Combat is absolutely awful

[Dilan Rona]

3 hours ago, Feycat said:

I mean, they're also incorrect. Wolves ONLY kill small animals like rabbits and chickens.

Well I guess mine must have been starving then, cause I had to drag a moose carcass out of a wolf pit on more than one occation.

[Maelstrom]

Likely a bear nom'd on the moose and left, if your pit trap is only 2 blocks deep.

[Dilan Rona]

Except I've seen them actually attack moose before. Those wolves are mean, and got a wasp stuck in their bonnet...

Edited May 21, 2025 by Dilan Rona

[Dealman]

On 5/12/2025 at 2:10 AM, Maelstrom said:

Every single release someone comes on the forums and comments how bad the combat is.  Seems like there's no effort to research the topic before the keys start flying.  Your comment was literally less than a week before or after someone else made a thread on the exact same topic.  Anego is a small studio.  Until recently Tyron was the only full time coder with a couple of sporadic part timers to help.  There's only so much he can do and I get tired of seeing posts that seem to expect the development capabilities of a AAA development company.

All the more reason this should be addressed sooner rather than later, don't you think? It's now a very integral part of the game, yet it's nowhere near as polished as many of the other features that are just as integral to the overall experience.

Why should we research if there are prior topics? There are no rules against double posting, there are no megathreads, why should we care that you find it annoying? If it's a thread you feel pops up a lot and you're tired of seeing it, then either just ignore it or help push the narrative that combat needs a overhaul and they'll finally go away?

I don't expect AAA quality from Anego at all, that's such a stupid hot take.

What we think should be higher priority is irrelevant because much like you said, in the end it's up to Anego to decide. I believe combat is by far the weakest aspect of the game in its current state, you disagree - that's fine. All we can do is provide our genuine opinion on things and it's up to Anego to do whatever they want with that information.

[Tom Cantine]

Personally, I do not find combat awful, except in the sense that I try to avoid it like any sensible person would. Someone could get HURT, after all!

And in that sense, I find the system works just fine for what I want from the game. I'm not great at combat in games generally, but I learn over time and get better, which is exactly as it should be. The system is mostly intuitive, with fine tuning details to learn through experience and talking to more experienced players about proper tactics.

My take on the OP's specific complaints:

(1) Bowtorn. I can see finding these guys difficult, but I don't. Defending against bowtorn just takes some preparation, and not very much of that. A couple of hay bales will block their arrows. They will waste shots shooting at you while you're completely behind cover, and you can hear their arrows strike, which tells you when they're reloading so you can act accordingly. Seems to me that the complaint here is coming from an expectation that you should be able to just run out and beat them up, which you CAN, but you have to be smart about it.

(2) Loot is insufficient? Seriously, why would you expect there to be material rewards every time you kill an enemy? In a real fight, your biggest reward is SURVIVING. And this is, after all, a survival game. Hostile monsters from beyond time try to kill you, and you think they should be bringing you GIFTS? Not every mob is a threat, and not every mob is a resource. If you're truly desperate for flax fibers, then sure, go hunting drifters, but understand that this is desperation. There are better ways to get things you need, and personally I LIKE that there are horribly inefficient and desperate alternatives available.

(3) Yeah, that's a bit of a bug. I sometimes find it very difficult to find the hit box to skin a kill when it should be right there, dammit! But again, this is a survival game, not a loot/XP shootemup. The task of skinning a kill SHOULD take some time, and not be practical while you're still in combat. You need to exercise some tactical discretion, not expect all the drops to just poof into your inventory like in so many other games. 

(4) Yes, rifts are annoying and menacing. They're meant to be. Turn them off if you don't like the story elements. But to appreciate a story (ANY story) you need to buy in, accept the premises and go along with it. Like they say in improv, "yes, and...."  This is the story we're being offered.

(5) Never engaged in PvP on VS, so I can't comment on this one. Never found the system problematic the couple of times I've tried cooperatively to take down prey or fight off drifters in multiplayer. 

(6) Wolves unbalanced? I dunno, man, you ever seen a real timber wolf in the flesh? There's a REASON we have fairy tales about the Big Bad Wolf. They're pretty terrifying. But again, with proper tactics you can deal with them. I'm finally at a point in my solo world where I can confidently take them on, but it's still appropriate to have a healthy respect for them. I still avoid them if they're in a pack. I feel this balance is absolutely correct. 

