A bunch of players are joining the game following the Hytale announcement

[Teh Pizza Lady]

7 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

This is usually why I push back on ideas of making the game harder in the beginning. The way the game is now, is hard enough at the start in my opinion for a new player.  

This ties into a point I made in a different thread. There should be no difference from what we have now if a player chooses not to dive into the complexities of an upgraded system... say farming crops for example since it's come up a lot. However should one CHOOSE to dive into it then they should be aptly rewarded with better crops, time savings in the future, and an easier winter because they actually have food stores that will last longer than a couple of months.

Another example would be smithing. If a player opts not to engage in smithing, there are still viable weapon options available to them. Casting copper weapons and trading for upgraded weapons are all viable options. However should the player choose to smith weapons then they will find that there are much better options in the iron and steel categories. Same goes for armor in that regard.

It shouldn't feel impossible to survive without diving into these systems. It should feel incredibly difficult! It should also feel very rewarding when the player finally figures out the system or chooses to spend time doing it. A lot of ideas that come across this forum do not adhere to that philosophy which I feel relegates them to the "mod suggestion" category. Increase your own difficulty if you so desire, but time and time again, the devs have shown us that they want us to be rewarded for our time, not punished for failing to operate a system exactly to the letter.

This is just an opinion, of course so feel free to disagree, but if anyone wants to argue with me about my opinion, please don't. I'm begging you.

[Daev]

11 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

The devteam should absolutely be watching these streams to see common pain points among fresh and blind players. A lot of the reason why this game "isn't for" so many people isn't necessarily because of the mechanics, but because a lot of bad or confusing design that is invisible to so much of us because we either got in early or had discord/friends carrying us through the early game. This is a rare chance where people will be giving genuine feedback and it would be foolish to completely ignore it.

Speaking from personal experience, most of the players who I try to introduce the game to (including myself when I first started) drop off not because they don't find the game fun, but because of a specific thing that that really shouldn't be the way it is. They don't even have a chance to get into the game before something takes them out of it and most aren't going to be coming back later once they're convinced the game isn't for them.

I started out in 1.20 and I agree, even with the Handbook somethings were a rather vague without going to the forums or wiki, I wasn't turned off because I was already digging in the wiki before I even bought the game which most people will not do and shouldn't have to.  I did see a recent post that they may be giving the handbook some love which is most welcomed.  Other than that, for me it was the lack of direction and near impossible to find treasure hunter.  I was only really blind to the story but I eventually had to cave and look for some kind of hint and learned that I was likely to never stumble upon a treasure hunter because I simply could not find one when I was trying let alone stumbling around aimlessly.  Other than that I have had little to complain about, my only complaint (As I have only progressed as far as a bronze saw) is the panning by default being grindy and the knapping tedious.  I do enjoy both mechanics and I feel the game smartly allows the player to choose how to divy such time up.  I maintain flint tools when I'm doing base chores and the same goes for panning, usually if I'm firing clay and can't progress until it is done.  So I do see the reasons for why most people unfamiliar with the game are put off initially, but from what I've experienced it feels like it's mostly polish that it's missing.  I personally like how the food is with the current formula and design.  It's treated with importance but once you've established your food stuffs you can let be just a min max sustenance thing or be really into it and seek out different ingredients and come up with recipes, I wouldn't be upset if they did more with it but I don't think it's out of place or ill-designed.  Even before I truly knew how much you could min/max by rushing the food mechanics I felt it was well balanced and just punishing and rewarding enough for where the game is currently, I don't think it should be completely lerft alone as is but I don't really know what I would to change only what I wouldn't do.  I hope my thoughts were conveyed clearly and I hope the influx of interest helps bring more to the table and that more people take advantage of how customizable the game.

