Should you spawn in the same system when joining another player?

[Shame]

Being able to join a random player and being sent to the system they are in can result to some mild griefing, and not being in the same system as you were before results in some more difficult situations. Being spawned at the same place you were in, just being able to chat with the person perhaps to locate one another seems like a better and safer idea, especially if you just want to play with one or two friends and not be bothered by anyone.

I've found it fun to have to use the portals to get to where my friends are, and it can make it a bit less confusing if I've played with a friend for a while, then go to play on my own after a long time and have no idea where I left off, because session and single-player save positions are completely different. This would require to have the acquiring of glyphs be easier, however.

It's mainly annoying that after using the portal, you are not connected to your friend if you're in the same system. I had to save outside the portal, relog and join their session instead! What is the point of the planet-found portals then if you can't use them for this purpose, and just need to join your friend's session?

[Faceplant]

I agree 100%. Players should spawn where they last saved. Period.

They could allow sharing of teleporters to make it easy for players to join up. There's not need to automatically spawn players in the same system.

[The Faceless Man]

Multiplayer was slapped on with minimal effort to appease the demand for it. That's it.

[ﮱﮔutex]

Originally posted by Lonerwurld:

Multiplayer was slapped on with minimal effort to appease the demand for it. That's it.

So can Multiplayer be improved ? I mean it cant be as bad as Elite Dangerous P2P

[MechWarden]

I wouldn't say multiplayer was slapped on with 'minimal effort'. It takes awhile to recreate a multiplayer system within a game, especially one where it is so different you just can't copy and paste code from any old game and expect it to work. You can't look at say, Counter Strike multiplayer code, and get everything you need to cover all the basic for NMS.

Sure, multiplayer was buggy as heck when it released, and still is to a lesser degree, but people have to realize this game is effectively in an Alpha or Beta version state; regardless of what the official word says. Expect new stuff that is in development to be crap at first.

I don't know what all it takes to code in multiplayer, but having seen how much it took to fine tone and polish multiplayer protocols in the now standard FPS games, I have some appreciation for how much work it takes to make.

[Bubba Fett]

The downside of having you always spawn into a MP game where you already were is that you might be too far away from your friend to get to his location. I've got a base that's about 900k LY from my friends base. Space station teleports might work, but they don't show the location of friends. The warp drive might work at closer range, but imagine jumping for half and hour and using up a couple of dozen warp cells then your friend has to leave cause he's out of time.

Portals might work if you could transmit the address through some game mechanic. You want to try and describe 16 glyphs over chat?

Wouldn't it just be easier for them to install a friends only option where you could play with 1 or 2 friends and not be bothered by anyone and leave all the other stuff alone?

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Bubba Fett:

The downside of having you always spawn into a MP game where you already were is that you might be too far away from your friend to get to his location. I've got a base that's about 900k LY from my friends base. Space station teleports might work, but they don't show the location of friends. The warp drive might work at closer range, but imagine jumping for half and hour and using up a couple of dozen warp cells then your friend has to leave cause he's out of time.

Portals might work if you could transmit the address through some game mechanic. You want to try and describe 16 glyphs over chat?

Wouldn't it just be easier for them to install a friends only option where you could play with 1 or 2 friends and not be bothered by anyone and leave all the other stuff alone?

That's why I suggested allowing players to share teleporters with their friends.

[MechWarden]

The 'rules' for multiplayer mechanics are kind of being written as things go. It would be nice to see more features in multiplayer, but it feels like HG is focusing on bug fixes before adding stuff in that would likely introduce more bugs.

While I like the idea of a Stargate (the movie and series) dialing system, it would kind of suck if you had to hunt for all 16 symbols to be able to dial to a friend's place.

Something in between would be nice, like having a mini quest to find the address for your nearby portal, no glyph hunting required, and can give the sequence of symbols to a friend so you can meet up.

I'm not sure how many 'glyph-digits' would be needed. A string that is 8 symbols long is 16^8 (4,294,967,296 combos) seems impressive, but still might not be enough. Now that I think about it, 16 digits/symbols would be more fitting. Would be 16^16, which is equal to 2^64, and could theoretically connect to any possible planet, but could have a large percentage that go nowhere, since the other end isn't activated.

[Shame]

Originally posted by Bubba Fett:

The downside of having you always spawn into a MP game where you already were is that you might be too far away from your friend to get to his location. I've got a base that's about 900k LY from my friends base. Space station teleports might work, but they don't show the location of friends. The warp drive might work at closer range, but imagine jumping for half and hour and using up a couple of dozen warp cells then your friend has to leave cause he's out of time.

Portals might work if you could transmit the address through some game mechanic. You want to try and describe 16 glyphs over chat?

Wouldn't it just be easier for them to install a friends only option where you could play with 1 or 2 friends and not be bothered by anyone and leave all the other stuff alone?

I did say that communication via players who are in the same "session" would still be shared, like it is now, or you could may be even share communication via some signal transmission to a certain portal or location of some sorts that the other player can detect. Either way, you can communicate with each other outside of the game, so I don't see how this is a problem.

