Different degrees of wear - depending on the type of rock, type of ground material, and type of wood

[RobinHood]

I have a suggestion that could potentially enhance the realism and strategic depth of the game.

Currently, tools in the game such as pickaxes, axes, and shovels wear out over time, but this wear does not seem to be influenced by the hardness of the material being worked on. In reality, harder materials would cause tools to wear out faster. Implementing this into the game could add an extra layer of strategy and realism.

For instance, pickaxes could have different wear levels when used on various types of rocks. Harder rocks like granite and peridotite could cause the fastest wear (high wear level), while softer rocks like chalk, lime, claystone, and bauxite could result in slower wear (low wear level).

Similarly, axes could wear out at different rates depending on the hardness of the wood being chopped. Hardwoods like oak could cause the fastest wear (high wear level), while softer woods like spruce and pine could result in slower wear (low wear level).

Lastly, shovels could also have varying wear levels. Harder ground materials like gravel could cause the fastest wear (high wear level), while softer materials like sand and soil could result in slower wear (low wear level).

This system could encourage players to think more strategically about how and when to use their tools, adding to the resource management and decision-making aspects of the game. It could also make the game feel more realistic and immersive.

Thank you for considering my suggestion. I look forward to seeing how Vintage Story continues to evolve and grow.

[Yozo]

I think they should first focus on making block breakage not like minecraft where it grows, but more like Boundless. Each hit deals an ever worsening crack until it breaks.

TOK TOK TOK TOK TOK CRACK

I think it needs this immersive thing first before we go any deeper.

[Thorfinn]

Interesting ideas. However, you both remember that simply slowing mining rate by 20% was rejected by the community and patched back out just a single sub-release later, right? And the reason for the initial 20% "nerf" was to match the effect to the animation, right?

If you want to have softer stones cause less wear than current, that could work, but we already know nerfing from the current specs (making some stones cause more wear) will spawn complaints, and not ones based on "realism". By extension, once the baseline expectation is established that sandstone incurs 20% less wear, that can never be reversed. We already know that creating an animation and matching mining rate to it is unacceptable. The effect would be to slow down the tuning of tools because each rock hardness would need it's own animations, by tool level, and instead of just changing an entry in a JSON for durability, you now have to rewrite animations.

As it gets closer to full release, yes, both are great ideas. But at this stage? All the extra work of balancing and creating new animations?

[Maelstrom]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

We already know that creating an animation and matching mining rate to it is unacceptable.

How about matching the animation to the mining rate to fix the mismatch between animation and mining speed?  The historic (and current) mining speed seems reasonable for the game,  nerfing mining speed just to make the animation match was a cop out solution to the problem.

As for variable durability cost to tools based on target block?  Yeah it's more realistic, but at what point do we admit that this is a game and there are going to be unrealistic elements to maintain the FUN FACTOR.  Otherwise, we'll just demand more and more realism until we have a reality simulator that is nothing but UNfun.  If the devs wanted this kind of meta to the game it should have been introduced much earlier, as it is a fundamental aspect to a MAJOR part of the game - resource acquisition and tool wear.  As you mentioned, to introduce it now would be difficult.

Both options, should the devs have their hearts dead set on implementation, would best be done in increments.  Maybe tweak the mining speed by 5% per release until the target 20% is achieved.  Same with adjusting wear factor to tools.  Make incremental changes over multiple releases until the target is reached.  Yes, I was one that put up a stink about the mining speed, mostly because of such a large increase in resource acquisition it would constitute.  If Tyron had introduced a 5% increase to mining speed I don't think I'd have even made comment on it.  The biggest beef I had with that tweak was that it was fix an animation problem (as stated in the patch notes), not to fix a mining speed problem.

Edited March 14 by Maelstrom

[Thorfinn]

Right. Again,  I think the best answer is to not obsess about the animation. At this point in development anyway. It seemed to me that the issue likely arose because of how timing of cave ins worked. Knowing when a block is about to give way gets much more important when misreading a block's status can be lethal.