[Daev]

9 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

Except it's not that uncompromising, is it? I can only list two times I have ever felt like I was on the back foot, the rest is just grind or artificial difficulty. It's only uncompromising if you're going in blind, which should be something that a majority of players don't do because of the discord and handbook telling them how to play. The game just frontloads all of its difficulty off the bat with very little scaling once you start getting a hang of things, and that's just a huge shame.

I would consider things to be 'uncompromising' when failure comes from small bad decisions you made catching up to you, not just when the game decides to f you over because you failed to comprehend the inner workings of the game itself, or because you got one-tapped by an undodgeable high tier enemy that spawned inside of you during a storm.

I find this interesting as a new player.  I haven't made it into the iron age and am only getting into the dawn of late copper, but I feel like it's a pretty uncompromising experience, but then again as I thought on it I can see what you mean.  Maybe once I've experienced more and figured out my workflow it probably will feel much the same to me.  However from what I do know mechanically about the later game I assumed the difficulty scale would be coming more so from engaging the story and having to prepare for travel.  Although I will say some of the difficulties in this game can be viewed as "self imposed" depending on how you approach progression I don't get a sense of artificial difficulty, at least not the way I understand it.  One generic example I can think of would be random bullet spread in shooters, no skill involved just upgrading the weapon to be more accurate or using perks.  I don't think I've noticed anything like that, if anything I think there's  potentially a lack of consequences represented by a direct mechanic rather than just the inconvenience of not having done the task sooner or with more care.  I also don't find that I have gotten just screwed over by a bad design or randomness.  I have suffered the occasional nonsensical mob spawn but I can't really count that as anything but a glitch in the matrix and if it is intended then it needs to be much more fleshed out.  As an aside, bases should either be your safe zone without worry or safer but not completely with a more logical way to sus out compromises in the base and being able to at least react  if not outright prevent intrusions even if they can still just spawn inside.   Still I am new and these thoughts and opinions are bound to change as I learn and experience so I'm going to just keep in tune to my elders here!

[Teh Pizza Lady]

17 minutes ago, Daev said:

Still I am new and these thoughts and opinions are bound to change as I learn and experience so I'm going to just keep in tune to my elders here!

A healthy and commendable mindset that we both share.

Things you find challenging now become easier as you get experience doing them. For example, harvesting cattails to make baskets. Once you get your first backpacks, you may be wondering "What do I do with these baskets now?". Well, you can put them in a crafting grid with a knife and recycle them back into cattails that you can use to make other things, like poultices, to name one such other use. I actually play with mods, so now i'm struggling to think of ways outside of beekeeping, storage, and baskets to use them that I'm sure aren't modded ways. Ropes for ladders? I think that's in the base game.  I need to go back and check now LOL

[Omega Haxors]

13 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

@Omega Haxors I hope they are as well. I really enjoy watching new people go cold into playing the game. It's interesting what they get hung up on and sometimes it reminds me of the struggles I used to have. This is usually why I push back on ideas of making the game harder in the beginning. The way the game is now, is hard enough at the start in my opinion for a new player.  

They just announced they're quitting on today's stream 

I don't blame them either, they got stuck in a death loop on their first light temporal storm even though they were doing everything they possibly could to stay alive. I don't get why this game feels the need to make temporal storms more and more unplayable with every update while never giving the players any real means of pushing back. The lore has people dying to stuff like starvation but if the gameplay was anything to go off of, they all got one-tapped by an enemy spawning on top of them during a light breeze.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Omega Haxors

[Omega Haxors]

10 hours ago, Daev said:

