Will Multiplayer be accessed from the Main Menu?

Tutorial wise, there will probably be some short video like in Smash bros Melee and Brawl, for people to quickly get the gist of how it goes, then leave it to the player to explore. This is an exploration game after all, once you have the basic 'point at things and shoot' down, the rest comes as you go.
As for multiplayer, the whole emphasis is on multiplayer, based on what I've seen, it'll be like Eve Online, where single player is basically down to avoiding other people, unless the 'every planet you find has an address for others to join' system includes a private address system too. That might not be the case, as it's against the core multiplayer ethos, it might simply be a case of having a home world on your computer, that people can visit when you're online, and a series of server grade planets that are hosted by Starbound, and everything else is a matter of exploration of others planets. Otherwise you'd get conflicting addresses (if you went off line and discovered say, 100 planets, and each had a unique address, and everyone playing has done the same, you'd need to assign some pretty lengthy addresses or check in with the server to get them before they are generated).... you know what I mean...

 

Well, from what I know it works so that people host their own private servers rather than trying to emulate an MMO. It is really better that way, since your team won't have to run around space looking for a planet that nobody has touched or griefed.

 

That makes sense, but it either means that planets need to render based on their address, like a seed in minecraft, for people to share them without being connected, or an address for a nice desert planet for one person would be a massive water world for another, and you'd have issues if they met online... I'm sure they already have a solution, I'm just curious about that, and I quite like the almost MMO style universe. Besides, finding a new world to mess with will be pretty easy, the chances of you entering an address consisting of just nine digits that someone has been to before by chance is astronomically slim. This universe would, in theory, have thousands of times more planets then the entire phone network system, imagine punching in a phone number randomly and getting someone from New York State (Assuming you don't prefix it to that state on purpose. Realistically, there will probably be less then 20million players) it is rather unlikely, especially if you add randomly generated country codes.... ok my analogy is getting way out of hand, you probably already know what I mean by astronomically slim chances... sorry to be patronising if you're smarter then me

 

1) What? People can meet up in same planet, theres no ploblem, at any time, anywhere. The server is hosted just like in terraria.
2) They said there would be LARGE spaces beetween planets, so not all coordinates will have a planet.
3) You host a server from your singleplayer space station, so other people can join your singleplayer world, but i think you can do that right from the beggining, from the very moment you get a space station.

Thats what they said. This information may not be 100% accurate.

 

If theres a tutorial, I shall press random buttons without looking at the screen until its over

 

If you meant to be patronizing, I didnt see it. I just thought you sounded misinformed... as the planet addresses in fact are seeds. As sarzael said, you have to join someone elses' world or make your own server. There isn't any merging of planets going on, everyone can have their own version of planet 001,001,001 or whatever.

 

I want it from the main menu, mostly because this would be a hindrance on three things:
1: The inventory (possibly, although you wanted it to not take up a slot)
2: Playability - What if I log off in singleplayer while getting eaten by plants FLORANS.
3: Connectivity - This might make the game like more recent builds of minecraft, the singleplayer hosting an internal server (LAN or otherwise), causing some connection problems if you don't happen to have a decent network up. (Might be more significant than normal)

Also, hasn't it already been stated that items wouldn't carry over between SP and servers? How would it work if you were connecting with your client's data and the multiplayer 'item'?
In general, I think it would be a bit counterproductive and useless to have an item in game to play multiplayer, when characters are server-based.

 

"Server owners will be able to limit joining players to using new characters and/or can also allow existing characters to join as well. How they are being limited (Either tracking minimum Item Levels, or simply having brand-new chars with a flag in their save file, for example) is still being discussed."

 

Ahh, I didn't know for sure that the addresses were in fact, seeds, and had imagined an eve like primary server system, but if they're more like Terraria, does that mean that the arena type worlds are being hosted by Starbound's servers directly? Or am I misconstruing something about the specifically multiplayer servers being more of an idea then a set thing...?
About the patronizing thing, I meant about the explanation of the astronomically small chances of bumping into a previously used address... That is meaningless now though, I kinda thought the system would be like Infinity (Quest for earth?) but I guess not :/

 

I don't fully understand what you are saying, but servers are hosted by players, like in Terraria/Minecraft, and there will be asteroids you can travel to for pvp arenas. I believe they have said that they probably don't want to host their own huge servers for people to join, but they aren't totally sure.

 

Asteroids? Didn't know about that either, I need to read more :/
I thought for sure I read somewhere there will be specifically PvP/co-op planets, but maybe I misconstrued

 

Well players could find a planet and make a pvp area on it, or the whole planet. I wouldn't be surprised if some day someone makes a mod for big servers to only allow pvp on certain planets.

 

Some day, as in right after release, right?

 

from what i heard, there will be an option for global PVP

 

I vote for Multiplayer through the menu and the tutorial as optional with a skip button.
What if I'm starting again for the ump-teenth time? Do I really need to learn how to press WASD again?
As for the multiplayer, it just seems like a waste to load up a single player map just to leave it a moment later to join multiplayer. Menu option just saves load time and annoyance.

 

From the menu and/or from a portal between universes. Likely the first thing. Second thing is a possibility. I can't remember in which topic I saw it discussed.

 

I think we can pretty safely say that its from the menu and why do we still debate this.

In real world terms, going from singleplayer to multiplayer is like putting a dvd on, then the dvd spits out a movie ticket and THEN you can go see the movie at the theater.
Or maybe if you want to drive a car, say to the store, instead of having a garage next to your home, your garage is half a kilometer away next to the road and you walk there or maybe take your scooter and THEN get into your car.