(7) Slings. Hmmm. I'll have to try them. I haven't yet, but I've only ever played hunters or commoners. I find I miss fairly often with bows, when I was a crack shot in Minecraft. Still, it seems to me that this is again one of those things you need to "yes, and..." and adjust your tactics accordingly. You go into a situation KNOWING that your missile weapon has inherent inaccuracy, plan your attack around the possibility that your shot might miss.

In short, it seems to me that the criticisms are based almost entirely on expectations developed from playing other games, but those other games are designed around different goals. 

[Lagos]

28 minutes ago, Tom Cantine said:

(1) Bowtorn. I can see finding these guys difficult, but I don't. Defending against bowtorn just takes some preparation, and not very much of that. A couple of hay bales will block their arrows. They will waste shots shooting at you while you're completely behind cover, and you can hear their arrows strike, which tells you when they're reloading so you can act accordingly. Seems to me that the complaint here is coming from an expectation that you should be able to just run out and beat them up, which you CAN, but you have to be smart about it.

If I interpret the complaint with maximum charity, I think the issue may be the gameplay experience of how they make engaging with the spawns of a temporal storm reckless and dangerous. As you say, you CAN run out to beat them up, but as soon as there are a sufficient number of them spawned all around you, it's very dangerous to do so because you can't engage and eliminate enough of them quick enough to avoid taking a dangerous amount of damage. Drifters don't have quite the same issue because a large group of drifters can still be kited and managed.

Once it becomes overly dangerous, it's wiser to just bunker down, maybe build a trap to farm gears. That definitely works but it's probably not as satisfying for someone who wants to engage with the dangerous storm head-on with a balanced degree of risk.

I'm not sure I see it as a problem, but I can definitely understand why some folks would find it unsatisfying.

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

In short, it seems to me that the criticisms are based almost entirely on expectations developed from playing other games, but those other games are designed around different goals. 

Honestly, this statement could be applied to a lot of the criticism/suggestions leveled at Vintage Story. That's not to say that Vintage Story can't draw inspiration from other games and how those games handle themselves, but just because something works in a different game doesn't mean that it will work for Vintage Story.

Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical here, but sometimes after reading complaint threads I get the impression that the player(s) in question don't actually want to be playing Vintage Story, but rather a different game with Vintage Story's skin.

Edited May 23, 2025 by LadyWYT
Grammar

[ifoz]

On 5/23/2025 at 6:10 AM, Tom Cantine said:

(6) Wolves unbalanced? I dunno, man, you ever seen a real timber wolf in the flesh? There's a REASON we have fairy tales about the Big Bad Wolf. They're pretty terrifying. But again, with proper tactics you can deal with them. I'm finally at a point in my solo world where I can confidently take them on, but it's still appropriate to have a healthy respect for them. I still avoid them if they're in a pack. I feel this balance is absolutely correct. 

Wolves are currently broken and lack a proper attack cooldown, so they are unbalanced at the moment. They can consecutively chain hits on you in the span of a few frames and instantly kill you.

I do agree with your other points though honestly, I am mostly fine with combat but do think that there needs to be something done to make the boss fights a bit more interesting. Even if future bosses are gimmick fights of some sort, just something to make future bosses fun.

Edited May 24, 2025 by ifoz

[Thorfinn]

3 hours ago, ifoz said:

Wolves are currently broken and lack a proper attack cooldown, so they are unbalanced at the moment.

So I've heard, though protein is almost always my first nutrition bar filled, and it's always with more or less useless bushmeat, with an occasional redmeat or poultry drop from a wolf kill.

Quote

I am mostly fine with combat but do think that there needs to be something done to make the boss fights a bit more interesting.

I'd vastly prefer to escape the tired old trope of the boss fight entirely.  Since CRPGs and FPSs came out, it's always been the same old same old. "Oh, look, a boss fight." Hard to believe no one has come up with anything different over the course of 40, 50 years.

Edited May 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Rhyagelle]

I have been playing more Vintage Story the last week or so, and at this point... I agree. The absolute weakest part of the game, is the combat. We have creatures that have autoaim (how is that fun?), we have creatures with wonky hitboxes (which also makes it hard to determine when or how a creature has hit you), and so on and so forth. There's nothing fun about a horde of Bowtorns or Drifters throwing bone spears/rocks at you with 95% accuracy and then you walk up in first person thinking you are close enough for a hit from that perspective, and you don't, instead getting whacked to death by them.

The combat of the game 100% needs a rework. It's the only frustrating part of the game for me. I almost completely loathe it. 

