Vintage Story: Adventure Mode

[Khornet]

27 minutes ago, Tyron said:

Minecraft 1.0.0 released in 2011....
It seems the main misunderstanding here what I and you interpret as "Early access" and also what Grym7er wrote

Quote

1.0.0 (displayed as release 1.0 in the launcher), is the second and last release of the Adventure Update, and the first full version of the game, and was released on November 18, 2011,^[1] during MINECON 2011, marking the game as officially released after two and a half years (916 days)^{[note 1]} of development.

Do you see the self-own you've just committed on yourself?
I was being generous by considering the Ender Update for Windows (also labeled 1.0.0 by the way) as Minecraft's "full release" (please note the quotation marks) and you went ahead and said "actually, Minecraft was formally finished in 2011 already". And yes, that is formally correct, The End was added to Minecraft's java edition in 2011 already.

Bringing Minecraft into this wasn't my intention at all, you did that. Impossible to measure "total development time" in different criteria with the same ruler here. Different scopes, different features, different goals, different business models.
So to reiterate - I don't care about Minecraft. I care about Vintage Story. And I am once again voicing my displeasure at the estimated total development time of ~25 years by its main developer. Without any comparisons to any games out there; it just just a fat chunk of time that makes me lose interest and motivation to follow the development of the game at all.

Edited July 7, 2025 by Khornet

[Voldemort]

2 hours ago, Grym7er said:

You're contradicting yourself. If you take "added bears" to a game without bears as revolutionary, then:

- 1.20 elk riding system is revolutionary
- 1.20 ship building system is revolutionary
- 1.21pre2 WIP ocean waves sounds revolutionary ( because I haven't checked it out for myself yet, but I am super excited about it)

Updates don't need to be revolutionary. Excellence is not achieved from revolutionary drops. Look at No Mans Sky, look at Minecraft.

Also, if you consider the 2016 version of Minecraft as a "complete" experience, then you should consider VS 1.20 as a "complete" experience as well, because it very much is, by your measurement of "complete". For Tyron, 'complete' seems to mean that he has added all features and functionality that he wants in the game. For you, 'complete' means that there is an end goal with a credits scene. The problem doesn't lie with Anego, the problem lies with your perception of what a complete game entails. If a end credits cutscene played when you defeated the Eidolon, would you be happy? Because that seems to be what you are implying.

 

EDIT: For myself, I am just so glad to have 30 more years of content to look forward to. Infinite replayablility, pretty much the last game I will ever need. For me, VS is already a complete experience, and anything I want to change, I can just do myself.

1.21 ocean waves?  you need to hop in pre build and tell me if you see it as wave

[Grym7er]

6 minutes ago, Adnyeus said:

1.21 ocean waves?  you need to hop in pre build and tell me if you see it as wave

As I said, I haven't checked it out for myself and I'm not really planning to until 1.21 stable (I use the update notes to generate hype for the full release), but if it is purely a visual effect (like the wavy ocean sands), I don't really care. I'm somewhat aware of the complexities of implementing wave simulations efficiently for these types of games, but I got very excited by the thought of maybe, just maybe, enticing some of my friends away from Valheim so we can have the same sailing experiences in VS.

But alas, if I interpret what you say correctly, it is merely a visual effect, but I'm sure that actual waves is on the "implement if technically possible" list. It would make more sense to release it as part of a more ocean-focused update, though. : )

Edited July 7, 2025 by Grym7er

[Scorpixel]

Disregarding what the side project even is (only even heard about it after it crashed and burned), i have very much negative confidence regarding taking-on a side project while the main one is yet to get a 1.0 (not EA) release.

The Q&A did not reassure me, as i witnessed failures far more than successes from studios/individuals presenting these rebuttals.

No matter how good the game currently is (and good it is, yet a WIP nonetheless), it was purchased by players as a project to be completed, it is not a matter of legality (indie devs can at any time grab the bag and run without any repercussions), but of trust.

Let's take FTL as an example, it was crowdfunded and delivered, after which they made Advanced edition, which they did not have to, and presented their new game Into The Breach, which was also well received.

While i don't think anyone is demanding free updates post completion (most are probably even willing to buy expansions/DLCs afterwards, Rimworld style), the studio was founded around making this game, as were the purchases, any other objective is unrelated to the original transaction until the game is considered complete by the initial roadmap.

After that? I don't think any meaningful amount of players would have any complaints with what is done with the capital and manpower, as it would be considered fully earned with promises having been delivered, which would further encourage spending toward any new project.

[CastIronFabric]

56 minutes ago, Scorpixel said:

Disregarding what the side project even is (only even heard about it after it crashed and burned), i have very much negative confidence regarding taking-on a side project while the main one is yet to get a 1.0 (not EA) release.

The Q&A did not reassure me, as i witnessed failures far more than successes from studios/individuals presenting these rebuttals.

No matter how good the game currently is (and good it is, yet a WIP nonetheless), it was purchased by players as a project to be completed, it is not a matter of legality (indie devs can at any time grab the bag and run without any repercussions), but of trust.

Let's take FTL as an example, it was crowdfunded and delivered, after which they made Advanced edition, which they did not have to, and presented their new game Into The Breach, which was also well received.

