Hey Devs, Just have a few suggestions after playing a lot of Stardew Valley multiplayer. I'm a min/max player and I play with my SO so take my comments according to that thought process. Currently on Year 2 Summer 7 (10 in all skills, 1.7M gold made, 5+ hearts all, full farm/barn/coop etc), but the game has lost its magic that single player had because... 1) There should be freezetime in the game, especially for cutscenes. At least 10 times in the last week, I've been incredibly frustrated trying to go somewhere and because I decided or was forced to watch a cutscene, I could not accomplish my goal. IE: Adventurer's Guild opens 2-10 pm, I exit the mines at 8 pm to sell gear, I'm in an UNSKIPPABLE cutscene with Linus for Wild Bait, (takes 2 hours) ... done with cutscene, cannot sell my gear anymore. Now I must re-plan my next day to be able to go to Adventurer's Guild the next day (Can't do Skull Caverns anymore which was the plan) 1a) The magic of Stardew Valley when I played single player last year was that I could watch EVERY cutscene with no repercussions, I could leisurely take my time with my inventory screens (which I kinda still can if I pause the game while both myself and my SO are opening a box...) and take the game at my own speed. Correction: Freeze the game when ANY player gets a cutscene ( its like 30-60 seconds) ... and have the option to click a button to resume time for the other players if one player is in a cutscene (let it be a teamvote thing) Correction 2: Option in Menu for "Freezetime for cutscenes for all players" 2) Speed is too fast in the game for 2-player. IE: A single day in single player used to take me an average of 15-20 minutes of real life. Now, it's 10 minutes. (~6 seconds RL = 10 minutes in Stardew, so 36 seconds = 1 hour, 36*18 (6 am - 12(2) am) = 600(720) seconds = 10-12 minutes RL time) Yes, 2 players accomplishes more in a day than 1 player can, BUT you also need 2x the goods/supplies to do quests and hearts etc. 2a) Maybe 3/4 player there's enough time, but I always feel like there's not enough time in 2-player. I'm rushed to do things and I'm often hitting that skip button on an event (which I hate) because otherwise I won't make it to someone's house in time for a gift, quest, or to buy something I need on the day or next (which sometimes leads to resetting the day) Correction: Maybe 8 seconds = 10 minutes for 2-player, 7 seconds = 10 minutes for 3p, and 6 = 10 for 4p could work better. 3) Make the new farms slightly better: We picked the Forest Farm because it looked interesting/new, but having only 1413 farm squares compared the regular farm's 3427, there's not much space to work with or operate. It's cool that it's so different but having no space makes the game less fun for multiplayer especially (because you can plant so much more)... too much space is lost to random shrubbery or ponds. Correction: Upgrade the new farms to have around 1700-2400 spaces (especially for multiplayer) Correction 2: Maybe have Robin have an option to "adjust" your farm and remove Riverland/Forest/Hill-top/Wilderness portions for 100k each portion or something. 4) Freezetime for inventory sorting Stardew is unique because it has so many items and materials and crafting, but you always feel like you can't get anything done because you are swamped with loot in multiplayer. (I've spent 6-10 hours of a day just running around looking for things/sorting/crafting) where in SP, only maybe 1-2 hours of ingame time would be spent.) Correction: If everyone in the game is in the menus/boxes, freezetime? Overall, I still loved my first experience in the single player (solid 95/100 game and worth every penny), but the multiplayer feels too rushed, the magic is lost on the almost forced skipping of cutscenes (or punishment for watching), no freezetime for inventory sorting and such too is a problem. (Like multiplayer, 82/100) Thanks for making such an amazing game and I hope this multiplayer turns out as great as the original! Bugs Known: - Joining player has "horse gliding" issues and then you can't get back on the horse if you jump off unless you leave screen. - Host player and joining player have different stairs/potholes at the Skull Cavern (is this intended?) ... can't really play together because you are often in different rooms because of the randomization of pothole drops and the other player getting stairs. - Joining player gets stuck in some infinite loop where they can't sleep if host player sleeps and joining player faints (past 2 AM) ... might be fixed or somewhat fixed, but we still had it happen a few days ago.
I totally agree with the time being an issue. The biggest example is while playing the mini-games, you cannot possibly get far in the mini-games because the time goes too fast, in single player the time is frozen. This is just an annoying limitation and being able to freeze time would be a great solution, if this does not cause unexpected side-results. 1) The problem with time freeze is is that it could be abused so that players have infinite time farming things and could end up just being an official cheat method. 2) Freezing the game however would just end up annoying people. 3) Slowing time down would cause balance issues as there would be way too much time when you're not participating in events. I honestly think this is just something you're going to have to deal with until a mod is made because i don't think there's a viable/good solution for this to implement in an official manner. Your suggestions are something that is better in form of a mod.
