I like how things move quickly and it gets more engaging when there are a lot of people in one spot. 5 or 6 characters mobbing around a room and chattering is an excellent thing to see. Let's get a player base in the hundreds concurrent.

A stress test would definitely be a good idea, assuming we can get enough player volume. Maybe say, have everybody log in all their characters at once. Or something.

It can be very challenging to find other players even when other people are online, and therefore characters who are not hunger self-sufficient can struggle to eat.

Speaking of population, there seems to be little reason for non-gathering characters to actually log into the game outside of the designated playtest times. This is the other edge of the double-edged sword that is no grinding; if there's nothing to grind, there's not a lot of reason to log in. If nobody is logged in, there's no roleplay. If there's no roleplay, nobody is logging in, etc. This doesn't apply as much once you have an established group you play with and log on together with, but then the first point I brought up applies.

I hope I've explained what I mean properly. I don't want to imply that there should be "things to grind" to get people to log in, but other than waiting for intervals there's very little reason to log on outside of playtests (when people are RPing) right now.

Yes, if you don't log in, your character doesn't advance. It's not the idea per se, the idea is that when the game is finished and on Steam there will be dozens of people playing at all times, and you'll always have a reason to log in. But while we are doing playtesting, that is the reason to log in outside of the designated times.

As for food, you can ask in the Discord or post on the forums if you need food. The rules on alt interaction also don't apply during the alpha, so if you want you can make an alt to feed all your other alts.