I find this interesting as a new player.  I haven't made it into the iron age and am only getting into the dawn of late copper, but I feel like it's a pretty uncompromising experience, but then again as I thought on it I can see what you mean.  Maybe once I've experienced more and figured out my workflow it probably will feel much the same to me.  However from what I do know mechanically about the later game I assumed the difficulty scale would be coming more so from engaging the story and having to prepare for travel.  Although I will say some of the difficulties in this game can be viewed as "self imposed" depending on how you approach progression I don't get a sense of artificial difficulty, at least not the way I understand it.  One generic example I can think of would be random bullet spread in shooters, no skill involved just upgrading the weapon to be more accurate or using perks.  I don't think I've noticed anything like that, if anything I think there's  potentially a lack of consequences represented by a direct mechanic rather than just the inconvenience of not having done the task sooner or with more care.  I also don't find that I have gotten just screwed over by a bad design or randomness.  I have suffered the occasional nonsensical mob spawn but I can't really count that as anything but a glitch in the matrix and if it is intended then it needs to be much more fleshed out.  As an aside, bases should either be your safe zone without worry or safer but not completely with a more logical way to sus out compromises in the base and being able to at least react  if not outright prevent intrusions even if they can still just spawn inside.   Still I am new and these thoughts and opinions are bound to change as I learn and experience so I'm going to just keep in tune to my elders here!

To be fair I played a much less refined version of the game so there's a pretty good chance they have addressed a lot of the core complaints I had about the difficulty.
(Also in the future, please break out your sentences into paragraphs. Your posts had a lot to contribute but was pretty hard to read)

My core problem with the handbook is that it should be more guiding the player towards how to play but it feels more like it wants to infodump every detail in a way that's not exactly easy to follow if you just want a quick hint to get you back into having fun. The only things that should be hard spelled out are things that can't be intuited, like controls.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Omega Haxors

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

I don't blame them either, they got stuck in a death loop on their first light temporal storm even though they were doing everything they possibly could to stay alive.

Fair. I doubt even someone with mad skilz can go into a storm cold and live. The spawn mechanic alone (tier 4 enemies pop in as few as 1.5 blocks behind you) gives you little time to respond. Damage occurs within tenths of a second, inside almost everyone's OODA. Like so much else, this comes down to training and practice.

Until then, there are bunkers.

[Zane Mordien]

6 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

They just announced they're quitting on today's stream 

I don't blame them either, they got stuck in a death loop on their first light temporal storm even though they were doing everything they possibly could to stay alive. I don't get why this game feels the need to make temporal storms more and more unplayable with every update while never giving the players any real means of pushing back. The lore has people dying to stuff like starvation but if the gameplay was anything to go off of, they all got one-tapped by an enemy spawning on top of them during a light breeze.

Yeah the temporal storms are so frustrating until you learn to hide and walk away from the keyboard for 9 minutes. Then they are just pointless time wasters until you learn how to cheese them. The more I think about it, I wish they would make the storms tied to progression. So until you engage with the story content they would just be low level drifters. Lower risk and no rewards really. That would still probably kill most new players but you wouldn't be getting 1 shot by shivers and bowtorns which you have no chance to defend yourself from or escape from as a new player. They would need to add a beginner quest before the archives to start the progression. It could be something as simple as a small ruin to explore that any trader could send you too. You pick up some nick knack there that the trader could tell you, "hey that is something my fellow trader the treasure hunter would like to buy from you" and ta-da you are starting on the story. That could also be how the trader sends you to the TH trader, which they said is a new feature, but I'm sure instead it will cost you 50 gears for the trader to tell you where to find a TH trader.

[Echo Weaver]

How have temporal storms changed since 1.19? (Yeah, I still haven't upgraded.)

To be fair, in 1.19, I experimented with a more aggressive approach in a medium temporal storm and ended up in a death loop with a nightmare drifter that got into my base. 

[Thorfinn]

Shivers and bowtorn are the major changes, of course. Their contribution to things is you can no longer just sprint backwards throwing spears and be safe. I think drifters must have had a spawn-in cooldown; shivers do not, so far as I can tell. Though I have not checked.

