The game is fantastic! , but

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, gomodo said:

They get bored when the conditions of survival give way to a certain comfort (around the Bronze Age), when the threats disappear.
They do not want to develop advanced technologies just to look pretty.

I will note that the addition of new enemies in 1.20 changes this dynamic. They hit much harder and are more difficult to deal with than drifters, so while a highly skilled player could technically just stick to bronze they're probably not going to have a good time. The addition of better bags also requires the player to have access to steel in order to craft them, as you will be needing to process chromite.

1 hour ago, gomodo said:

Enemies that are more and more numerous, more intelligent

Already covered, for reasons stated above. I also assume that more enemies will be added at some point in the future.

1 hour ago, gomodo said:

Difficulties are triggered at each technological level.

I would say this technically already exists in the game, given that acquiring better gear lets you venture into more dangerous areas without as much risk of immediate death. What I really don't want to see though, is a system where enemies always match the player's tech progression. I have played games that used that system of difficulty scaling before, and while it technically meant the enemies always presented a "challenge", it also meant that I never felt like I actually progressed. There's not a lot of point in going to the effort of acquiring really good weapons and armor if you're still killing enemies at the same general rate as before.

1 hour ago, gomodo said:

Cataclysms that force you to leave the comfort of the base and settle elsewhere (an asteroid that is going to crash, a volcano that is going to explode, a tsunami, a tornado, a flood, a collapse of an entire area).

Best left to mods, in my opinion, as I don't see the average player enjoying having all of their hard work wiped out by something they couldn't prevent. Infrastructure like livestock, fruit trees, and machinery takes a lot of time and effort to acquire--easily a few hundred hours' worth of play. One could argue that stone structures could be more resistant to most disasters, but if you look at the aftermath of most disasters...there's often not a lot of stonework still standing either.

If something like this were added, it would essentially have to be an option that's turned off by default. I'm also not sure how you'd go about calculating some of the effects, like an earthquake hitting with soil instability turned on. It's likely to cause a huge mess that you can't really ever fix, that also likely takes a lot of processing power that could have been used for other things in the game. There's also the issue of disasters likely needing loaded chunks in order to occur; if players are warned in advance(like they are for temporal storms), then they can simply leave an area for a while and come back later to avoid the damage. If they aren't warned in advance, however, then they don't really have time to prepare for disasters that could occur in that area.

The last problem I see is that parts of the main story are built with the expectation of the player leaving home for extended periods in order to complete certain tasks. Not only would it be really disappointing to return home and find out that your entire base has been wrecked by a disaster, but it would also be very frustrating to die far away from home due to a disaster you couldn't prevent or otherwise avoid. Likewise, you'd need special protections in place for lore locations in order to ensure that the story remains able to be completed...which in turn is going to break immersion if a disaster rolls through and leaves certain bits magically unscathed.

2 hours ago, gomodo said:

An environment that is constantly deteriorating and that gradually becomes unlivable (rising waters, temperature?): having to move very far away to survive.

Again, good concept for a mod, not so much for the main game. Vintage Story already has some of these themes, with the general setting, the temporal storms getting worse as time goes on, and the new travel expectations...and I also recall seeing several complaints about each one of those(some of them quite colorful). So I don't really see that kind of environment being enjoyable to play, outside of players who are specifically looking to live as a nomad in an apocalyptic wasteland. Which, I'll also note, being a nomad doesn't support the kind of settling down and base-building that fancy gear and tech requires.

2 hours ago, gomodo said:

The seraph becomes old and gradually weakens: Technology allows it to compensate for its weakness. We can also imagine a technological advance necessary to reproduce before dying (victory condition and reboot of the game on a new character?).

Another concept that's great for a mod, but not so good for standard gameplay. First and foremost, the lore does not support the concept, as seraphs don't seem to age as they are no longer subject to the usual laws of time(hence why they respawn upon death rather than staying dead). Aside from that, it's generally not a lot of fun to play a character that actively gets weaker over time, instead of one that gets stronger.

Those looking for a hardcore experience, however, can already achieve such by limiting themselves to one life only in the settings upon world creation.

[ifoz]

5 hours ago, gomodo said:

The seraph becomes old and gradually weakens: Technology allows it to compensate for its weakness. We can also imagine a technological advance necessary to reproduce before dying (victory condition and reboot of the game on a new character?).