[FemboyDominator]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Hard to believe no one has come up with anything different over the course of 40, 50 years.

Kind of a weird take. A boss fight is just pacing. The climax of a given "chapter" and a final challenge. You need to challenge the player in some area to keep them interested. Combat just happens to be the focus or a main mechanic of most games. So if you want to challenge the player's combat skills (which they'd naturally be building during their playthrough), you pit them against a mechanically complex enemy or overwhelming odds... both of which can easily be considered a boss fight. It doesn't even have to be strictly combat. I'd call something like the Storm from Frostpunk a boss fight - because it's the climax of the story campaign and it challenges you in one of the game's main mechanics (surviving the cold).

[kcroxtonjr]

I'm new to the game, and even though I know it's not supposed to be a hack and slash game or anything like that, the "combat" does frustrate me quite a bit.

Not saying the game needs to have top-tier combat, but considering how dangerous the world is right from the start, it should at least be less janky than it currently is IMO.

I haven't played long enough to see what all of the weapon options are and how they all feel, but for example the first club is VERY ineffective, not because it's so weak but because of the way hit detection works. The game does not make use of proper collision detection based on the way the weapon swings, so if your crosshair is even a pixel off you will just completely miss the target even if it looks like you should have hit it. This just makes it feel janky, you're swinging a club not poking at an enemy with a needle. This issue applies to everything else of course just because of the way hit detection works.

Spears feel a bit better because you actually are poking at something and can throw them, but the issue I sometimes run into with them is somehow enemies can hit me with close ranged attacks even though they are out of range from my spear attack. Makes no sense when a wolf bites me before I can poke it in the face with a long spear. Also another issue is the window to register a hit from an attack is very small right at the beginning of the attack, making it very unforgiving with how accurate you need to be without proper collision detection.

Again, not saying this game needs a very advanced combat system, but with things like proper collision detection and animations for the weapons, tweaks to enemy AI, and a few other minor changes, defending yourself against the enemies of the world could feel a whole lot better.

[ifoz]

On 5/26/2025 at 5:33 PM, kcroxtonjr said:

I haven't played long enough to see what all of the weapon options are and how they all feel, but for example the first club is VERY ineffective, not because it's so weak but because of the way hit detection works.

The three main weapon types are "falx", "spear" and "bow".

Falx is like a sword. You click, it swings, it's a hitscan system so your hit or miss is determined by where you clicked.

Same for spears, except you can also throw them. When thrown, it isn't a hitscan system, so there is actual hitbox collision involved. Rather overpowered if you spam throw a lot of them.

Bows are pretty much what you'd expect. Also not a hitscan system, though you get less DPS than spears in exchange for being able to carry many arrows in a single inventory slot.

The clubs and scrap weapons (aside from the scrap blade and spear) are rather bad compared to any others, since their hitscan range is a block shorter than other weapons.

[Mummel]

...But seriously, the game's greatest problem right now is that the only people who actively play it are people with such a high tolerance for annoying bullshit that they can't comprehend that most people don't.  

I've owned the game for over a year, and every time I try to get into it I die several times to a single wolf that appears from behind a bush and just quit. "Make pit traps", "don't go near bushes", guys you realize that the early game makes you wander quite a lot, and then punishes you for wandering around too much, right? I NEED to wander around, I need to find specific kinds of stones that are actually knappable and berries to eat work out where ores are going to be and blah blah. It truly feels like you just have to pray to the "no wolves today" gods just to learn a little more about how the game even works. Scramble naked through the woods and get mauled by a bear simulator (except it's a wolf because bears are pushovers actually). If they're going to be this dangerous they need to be like 1/4th as common as they currently are.

Honestly I think the simple solution would be to just make them easier to hear. I should have _some_ way of noticing and preparing for the thing that's about to rip my throat out, even when the world is 90% bushes.

Edited May 28, 2025 by Mummel

[Asatar]

7 hours ago, Mummel said:

the early game makes you wander quite a lot, and then punishes you for wandering around too much
Honestly I think the simple solution would be to just make them easier to hear. I should have _some_ way of noticing and preparing for the thing that's about to rip my throat out, even when the world is 90% bushes.