[Omega Haxors]

What I don't get is why anyone thought it was acceptable to have the lowest level of temporal storm spawning in end game monsters in a way the player can't reasonably avoid. I'm sure if you surveyed the average player who quit day-one they'd all have just came out of their first temporal storm.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Omega Haxors

[Daev]

7 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

To be fair I played a much less refined version of the game so there's a pretty good chance they have addressed a lot of the core complaints I had about the difficulty.
(Also in the future, please break out your sentences into paragraphs. Your posts had a lot to contribute but was pretty hard to read)

My core problem with the handbook is that it should be more guiding the player towards how to play but it feels more like it wants to infodump every detail in a way that's not exactly easy to follow if you just want a quick hint to get you back into having fun. The only things that should be hard spelled out are things that can't be intuited, like controls.

Thank you. I agree with that sentiment on the handbook and I hope it gets some love, it's a great tool to have and I think it definitely be implemented better.  Also apologies for the poor structure of my larger posts, I was too focused on describing the thoughts and neglected the actual structure. (Might edit them later to be easier to read)  Thanks for starting this post as well! Always exciting to see this game get some boosts in engagement and even better when the community wants to capitalize on it.

[Zane Mordien]

41 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

How have temporal storms changed since 1.19? (Yeah, I still haven't upgraded.)

To be fair, in 1.19, I experimented with a more aggressive approach in a medium temporal storm and ended up in a death loop with a nightmare drifter that got into my base. 

It's crazy sounding, but the easiest thing to do in 1.19 temporal storms is to find a large flat area and fill your inventory with spears and just run around throwing spears at the drifters. They can't catch you and as long as you keep running, even when they spawn on top of you they can't hit you before you are out of range. That is why they added shivers (fast runners) and bowtorns (archers) to stop you from doing the run and gun with no risk. IMO they just went way way overboard.  

[MagpieOAO]

I just joined recently and while i'm someone who tends to go to wikis, I picked up the handbook pretty quickly and would spend my nights studying it. The handbook is as integral and as impressive as the game itself with how it lets you navigate around through every item, sub-item and showing the how they are processed. Even information on the mobs found in the world.

There were some things that weren't so clear that I ended up looking up outside the game but only while starting off. 

Some kind of tutorial would be good, like spawning in a ruined home with a book you HAVE to grab to leave the room (maybe it's on a lever) which is the guide-book so players are literally forced to see the guide book exists and a brief explanation on how it exists (along with an ingame reason for having it cause why not) before going out wandering around and deciding "I can't figure anything out". 

I don't think anything more than forcing players to pickup and read a page to get playing should be used or required. If they aren't willing to put in that much effort they probably aren't going to enjoy VS which shouldn't compromise its vision for them. That said the guide isn't PERFECT but it is really good and continue to improve. 

[Daev]

1 hour ago, MagpieOAO said:

I just joined recently and while i'm someone who tends to go to wikis, I picked up the handbook pretty quickly and would spend my nights studying it. The handbook is as integral and as impressive as the game itself with how it lets you navigate around through every item, sub-item and showing the how they are processed. Even information on the mobs found in the world.

There were some things that weren't so clear that I ended up looking up outside the game but only while starting off. 

Some kind of tutorial would be good, like spawning in a ruined home with a book you HAVE to grab to leave the room (maybe it's on a lever) which is the guide-book so players are literally forced to see the guide book exists and a brief explanation on how it exists (along with an ingame reason for having it cause why not) before going out wandering around and deciding "I can't figure anything out". 

I don't think anything more than forcing players to pickup and read a page to get playing should be used or required. If they aren't willing to put in that much effort they probably aren't going to enjoy VS which shouldn't compromise its vision for them. That said the guide isn't PERFECT but it is really good and continue to improve. 

Agreed, one of my favorite things in the game and it definitely needs a better introduction.  I don't know how I'd go about that myself but the tutorial spawn idea sounds promising.  Maybe make it a feature you can toggle so that you can decide based on preference and experience.  I personally do like the idea of it being somewhat like a physical item but without costing inventory.  I do wish we could use it for note taking but I think this game has paper/parchment so that might be a no no.