Vintage Story isn't really a game made to be "won" in such a sense, I don't think.
Sure you could beat all of the story and say that you "won", but a lot of the game is based around the player creating their own goals and achievements in the world. I'm winning if I complete that base extension, I'm winning if I stop my chickens being wiped out by local bears (though they did kill my rooster, dang).

Having a hard limit on the game and an incentive to rush to "beat" it seems to go against these principles of the game's design and tends to lead to minmaxxing and speedrunning in games. Much more suited to a competitive game than an endlessly open sandbox, at least in my eyes.

The lore also has Seraphs unable to die, and presumably unable to age, too. They are kinda funky like that - they almost exist outside of time in a way.

[gomodo]

DameWYT, I understand that you are not the same type of player as Sullivan and Krougal.. ..and so you do not propose anything because you do not feel concerned ("oh no, do not touch anything !").

However, some players would like options (or a hardcore mode) with a longer survival challenge duration.

For example, the other game (minec..) implemented waves of progressive raids with pillagers, avengers, ravagers and evokers (who can summon vexes) who invade a village stronger and stronger.

We can also imagine really heavy and very slow monsters attracted by large buildings (technically, detection of rooms or structures with doors) .. .. but the first wave could destroy the earthen walls, and later new, stronger monsters can destroy the stone walls.
To survive, two possibilities:
- flee, rebuild elsewhere
or
- develop stronger equipment (attack and defense).

 

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, gomodo said:

DameWYT, I understand that you are not the same type of player as Sullivan and Krougal.. ..and so you do not propose anything because you do not feel concerned ("oh no, do not touch anything !").

However, some players would like options (or a hardcore mode) with a longer survival challenge duration.

For example, the other game (minec..) implemented waves of progressive raids with pillagers, avengers, ravagers and evokers (who can summon vexes) who invade a village stronger and stronger.

We can also imagine really heavy and very slow monsters attracted by large buildings (technically, detection of rooms or structures with doors) .. .. but the first wave could destroy the earthen walls, and later new, stronger monsters can destroy the stone walls.
To survive, two possibilities:
- flee, rebuild elsewhere
or
- develop stronger equipment (attack and defense).

 

The reason I don't propose an alternative to your suggestion is that I can't currently think of a good alternative that wouldn't change the entire dynamic of the current game. Generally speaking, I consider the Standard game mode to be the premier version of Vintage Story that everything else is balanced around, with Exploration/Wilderness Survival modes being a close second. Creative mode is for testing things out, or just building without any limits. Homo Sapiens is a great addition for those who just want a real-world survival experience, but ultimately takes a backseat to the modes with the lore content.

I'm also not a fan of just using a world setting enable/disable a thing either as a fix for those who really don't want that thing, especially when it comes to systems that change the game significantly. In some cases it makes sense, but in this case it does not.

That's why I say that these ideas would be great as a mod, but not so much for the vanilla game. That way the option is there for those who want to play that way, without throwing everything else off.

[Maelstrom]

@gomodo Another consideration that hasn't been discussed, is the dev teams vision for the game.  At present Tyron (lead developer and only full time coder) has estimated the game is about 20% complete.  The concepts you've presented might be antithetical to the game the team is creating.

[Thorfinn]

On 1/14/2025 at 11:41 AM, Maelstrom said:

The concepts you've presented might be antithetical to the game the team is creating.

In particular, I think it's not intended to be a tower defense game. Not of your homestead, anyway. It would not surprise me if one of the story locations required your assistance to fight off a horde, but I suspect that will be a one-off challenge. Particularly after seeing the similarities and differences between the two story releases.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

In particular, I think it's not intended to be a tower defense game. Not of your homestead, anyway. It would not surprise me if one of the story locations required your assistance to fight off a horde, but I suspect that will be a one-off challenge. Particularly after seeing the similarities and differences between the two story releases.

 

On 1/14/2025 at 11:41 AM, Maelstrom said:

@gomodo Another consideration that hasn't been discussed, is the dev teams vision for the game.  At present Tyron (lead developer and only full time coder) has estimated the game is about 20% complete.  The concepts you've presented might be antithetical to the game the team is creating.

Pretty much my thoughts on it. It's not that one couldn't turn Vintage Story into that kind of game with mods, but I'd figure that people who are looking for tower-defense gameplay will opt to play a game that's designed around that concept to begin with, and not Vintage Story. And of course, if Vintage Story's focus changed to be tower-defense style play now, it would likely turn away a large portion of its current playerbase, as I don't think that's the kind of game most of us signed up for.

Edited January 15, 2025 by LadyWYT
Because apparently, I forgot how to spell