Originally posted by MechWarden:

The 'rules' for multiplayer mechanics are kind of being written as things go. It would be nice to see more features in multiplayer, but it feels like HG is focusing on bug fixes before adding stuff in that would likely introduce more bugs.

While I like the idea of a Stargate (the movie and series) dialing system, it would kind of suck if you had to hunt for all 16 symbols to be able to dial to a friend's place.

Something in between would be nice, like having a mini quest to find the address for your nearby portal, no glyph hunting required, and can give the sequence of symbols to a friend so you can meet up.

I'm not sure how many 'glyph-digits' would be needed. A string that is 8 symbols long is 16^8 (4,294,967,296 combos) seems impressive, but still might not be enough. Now that I think about it, 16 digits/symbols would be more fitting. Would be 16^16, which is equal to 2^64, and could theoretically connect to any possible planet, but could have a large percentage that go nowhere, since the other end isn't activated.

You do realise that the coordinates require 12 symbols out of the 16 and not 8 right now, right? And that's over 184 quintillion combinations, which for one galaxy is about x10 of what is needed. The portals are probably not useful for inter-galactic travel, though I wouldn't exactly know.

Regardless, that's not the issue. I personally have found the hunt for glyphs in the way it's implemented not only boring and grindy, but stupidly pointless as well. Best if there's some interesting way to achieve them all, or something to not make it so you can multiplayer from the start, unless you're starting a new save, but something that is interesting and rather quick to do as some sort of a challenge. Making a new save is always the option though, so, a having to choose seems fairly balanced.

[MechWarden]

Originally posted by Shame:

...

Originally posted by MechWarden:

The 'rules' for multiplayer mechanics are kind of being written as things go. It would be nice to see more features in multiplayer, but it feels like HG is focusing on bug fixes before adding stuff in that would likely introduce more bugs.

While I like the idea of a Stargate (the movie and series) dialing system, it would kind of suck if you had to hunt for all 16 symbols to be able to dial to a friend's place.

Something in between would be nice, like having a mini quest to find the address for your nearby portal, no glyph hunting required, and can give the sequence of symbols to a friend so you can meet up.

I'm not sure how many 'glyph-digits' would be needed. A string that is 8 symbols long is 16^8 (4,294,967,296 combos) seems impressive, but still might not be enough. Now that I think about it, 16 digits/symbols would be more fitting. Would be 16^16, which is equal to 2^64, and could theoretically connect to any possible planet, but could have a large percentage that go nowhere, since the other end isn't activated.

You do realise that the coordinates require 12 symbols out of the 16 and not 8 right now, right? And that's over 184 quintillion combinations, which for one galaxy is about x10 of what is needed. The portals are probably not useful for inter-galactic travel, though I wouldn't exactly know.

Regardless, that's not the issue. I personally have found the hunt for glyphs in the way it's implemented not only boring and grindy, but stupidly pointless as well. Best if there's some interesting way to achieve them all, or something to not make it so you can multiplayer from the start, unless you're starting a new save, but something that is interesting and rather quick to do as some sort of a challenge. Making a new save is always the option though, so, a having to choose seems fairly balanced.

I haven't gotten that far into the portal quest, and I don't have the number of in-game stars per galaxy remembered off hand. I was pretty much tossing out numbers and didn't take into account galaxy size. And yeah, I doubt there is intergalactic travel via those, since it would break the lore and game mechanics if travel either way was doable.

And I know that it would be a pain to find actual glyphs fast enough to make such a thing workable for casual multiplayer hookups. That's why I was suggesting a no glyph hunting version for that feature, and instead have a quest for finding the address for it.

To answer one concern that came up, some workable nomenclature (aka, way of naming things) would be established for glyph addresses if there was a need for it. So I don't think sharing addresses would have issues.

I think it would be neat to use the gates like that, but also brings in the issue of how and where do you introduce them into the flow of the game? Logically, it would be part way into Artemis' quest line, but by that point the option for two new games to start off close by would be gone.

It just boils down to how much detail and options HG is willing to give, and how much in demand it is. If there doesn't seem to be a big enough need for it, it won't get made.

I guess one option to get around that is to have a ready room of sorts for players that want to start a game together, but that would take work to put in; needing new functions to sync things up, new interface, deciding how close or how far they start apart, and of course testing and debugging.

[ﮱﮔutex]

Given the focus the Dev's have shown, in getting the game to its current very playable state.
I dont have any doubts, that if Multiplayer needs to be tweaked and made better it will be.
Just would like to see it happen sooner rather than later , as bug fixing does seem to be the focus for the Dev's at this time.

It is the multiplayer that interest me most in NMS. For allowing more freedom, player interactions and control, just adds more depth. Management of bases, can allow players to make choices "you CAN'T open that door but you CAN shoot it off".. do you ?

Things I would like to see:
Ownerships
Temp truces with any new folk you meet.
Opening / using items for clan and strangers
Better flight controls