Quick question about the co-op

[Shien]

I just started playing the game, I bought it to play with a buddy and we started playing in a server he hosted, everything was fine. However, after he logged off, I wanted to do some solo play with my character (I dislike backwards progression in levels and wanted to keep the one I leveled in co-op). When I logged into the world, I had no house to put down and the quest had been progressed to the same point as the co-op server. Is this intended or is this a bug I can fix somehow?

[Midnyte Rabbit]

When a player hosts, all other players affect their world physically. This means you're building a farm on their world. If they log off, meaning they are no longer hosting, that world logs off with them. If they enter single player, all that stuff is still there, because it's saved to that character's world.

Conversely, your character's world (since you were not the host) is going to be untouched, like started from the beginning, with some exceptions:
Your character has all the story progress (and quests) they have already done, You have whatever was in your inventory when you logged off. Your interactions with npcs are recorded to your character as well. If you've unlocked some form of fast travel, that persists for you. So, you could be far along in the story, perhaps used to traveling all over the world, but your farm is going to be waiting for you to place your house, and the date is going to be the beginning of Spring, year 1.

You could start doing stuff on your world, like farming and whatnot. If you host and your friend joins, they will see your world. If you later join and your friend hosts, it will be there world again (the one you were working together in originally).

Hopefully this explains what's happened. As far as I can tell, this was intended by the developer.

[Shien]

Originally posted by Midnyte Rabbit:

When a player hosts, all other players affect their world physically. This means you're building a farm on their world. If they log off, meaning they are no longer hosting, that world logs off with them. If they enter single player, all that stuff is still there, because it's saved to that character's world.

Conversely, your character's world (since you were not the host) is going to be untouched, like started from the beginning, with some exceptions:
Your character has all the story progress (and quests) they have already done, You have whatever was in your inventory when you logged off. Your interactions with npcs are recorded to your character as well. If you've unlocked some form of fast travel, that persists for you. So, you could be far along in the story, perhaps used to traveling all over the world, but your farm is going to be waiting for you to place your house, and the date is going to be the beginning of Spring, year 1.

You could start doing stuff on your world, like farming and whatnot. If you host and your friend joins, they will see your world. If you later join and your friend hosts, it will be there world again (the one you were working together in originally).

Hopefully this explains what's happened. As far as I can tell, this was intended by the developer.

This was intended? What? This is dumb AF, why would anyone make the co-op work like that?

[Bishamonten]

Honestly from a technical stand point this is second best option.

Sun Haven isn't dedicated servers. You might think dedicated servers are easy to make, but in reality they aren't realistic for small development teams.

Client hosting is 90% easier to work through, its just a matter of what degree is shared.

Only better option the Sun Haven dev's could have done was to do what Terraria does, and just make the characters and world separate, and chosen at start up.

How exactly is the game going to determine who's farm to load when and reconcile what differences between two people playing game independently? If someone isn't online and their PC is off, how exactly are you suppose to update their world save? Without using dedicated servers which are a HUGE undertaking.

Not even Stardew Valley, thats made millions, has dedicated servers (without mods).

[Shien]

You don't need dedicated servers for the quest progress to be character specific or world specific instead of shared with everyone that plays in your server.

In terraria, I can play co-op get the best summoner gear there is in co-op. Then, decide I want to run my own world too and just start a new world from scratch. It ain't hard. Also, as an aside. Dedicated servers aren't hard, that's a myth. It is, however, irrelevant to what I am saying so I wont argue the point further cause it really is irrelevant.

They should just make it so the quest progress in world based and not character based. That basically solver everything. I have to re-level the same character again simply because the devs couldn't be asked to make it better?

I honestly don't know if I'm being honest, it's just bizarre and honestly, if my friends didn't really want to play this specific game (cause stardew valley is too complex for them apparently?) then I would have given it a negative review and refunded the game already. This design is completely unacceptable in my opinion

[Midnyte Rabbit]

I can't tell if I just didn't explain it well, or if there's other confusion at foot here.

