Multiplayer sleeping?

[hardy_conrad]

As near as I can determine sleeping is entirely absent in multiplayer currently because it just doesn't work for obvious reasons. You can't speed up time when there are other players online. So the whole sleep deprivation thing is simply deactivated entirely. But, I had a thought...

In a multiplayer server time can continue when you're offline, even if there aren't other players online. So how about have sleep happen when a player is offline, but make them invisible to zombies so they don't sign in and discover they're dead? Could something like that work?

Also in the past whenever I tried sleeping in multiplayer, with time not speeded up of course, my body temperature went totally nuts. It would instantly rocket up to boiling or zip down to sub zero. Not sure what the deal is with that, but if it's something universal I guess the entire thing is moot.

[Armagenesis]

So basically whenever you go offline you are considered sleeping? That's going to be exploited to oblivion by a lot of players. And even if it's not, your sleep schedule will be going out of whack since you can return to the game while it's in the middle of the night and what have you.

[hardy_conrad]

Hmm, it definitely has drawbacks. I don't think the exploit would be too bad however. But short of that I don't really see any other way to have sleep in multiplayer.

[Armagenesis]

Unfortunately it's going to be difficult to implement sleeping especially with exhaustion involved. Everyone will have their own sleeping schedule after all.

I just hope with the arrival of NPCs, there's a way to work around this. Maybe something like having your character sleep in real time, being treated like an NPC, then you can seamlessly swap out with a different character you can play with in the server.

[Animalman]

Because of sleep requires quite a few hours multiplayer sleep doesn’t work. So you are fairly OP instead. Increases the value of low thirst and light eater, as it’s those two the main multiplayer challenge. Aside injury and exhaustion.

They could do a perk system. Where sleep is like a bit of a grind. But your character has a little perk and a track of his sleep. Last sleep 36 hours ago. Last slept 16 hours ago. And you get a little reduction to your exhaustion or something. Or a bit of a pep in your activity performance speed. Like washing, and general inventory task. Maybe the incentive is you did it for a 16 hour boost. So someone can do it in prep for a loot run, or while waiting for friends

I think as standard for day length in multiplayer is 2 hour day lengths, sleeping half a day is huge time sink. Lots of inactivity. So you’d have to balance it for a Power nap strategy. Possible you actually degrade users vision like in main game, for when no nap of any sort was taken after 24 or 48 in game hours.

[hardy_conrad]

Those are both interesting ideas. It shows that while implementing sleep in multiplayer is tricky it isn't necessarily impossible.

[Swiggy]

I don't see the issue with needing sleep in MP. It seems fine. When everyone sleeps together, time progresses. If you're sleeping on your own, time passes at a normal rate. I don't see it being any different than sitting there reading a book, or exercising. Besides, it gives me a nice little break to smoke or grab a drink.

[hardy_conrad]

Yeah if I'm somewhere safe I'm happy to go away from keyboard and do other stuff. As it is now however there seems to be some kind of glitch with body temperature, which even if it doesn't outright kill you from extreme cold and / or heat it'll give you a brutal cold.