This. 100% this is honestly my major gripe with the game currently. Bear/wolf spawns have made forests no-go zones for me. Want to explore? Good luck not getting mauled by bugged wolves or ninja-bears with mild leaf coverage. And whenever I do get mauled, it makes me lose all interest in playing. As a personal antecedent, Ninja-Bears were such an issue (I lived in a relatively flat, plains area). Thankfully it was a plains biome, so I made it a ritual to do a "bear-watch" before I left the safety of my compound. I didn't explore my world UNTIL I made gambeson armor (a whole separate issue about early-game armor). Even then, the only reason why I made gambeson armor was so I can live long enough to make my escape/break aggro. Bears shouldn't be 100% lethal with the only exception being "near a body of deep-enough water".

I know this game isn't a 1-to-1 analog of real life but aggressive bear behavior, like in game, is usually a mama bear protecting her cubs. At the very least, I would like to see lesser bears or less aggressive bears (unless it is a mama bear with their cubs), or a way to hear a bear or at the least hear bear-cubs.

[Thorfinn]

The easiest answer to wolves and bears are your world settings. Turn creature strength down to 25%, seraph health up to 35 (or whatever max is), give yourself faster walk speed. Eventually you will improve enough you start bringing them back to defaults.

 

Unlike Real Life™,  you can easily outrun wolves. Bears, too, unless you encounter a brown on flat, featureless plains. Even there, but I can't time my bob & weave unless I'm in  max distance 3rd person camera. YMMV. But if you have at least some bushes or uphill grades, it's easy to give them the slip. You can time your jumps so you don't stop sprinting, they can't.

You can also take them out at max range, and most of the time, when they flee, it's away from you. You can even pretty easily take them out running backwards while sidestepping (hold down Sprint-A-S for example), using nothing more than a shield and a stick, though a spear (any kind) makes that a lot easier.

There are mods that add footfall sounds to nearby critters, but most of it can be handled with situational awareness. A couple dozen ladder sections makes you king of all you survey, as you see behind the bushes, plus it makes finding resources simple.

[Garro]

Fairly new to the game as well but just want to voice my opinion.

I stopped playing for the last few months for various reasons. But I picked up the game with a group of three friends and was running a multiplayer server.

Everyone loved the survival and exploration aspects of the game, but the universal complaint we all had was that the combat is extremely under baked and unsatisfying. Obviously as a survival game that goes for a more realistic approach it makes sense that combat should be avoided when possible, but when we were forced to engage with it we did not hate it because it was potentially a severe punishment. We hated it because it lacks depth and was extremely unresponsive and clunky.

I'll come back to the game eventually, but unless the way we engage with the combat system changes pretty significantly I doubt my friends will be drawn back.

[Brandybuck]

On 5/3/2025 at 7:39 AM, Dealman said:

Combat desperately needs a complete overhaul.

I mostly agree. I don't mind the wolves so much, but I do abhor the fact that they all seem rabid. Ditto for bears. Apparentlyt here's some sort of lore about it, that they really are rabid due to rust or something.

But I've given up. I'm turning on passive mode. I'll be mocked for it, especially on Reddit, but fuck it. The combat just isn't fun. It's not that I'm weak and pathetic and unworthy, it's just not fun. (I feel the same way about most souls games). There are things I like about VS combat (damage tiers, etc), but plenty I don't. So I've just given up on it and turned on passive mode. I feel sad about it, but I'm just tired of annoyances. 1.20 just tipped me over the edge . 

What the game needs is a rebalance of the default game styles. Exploration is fine, Wilderness is fine, but I think Standard is too hard to be a standard. Split it into a normal and a hard. Then fix the combat. 

[Maelstrom]

Yes, combat is a bit janky as mentioned by @ifoz and that jankiness needs to be fixed (I expect it will in the upcoming 1.21 Polish Update), but everything else is yet another gripe about TACTICS and blaming it on the combat system.  Wolves are actually easier now than before 1.19 coz they would chase you FOREVER!  I once had a wolf chase me over 200 blocks (probably closer to 500).  I figured (based on experience) that I had outrun it and stopped to check something (note a clay deposit or something similar) I got a nice little reminder from said wolf.  I was shocked it followed me over hill and dale to surprise me.  I was equally shocked in 1.19 when wolves gave up the chase so incredibly quickly (typically under 50 blocks).

For people complaining about non-IRL behavior of the wildlife.  There is ingame lore that explicitly states that the fauna is more aggressive now than it was in the past.  The reason why is not stated and left to speculation.  This game is advertised as an uncompromising survival game.  It ain't gonna pull punches and most of us like it that way.  If you can't handle the difficulty grow up and do something about it like change the difficulty in the game settings or rise to the challenge by altering your tactics and strategies.  

