Farming overhaul!

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Of course they can think of pursuing story content from the very beginning even with this farming overhaul idea. Implementing this idea does not necessarily stop people from thinking, planning, and even pursuing as early as they like. It just might be difficult to do it early on. What is the problem with that? It is not like it is not already difficult. In an effort to advocate for more free gameplay in terms of exploring story content, you are discouraging free gameplay in terms of more advanced farming.

The problem with that statement? The more you ratchet up the difficulty of pursuing the main story, the less likely players will be to bother engaging that content. There's a delicate balance with the time and resources a player invests into a gameplay loop versus the reward they get for their efforts. If you make players jump through a bunch of difficult hoops just to eke by and survive as the favorable outcome...that's not a fun game anymore. It's a digital hamster wheel.

 

8 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

I think tweaking some crops will still allow players to be flexible.

It depends on how they're tweaked. What you've proposed, I don't think would work well at all, and would likely make the game more frustrating for the average player. I think the better option to improve farming without making it too much of a hassle, is simply decrease the crops dropped per tile slightly, and increase the time it takes crops to reach maturity slightly. The end result there is that one harvest per growing season on average(two with high quality soil); at that point, planting times become a little more critical to ensure you get a full harvest, and you're less likely to get an overflow of crops with a smaller farm. A change like this would help encourage players to make their farms a little bigger to compensate and pay closer attention to planting times for their climate, but it shouldn't otherwise make farming demand more of their time overall than it already does.

 

8 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

We are not proposing they should always have to be coming back to ruined food stores and decrepit infrastructure. This is a straw man of the position.

Of course depending on how long you have left your base will have different effects. Leaving your base for over 2 days will leave you with burned out torches, for example. Yet it would not allow for weeds to kill a healthy farm that you left 2 days ago. Why is nobody complaining about the torches here? For some reason, losing the seed you clicked into the ground seems to be the deal breaker. We hate spontaneous crop death, but we love certain torch death, for some reason.

Ruined farms and decrepit infrastructure is the end consequence I see when suggestions like this arise(that is, suggestions for increased maintenance to keep you crops and machinery going or it falls apart, etc). There are already mods that achieve similar effects in some cases, when they exist, though I don't recall seeing any of those mods be wildly popular. 

I believe you're also failing to understand just how long the player is expected to be away from home for current story content, let alone doing something like traveling to the tropics. On default settings, completing the entirety of chapter two will take the player away from home for about two in-game months; that's a lot of time to be losing progress. With the current balance, however, players are able to finish their chores at home, leave for a while, and pick up where they left off when they return. If you're wiping out crops, killing livestock, or destroying machinery because the player wasn't around to perform necessary chores and maintenance though...sure it's immersive, but now the player has to look forward to putting their base back together and trying to recover their progress every single time they leave for an extended period of time. 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Vintage Story is an uncompromising wilderness survival game. It's okay if crops sometimes spontaneously die.

If you're wipe player progress at random just in the name of "it's a hard game, get over it"...that's artificial difficulty. With the current state of the game, it's clear what the player has to do to get specific things. I will also note that some crops already die spontaneously--fruit trees. That's a big reason that many players just ignore fruit trees entirely; they take a lot of time to actually get going, and don't survive the planting oftentimes.

I also think that when Vintage Story brands itself as "uncompromising", that means it doesn't really hold the player's hand. It doesn't mean stripping players of progress arbitrarily just because "it's a difficult survival game, so it must be difficult 100% of the time". The game has a steep learning curve, but the reward for learning how it works is that tasks get a lot easier to do. If you change the end result to that learning to more busywork with less reward, the gameplay becomes less satisfying to engage with.

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

So you are fine with the challenge of having to time your farms appropriately? Surely many people are not fine with this. What do you say to them? Perhaps download a mod?

Yeah, because in the current state of the game it is a challenge depending on crop and climate, but there's quite a bit of wiggle room still to ensure that a broad range of player skill levels can achieve similar results. I've also not noticed a lot of people complain about farming being too hard or too easy, which suggests to me that farming is well-balanced in its current state, and not an issue. There are mods available to make certain farming aspects a bit more in-depth, for those that wish more detail, but I wouldn't call those mods wildly popular either.

 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Did I say the players can just "deal with it"?

Huh. Where?

20 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Well people are always able to not get 'so frustrated that they quit'. That is up to the player whether they have no patience to play an uncompromising survival game.

Right there. You're implying that players who don't like your proposed changes can decide whether they have the patience or not to keep playing the game, and just quit if it's too frustrating. At least that's how your statements read.

 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Anyway, that sounds fitting for an uncompromising wilderness survival game. "Just dealing with" problems is kind of the point at a stripped back, fundamental level. If you want to strip it back that far.

Of course the game design goes much further than just having players simply "deal" with problems. I don't expect anyone here to have that simple of a philosophy.

With all due respect, that's exactly what you seem to be supporting your proposed changes with though. "Just deal with it, they don't adversely affect anything because I said so! Your concerns are irrelevant and unfounded, and it's an uncompromising survival game anyway!"

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

Regardless, the relevance is in ensuring farms can be upgraded to the point of general long term self-sustainability. This is why I am confident it is not a big problem. Because I am confident these ideas can be implemented in a way where farming can still be upgraded to the point of being mostly safe during long times away. So whether I have experienced long times away from farms for any reason is irrelevant.

I would say it's very relevant information. If you yourself haven't experienced long times away from your infrastructure, how can you just say that your changes won't cause problems? Likewise, how can you just brush off concerns about such changes potentially causing issues when players leave their bases for long trips(which you HAVE to do to complete the main story), if you don't have experience making those kinds of trips yourself?

 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

It is relatively safe to assume no players here have fully considered the game as a whole. Do you understand how complex that would be? You would need to practically live in the source code.

You don't need to live in the source code to consider the game as a whole. I would agree though, given some of what I've witnessed on the forums, that players who consider the game as a whole when making suggestions aren't the majority.