Just like Terraria, you can join your friend, get the best gear, and level your character (I forget there are levels in this game), and progress the story. All of that stuff sticks with you as it's tied to your character. Then if you decide to start your own world, I.E. start single player, that's exactly what you get: a brand new world to play in, your levels gear and progress are still there. The only thing that isn't there is the farm, because you are on your farm now, and not your friend's farm. You can always go back to your friend's farm by joining their game later, or your friend can visit your farm by joining your game.

The whole server debacle, as a workaround, could be solved with the game's present technology by creating a second instance of the game, with a virtual player that does nothing except auto sleep at 10pm, and doesn't exit the end-of-day status report unless another player is online. The virtual player would have to be created by the developers, I think;, but this is getting off-topic.

...I am sorry if I didn't explain it well the first time. The last sentence in your third paragraph was making it difficult for me to understand your argument.

[Skittles]

Originally posted by Shien:

I just started playing the game, I bought it to play with a buddy and we started playing in a server he hosted, everything was fine. However, after he logged off, I wanted to do some solo play with my character (I dislike backwards progression in levels and wanted to keep the one I leveled in co-op). When I logged into the world, I had no house to put down and the quest had been progressed to the same point as the co-op server. Is this intended or is this a bug I can fix somehow?

i was playing with a buddy on his world [we both started together on it with new characters] and i noticed that when i tryed to play on my own world i had the same issue with being able to do that said quest for the house and generally the beginning, i believe its because its all the normal tutorial stuff from creating a new character, but i believe the tutorial mainly applies to the singleplayer worlds? like your own world you create, so what i did was after my buddy re-opened his world, i went over there and earned enough money to get a 25k house from the town hall and then placed it over in my own world, its dumb and i know it is, but now from the experience, i know to create a complete new character on my very own world, and finish the very basic quests until i can leave the farm, then i jump on over to a friends world :)

i agree, its dumb and i do hope there is some kind of change that tells you that you must create a new character on a single player world or something before being able to play with friends, some kind of warning or something idk xD

[Shien]

Originally posted by Midnyte Rabbit:

I can't tell if I just didn't explain it well, or if there's other confusion at foot here.

Just like Terraria, you can join your friend, get the best gear, and level your character (I forget there are levels in this game), and progress the story. All of that stuff sticks with you as it's tied to your character. Then if you decide to start your own world, I.E. start single player, that's exactly what you get: a brand new world to play in, your levels gear and progress are still there. The only thing that isn't there is the farm, because you are on your farm now, and not your friend's farm. You can always go back to your friend's farm by joining their game later, or your friend can visit your farm by joining your game.

The whole server debacle, as a workaround, could be solved with the game's present technology by creating a second instance of the game, with a virtual player that does nothing except auto sleep at 10pm, and doesn't exit the end-of-day status report unless another player is online. The virtual player would have to be created by the developers, I think;, but this is getting off-topic.

...I am sorry if I didn't explain it well the first time. The last sentence in your third paragraph was making it difficult for me to understand your argument.

That is not what I'm saying. In terraria your character progress stays with your character (gear, powerups etc) as it should. The world progress DOESN'T. In sun haven the quest progress, which I would argue is part of the world progress NOT the character progress, also stays with your character, which it shouldn't.

If I make a new world with a co-op character I should start from the very first quest again. Instead, I get thrown in a progressed world, meaning I have to create a new character, re-level him and re-gear for no reason other than "the devs couldn't be asked"

[Shien]

Originally posted by Skittles:

Originally posted by Shien:

I just started playing the game, I bought it to play with a buddy and we started playing in a server he hosted, everything was fine. However, after he logged off, I wanted to do some solo play with my character (I dislike backwards progression in levels and wanted to keep the one I leveled in co-op). When I logged into the world, I had no house to put down and the quest had been progressed to the same point as the co-op server. Is this intended or is this a bug I can fix somehow?

