Agriculture, weeds, mulch, and plows

[redram]

9 hours ago, tony Liberatto said:

 neither I nor you would know how much fun or maybe frustrating this would be without actually trying.

For others.   I *do* know that for me it would be very artificial and annoying to have an achievement gate.   Now, I'm not arguing *for* the gating of agriculture behind metal.  But at least it's a more natural *need-based* gating.  You need metal.  Find metal and you're there.    This is as opposed to an entirely artificial achievement gate, which I find immersion-breaking in this kind of sandbox game.  I would be fine with metal being gated behind agriculture or animal husbandry in a need-based way, but the problem is how?  There's nothing logical that I can think of in agriculture or animal husbandry that would make sense at all.   You could require a bellows, hence leather, but the player can just get that from hunting, they don't need to have 'mastered animal husbandry'.  I'd be interested to know how you would even define the 'mastery' of agriculture and AH for purposes of your achievement gate. 

So a couple meta questions come to mind.  What is the 'canon' behind the player start?  Are they supposed to be a primitive savage with no knowledge of metal?  Or are they an advanced person that is 'stranded' in the wild or something?  If the latter (and I would argue it is the latter, based on the game lore as I understand it thus far), then why should they not be capable of leap-frogging food concerns and going straight for metal if the player wants?  Also, is this a history simulator, or a game?  If it's not a history simulator, then again, what's wrong with the player rushing metal?

The only reason man developed things in the order they did is because man HAD to have food to survive.  Period.  We know instinctively from day 1 what food is, and it was simple to use - you eat it.  And also relatively easy to find, at least in certain areas, though some food does resist becoming food.   Metal was not easy to find, not obvious how to use, and not required just to live.   But this is not real life.  This is a game.  And I don't think the game is ever probably going to have the starvation imperative that forced primitive man to focus so much on just getting food, before he had the free time to discover metal.  Even if it did get pretty hard, metal entry point will also have to get far harder, as it's very easy to find four copper and create a handful of charcoal, currently.   Plus, we as modern humans already know what metal is and generally how it's used.  You can't erase that from the player's mind.  This just isn't real life, period.  

 

 

[tony Liberatto]

Have you read The Mysterious Island? The characters there are in a similar situation to the player. They are suddenly in a primitive environment and having to survive.

You will notice that they went straight to iron.  There was no Stone Age, There was no copper age, no bronze age. They just found iron and started working it, made wires and electricity.
If the goal is to get to high tech as fast as possible, why should the Devs waste any time in coding lower techs?
I believe the longer it takes for the player to get to the top of the tech tree, the more enjoyable the game will be.
Right now iron is the top, Once you reach iron what do you do? get bored and start a new world.
Many players enjoy that feeling of starting a new world, and why is that? Because of the struggle to survive, all I am saying is that if we can have the player spend more time in the Stone Age, the game in itself will be more enjoyable. 
If the player can get to the iron age in 6 hours, that's how they will measure the game.  They will say: Vintage Store is a short game.
With a few tweaks, we can make the game longer.

If the Devs will agree with me and make those changes, I do not know. If not but at least they get me an Achievement System with an API, at least I will be able to mod this.
For now, I do not believe I will be able to change your mind.
But, know that I enjoy our arguments, even if we disagree, at least your comments are intelligent and interesting. Your arguments are valid. Is just a difference in what we each expect from the game.

[Balduranne]

45 minutes ago, tony Liberatto said:

Right now iron is the top, Once you reach iron what do you do? get bored and start a new world.

That's because there's nothing else to do after iron. I'm with RedRam on this - Arbitrary gating progress through achievements is more annoying than the enforced rush to copper. I'd rather have more options before copper and more things to do once you reach iron; 

Longer doesn't mean better - Look at Alien: Isolation.