 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

I'm supposing you are suggesting there is or may be story content that is inherently incompatible with complex farming. I don't think so. In my opinion, that is so far off the radar, it would be reasonable to not even worry about it.

That is a concern, yes. Only 2 of a planned 8 chapters have been implemented, and I suspect that future chapters will require the player to do a lot of traveling as well, or otherwise spend a decent chunk of time away from home per chapter. It might be further down the development road, but that's not a reason to say you can just ignore that part of design when suggesting changes like this. It's also not fair to say implementing your proposed changes now would have no effect on the story and required player travels, since the currently implemented story already have the player doing a lot of traveling.

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

I am starting to hear a little bit of, "We can't make plants get diseases, because we don't know how that will affect future story content."

But I understand maybe you are just speaking in general here.

Story content isn't the only reason I've argued against plant diseases, weeds, and other related changes. Story content is the main reason a player is going to leave their base for long periods of time, hence why I keep referring to story content, but it's not the only reason a player can leave. In any case, the issue isn't just "what happens when the player leaves"; it's also a matter of how much extra time they'll have to sink into farming with your proposed changes. The more time they have to spend babysitting the farm, the less time they'll have to engage in other gameplay that they may enjoy more.

 

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

Seriously, you sound like you’d like Better Than Wolves- it’s a mod(pack?) for TOBG. I’d recommend you check it out. Little hard to download, too hard for me, but it has all of the farming features you seem to want and more. If you want what you’re recommending and it takes flak from the two most committed members of the community that I know, I’d take a look at what your idea might look like implemented (in TOBG, at least) just to see what you actually feel about the feature in gameplay. 
… as a warning, Better Than Wolves might be a little more difficult than this cushy game. Not speaking from experience here, but it’s probably good to warn you.

I haven't played Better Than Wolves, but I've heard stories about it. 

Great point here about mods though--they're a great way to gauge how well an idea plays with the rest of the game, and whether or not the community as a whole enjoys it. 

15 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Awesome. Code it up. I guarantee I'll give it a whirl. I have done so for all other crop re-imaginings. And others' re-imaginings of other gameplay. All except chiseling. I just have not yet encountered any hardcore farming mods I think add enough to the game.

I agree with @Thorfinn here; if you believe that strongly in your proposed changes to farming, turn them into a mod and see how it flies in the community. If it gains enough traction, it could be implemented into the game. Worst case scenario? You just make a niche difficulty mod that will still be enjoyed by some players.

17 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

You are putting way too much emphasis on a blurb. Not all gameplay possibilities are fun.

Agreed. I would also note that sometimes compromise needs to be made in order to achieve a fun end result. An example I would cite from Vintage Story itself is the fiasco that ensued when 1.20 first released. Sailboats were a bit...underwhelming...and some players REALLY did not like the distances that chapter 2 required you to travel for the story. The solution was to make the sailboat faster(which was needed) and add an option to allow player to customize the distance between story structures. In my opinion the distances were fine and set the tone beautifully for the story, so I don't think that change was needed, but I also think it's nice that the developers gave players that option.

 

23 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Yes, I am. I, for one do not enjoy tedium and frustration. I don't really care to play a farming simulator. So far as I can tell, the story has nothing at all to do with farming.

Pretty much my sentiment as well. I don't mind turning my own game into a ruthless challenge via mods, but that's my choice. Not everyone plays at the same level I do. 

 

9 hours ago, Rudometkin said:

But if someone wants to wind down after work by making works of art, they can play creative for that. Why stress him out with torches burning out and lightning striking his head off, when all he wants to do is wind down by making works of art?

Speaking from the artisan standpoint...creative mode is for experimenting with ideas easily and not having to worry about acquiring your own building materials. A good chunk of the fun of making works of art in the standard game mode is the process of gathering your own materials and bringing the work to life over time(also holds true for making art IRL). Likewise, some players will turn down the difficulty significantly so they focus more on just the cozy or creative aspects of the game, and some players will do the opposite because they want to enjoy other aspects of the game in addition to the creative one.

There's also this weird artist trait that we make some our best work under pressure. I'm not saying that stressing yourself out to make art is healthy though! Beauty comes from pain, but make sure to take care of yourself as well.

[Rudometkin]

Just now, Thorfinn said:

Actually, you can get a pretty good idea based on number of people who download various mods. Crops V2 is pretty good, and sounds a lot like what you are asking for. But there's only a few hundred downloads for any given version, and several of those were me. It is self-evidently not what "everybody here wants".

The context of what Facethief doesn't know what people want, is the subject of whether people want to argue with me.

Regardless, there is no way to gauge whether the number of downloaded mods is accurate to the desire from the overall community.

The number of downloads in a mod could be drastically smaller than the number of people who want the feature added to the game. It is not a 1 for 1. So looking at mod downloads is not evident of what "everybody here wants".

In fact, you even accepted early on the notion that I am dead set against using a mod. So even you understand there are people who are dead set against using mods. Why then are you putting so much weight in mod downloads when determining what the community wants? Are you just assuming the amount of people who don't use mods is extremely low, perhaps? It could be extremely high. 

[Thorfinn]

5 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

I think crop death should be more likely than getting struck by lightning.

Why should lightning death be a rare thing? What is "uncompromising" about that?

But seriously, give Crops V2 a whirl. See if it adds to your fun. 

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

Regardless, there is no way to gauge whether the number of downloaded mods is accurate to the desire from the overall community.

The number of downloads in a mod could be drastically smaller than the number of people who want the feature added to the game. It is not a 1 for 1. So looking at mod downloads is not evident of what "everybody here wants".

I will note that number of downloads is a decent indicator of whether or not an idea is popular with the community. Mods like Primitive Survival, Expanded Foods, or Fauna of the Stone Age all have very high download counts, and also have features that are frequently asked for here in the forums. If I'm not mistaken, the devs themselves have stated that one of the best ways to get one's idea into the game, is to make a mod for it. The devs watch the modding database and it's not unusual for the most popular mods to be implemented into the game in some fashion, provided the mod fits the developers' vision for the game.

