This is not a multiplayer co-op game, do not buy it for this reason

[Bitten-Once-Shy]

tl;dr at the end

This is a play-by-yourself-at-the-same-time-as-your-friends game. What I mean is, a true multiplayer co-op game is designed to allow several players at once all playing together handing objectives together. This game has very, very light co-op elements to the point it would be fair to not call it co-op at all.

You spawn in with your buds, you all met up on a planet, you all start diving into the planet to find ores all happy until... Oh only one person gets the ore. Right, well let's all take turns mining ore..? Oh this is taking a reallllly long time. What if we mine, slightly farther apart? Hey, that's a lot better, let's mine farther still, wow it's getting better oh wait we found a dungeon let's all go through it ohthelootattheendisallforoneperson.

Right, let's all split up to completely different planets so we don't steal each others resources, dungeon loot, and wow this is a single player game.

The only time you can come together to do something is, maybe building a centerized home world so at very best you end up building a neat house or several houses; oh but you can't have store all to yourselves what if you mix up yer loot? Better section off that storage!

Seriously, even if you want to fight bosses together it's a problem, because any chest loot that said boss offers has to be split between several people and it's balanced around one person getting it. Doing bosses together, the one thing you would think would be good, is actually bad.

"Oh but the loot bags!" Well, for one this only works for main quests and a few dungeon focused town assigned quests. Great, well done! You get a tiny amount of loot, often not weapons and never armor and almost always modules.

Terraria suffers from the same thing, but at least on hard mode each boss gives you a loot bag that contains cool stuff, each bag actually feels rewarding unlike the bags in this game (nice ripping off that mechanic without understanding it Chuckle Fish~). In Terraria all the same problems happen, so when Chucke Fish (very obviously) copied the mechanics and stuff from that game they copied the poor co-op mechanics as well; Oh but the co-op house building is really cool! Both games are house building simulators and that's it.

tl;dr
-Mining together yelds almost no reward - one player gets everything or many get nearly nothing
-Dungeoning without quests to do said dungeon rewards only one player
-Doing bosses together means chest reward loot (balanced for one player) is garbage
-Even just two people is too many for this game's balance
-Doing anything involving loot bags yelds poor unexciting loot
-Everything other than house building is better done alone

+At least you can build cool houses together!

[Grimmrog_SIG]

Well SB is not doing the Co op well when it comes to working together in PVE and stuff.

The Multiplayer part is more about building a world together, showing eahc other the worlds or making a band!!! Most important thing of them all.

So the multiplayer serves more RPG reasons than anything else in SB. There neither cool PvE nor boss battles for multiplayers.

[Inny【🐭】Nazrin]

Sssslimey fiisssh lipsss

[Bitten-Once-Shy]

Originally posted by Inny【🐭】Nazrin:

Sssslimey fiisssh lipsss

Kiss me.

[Spicy Rock Monster]

Oh no! Your friends stole your loot!
-Every RPG ever
Community house! Wait, who took of this resource?!
-Every RPG ever
Everything benefits one person and not more? Welcome to Human Nature. Greed, steal, hoarde, throw in some revenge and you have every modern "multiplayer" game ever. Co-op doesnt benefit everyone. Most of the time one person is benefitting more, or is ahead because of something they got to first. Most of the time its up to you and your friends to decide you want to help eachother. Got something you dont want? Offer it. Collect enought resources for two... delegate tasks for better effiency... The game doesnt FORCE cooperation. Cooperation is possible through... cooperation.

[Bitten-Once-Shy]

Originally posted by 0ddAcHe:

Oh no! Your friends stole your loot!
-Every RPG ever
Community house! Wait, who took of this resource?!
-Every RPG ever
Everything benefits one person and not more? Welcome to Human Nature. Greed, steal, hoarde, throw in some revenge and you have every modern "multiplayer" game ever. Co-op doesnt benefit everyone. Most of the time one person is benefitting more, or is ahead because of something they got to first. Most of the time its up to you and your friends to decide you want to help eachother. Got something you dont want? Offer it. Collect enought resources for two... delegate tasks for better effiency... The game doesnt FORCE cooperation. Cooperation is possible through... cooperation.

Yes, sure, fine. Then why bill this as a co-op game?

[SimoonGryphon]

Pretty much what 0ddAcHe said, though considering this is finally ver.1.0 of Starbound, I wouldn't be surprised if they add more co-opy things in the future (like teams ans PVP, yada yada).

To the OP have you played Terraria? It was the first game like this I played and I played it with 3-6 friends originally. It was a lot of fun because we spread out in different areas and made our own houses and tunnels and such. Though all of my friends we'd gamed together in other stuff (City of Heroes) first and were all (mostly) of a co-opy mindset. That is, if there's something in someone else's boxes, you can grab what you need, replace it later. ('Don't be a jerk' rule of thumb.)

I guess it boils down to playing with nice people (helps to already have peeps you know like that), and be willing to pool resources together and not be greedy. I'm definitely a fan of the 'go out and mine/forage/etc and then come back and store stuff for use' tactic. Can even divide labor up between tasks if someone, say, wants to focus on building and the other would rather spelunk.

Just some playstyle suggestions to help mitigate frustrations.