i was playing with a buddy on his world [we both started together on it with new characters] and i noticed that when i tryed to play on my own world i had the same issue with being able to do that said quest for the house and generally the beginning, i believe its because its all the normal tutorial stuff from creating a new character, but i believe the tutorial mainly applies to the singleplayer worlds? like your own world you create, so what i did was after my buddy re-opened his world, i went over there and earned enough money to get a 25k house from the town hall and then placed it over in my own world, its dumb and i know it is, but now from the experience, i know to create a complete new character on my very own world, and finish the very basic quests until i can leave the farm, then i jump on over to a friends world :)

i agree, its dumb and i do hope there is some kind of change that tells you that you must create a new character on a single player world or something before being able to play with friends, some kind of warning or something idk xD

It just shouldn't work like that. There is no player benefit from not being able to create a new world and start from scratch (world progress wise) but with a geared character, none whatsoever. Quest progress should be tied to the world not the character that's all.

[Temil2006]

I'll be honest, I didn't read over everyone's reply here as i read a few and right off the bat there were was a bit of confusion.

So I'm an IT Solutions Architect by trade, so basically people come to me for anything IT related and tell me how it can be done and I provide them with solutions.

That being said, I can tell you from my 20+ years of background and experience that dedicated servers are not overly that hard, "IF" the game was designed to work around them. Now I can tell you that this game wasn't designed from the start with Multiplayer in mind, or at least not with multiple types of multiplayer in mind. The devs went the easy route and had solo play, and them layered the multiplayer over the top. How do I know this? Because they have all the aspects of Solo play (quests, story, etc) unlocking for everyone on the server. That's a key sign that multiplayer wasn't thought out fully and it's applying the settings/save data to all players as if they were solo playing. However, you can't exactly have a solo progression for multiplayer, it simply doesn't work as the reason the OP is stating the confusion here.

Now, back on dedicated servers. They aren't that hard really, again if they were coded from the started. But they can be hard after the fact if they aren't coded to take into account for multi char saves, etc which is why people assume / state that it's hard to do. I mean, one solution that the devs could have done ..which other devs have.. "IF" they had the saves and progression setup to support multi char progression, they could have simply had a "sudo user" that was logged in / started from a server.. a few other games have done similar to make it seem like a dedicated server, when actually it's just a non-graphical user that started the game and allows for others to join. Now, technically this is still doable even if they didn't change the progression saving method.. or for that matter, someone with a PC siting aside could do this .. (login to a second account and leave the game running) . but then some other things come into play such as ..

1. take into account for users across different areas (aka :: leashing to server host)
2. take into account for the first / server user to not be visable, not take dmg, etc (have as a simulated host only)

again, all doable .. almost doable now without dedicated server..some slight and server version or even just command lines that starts the game in non-graphical mode would make this work.

Another option they could have done is what "Grounded" did .. but again, they were only able to do the following because they had the progression, items, etc all build out to support multi player capability. Btw in case you aren't aware, they have it so that whoever closes the hosting last, it uploads that world to a hosted service and any player the creator/admin of that world grants access is able to start the hosting. So basicly, anytime someone hosts the world.. it first downloads the world to the local PC, then start the session .. when the last person leaves the world, it updates back up to the cloud (aka : steam save files). Now some people would say this isn't good because it costs more money to the developers.. well, i ask .. is there not "Steam Cloud Saves" for the game? if so, they allready have 90% of the cost covered allready because the world allready saves up to that cloud, and not only on the local system. So why no leverage that and add the extra ability to download from cloud based on authorized parties from the creator?

This all goes back to the devs wanting to code the game as solo play from the start, and not thinking of the best multi player experience, and instead coding around solo play to give a limited multiplayer experience instead. Honestly, more devs need to think of there different comunities because multiplayer shared worlds, dedicated servers, etc are kind of the way things on going into the future and yea, if the company is looking for a quick cash grab and run, then yea they can state it's to hard and not budgeted, because they don't want to do it.

also all this talk about Terraria and all, um.. you all realize that Terraria has full dedicated server and segmented multiplayer progression and all, right? so comparing that to this game isn't really a good idea, because they have what is being asked for.