[Thorfinn]

10 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

Regardless, there is no way to gauge whether the number of downloaded mods is accurate to the desire from the overall community.

True, but it's the best yardstick we have. Kind of like Nielson ratings. What better guide do we have of how popular a given show is than how many people watch it?

[Rudometkin]

Just now, LadyWYT said:

I will note that number of downloads is a decent indicator of whether or not an idea is popular with the community. Mods like Primitive Survival, Expanded Foods, or Fauna of the Stone Age all have very high download counts, and also have features that are frequently asked for here in the forums. If I'm not mistaken, the devs themselves have stated that one of the best ways to get one's idea into the game, is to make a mod for it. The devs watch the modding database and it's not unusual for the most popular mods to be implemented into the game in some fashion, provided the mod fits the developers' vision for the game.

I think you don't know that. I think you know this, this is why you are reducing it down to being a "decent" indicator, and not an "accurate" indicator. Or, if you just mean 'popular' as in what is 'commonly expressed', then fine, but this still does not solve the issue.

Even if polls are taken, the outspoken people could be the same ones who download mods, which could be the minority!

There could be a silent majority wanting this farm overhaul. This is my point.

[Rudometkin]

3 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

True, but it's the best yardstick we have. Kind of like Nielson ratings. What better guide do we have of how popular a given show is than how many people watch it?

Sure. But let's not try to pick up bricks using a yardstick, regardless of whether it is the best yardstick we have.

Point is, it may be the best tool we have for gauging what people want, but this does not mean we should therefore be pretending to know what everyone wants. Because it is not the tool that gives us the knowledge we are pretending to have.

[Thorfinn]

3 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

but this does not mean we should therefore be pretending to know what everyone wants.

So you propose, what, exactly? Mind reading? Assuming everyone likes the same things you do?

[Rudometkin]

2 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

So you propose, what, exactly? Mind reading? Assuming everyone likes the same things you do?

I propose precisely that we should not be telling others "nobody wants to argue with them" when we can't even know that.

I propose we be honest and realistic. Do you disagree?

[Thorfinn]

Why are you talking to @LadyWYT and I about that? I don't believe either of us said anything remotely like that. Though, to be honest, I'm getting a little tired of having you argue past me. 

[Rudometkin]

 

@Thorfinn This is the chain you followed:

3 hours ago, Facethief said:

I appreciate your Noble 6 level last stand in this argument, but seriously, nobody wants to argue with you

1 hour ago, Rudometkin said:

You don't know what everybody here wants and doesn't want.

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Actually, you can get a pretty good idea based on number of people who download various mods. Crops V2 is pretty good, and sounds a lot like what you are asking for. But there's only a few hundred downloads for any given version, and several of those were me. It is self-evidently not what "everybody here wants".

59 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

The context of what Facethief doesn't know what people want, is the subject of whether people want to argue with me.

41 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

...this does not mean we should therefore be pretending to know what everyone wants.

37 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

So you propose, what, exactly? Mind reading? Assuming everyone likes the same things you do?

32 minutes ago, Rudometkin said:

I propose precisely that we should not be telling others "nobody wants to argue with them" when we can't even know that.

24 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Why are you talking to @LadyWYT and I about that? I don't believe either of us said anything remotely like that.

---------

This is a chain of messages with  direct quotes in responses. It's a chain. To answer your question, I'm talking to you about it, because frankly you're asking about it as far as I'm concerned, considering the context.

24 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Though, to be honest, I'm getting a little tired of having you argue past me. 

I don't think it's fair to say I'm arguing past you. I am actually very direct, some might say refreshingly direct. It's common for logical progression of discussions to get muddled sometimes in a forum. It's fine. Sorry you saw it as me arguing past you. I was being direct while staying relevant.

Edited June 29, 2025 by Rudometkin

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, Rudometkin said:

It almost seems as if you are the one who might not be suited for this game, seeing as how not even 24 hours ago, you said:

23 hours ago, Facethief said:

To me it’s uninteresting at worst.

Regarding the early game.

… by which I meant it’s amazing at best, and tends towards that end of the spectrum.

[Facethief]

You know what? I’m sick of this. See you on a less argumentative forum page.

[Thorfinn]

I hadn't planned on ever opening this thread again, @Rudometkin, but I hadn't noticed that this was the thread I got a notification on before I clicked on it.

I don't care one whit what post you were replying to. I was commenting on the content. You asserted that there is no way to determine what people want, and I said that's not exactly true. Unless one is omniscient, there is no better guide than revealed preference.

Ciao.

 

[Enjen]

Hey everyone I've read through the posts and frankly agree with @Rudometkin. He is doing exactly what this forum was meant for-- Suggesting.

Even though nobody asked for it, in my opinion, whether or not a feature is for everyone is not really what determines a gameplay feature? We cannot underestimate the average gamer/player. Many people play this game for many different reasons with different playstyles. While I see both sides of the argument (which it did spiral into an argument at the end instead of staying as a debate how it started out) its not fair to say "Just make a mod". OP posted an idea and while I think criticism to any idea brings forth innovation and proper change, he was met with "it wont work, people wont like it"

The people that mod are much fewer in number than people who play base game im sure. I dont have exact numbers but I can imagine how many people buy the game and never participate in the forums or the modding community.

On another note, having suggestions like this one breeds more ideas. A farming overhaul? Cool! Make the system more complex, thats awesome. What if someone else thinks "Whoah thats actually a cool idea, im not much of a farmer but LOVE making weapons, why don't I come up with an idea for a more complex weapons/blacksmithing overhaul system to suggest it!"

By shutting down suggestions like this so harshly, it is going to make it very difficult for people to want to share their ideas. 

