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 Friday at 01:41 PM 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.

[Makeshift]

30 day months. If I'm not completely misunderstanding the scaling. 

30 day months make one month take 1 day IRL to pass, and I think the spoilage/growing/etc are scaled accordingly? I can say I plant grains one day, and coming back the same time next day they're just barely finishing growth. The extra food you'd need to survive 30 day months doesn't actually come into play, because you won't be playing 24/7, so it kind of evens out.

As for Winter... Server's still running with people who are able/willing to harsh it out. If Winter is too extreme for your level of prep, you can just not log in and let time pass harmlessly. If you have a good community, they'll also help you out with food and supplies where they're able. So something like your own crops being dead doesn't hit as hard when you've got a (nice) community working on it while you're not there.

[LadyWYT]

15 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

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?

I think if it's just a small friends group, you should be fine, even if the server is running 24/7. You can set the server time so that it pauses if no one is online, which definitely helps with the game pacing. Likewise, if you're all working together rather than running off to build independent bases, it's easier to manage everything since those who play more often can make sure supplies are stocked and whatnot for those who can't play as often. However, if everyone is operating independently or there are mods like XSkills installed that give a significant power boost to those that play more often, then it gets a little harder to keep things balanced as players who don't play as often will fall behind.

My friend and I play cooperatively, and it's always worked for us. Time doesn't pass if neither of us is online, and we both play around the same general times as well. In the event that only one of us is online though, then it's understood that whoever is online is responsible for keeping supplies stocked and making sure the base doesn't burn down, so to speak.

As for bigger servers types that you've mentioned...I have no idea. It depends heavily on the server and the goals of the community. I think as a general rule, the months might be set to maximum length and food spoilage rate turned way down in order to help make sure that players don't have everything rot just because they couldn't play for a day or two. I think a lot of players may also tend to settle in warmer regions where they can leave crops in the fields without worrying about them freezing. Depending on the server, they may also have a few mods to help manage such issues as well; I think there's at least a mod or two that's supposed to stop food in the player's inventory from spoiling if they are offline.

In any case, I would also say that at least part of the responsibility lies on the player as well, in that if they're going to play on a busy server, they need to make sure they can log in consistently or otherwise have a friend group to work with in the event they're a more infrequent player.

[Foe Hammer]

On 4/24/2026 at 9:09 AM, Rainbow Fresh said:

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?

Funny enough, I was planning to ask more or less the same question to get some ideas. In the future I plan to start a server with a bunch of friends and essentially build civilizations, and I was not sure, and still am not 100% sure, about how to handle time since the idea is different factions would be working in different areas.

So far the best I can think of is to have it online only during certain times/days, like weekends and such. I have contemplated setting the time scale to 30 day months, and things from what I have heard scale to match, but I am not 100% sure how well that will work out. I also know there are mods that make it so time only progresses if there are a certain number of people online, as well as the mod that stops food spoilage when offline.

I think something that may help you is to talk with those who are involved/interested in playing, and seeing if everyone comes to a consensus on how to handle it. I know I plan to have a few talks with people before I start up my next server to get things laid out.

I am hoping people more experienced with multiplayer servers will be able to shed some new insights.

On 4/24/2026 at 9:09 AM, Rainbow Fresh said:

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)...

As far as I am aware, time stops for unloaded chunks, so crops do not grow and so on. I know in game I have revisited places after winter came and water started to freeze and snow began to accumulate.

[Demoncyborg]

i've played on 24/7 servers like this and it's an absolute blast if you have a lot of free time. Most servers mess with the timescale somewhat, so i've always run longer months.

what ends up happening is you get an uncanny timing for how in game time passes IRL. it'd be around ~20 days every time I went to bed IRL, perfect time for a goat to gestate and give birth right around the week i log back in on. Having a good cellar and cooking and preserving routine became completely necessary to keep things going smoothly. it's a skill you learn as you go, for sure. 

the amount of nights i stayed up extra late just because the trees were ripening in a few in game days and i didn't wanna miss it.. you can miss out on a lot of things, and log in with your food all rotted yeah. But it's multiplayer, so someone else you play with has been actively farming, or keeping food stores going, ect. or like me, take on that excitingly stressful job.

you really will learn more quirks of the game like that- like how mature crops can stay there for a long, looong time if you're not ready to preserve or store them yet.

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, Foe Hammer said:

As far as I am aware, time stops for unloaded chunks, so crops do not grow and so on. I know in game I have revisited places after winter came and water started to freeze and snow began to accumulate.

Kind of, but not really. To my knowledge the way it works is that nothing happens while the chunks are unloaded, but as soon as the player enters them the game does a "time check" to see what should have taken place in the interim and updates everything accordingly. So you can plant crops, leave home for a while, and come back to a harvest, or frozen crops in the event it got too cold, etc.

Ice is bit finicky on how it works though. The game doesn't update ice very quickly, so you can revisit a chunk in winter and it'll take a while for the ice to freeze, or revisit a chunk in summer and the ice there will take a while to melt. Snow, on the other hand, updates fairly fast, so most chunks should be appropriately snowy or not-snowy when the player visits them.

[Foe Hammer]

23 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Kind of, but not really. To my knowledge the way it works is that nothing happens while the chunks are unloaded, but as soon as the player enters them the game does a "time check" to see what should have taken place in the interim and updates everything accordingly. So you can plant crops, leave home for a while, and come back to a harvest, or frozen crops in the event it got too cold, etc.

Ice is bit finicky on how it works though. The game doesn't update ice very quickly, so you can revisit a chunk in winter and it'll take a while for the ice to freeze, or revisit a chunk in summer and the ice there will take a while to melt. Snow, on the other hand, updates fairly fast, so most chunks should be appropriately snowy or not-snowy when the player visits them.

Ahhh gotcha, that is a pretty good compromise. Happy to be wrong on that front