Improved Survival Experience

[TertiaVigilia]

Hi, 

After spending 27h playing the (great!) game I have only one suggestion/criticism:

• Death should not be an option. In a survival game you should strive to avoid dying. In the current game it is too easy to die (wolves, falling into ravines, starvation, drifters) and not punished enough (respawn, all loot still at death point, half saturated, full HP)

Therefore I have a few suggestions which would heighten the survival experience:

• Remove ravines from forest/grassland biomes. These are not realistic and just provide another easy way to die in the game. In e.g. mountain or desert biomes it makes sense to have them. 
• Remove temporal stability. The storms and drifters were a simple annoyance, nothing more. Just a few minutes of sitting inside while the screen tilted and moved. Instead I'd suggest adding e.g. a wandering wolf pack (like 10-20 animals spawning and wandering around the base or something like that). More realistic, more terrifying and less annoying. 
• Wolves only attack in packs. Therefore you can encounter a single animal without worries, but need to RUN fast when seeing a lot of them. 
• If you die with >10% HP, you are respawned at the position of death 8 hours later, without saturation and 10% HP (so it is like you almost died). Wolves/Animals are gone from that position. This way death is no alternative to finding food (I just /kill and get half saturation).
• If you die with 10% HP, the game ends. Yes, it ends.
• Sleep is the only way to increase HPs. Therefore the first time you die is like a free pass. You "almost died". However the second time is game over. 
• There is a lot of content in the game, alcohol/cheese/jam making etc. But what I'm missing is a good body health system. e.g. getting injured or sick, frostbite, heatstroke, etc. Then you need specific medicine/herbs or bandages, bedrest to cure. 

Let me know what you think. I personally really love this game, it is very well made and provides a good challenge. Still, I found that I played it wrong, e.g. exploring without care of encountering wolves, choosing to kill myself instead of fighting hunger. There must be a real punishment for starving, a real threat from dying, in order to make it truly immersive.

[Rhyagelle]

I'm sorry, but I disagree with pretty much everything except maybe the wolf pack. Especially removing biomes and stability. 

[Maelstrom]

Played for only 27 hours and you want to remove Temporal Stability?  Uhhh...  Are you aware that this survival game has very heavy Lovecraft themes and the whole temporal instability is a core concept to the game world?  I have to agree with @Rhyagelle  

If you want to heighten the survival aspect, might I suggest wilderness survival setting and/or perma-death?

 

[Anthony frailey]

Thing is, can look in settings, and turn off storms, rifts, and temporal stability.  ( though i think deep places, and dark caves still spawn drifters, locust, ect...)
Already a feature. 

On the death aspect, ... that's an exploit, if you chose to use it that way, you are basically ruining your own fun.  it should NOT be a forced mechanic on everyone via engine or hard-coded limits.  You can set death, not to keep items on death, and limit respawns though.  
 

immersion wise-  a game like this, is more of a "sandbox" building "survival" than a hard core , survival simulator.  I'd look to modders to provide a more complex and involved medical system.  I'm sure modders here will take commission to provide. 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Anthony frailey

[ArgentLuna]

Temporal stability and the drifters I'm sure will eventually get expanded on and that will be good, its a core part of the game and not in need of removal. The treacherous ground similarly (although I guess Im a bit complacent on that currently as the server I play on didn't have it on at the start and for some reason it doesn't stay enabled so has been left off since then but I miss it as feature)

The later half sounds very much like you would want to mod it in because that's not the gist or needs to be the gist of the game presently. maybe later down the track they will add a hardcore mode for those that want that experience. I've certainly not ever decided welp time to die to avoid hunger, will scavenge food as much as i can and suffer the slow drain as i rush back home to the pantry and have also had rush food out to a friend who had theirs go off while a long way out.

 

[Anthony frailey]

Well, i play "survival games" , I never played Minecraft to know what that's like. Nor 7 days to die, as i find that concept rather dumb.  VS is not truly a survival game, nor truly just a blocky build game. Its a sandbox with a lean towards exploration and discovery, with a lovecraftian theme tossed in to be different than the zombie genre and minecraft games. 

But, games like subsistence and Greenhell, seem like what your looking for more so than Vintage Story, as i  know that "style" will never fit into Vintage Story game play, or mechanics by default. 
There is a hard-core mode already.  You can't base the entire game, off a very short stint of multiplayer server, that most likely had settings put to favor building as most of them do. 