Everyone here is in support of Vintage Story and has some level of passion for it. We just like it for different reasons and thats OK

Edited June 30, 2025 by Enjen
Grammatical errors

[Enjen]

Even during this discussion in between the back and forth you took Spontaneous Crop Death turned it into Plant Diseases which I think is a fantastic idea! It's a risk that could happen but preventable if you take care of your crops. Innovation. If an idea doesn't land exactly as is, modify it. Continue to improve. Vintage Story is in its early stages and still can be anything! 

Never stop the conversations. Never stop the ideas. We are one community.

Edited June 29, 2025 by Enjen

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Enjen said:

He is doing exactly what this forum was meant for-- Suggesting.

All due respect, that is NOT what he's doing. He long ago left off from Suggesting, to the point he became aggressively dismissive of others. "It's supposed to be uncompromising!" repeated ad infinitum.

1 hour ago, Enjen said:

its not fair to say "Just make a mod".

He already said he will use a mod, but he wants it in vanilla. Others who disagree can go screw. I even made the effort to recommend a mod that, I think, did more or less everything he was asking for, and he's asserted his own game design bona fides, as in, "I thought about farming mechanics, and the occasional need to leave the main base for long periods of time, and determined with my game-design oriented mind that these farming mechanics can be implemented for the betterment of the game." Implying that his "game-design oriented mind" is superior to others', and has been dismissive of anyone who disagrees.

[EDIT]

I should say, it may not be intentional. Some people are just unknowingly abrasive.

Edited June 29, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Enjen said:

Even though nobody asked for it, in my opinion, whether or not a feature is for everyone is not really what determines a gameplay feature?

This is true, however, if a suggestion is meant to be a feature of standard gameplay, then it should be a feature that is enjoyable for most players. As I've noted, I look at suggestions through the lens of the Standard game mode on default settings, which seems to be the general intended experience the developers have in mind.

1 hour ago, Enjen said:

Even during this discussion in between the back and forth you took Spontaneous Crop Death turned it into Plant Diseases which I think is a fantastic idea! It's a risk that could happen but preventable if you take care of your crops. Innovation. If an idea doesn't land exactly as is, modify it. Continue to improve. Vintage Story is in its early stages and still can be anything! 

A fair point in some regards, but I still maintain my previous position that such a mechanic needs to be balanced around other gameplay that demands player attention as well, such as the player needing to be absent from their base for extended times in order to complete the main story. As I've stated previously, the current system of farming allows a player to plant a crop, leave, and have it ready to harvest by the time they return, so they don't feel like they're actively sabotaging themselves to pursue the main story or go exploring. Unfortunately, I've not seen a counterpoint to such concerns other than "the concern is irrelevant", "it's fun, because I think it's fun", or "it'll just work, because I said it would". Perhaps something got lost in translation, but that's how it comes across.

As for implementing things like spontaneous crop death, weeds, and whatnot...here's the gist of how I see such things panning out:

Spontaneous Crop Death

It's true that sometimes crops just up and fail, despite your best efforts. You could have crops randomly die in the game and accompany the dead crop with a brief explanation of how it died(disease, pests, etc) as an easy way to make farming "tougher". I believe @Rudometkin suggested it be a somewhat common occurrence, like 1 tile out of every 10 crop tiles failing on average. I would probably expect 1 in 8 though, since a fully irrigated farm consists of 8 farmable tiles around 1 tile of water. The average is probably a mix of getting a harvestable 8/8 tiles per irrigated unit; 7/8 to 5/8 depending on how many tiles fail in a unit. For brevity's sake, let's assume that 5/8 tiles is the worst possible outcome per unit.

The problem here is...how does the player counter the crop loss? Every other challenge in the game, that I can think of, gives the player options to counter it before it becomes a problem. In this case, however, the crop just dies despite the player's best efforts, and they get nothing in return for their work. If a crop dies to lack of water, wildlife, or inappropriate temperature, the player can at least learn from that experience and improve their farming strategy by irrigating, planting at a different time of year, or fencing off their farmland. The most they can do in the case of spontaneous crop death is just plant more farms to compensate, but that unpreventable crop loss is going to reduce the sense of accomplishment at harvest time, because the player is getting screwed by RNG.

Weeds

Currently, we have weeds in that fallow farmland will grow grass and horsetails, which you will need to remove before you can plant anything in the tile. Adding the need to weed growing crops in order to avoid reduced harvest(bad result) or crop death(worst result) is at least a better option than spontaneous crop death, as it gives the player to chance to counteract a bad outcome. I think the main question to answer here is...how often is the player expected to weed their crops?

If the player doesn't need to check often at all and can safely ignore the mechanic without penalty, I'm not sure it's really worth adding in the first place, as the current system already provides similar results.

If the player needs to check almost daily and dispose of weeds promptly lest the crop be damaged, then you run into the issue of the player having to spend more time babysitting their farm, which is less time they're able to spend doing other things. I'll also note that the more often a player has to repeat a task, the more tedious it tends to become. Some tasks need to be done more often than others(like cooking or charcoal), that's true, however those tasks are fairly flexible in how and when you accomplish them.

Exploration and pursuing the main story also become less attractive, as now the player has to choose between having a harvest of food or industrial material(flax, or similar crops if added), or pursuing the story or other resources. 

Honestly, the best alternative I see to a weed mechanic, is to simply allow weeds to turn farmland back into dirt blocks if left fallow for an extended time. That gives players an option to relocate farms without needing to replace all their dirt, while giving the consequence of needing to till your farmland again if they let their farm idle for too long. 

Crop Disease/Pests

If weeds were bad about demanding player attention before something undesirable happens, these particular problems are much worse. Realistically, a player would need to destroy a diseased/pest-ridden tile immediately to prevent other tiles from getting infected, which is going to mean a LOT more micromanagement. Keep in mind that the setting is the late Middle Ages, so pesticides and whatnot aren't much of an option when it comes to counterplay. And it's not like the player can just ignore the affected tiles either, as doing so means losing the entire harvest.