 

[ifoz]

On 5/5/2025 at 1:11 PM, LadyWYT said:

I think some sort of Jonas tech weapon or two might offer an interesting solution to the problem. If it's a powerful late game item, that gives the player a good goal to work towards without trivializing the struggle of the early storms. Plus if said weapon has limited charges and is refueled via temporal gears, that not only gives players another use for temporal gears, but also means that they'll need to be careful about when they choose to use the weapon, as overuse could deplete their supply of gears too quickly. It's the kind of thing I could easily see being a oneshot weapon for most low-tier enemies(maybe even most common enemies in general), so that players can easily mow through hordes of enemies as long as it has charge. Difficult to acquire, limited use, but ridiculously fun if you can get your hands on one.

I love this idea!

A while back I had an idea for a "Jonastech sidearm" which would be sort of like a gun, except whatever you shoot would be randomly teleported anywhere within ~20 blocks of where it was when it was hit. Powered by temporal gears and used as a last-ditch 'do-or-die' type weapon when dealing with hoards. It wouldn't have to do any actual damage, but teleporting a bellhead shiver away from you long enough to escape or break sightlines sounds interesting.

Edited May 29, 2025 by ifoz

[Zane Mordien]

17 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

 

For people complaining about non-IRL behavior of the wildlife.  There is ingame lore that explicitly states that the fauna is more aggressive now than it was in the past.  The reason why is not stated and left to speculation.  This game is advertised as an uncompromising survival game.  It ain't gonna pull punches and most of us like it that way.  If you can't handle the difficulty grow up and do something about it like change the difficulty in the game settings or rise to the challenge by altering your tactics and strategies.  

 

The "lore" answer doesn't really work because he has said in interviews that they just haven't gotten around to upgrading  all of the animal behavior.  I don't expect them to reprogram bears to bring you coffee and biscuits every morning,  but more diverse behavior would be nice. I fully expect they will tone down bears and add mountain lions to make up for it. Lol

[QueenGeeBee]

I dont like how shivers clip into my model while attacking so i cant hit them.

I like fighting hordes of drifters and bowtorn, but shivers arent very fun to fight. 

[Maelstrom]

1 hour ago, Zane Mordien said:

The "lore" answer doesn't really work because he has said in interviews that they just haven't gotten around to upgrading  all of the animal behavior.  I don't expect them to reprogram bears to bring you coffee and biscuits every morning,  but more diverse behavior would be nice. I fully expect they will tone down bears and add mountain lions to make up for it. Lol

Except the lore answer does since not everyone will see that interview, but everyone can find the in game lore which is game cannon at this time.  From what I understand about upgrading animal behavior is not about animal aggression, but ability to tame wolves and elk (and probably other animals) and, iirc, migration.

1 hour ago, QueenGeeBee said:

I dont like how shivers clip into my model while attacking so i cant hit them.

I like fighting hordes of drifters and bowtorn, but shivers arent very fun to fight. 

This is what I expect to be improved with combat.  The shiver hit box is....   (to be diplomatic) difficult.  Others may say abysmal.

[Zane Mordien]

If no one is watching does a bear in the forest exist? I guess not by that logic.

[MagpieOAO]

Not sure if the engine can support it and my guess is probably but, the relatively simplest but most depth-offering combat mechancs I've seen use raytracing for swings and are found in games like mount and blade, Mordhau, etc where you have 4 directions of attack (Left, right, overhead, stab) and a block with some games also having blocking in each direction and pretty much all of them giving a bonus for timing a block.

The dedicated block key being your sneak key causes it to fill your vision while trying to sneak, which is not ideal. 

If it were possible, I'd first make it so you can block with any tool/weapon (even a stick) and give them some damage reduction values with the value being highest when you first block but reducing as you hold the block. Fiddle with the timing and now you have something like a shield which let's say blocks 3 damage flat. A buckler which blocks 5 damage when activated for .3 seconds then reduces over time to blocking 2 damage. 

tadaa, you can now parry in combat, as long as attacks are properly animating a telegraph and the cooldown is working. 

Some other things might be bleeding, burning, weapon oils (With the herbalism/brewing). 

Maybe some weapons have a higher chance to cause bleeding which you need a bandage to stop, but will likewise cause animals to bleed out and maybe the monsters assuming they work that way. Likewise burning, just having ways to apply it. Lastly with herbalism/brewing maybe things like poison mushrooms can be used to actually coat a weapon in poison.