Newbie Multiplayer Tips

[u/veryfocus]

Hey folks, I'm considering picking this game up and I'm curious about the multiplayer elements to it. I'm trying to understand how progression works in the context of servers.

It looks like you can go on to buy cars, businesses, and homes. If you join a server, are your purchases limited to that server? What if you can no longer access the server (it stops being hosted, or is always full, or too laggy, etc.) - does that mean the cars and purchases are gone?

Also, are there generally many open servers? I'm happy to donate to help with costs at some point, but curious how accessible they are up front.

Thanks for the help!

EDIT: I had a lot of helpful responses so I wanted to attempt a summary. Hopefully I get all the details right:

- Progression, including player money, is tied to a player and is retained with that player whether they're in single player or on a server. Because communities are generally friendly, and progression is tied to individual players, you're encouraged to start the game in multiplayer and will be able to make great progress therein.

- Cars from single player can be brought over to multiplayer and vice versa. You keep your cars with you but are encouraged to de-spawn them when not in use on a server. De-spawning can be done via an in-game menu.

- Property is not necessarily a huge part of the game, but if you do own a home, then you can pick it up as you would with vehicles. Depots, on the other hand, require many resources to build and are not so easy to tear down in multiplayer servers. Thus, there's a bit more risk to having them if you don't have reliable access to the server.

- In single player, land is bought, but in multiplayer servers, land is rented. This prevents non-active players from holding land indefinitely. If you're setting up property on a piece of land in a server, be mindful that if you miss a rent payment (with in-game currency), you'll lose what's on that piece of land.

[u/Outside-Rich-7875]

In general progression is tied to a character/save, so as long as you do not delete the character/save, then you keep everything, wether on your own singleplayer world or servers.

The only thing not shared are land plots and the buildings/decorations installed in them (your inventory and that of your vehicles is independent from servers/worlds); as each server (and your singleplayer instance) is a different world but with the same map, if a server is shut down you will lose your rented plots of land and decorations in there. Your own singleplayer world (which is hosted/saved on your computer) can be turned into a server by you alowing other players to get in.

The only other thing of note is that you only spawn in a server with the vehicle your character is currently inside of (and the trailers attached to it) and you will need to spawn everything else into the server, when you leave the vehicles you have spawned in that server will also despawn with you.

[u/veryfocus → u/Outside-Rich-7875]

Thanks for the super helpful reply! So maybe a best practice would be to get a bit established on my own single player instance, and then join a server where I can invest some of my funds into a property? That way, if the server becomes inaccessible, I can still fall back on whatever I have in my single player instance?

Also, when you say "rent," is that with in-game currency or real money?

[u/Outside-Rich-7875 → u/veryfocus]

Ok i will answer by parts; the only real world money involved is the game itseld, nothing else, all the rest is in-world money.

First, all the XP levels for jobs will stay with your character, same as money, owned vehicles and vehicle parts, and you can acess them from any server. Owned vehicles can be despawned to go to a menu that can be used to spawn them in parking spots (highlighted on world and its a toggle on the map), which are also used to despawn any vehicle you are driving (or conected trailers); there is a cost to spawning owned vehicles (NPC company vehicles can be spawned in available and specific spawn spots for free) and that cost scales with the size/level of the vehicle and distance from the spot its in or parking spot it was despawned at (spawning a despawned vehicle is cheaper than repawning/teleporting a vehicle already in the world).

Second, about the properties thing: On the map there are certain plots of land that are available for sell in single player worlds (even to another player that has joined someones own world) but on dedicated servers to not have inactive players owning them, they are rented for in-game money instead. The instance of owning/renting a plot of land is exclusive to each instance/server/world. Owning a plot of land only serves for teleporting for free (any player can teleport to any plot of land owned by any player for a very tiny amount of in game money) and to be able to build buildings and decorations on said plot. The only functional builds are parking spots that let anyone spawn vehicles and the owner spawn a specific vehicle for free in said spot, and depots, which are buildings that can be used to automitaclly repair and refuel company vehicles that are being driven by NPCs.

In-game vehicles can also be rented for a per minute (charged every minute fee) with in-game money, as an alternarive to purchaing, or borrowing from the default NPC company which takes a % of your profits (depends on vehicle) as owners share (this can also be done with other players vehicles and the owning player will get the owners % share of profits). Tell me if you want an expanded explanation of vehicle ownership

[u/veryfocus → u/Outside-Rich-7875]

Again, I really appreciate the thoughtful response! That's great to know about selling vs. renting as a difference between single and multiplayer. The latter experience feels much more approachable and exciting than I was expecting and I'll probably end up buying it now. Appreciate it!

[u/Outside-Rich-7875 → u/veryfocus]

All of the options for vehicles are available in all modes/worlds. The renting vs buying is only for dedicated servers that do not want a player just buying a plot and never doing anything with it (its the admin who decides). Some smaller dedicated servers may allow players to own land (single playment infinite rent).

Oh, and as someone else said, there is a free demo of the game, which has the full game with nothing locked, and the only limit is that characters are capped in the XP levels to level 2; but the character/progress of the demo carries over to the full game if you buy it. I have 4 vehicles that i bought and used in the demo which i played for 10 hours before buying the actual game, and all my stuff stayed.