In any case, players who really enjoy farming and a lot of micromanagement might enjoy a mechanic like that, but I daresay the average player is going to find it frustrating if they need to devote that much attention to one gameplay loop just to ensure they get a good result. And like I mentioned previously, more micromanagement is going to discourage players from going on long exploration trips or pursing the main story, as they're likely to end up feeling like they're sabotaging their progress. The current implementation of farming might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but it does allow the player the option to plant crops before leaving on an expedition, and have a full harvest to look forward to when they return.

----------

After saying all that, I suppose one could simply brush off all those points by saying players should spend more time getting their base well-established before heading off to explore the story. However, that narrows the options that players have when it comes to the game's pacing. The current standard mode allows players to progress as fast or as slow as they'd like, which allows for a broader appeal. Requiring 100 hours or so of gameplay to set up a base just so a player can think about actually playing the story content might appeal to those who like a really slow pace game, but it's going to be a turn-off for those preferring a faster pace or preferring to have more control over their own pacing.

18 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

All due respect, that is NOT what he's doing. He long ago left off from Suggesting, to the point he became aggressively dismissive of others. "Screw you! It's supposed to be uncompromising!" repeated ad infinitum.

He already said he will use a mod, but he wants it in vanilla. Others who disagree can go screw. I even made the effort to recommend a mod that, I think, did more or everything he was asking for, and he's asserted his own game design bona fides, as in, "I thought about farming mechanics, and the occasional need to leave the main base for long periods of time, and determined with my game-design oriented mind that these farming mechanics can be implemented for the betterment of the game." Implying that his "game-design oriented mind" is superior to others', and has been dismissive of anyone who disagrees.

Pretty much my general complaints in a nutshell. I've done my best to provide my thoughts, concerns, and otherwise attempt at well-ordered constructive criticism. Unfortunately, I've not seen much of a counter-argument to my points aside from getting told it's all irrelevant...because reasons...and other similar brush-offs.

[Thorfinn]

30 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I'll also note that the more often a player has to repeat a task, the more tedious it tends to become.

By late summer, it is not that hard to end up with well over 500 tiles under cultivation. Twice that with some practice. If you have a random weed sprouting, say, 10%, not only do you have maybe a hundred tiles to hoe every day on average, but unless the weeds are really, really obvious, there is the issue of spotting which tiles need weeding.

I mean, if you are a novice, maybe you only have a couple dozen tiles under cultivation, and this suggestion is a trivial "ask". But if you want a definition of tedious, it seems to me it would be a gameplay loop that takes more effort to weed than it does to plant the field in the first place. And, yes, I'm sure the answer will be, "Then only plant as much as you can care for." In essence, you should be punished for game mastery.

That was the main reason I was asking about level of experience in the game. It is completely understandable that one might have absolutely no idea how involved a suggestion is if he's relatively new to the game.

Edited June 29, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Enjen]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

All due respect, that is NOT what he's doing. He long ago left off from Suggesting, to the point he became aggressively dismissive of others. "It's supposed to be uncompromising!" repeated ad infinitum.

^ To be honest, I don't think he was being aggressive. His tone is rather direct and lacking of compassion or maybe came across as "too professional" But I don't think he was being rude or aggressive. Some of your comments on the other hand were quite touchy  I will agree a few of his opening comments gave the sense of "superiority" which does leave a bad taste and makes it difficult for others to digest with an open-mind.

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

He already said he will use a mod, but he wants it in vanilla. Others who disagree can go screw. I even made the effort to recommend a mod that, I think, did more or less everything he was asking for, and he's asserted his own game design bona fides, as in, "I thought about farming mechanics, and the occasional need to leave the main base for long periods of time, and determined with my game-design oriented mind that these farming mechanics can be implemented for the betterment of the game." Implying that his "game-design oriented mind" is superior to others', and has been dismissive of anyone who disagrees.

^ He was pretty thorough in his replies early on. Whole paragraphs defending his viewpoint and how a different playstyle could be developed to work with the long travel times and why he thinks it'd still be a good idea despite your protests. You and Lady agree that it makes for poor gameplay and is more tedious than not and that's absolutely okay. 
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

This is true, however, if a suggestion is meant to be a feature of standard gameplay, then it should be a feature that is enjoyable for most players. As I've noted, I look at suggestions through the lens of the Standard game mode on default settings, which seems to be the general intended experience the developers have in mind.

^ I still don't agree very much with that sentiment. Let's bring back the idea of the Torches burning out. Not super enjoyable but not annoying enough to be needed to be taken out of the game. It's just a mechanic that is a part of the game that players learn to work with. Whether it's crafting a bunch off rip, or turning them off so they don't burn out, or increasing the amount of grass you carry on hand specifically for it, your playstyle kind of changes with the game if that makes sense? I believe that's what @Rudometkin is trying to say. Is that if it's a feature it will just be another thing to learn.

I for one am terrified of farming. That is quite an exaggeration but I have not touched farming in the time that I've played the game because it already seems complicated to me. Nutrient Rotation, Soil Types, the option to water or have water nearby. But I still believe his idea (or the OP's idea rather) would still work well to flesh out the system once polished.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

A fair point in some regards, but I still maintain my previous position that such a mechanic needs to be balanced around other gameplay that demands player attention as well, such as the player needing to be absent from their base for extended times in order to complete the main story.

^ I see your point, but in that regard I feel that it should be up to the player to plan appropriately. If you know you are getting ready for a big expedition, perhaps you do all your farming beforehand, grab what you need and trek on! Leaving your farmlands empty for when you return. Food Supplies saved up in containers made for preservation and restart your farm after expedition.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Unfortunately, I've not seen a counterpoint to such concerns other than "the concern is irrelevant", "it's fun, because I think it's fun", or "it'll just work, because I said it would". Perhaps something got lost in translation, but that's how it comes across.

