the "Questions" forum but that is because I am more asking for opinions than actual right answers to a question about the game. No, my question is on an abstract level - how is public multiplayer supposed to work?

Granted, this question is coming from Mr. "Only played Singleplayer" so if the answer is something very obvious that was thought of in the game's development already I'll excuse myself. But the story is that this Mr. Singleplayer has some friends who are considering to host a small little community server for us (and some interested others) to play together on. Community server meaning it's not the typical "Hey, anyone got time? I'mma boot the server then" but your average 24/7 dedicated server. And that got me thinking. How is that supposed to work on an increasing scale?

If you got a friend, maybe two, to play with and some decency/coordination in when to play even on a 24/7 server (considering time is stopped when nobody is connected afaik) there is no issue. You usually all play together at the same time. Even with more friends and some less "all together or not at all" playing rules, as long as you stick together as one in-game community everything is fine; whoever wasn't on for a bit gets the resources (food) prepared by the ones that were. But all of this falls apart when thinking about a big server with split communites, where not everyone lives/works together. Time is a very, very crucial resource in Vintage Story. Crops grow - and die, food rots. Seasons change making the acquisition for more food potentially harder to "impossible". So if a server is on 24/7 and people mostly always play somewhere on it (global timezones baby), even just having to go to bed for the day and getting a comfortable 8h of snooze before the next gaming session can mean that months have passed in-game. Now you come back and your less preserved food have rotted. Nobody tended to your crops so they dipped past their ripe stage and into damaging weather, reducing the harvest. And this potentially every day. How is one supposed to play like that?

And while this is under the half-knowing assumption that most things in-game process their time even when unloaded in-between, even if that wasn't the case and a logged out player's area was unloaded and hence untouched (a very exploitable mechanic), unless you building your base 200k blocks away from other players surely one will walk into simulation distance every now and then - with more or less friendly intentions.

[Broccoli Clock]

20 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

How is one supposed to play like that?

I hate to answer a question with a question, but how else would you expect a multiplayer server to work? Everyone agreeing to log out when you do, so the server can be stopped and your crops don't grow. I am being a bit facetious, I know, but the fact the world "keeps turning" after you left is pretty much a selling point of mutilplayer. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

7 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I hate to answer a question with a question, but how else would you expect a multiplayer server to work? Everyone agreeing to log out when you do, so the server can be stopped and your crops don't grow. I am being a bit facetious, I know, but the fact the world "keeps turning" after you left is pretty much a selling point of mutilplayer. 

And that is exactly why I am opening discussion to ask for opinions. It makes absolute logical sense that the world keeps turning when you log out. In the same vein, however, if sticking with what makes "logical sense", it doesn't make sense that you just blip out of existence for a certain amount of time. On the one hand I wouldn't want to force everyone to adjust to my playtime schedule. On the other hand, constantly being pressurend into playing as much as possible when others do aswell (which would be hard across global timezones) sounds like no long term fun time. My conclusion would be that Vintage Story is simply no Multiplayer Game (organized Coop at best). But considering there seems to be 24/7 dedicated public/official? servers people seem to disagree. That's what I'm curios about.

Edited 9 hours ago by Rainbow Fresh
I can type I swear

[Broccoli Clock]

52 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

And that is exactly why I am opening discussion to ask for opinions. It makes absolute logical sense that the world keeps turning when you log out. In the same vein, however, if sticking with what makes "logical sense", it doesn't make sense that you just blip out of existence for a certain amount of time. On the one hand I wouldn't want to force everyone to adjust to my playtime schedule. On the other hand, constantly being pressurend into playing as much as possible when others do aswell (which would be hard across global timezones) sounds like no long term fun time. My conclusion would be that Vintage Story is simply no Multiplayer Game (organized Coop at best). But considering there seems to be 24/7 dedicated public/official? servers people seem to disagree. That's what I'm curios about.

Reading that, it sounds like you should focus on co-op with your friend. That way you can have a shared world, but have control over when that world "exists". 

If you look at, just for example, the AAA free to play MMORPG games, they operate in exactly the same way as VS. The server is persistent, if you leave, the world continues. Same for Minecraft too, for that matter. Multiplayer servers have their pros, but cons as well, and you have identified the cons pretty succinctly. The problem is there are no solutions to those problems, if there were they would have been implemented already.

For me, and this is subjective, but I look upon people playing multiplayer server as those looking for a vibe, interactions, and emergent gameplay. It's not really about building a new world (although, obviously that happens). It's the frisson created between Internet randoms that is the push for MP in this sort of game.