‘A horrible experience’: Once Human fans cry out for urgent solutions to make playing with friends more fun

Once Human players are frustrated with the game’s current state, where playing with friends is marred by numerous problems that detract them from enjoying its intended horror post-apocalyptic experience.

Taking their case to Reddit, one Once Human player wrote, “Trying to play with friends is a horrible experience,” while sharing their troubles, noting they have made over four servers and started afresh in low-population servers to play with their friends, making it a tiring affair.

However, as the game doesn’t allow you to carry your progress to a new server, it makes it more challenging for everyone to navigate their way to find their friends and enjoy the game together.

While Starry Studio did make things worse by announcing a non-deletable character per account due to a “technical limitation” in their FAQ at launch, a move that caused significant backlash from the community, the developer quickly went back on their words and enabled the way to make multiple character creation feature across servers to let everyone play with their friends. According to the developer, the decision to have one character per account approach “resulted in a diminished gaming experience” for everyone, so they did not wait till August to reinstate the feature.

A free-to-play title, Once Human thrives on being a fun multiplayer experience without an entry barrier. You join other players to take down the Deviants in Nalcott, clear Securement Silo to get rare weapons like Fabled Masamune katana, join each other’s Hive and become allies to visit each other’s bases to work together toward the end game. However, the problem persists when you can’t change your servers and have to wipe your progress when playing with your friends on a different server. Thus, it takes away the hard work of spending hours on the title and crafting your perfect survival gear.

Even after you overcome the hurdles and somehow get everyone on board, there is little incentive to play with your friends. One of the players on Reddit proposed having “sharing quests” to ease the issues and give players a reason to grind the title together. As it stands now, there needs to be more value in sticking around with other players in Once Human.  

The game has multiple fun ways, like the Whisper item, which allows players to leave a message for other players on the map. This is a great way of making new friends on the server and even using their experience to find secret loot on the map, making it a wholesome experience.

The developer also added events like Accept Invitation, which prompted players to exchange codes with other players and earn a boost in their XP income along with other rewards. However, it seems it wasn’t enough, and players still want more options to play with their friends and have a good time cherishing the post-apocalyptic world.