^ That is unfortunate that those were responses. Everything has it's relevancy and should be addressed.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The problem here is...how does the player counter the crop loss? Every other challenge in the game, that I can think of, gives the player options to counter it before it becomes a problem. In this case, however, the crop just dies despite the player's best efforts, and they get nothing in return for their work. If a crop dies to lack of water, wildlife, or inappropriate temperature, the player can at least learn from that experience and improve their farming strategy by irrigating, planting at a different time of year, or fencing off their farmland. The most they can do in the case of spontaneous crop death is just plant more farms to compensate, but that unpreventable crop loss is going to reduce the sense of accomplishment at harvest time, because the player is getting screwed by RNG

^ Personally I'd shy away from a purely Random occurrence. With this mechanic, potential plant disease should not even be seen by a farmer who is taking proper care of their plants. Or maybe there could be a grading system for seeds upon pickup "bad" "good" "great" where bad seeds have a higher chance of growing diseased plants and great seeds a lesser chance. or SOMETHING like that. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure a system could be come up with  where it's not purely RNG. Giving power and choice to the player I think is the right move. I agree with the player learning from their experiences. but then again this goes even deeper. "How often to 'good' seeds drop? how often do those get diseased" etc. This isn't really my suggestion so I won't ponder on it any longer. I just wanted to show my support for an idea being shared.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If the player doesn't need to check often at all and can safely ignore the mechanic without penalty, I'm not sure it's really worth adding in the first place, as the current system already provides similar results.

^ If the current system already does similarly what the Weeds suggestion is trying to do, I would just stick with the one that's already implemented.

 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

That was the main reason I was asking about level of experience in the game. It is completely understandable that one might have absolutely no idea how involved a suggestion is if he's relatively new to the game.

^ That's a fair point! Someone well into the late game with a massive farm cannot be compared to someone with a 10x10 backyard farm. A system such as farming should be considered consistently throughout different levels of the game your in. From beginning, middle, to late game.

Edited June 29, 2025 by Enjen

[Rudometkin]

So I can see some of you guys don't like how I stood my ground and defended my position. I am thought to be aggressively dismissive, repeating lines ad infinitum, abrasive.

Well if those things are true, then it is fair to point out that I am clearly not the only one here being "aggressively dismissive, repeating lines ad infinitum, abrasive".

I still need to catch up on some of the later posts. But @Thorfinn, I'm sorry I made you feel threatened when I suggested "my game-design oriented mind", as if I am supposed to be superior to others. I believe my mind happens to be fairly oriented toward game design, and mentioned it as part of support to defend my suggestion (support for Felix's suggestion) that is arguably unfairly under attack.

I understand being friends, one family with this shared interest, is better than being enemies. I would rather find common ground with each other than us argue with frustration.

I hope you understand that I am not intending to attack you as people, just some of your ideas. With that said, it is good we challenge each other.

I appreciate Thorfinn, LadyWYT, and especially Enjen for seeing my point of view fairly. I think I enjoy the community as much as I enjoy the game.

Now that I am done giving out virtual lollipops, I want to dive deeper into the discussion where I left off. For the sake of time, I will leave many things unsaid, so that not every word is replied to.

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The problem with that statement? The more you ratchet up the difficulty of pursuing the main story, the less likely players will be to bother engaging that content. There's a delicate balance with the time and resources a player invests into a gameplay loop versus the reward they get for their efforts.

So Lady, for vanilla implementation, you are not against all suggestions that inch toward a slightly more challenging experience. You are admittedly fine with making farming take longer. This makes it more difficult to pursue the main story. But when it is suggested it becomes a little more difficult in a different way that adds complexity to farming, you are against it.

What is up with that? I don't need you to answer this. Please read on. I also understand that the suggestions are becoming more refined as we go, so it may not be fair to challenge some of your thoughts on the suggestion when the suggestion is evolving - just a quick thought.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If you make players jump through a bunch of difficult hoops just to eke by and survive as the favorable outcome...that's not a fun game anymore. It's a digital hamster wheel.

Weeds and plant diseases finely implemented will not turn Vintage Story into a digital hamster wheel, we are starting to become silly. Vintage story is already a digital hamster wheel that players love running in. Once the wheel gets rolling, it gets easier.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It depends on how they're tweaked. What you've proposed, I don't think would work well at all, and would likely make the game more frustrating for the average player.

I think it likely would not make the game more frustrating for the average player, but instead would make it more rich and fun for the average player.

See we are starting to go back to asserting likelihoods without strong basis.

As Enjen wisely suggested, let's not underestimate the average player.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think the better option to improve farming without making it too much of a hassle...

To me, it starts to look like you are telling on yourself that you don't appreciate intricate game loops like farming in Vintage Story. In your verbiage, you say, "without making it too much of a hassle".

When I research 'hassle' in dictionaries, I get descriptions like this:

Hassle: An inconvenience caused by difficulties encountered trying to accomplish a task.

I figure you either see this more detailed farming experience as an inconvenience, like it is just in your way, or you are imposing this verbiage for the sake of what you think other people might view it as.

1. Weeds. They can sprout up in your farm and negatively affect, or eventually kill plants if left unattended. Grooming your farm is important.

2. Diseases. They can overcome your plants, producing negative effects, even poisoning soil and killing plants if left unattended. Grooming your farm is important.

 

People can view this at least in two extremes.

1. "This is an excellent idea, a wonderful mechanic, it will enrichen the experience of the game."

2. "This is a terrible idea, an utter inconvenience, it will ruin all other aspects of the game."

For the first kind of person, they want this in the game. Of course you have been asserting your rather un-based likelihoods that this kind of person is the minority. That is fine, you are entitled to sharing your opinion, as un-based as it may be. But this kind of person could actually be the majority, and this idea could send the game into total popularity, which could lead into the development team getting paid more than they have ever dreamed of. Of course you are comfortable instead shooting it down as a mod on the basis that it 'probably will serve to hurt the game'.

For the second kind of person, more positivity is required before you might even get excited about the idea.

So lay out the potential positives:

1. Weeds can be managed and prevented. Pulling them, laying mulch, using high quality soil, separating farm soil from wild grass, and pesticides such as a salt or vinegar concoction can help in managing and preventing weeds.