On modding... yes. All the best games ever done , from fall outs, to Stalker , to Skyrim , and countless others... always it was mods and modders that carried them, and even to this day, still have active communities and followings, though most are defunct officially. 
And, it most likely will be the only way for a vastly different medical system in the game.  ( Mostly, because such things, simply do not fit the play style of the game by default.) 
 

[qwerty]

The thing i really would love to see in the game is the map not being present from the start of the game.
Since the game is about survival, which means you could get lost while being chased by animals (i really think that would be fun).
When i'm playing the game most of the time i'm looking at the map instead of remembering the environment, which removes allot of the survival aspect.
Already posted my idea of the map system being craftable once but i'm not sure if people understood what i meant.
Maybe you should be able to craft ink and paper with which you could make a sketch of a chunk or area or something, then when you look at the map it will show your position but it would never show your position when you're inside of an undiscovered/unsketched area or something.
All those sketches could be added to a book (collection) which players carry with them and can exchange with one another.
Also night time should not spawn creatures every night, there maybe should be a bit more reason for them to lurk around your camp/house. (food being present or the smell of food being cooked).
Fire scares creatures in the wild, maybe wielding a torch could scare them.
I know the difficulty of programming such mechanics but then again they're just ideas.
A punishment for death could be advancing time ( in single player that is ), so your crops/food might get spoiled and your plans for the days go to waste.
Then again in multiplayer it wouldn't work.

[qwerty]

oh nevermind about the map system, didn't read all the new ideas, just saw it has already being discussed

[Maelstrom]

Map can be disabled during world creation customization.

[qwerty]

That would mean the map would be entirely disabled, what i mean is it should be more like an item which you can carry with you and add sectors to, which can be copied and shared between players or other maps.
Making the map an important item which (if dropped) could get spoiled by rain. A map should be more like a collection of mapped out sectors, maybe keep one map at home at all times and craft a copy of the map which you can carry with you and add new sectors to... then when you get home after a day of discovering new sectors (adding sectors to the copy) you can then copy then newly discovered sectors unto the map you keep at home.
So it will be more like sharing knowledge and discovery.
Creating a copy of a map would mean you would need the same amount of materials (paper/ink) as it would have took to create the original and adding to a map should also cost paper+ink.
So what i mean is there should be multiple instances of maps having all different data which can be exchanged.
Also map sectors need to be updated, which means one map could have out-dated data about the environment (those trees being drawn there might already been cut down).

[dakko]

On 12/12/2022 at 7:29 AM, TertiaVigilia said:

 

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by dakko
nevermind

[Davis]

On 12/12/2022 at 10:29 AM, TertiaVigilia said:

Hi, 

After spending 27h playing the (great!) game I have only one suggestion/criticism:

• Death should not be an option. In a survival game you should strive to avoid dying. In the current game it is too easy to die (wolves, falling into ravines, starvation, drifters) and not punished enough (respawn, all loot still at death point, half saturated, full HP)

Therefore I have a few suggestions which would heighten the survival experience:

• Remove ravines from forest/grassland biomes. These are not realistic and just provide another easy way to die in the game. In e.g. mountain or desert biomes it makes sense to have them. 
• Remove temporal stability. The storms and drifters were a simple annoyance, nothing more. Just a few minutes of sitting inside while the screen tilted and moved. Instead I'd suggest adding e.g. a wandering wolf pack (like 10-20 animals spawning and wandering around the base or something like that). More realistic, more terrifying and less annoying. 
• Wolves only attack in packs. Therefore you can encounter a single animal without worries, but need to RUN fast when seeing a lot of them. 
• If you die with >10% HP, you are respawned at the position of death 8 hours later, without saturation and 10% HP (so it is like you almost died). Wolves/Animals are gone from that position. This way death is no alternative to finding food (I just /kill and get half saturation).
• If you die with 10% HP, the game ends. Yes, it ends.
• Sleep is the only way to increase HPs. Therefore the first time you die is like a free pass. You "almost died". However the second time is game over. 
• There is a lot of content in the game, alcohol/cheese/jam making etc. But what I'm missing is a good body health system. e.g. getting injured or sick, frostbite, heatstroke, etc. Then you need specific medicine/herbs or bandages, bedrest to cure. 

