1. A cooperative farm should support 2 or more persons, and be persistent; players should be able to log on and off apart from one another -- in other words, you shouldn't need both people online to be able to work on the farm. Some players may not always be online at the same time; they should be able to play on the same farm sometimes but also log onto it apart from one another when schedules prevent them from being on synchronously. This will still be fun; you will see everything the other player did. (Perhaps players can leave notes and presents for one another?) 2. Farms/ranches all look different; the player structure for a coop farm should be flexible. What I mean is, you should be able to have a farm with someone where you two players are married and use the same house, but players should also be able to have other configurations: a farm with two houses where each player might also have a spouse, or a farm that starts off as one house where both players are brothers, and then one builds their own house on the property (maybe one player gets married and the other never does), or even a farm where multiple couples live under same roof -- like a commune, or even a polyamorous relationship perhaps. Hey, people do -- why not include these options? 3. Going off of my second point I just want to put the following out there -- it's great that Stardew will let you marry characters of the same sex -- so why not go one step further towards inclusion in multiplayer; the game should let you live with several other players and/or be flexible with relationship arrangements. I think that would be truly unique and cool for a game, and that people would have a lot of fun with that flexibility. If you're going to do this, you may as well do it right. Here are also a couple quick solutions to problems with coop that players have brought up -- make the museum collection be a cooperative experience (1 pool of items) so that there does not need to be two museums. Have two separate records for hearts, after all an npc should be able to like one player more than another. Also, before I close, I think that there should be new features and events designed entirely around cooperative play. What do others think of these guiding ideas that I've suggested?