2. Diseases can be cured and prevented. Fungus and Virus. Fungus can grow from overwatering, or poor soil. It can be cured by fungicide: a mixture of oil, lye and salt. (Oil can be olive oil, for example. Lye is made by leaching wood ashes with water).  Mosaic virus will cause plant foliage to have a mottled appearance. It can live in poor quality soil and can be contracted through pests, and can spread. It won't kill plants, but will permanently stunt their harvest, and cannot be cured. Get rid of the soil. Fungicide will not affect it. Seeds from a plant with mosaic virus will come out as poor quality. It can be prevented with diatomaceous earth, basically ground up seashells, which will function as a preventative for several months, until it needs to be reapplied.

These are technical solutions we can easily come up with on the fly. I just did. So diseases can come in two forms. Fungus and viruses. Fungus can kill plants, but be cured. Viruses cannot kill plants, but cannot be cured. Both can be prevented. A neat little system for the farmer to fall in love with in Vintage Story.

In a nutshell, keep your plants watered properly, not too much, not too little, lay mulch, use high quality soil, separate your farmland from wild grass, lay some preventative concoctions that could last several months, (or perhaps longer, if there is desire to implement higher quality pesticides), and you will be preventing all plant death and weeds. You will need access to trees, halite ore, saltwater, and the right technological advancements to have the full scoop. The full scoop can keep a farm in perfect condition for say, roughly up to 3 months. Miss any of these steps, and you're beginning to farm with risks. Implementation of this farming overhaul package could aim for players to roughly harvest 75% of their crops if they totally ignore the new special mechanics, meaning the avid farmers are rewarded with 25% bonus crops for taking special care. Ultimately, harvest for the players who ignore the new special mechanics are receiving some less harvest, as you simply suggested as a quick tweak, already. Is this all fair?

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Ruined farms and decrepit infrastructure is the end consequence I see when suggestions like this arise(that is, suggestions for increased maintenance to keep you crops and machinery going or it falls apart, etc). There are already mods that achieve similar effects in some cases, when they exist, though I don't recall seeing any of those mods be wildly popular. 

So have you been arguing against a generalization, and not the actual suggestion here? Because you suggest a common "end consequence" with "suggestions like this" like this, and I don't remember reading anything from Felix or I mentioning decrepit infrastructures in this suggestion. I may have missed it, though.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I believe you're also failing to understand just how long...

Well I believe not.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If you're wipe player progress at random just in the name of "it's a hard game, get over it"...that's artificial difficulty.

What does this have to do with me? I was doing it in the name of adding to the farming profession. I suppose you couldn't tell despite me mentioning it throughout my posts. That's ok.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I will also note that some crops already die spontaneously--fruit trees. That's a big reason that many players just ignore fruit trees entirely; they take a lot of time to actually get going, and don't survive the planting oftentimes.

So, many players aren't quitting the game out of frustration. Interesting.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I also think that when Vintage Story brands itself as "uncompromising", that means it doesn't really hold the player's hand. It doesn't mean stripping players of progress arbitrarily just because "it's a difficult survival game, so it must be difficult 100% of the time".

Yes, but why do you bring this up, unless you think I am advocating for the game to be difficult 100% of the time, on the basis that it is uncompromising?

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The game has a steep learning curve, but the reward for learning how it works is that tasks get a lot easier to do. If you change the end result to that learning to more busywork with less reward, the gameplay becomes less satisfying to engage with.

Once you get all your systems in place, pesticides in order, and so on, taking care of your crops will get easier again.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Yeah, because in the current state of the game it is a challenge depending on crop and climate, but there's quite a bit of wiggle room still to ensure that a broad range of player skill levels can achieve similar results.

Or, the wiggle room is there because desired mechanics have not yet been finished. This is early access in heavy development.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I've also not noticed a lot of people complain about farming being too hard or too easy, which suggests to me that farming is well-balanced in its current state, and not an issue.

Nice, but I think you are using a fallacy of assuming the community is sufficiently speaking outwardly where you can hear them, and that well-balanced depends on the complaints of players. In technical terms, at least.

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Right there. You're implying that players who don't like your proposed changes can decide whether they have the patience or not to keep playing the game, and just quit if it's too frustrating. At least that's how your statements read.

Well this is the truth.

Are you suggesting players who don't like it can't decide?

I thought you were the one who brought up players quitting out of frustration. I didn't bring it up. But now it looks like you're starting to frame me as some brute that wants to kick people out

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I would say it's very relevant information. If you yourself haven't experienced long times away from your infrastructure, how can you just say that your changes won't cause problems? Likewise, how can you just brush off concerns about such changes potentially causing issues when players leave their bases for long trips(which you HAVE to do to complete the main story), if you don't have experience making those kinds of trips yourself?

Because I have a solid understanding of the concept of time, and that is the key factor you keep bringing up. (But when you say problems, of course it causes problems, small, good, game mechanic problems. Just not the 'problems' that make the suggestion unworthy.)

Farms should be more complex. Sometimes you need to be away for a long time. If you want farms to survive while away for a long time, (That is, if you want to manage a farm from 100k blocks away), they should be upgraded to be better equipped for self-sustainability. That is the answer. Giving the player the option for self-sustainability is also what gives me confidence that I don't need to physically leave a farm in order to formulate valid ideas about farming mechanics.

It is seeming like some of you are beginning to gatekeep suggestions from people who have not physically undergone specific tasks that are rather irrelevant.

A: "Let's make X more complex."

B: "No, because Y requires too much time."

A: "That's fine, X can be self-sustaining for whatever amount of time is needed."

B: "Your suggestion on X is invalid, because you have not experienced Y."

A: "No, experiencing Y is irrelevant to making X more complex. As you mentioned, time is the main factor. I have already provided the solution. I have shown that time does not have to be a factor for the player who has earned it."

B: "No, your suggestion on X is invalid, because you have not experienced Y."

A: "Are you even listening to me?"