Let me know what you think. I personally really love this game, it is very well made and provides a good challenge. Still, I found that I played it wrong, e.g. exploring without care of encountering wolves, choosing to kill myself instead of fighting hunger. There must be a real punishment for starving, a real threat from dying, in order to make it truly immersive.

I can appreciate where your suggestion is coming from, and the game certainly needs improvement in some areas. I just have the following comments to make in regard to your original post; 

1. Temporal Stability and the drifter mobs are a core element of the game. The same way The End is for Minecraft, it just has not been fleshed out and is in a very early state. My suggestion is be patient with Tyron, he does most of the programming (if not all) for the game and he's one person, he can only tackle one game feature/change/issue at a time. 

2. The pack animal suggestion is a good one and it's been stated by Tyron and on the roadmap that improved animal behaviour is the end goal. Seeing how committed the Vintage Story team is to creating a believable natural world, I'd be willing to bet my house on the fact that at some point animal behaviour, AI and pack formations/migrations will all be a part of the game somewhere down the line. 

3. I agree that death is a pretty easy way out a lot of the time. It needs to be more punishing, and there is an endless amount of directions the VS team could take. I'm not sure what the right answer is there, but what I know is that one size will not fit all play styles so some of us will be disappointed if that ever changes I'm sure. 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by Davis

[Anthony frailey]

In its current state , i do agree AFTER you've experienced temporial storms a few times, they are rather just a interruption and annoyance.  That i will grant to the OP. 

Mostly just reminds me of the Emission storms and Psi-storms in Stalker , just mechanic in place designed to drag out and interrupt normal activities. It'd be different story/worthwhile to experience them, if there was more "reward" to surviving them, say guaranteed glowy gears, or rare metal bits, or even artifacts or rare weapons/armors. 
Currently, mind you.  At this time, there really is not much of a point to them.  
First few times, might be "cool" bleeding rocks, warpy stuff... look things to kill! After a few, its more like... *GROAN* this again? Meh ... dull. 
In fact, i've turned them off in gameplay, but I keep rifts and land stability on. The lore still fits, even if you turn off these features. 

I suppose i'm a rare breed of player, where I just do not like mechanics that are aggravating , just for the sake of being there to be aggravating.  

Edited December 15, 2022 by Anthony frailey

[Maelstrom]

2 hours ago, Anthony frailey said:

Mostly just reminds me of the Emission storms and Psi-storms in Stalker , just mechanic in place designed to drag out and interrupt normal activities. It'd be different story/worthwhile to experience them, if there was more "reward" to surviving them, say guaranteed glowy gears...

In my experience, double headed drifters are almost guaranteed spawn during storms AND they have guaranteed temporal gear drops.

[Anthony frailey]

i do not guess i ever seen one during them then, I'll check again
I get surface, deep, tainted some are "blinky"  , no two heads though

Edited December 15, 2022 by Anthony frailey

[Maelstrom]

I've had them spawn in light storms but they're more likely to spawn in medium and heavy storms.  Even got 2 of them in a recent heavy storm.

[BigBadBeef]

You want pain and suffering? Adjust the world settings, crank things up as hard as they can be.

Lets how how you will be full of yourself when you get one-hit killed by the first hostile thing you encounter. And with permadeath, your world will get deleted as soon as it had the chance to fully load in.

I promise you, you will never complain again about having it easy on the default settings.

[Anthony frailey]

does rifts only spawn surface drifters?

 

[BigBadBeef]

19 hours ago, Anthony frailey said:

thats not what happened though, the OP stated 27 hours on a server. Probably did not even see world settings, or options... just hopped on a server, and started basing everything off that experience. 

You would think he never played a survival crafting game before.

[Maelstrom]

On 12/16/2022 at 12:25 PM, Anthony frailey said:

thats not what happened though, the OP stated 27 hours on a server. 

I don't see where they stated they played on a server.  Even went back and re-read the OP.  Searched the page and server does not appear in the post either.  Seems like they played default and based it off of a short time playing.

[Anthony frailey]

43 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I don't see where they stated they played on a server.  Even went back and re-read the OP.  Searched the page and server does not appear in the post either.  Seems like they played default and based it off of a short time playing.

yeah, my bad... i got this bit confused with another topic ( i had two pages open at the time of.) My silly brain jumbled info into one response.  Totally my bad, i'll retract said statement now. 

[Maelstrom]

No worries.  I was worried I had missed something since I skimmed over much of the OP.