[Rudometkin]

1 hour ago, MagpieOAO said:

If they aren't willing to put in that much effort they probably aren't going to enjoy VS which shouldn't compromise its vision for them.

100%!!

Thank you for protecting the vision of Vintage Story. It seems alarmingly too common that we have a lot of people wanting the uncompromising game to 'artificially' make compromises here.

[Rudometkin]

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

How have temporal storms changed since 1.19? (Yeah, I still haven't upgraded.)

Nice to see I'm not the only one. I still haven't upgraded either. Waiting to run out of my 20 lives in my first world.

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Rudometkin said:

Nice to see I'm not the only one. I still haven't upgraded either. Waiting to run out of my 20 lives in my first world.

Haha. My reason might be the opposite. I really like my current game, and I've been leery about what the big changes will do to my play strategy as well as the possibility of terrain generation changes that doesn't mesh well in an existing world. (That was certainly a problem with That Other Game.)

I haven't really started the story (still searching for the Treasure Trader), so I'm not ready for the chapter 2 content. I think I saw that the release candidate might have some help for finding that pesky trader, which might be motivation.

I also have been reading threads about drifter spawn going way down during high rift activity and difficulty getting way worse during temporal storms. I'm pretty happy with the spawns the way they are in 1.19.

Mostly, I've been intending to install a 1.20 game in parallel to my 1.19 game and copy over my save to see how it handles in the new version, and I've been having too much fun playing to bother.

Edited July 3, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, MagpieOAO said:

Some kind of tutorial would be good, like spawning in a ruined home with a book you HAVE to grab to leave the room (maybe it's on a lever) which is the guide-book so players are literally forced to see the guide book exists and a brief explanation on how it exists (along with an ingame reason for having it cause why not) before going out wandering around and deciding "I can't figure anything out".

I love this idea. It further contributes to immersion while throwing the noob instructions in your face so you can't miss them -- though I realize that there are probably lore reasons justifying the way we start now.

There are definitely places where the guide isn't detailed enough, and I have needed to look things up on the wiki. I wasted my first growing season trying to farm on low quality soil, assuming I could eek along while looking for better soil. Not so -- my harvest ran out about one month into winter, and I spent the rest of the time digging cattail roots out of the ice and running home before I froze to death. Also spending stupid amounts of time failing over and over again to milk my wild ewe for the dairy. Honestly, I loved getting my butt kicked like that and really feeling the pressure of starvation. But it also felt kind of like a gotcha that I didn't know that farming on low quality soil was pointless and that I should spend my first days searching for better farmland before settling down.

I found the mechanics of putting the sails on the windmill confusing enough to go find a YouTube video (kind of a last resort for me), and figuring out the power train has been more so.

[Omega Haxors]

The lore has the player going to the past from a time machine, so why not pull an Alucard and have a tutorial level in the future where you get shown a basic build for various things allowing you to play around with it as much as you want, then it ends with you picking your character/class and being sent to the past. It would fix the issue of just dropping you in the world while you choose your character, plus gets the player VERY invested in the story by showing them right out the gate what's going on and why they're important.

The huge benefit of such a setup is that those who are new or curious can play around in a safe environment to get a hang of the various mechanics, while those who would rather figure things out as they go can skip the tutorial completely by just grabbing their handbook and then being sent into the past.

Edited July 4, 2025 by Omega Haxors

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

The lore has the player going to the past from a time machine, so why not pull an Alucard and have a tutorial level in the future where you get shown a basic build for various things allowing you to play around with it as much as you want, then it ends with you picking your character/class and being sent to the past. It would fix the issue of just dropping you in the world while you choose your character, plus gets the player VERY invested in the story by showing them right out the gate what's going on and why they're important.

The huge benefit of such a setup is that those who are new or curious can play around in a safe environment to get a hang of the various mechanics, while those who would rather figure things out as they go can skip the tutorial completely by just grabbing their handbook and then being sent into the past.

