I have been thinking about some multiplayer options for Stonehearth.
Maybe there could be like a co-op campaign for up to 2 players, where both players start with a different town, but on the same side of the map and you have like a objective to destroy an enemy camp/castle or to get a certain wealth number combined to proceed to the next level. And when you have reached the next level, you have more resources to begin with or you begin the next level with the same town you had the previous level.
I’m sure you have been thinking about this, but maybe there can also be a free play multiplayer mode, where you can just build your town to your liking, trade with other players, make friendships, have war for land or combine kingdoms.
Also i have been thinking about another mode for multiplayer. What if there was a castle/tower defense mode with 2-4 players and they need to work together and build a strong enough base/kingdom/castle to hold off hordes of monsters for as long as possible. I think this would be a really unique experience for a game like this and it could be great fun.
I like the idea of multiplayer, being about working together against an npc enemy and not other players. It seems like it generates so much negativity among the community in other games. It just dont feel like stonehearth with that negativity?
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ve been thinking about multiplayer a lot lately, and I tend to agree a co-op version seems to be a much better fit for Stonehearth than a PvP one. Nothing to announce on this yet, though!
I think a PvP multiplayer for Stonehearth will not do as good as co-op. Since its actually a quite relaxing game, creating a PvP multiplayer for a more relaxing game then a competitive game will do very poor i think. Because most people just want to focus on building your own kingdom instead of building everything as fast as possible to annihilate the other player. If they were to add PvP multiplayer in Stonehearth, i think the negativity among the community will increase.
Thats how i feel about it, not sure what others think.
No problem at all! I will try to improve and work out the castle/tower defense style co-op mode. If you have any more questions about it, i will be glad to help!
I think multiplayer should borrow Ideas from the time when u sat down with ur friend playin with legos… Just talking and working on your seperate buildings or things. I really dont think it should be possible to play multiplayer “solo” like it was talked about in the video, there shouldnt be a bot that takes over or anything, if ur friend arent online you shouldnt be able to play that save. I cant think of a way of doing that that wont just leave one player in the dust anyways.
I think that there should be 3 types of enemies:
Goblin camps spawn and attack the nearest player like they do in single player. This would give the other player a reason to be kind and send a soldier or two (risking his own town)
A larger structure (castle or large camp) that sends out attacks to both player (this would be the “villain” you both could work together to fight
The other player. I get whats been said here, but I think that it would be a nice way of maybe wrapping things up after all villains are dead, anyways it gives the nice feeling of trust when fighting against the villain, If you cant attack eachother you dont really need that trust do you? they help you because they cant do anything else. If they could attack but chooses not to that would mean alot more.
I think multiplayer should be max 3 player, 2 players would be totally fine for me.
IMHO, the more options the better. PvE or PvP with 1-X players, with or without AI, AI difficulty levels and varying strategies. I realize there is some danger in being like other MP games, but this formula works well for, TBS, RTS and FPS.
I think the game could have PvP, but have it set up almost like the way the Goblins act. If you want to attack another player, you have to send a note with demands (and it can only contain things that they know how to make), but if they don’t meet your demand in 2 or 3 game days, or refuse to try, then you can set them as an enemy. This would really only work if you are playing with a small number of people, but I think it would be an interesting approach to PvP.
Even without any PvP, I would think that you could sway Hearthlings to leave one town to join yours if you had a higher happiness rating that the other town (and your reasons for better happiness matched the reasons a Hearthling was unhappy.
I think the best pvp would be just in some form of military training. Like both towns agree to fight and then they start a battle. When all military from one side is defeated, the fight ends, and nothing else changes, besides the soldiers needing to recover from it.
No civilians hurt, or properties damaged. Players can then organize another fight later on.
This could even lead to some mini-games, like capture the flag (that both sides would need to have before starting this game).
And those suggestions are just because they will have to make pvp, as promised in the kickstarter. Otherwise, I would not miss pvp at all.
sounds like a great way to implement pvp @BrunoSupremo I would hate that other players could force pvp onto players that are purely interested in pve. But i think it counts the other way around aswell.
Something like “The Settlers 5” can work for Multiplayer. A big map where the player choose their Home-Base, build their own town and trade with other Players or CPU.
I remember the Map of Settlers 5… you can find a lot of neutral villages to trade, also for missions when near Villians attack them.
Only using the Multiplayer for fight other Players sounds really boring…
This example shows a Village from The Settlers Game
Everyone here is full of great ideas!
I really like the part where you have apart from the player settlements, also have NPC settlements you can trade/ co-operate with. Having a certain economy, a bit like the civilization series. Where you can trade goods with other NPCs and players to the point everyone is expanding like some horny rabbits (sorry for these choice of words). But it would be a bit boring in my opinion if it would be only that. I think there should also be an option then to attack the other settlements, make demands, create alliances or sign some kind of peace treaty between certain settlements.
I think this would be a really good concept for the multiplayer of stonehearth too.