 

It almost seems like I am speaking with a person who will not listen

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

You don't need to live in the source code to consider the game as a whole. I would agree though, given some of what I've witnessed on the forums, that players who consider the game as a whole when making suggestions aren't the majority.

No, if you don't know all of the source code, then you are not considering the whole game.

"Whole game" has meaning. Words have meanings.

Just how can you consider the game as a whole when you don't even know all of the source code, which is the lifeblood of the game?

 

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

In any case, the issue isn't just "what happens when the player leaves"; it's also a matter of how much extra time they'll have to sink into farming with your proposed changes. The more time they have to spend babysitting the farm, the less time they'll have to engage in other gameplay that they may enjoy more.

I think you are a bit misunderstood about my proposed changes as a whole. Frankly misunderstood. And I'll show you why. Please consider carefully what I have been proposing.

A farming system where players who spend no extra effort farming receive roughly, say 75% - 80% of the produce they are currently harvesting. These are quick numbers. (I have already expressed this general idea before. Maybe you didn't read).

So the consequence is not "they have to spend time babysitting the farm when they could be out doing other things they actually enjoy." (remember, 'have to' has meaning). Instead, the consequence is, they get slightly less harvest if they ignore the extra mechanics.

People get slightly less harvest if they ignore the extra mechanics. In fact, you are already suggesting slightly less harvest as a vanilla game change. Are these double standards you have? That is an honest and fair question. One might think you are intentionally avoiding this part of my point in order to save face.

Also, it's like you are using a slippery slope fallacy. "Your suggestion means the average person will be forced to put up with a bunch of tedious mechanics, babysitting!" Babysitting, what a crafty word to use there, when I already mentioned the average player doesn't have to account for anything extra.

---------------

I want to mention, this would be a strong update to farming, in a good direction. But I still like the idea of crops dying occasionally due to factors outside of your control, even for the most experienced farmers. Such as tornados, for example.

We are talking about the exciting difference of, "I'm hoping to have a successful harvest this year", to "No, I'm a god. I choose to have a successful harvest this year."

All of you ask yourselves, which one sounds more like Vintage Story?

Thank you.

Edited June 30, 2025 by Rudometkin

[Thorfinn]

@Rudometkin, I remembered you started a YouTube series some time ago, and announced it here, and, while I only watched the first couple, because it was plain you were a novice, I could tell you were quite good at gameplay mechanics, even though you understood almost nothing of the game itself. My guess is you've played that other game quite a little.

But I saw you have kept it going, like as recently as yesterday. I skipped to the last few episodes to see your current gameplay. I wanted to know what it was that has you so fired up about farming.

It is August, I think it's still year 1, or at least you don't appear to have copper yet, you have a small farm, maybe 15 plots on top of a hill, in low fertility soil, with no irrigation, and, unless I'm mistaken, you aren't even fertilizing. I'm not saying you can't have ideas, but how about trying out how the game actually works before proposing radical changes? Tyron is not a crappy game designer, and you are selling him way short by not even giving his game a fair evaluation before crapping on it.

Edited June 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Rudometkin]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

@Rudometkin, I remembered you started a YouTube series some time ago, and announced it here, and, while I only watched the first couple, because it was plain you were a novice, I could tell you were quite good at gameplay mechanics, even though you understood almost nothing of the game itself. My guess is you've played that other game quite a little.

But I saw you have kept it going, like as recently as yesterday. I skipped to the last few episodes to see your current gameplay. I wanted to know what it was that has you so fired up about farming.

It is August, I think it's still year 1, or at least you don't appear to have copper yet, you have a small farm, maybe 15 plots on top of a hill, in low fertility soil, with no irrigation, and, unless I'm mistaken, you aren't even fertilizing. I'm not saying you can't have ideas, but how about trying out how the game actually works before proposing radical changes? Tyron is not a crappy game designer, and you are selling him way short by not even trying out his game before crapping on it.

LOL!

That wilderness survival world resets all of my progress whenever I die, and it's footage of my first world. Of course it's beating me up and I'm struggling. I didn't know anything when I started, I only have the survival handbook and my own little community of subscribers helping me through it. Also, you are poorly concluding I haven't "tried how the game actually works", even related to farming. I've had nothing but love and enjoyment for the game, even enjoying the challenges that beat me down as I learn, and you can watch 20 hours of it to see for yourself.

It is really unfortunate you just asserted I'm "crapping" on Vintage Story, and insinuated I think Tyron a "crappy game designer" because you saw my progress in my first world that I'm enjoying so much.

That is just messed up. I honestly thought you were a more honest and fair guy than this. It appears to be an obvious cheap shot. Very dishonest. You should take all of that back and feel very silly about yourself, because that was a very low shot, friend.

However, you are free to support your baseless, unfair claims. So, how am I crapping on Vintage Story? Where?

Does anyone else here agree that I have been "crapping" on Vintage Story?

Edited June 30, 2025 by Rudometkin

[Thorfinn]

Please don't be that way.

If you learned farming techniques in your first death, you sure didn't apply them here. You still don't appear to understand how trees and seeds work in this game. You are storing up acorns and even birch and maple seeds rather than planting, burning or throwing them away. You are using storage vessels for general storage, but a wicker basket for food. It's not a bad thing. It's just a steep learning curve that you are obviously not very far along on.

There's no need to be defensive. You may have a good game-design mind, but you do not understand the design of the existing game yet.

Edited June 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Rudometkin]

Just now, Thorfinn said:

Please don't be that way.

If you learned farming techniques in your first death, you sure didn't apply them here. You still don't appear to understand how trees and seeds work in this game. That's not a bad thing. It's just a steep learning curve that you are obviously not very far along on.

There's no need to be defensive. You may have a good game-design mind, but you do not understand the design of the game yet.

I will say this.

I have been a fair member of the community. Shown nothing but love for Vintage Story.

And now I don't want to be here, because of you.

You baselessly writing that I'm "crapping" on Vintage Story, and LadyWYT awarding you for it.

You know, if it weren't for my confidence that I can help turn this community around and make it a better place, I would have left after this.