I don't know that the lore catapulted everything into the past, as much as it threw certain things like the players forward in time, similar to what happened to Alduin with the Elder Scroll in Skyrim. Alduin wasn't actually defeated by the ancient Nords; he was just displaced from time temporarily and had to be dealt with later by the Last Dragonborn.

That being said, I've been chewing on the idea of a "Tutorial Mode" as a new preset game mode. The ones we have are currently fine, however, Standard can be a little too punishing sometimes on brand new players, and a brand new player might not think to adjust the settings(and Vintage Story allows several adjustments that most other games don't). Likewise, Exploration takes a bit too much of the challenge out of the game, and Wilderness Survival is harder than what most brand new players should probably be playing in order to learn the game. A Tutorial Mode would be a great way to start players off easy, and then ramp up difficulty as time goes on, until the eventual difficulty is the same as Standard. Or, and I don't know if such coding is feasible, perhaps Tutorial Mode could ramp up to one of the other presets of the player's choosing. That way a brand new player can play Wilderness Survival if that's what sounds the coolest, but they can also have some breathing room to learn the game basics before that level of difficulty kicks in.

The other advantage I see to offering a Tutorial Mode instead of changing the standard gameplay to ramp up the difficulty, is that it gives a more forgiving option to new players without forcing old players to speedrun "tutorial sections" in order to get to the part of the game they enjoy. One quality of the current balancing that I really enjoy is that while Vintage Story starts off as a pretty steep, unforgiving challenge, each bit of progress you make feels rewarding because the problems you face become easier to deal with. Other games implement a strategy of enemies always scaling to player level, and while that kind of scaling ensures the enemies always put up a fight, it's difficult to actually feel like one has made any progress when they get new gear. 

[Silrana]

What I did when I got the game was play in Exploration mode until I felt I had a handle on things.  Then I started my real game.

[Faona]

On 7/2/2025 at 10:12 AM, traugdor said:

100% yes. The game should make it obvious for a first-time player
1) that there even IS a handbook
2) how to use it

I start a new game, wander around for few seconds and a popup asks if i want help figuring out the game

i hold K as instructed for help to figure out the game

It opens a new popup with the following text:

"At any time, press [H] to access the Handbook. It provides guides, tutorials and recipes and other details of all items in the game.

New to the genre? We recommend launching the first steps tutorial"

With underlined text being clickable links that take you directly to what theyre talking about. And handbook even has (in singleplayer) a convenient pause game button if you want to take your time reading something without wasting hunger or daylight

At least in the current version of VS it is made extremely obvious for first-time players that the handbook exists IF they dont explicitly dismiss the tutorial pop up, which you have to hold a button to dismiss so cant do it accidentally either.

[CastIronFabric]

On 7/2/2025 at 12:10 AM, Nothing said:

you're very much right the learning curve for this game is to big to ever grow super big.

that is just the physics of reality. Complexity brings...well... Complexity

 

One can not have a simple game that appeals to people who do not want depth and a game that has depth for people who do.

Its two entirely different audiences and they can not work together well in one game.

[CastIronFabric]

3 hours ago, Faona said:

I start a new game, wander around for few seconds and a popup asks if i want help figuring out the game

i hold K as instructed for help to figure out the game

It opens a new popup with the following text:

"At any time, press [H] to access the Handbook. It provides guides, tutorials and recipes and other details of all items in the game.

New to the genre? We recommend launching the first steps tutorial"

With underlined text being clickable links that take you directly to what theyre talking about. And handbook even has (in singleplayer) a convenient pause game button if you want to take your time reading something without wasting hunger or daylight

At least in the current version of VS it is made extremely obvious for first-time players that the handbook exists IF they dont explicitly dismiss the tutorial pop up, which you have to hold a button to dismiss so cant do it accidentally either.

some people should not be playing this game.

games should not try to appeal to everyone, its nearly impossible to make a game super simple and super in depth at the same time, it just aint gonna happen.