While i don't think anyone is demanding free updates post completion (most are probably even willing to buy expansions/DLCs afterwards, Rimworld style), the studio was founded around making this game, as were the purchases, any other objective is unrelated to the original transaction until the game is considered complete by the initial roadmap.

After that? I don't think any meaningful amount of players would have any complaints with what is done with the capital and manpower, as it would be considered fully earned with promises having been delivered, which would further encourage spending toward any new project.

Medieval Engineers.

Same points in both directions where made then, it did not do well.

I am not a fan of this idea but I am also not a business manager at the company, I have zero idea what the accounting is etc. I have no idea if they can do it or not, I am just not interested in this new project idea...full stop.

Edited July 7, 2025 by CastIronFabric

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, Khornet said:

Do you see the self-own you've just committed on yourself?
I was being generous by considering the Ender Update for Windows (also labeled 1.0.0 by the way) as Minecraft's "full release" (please note the quotation marks) and you went ahead and said "actually, Minecraft was formally finished in 2011 already". And yes, that is formally correct, The End was added to Minecraft's java edition in 2011 already.

Ender update was the full release of the versions that were merged into bedrock. Tyron and you are talking about two separate games.

[Sullivan]

Tyron and the team,

Many of us here are believing in you. We see that patches are comming out, new content is comming to us, same as respect to the comunity and transperency. 
Thank you for all your effort. 
Whatever you are making, me and my friends are supporting you and your beginings and will buy any product that will come under your team. 

Cheers mate! Continue to do your best.

[krystalchan]

Honestly, I support the risk. You guys have an active plan going into it that supports the core project with very open and direct testing with the community. I do have hopes in general for the updated AI and combat for the core-VS game. While I agree it isn't focused on flashy combat, this could mean new options for both the players and the hostiles. 

As far as the NPCs getting a bump, maybe some light reputation/faction system where helping them out could give you more lore about the world or ability to request aid.

[Zastier]

6 hours ago, Khornet said:

I didn't compare VS to anything. Why even mention Minecraft? I think the two games are in entirely different leagues, and the comparisons are fair only for surface-level similarities, or in the context of VS's origins. 
I gave you raw numbers without any further context. VS's first launch was in 2016. That's almost 10 years ago. You are now saying this:

This brings us to - let's go for the middle ground here - 25 years of estimated total development time. That's a quarter of a century. I don't think I'm alienated by thinking that is a lot of time for one game.

But if you INSIST on bringing Minecraft into it... Minecraft is finished. It's a "complete" experience. It's been one since December 2016 (coincidentally the same year VS "launched"), since the Ender Update, which was formally the 1.0.0 version of Minecraft.

Everything after that is milking profits via content drips by the big M company. I don't think this is worth elaborating upon, as I think you know exactly what I mean and you'd be inclined to agree that including those drips as the "development" time of Minecraft proper is disingenuous.
 

This is a weird ass comparison because Minecraft at 1.0 had such an insignificant amount of content compared to what either Minecraft, or Vintage Story offer today. The fact that Minecraft had an ending is irrelevant, nobody actually cares about that when evaluating their content. 

Most of the changes done to Minecraft in the past 14 years since it launched were also background engine changes. And yes, the average person won't care about "low level optimization" lines in the changelog, but they will care if the game suddenly releases a huge update and all of a sudden the game stops running well because the background engine work needed to keep expanding wasn't done. Both Vintage Story and Minecraft run into the exact same issue, mods are cool, but if you add too much content through mods, the game performance suffers immensely. This issue exists in basically every single game like this, Starbound suffers from it, as does No Man's Sky (which needed several updates purely focused on the engine to fix the numerous rendering and loading issues that game had). And if those issues are a dealbreaker for you, probably shouldn't have bought the game, they are very open about this fact on the website.  

[DessertOverlord]

So let me get this straight: We don't hear a PEEP out of anyone when Tyron works on a different side project (i.e., VintageHosting, as he points out), but when it's a different side-project, suddenly "my money didn't pay for that" or "feature creep!" I also never asked for story content when I bought the game pre-fruit trees, but here it is and I think it is awesome!

To Tyron's point, you spent your money to buy the game in the state it was in at that time. Yes the game is in development, but if you spent money and got your copy of the game when you spent the money, then your transaction is fulfilled.

I didn't spend my money on Minecraft for Bedrock edition. Certainly some part of my purchase helped fund that project. But I don't care, because I put in 30 bucks and got out Java edition in 1.4.7, which was worth it to me.

tl;dr: get outraged when something actually sucks and not because you don't want to play what is essentially another mode, which Tyron says will not conflict with development of the main game. Yes it is going to cost Anego money, but it seems they've been pretty successful at managing their funds thus far. I don't think any of us here are qualified to be armchair accountants or CEOs when we don't have a damn clue what Anego's financial or managerial situation is.

[Chalky]

Further development on Vintage story has been cancelled in favor of a second hytale abortion. Pack it up lads.

[Enjen]

Tyron, I and many others believe in your capabilities as a CEO of your company. We believe in the abilities of your team at Anego Studios. If you've got a vision, I don't think anything should hold you back, especially if you've got a plan in place.

[Echo Weaver]

Tyron answered most of the concerns here, and they focus on the same sorts of concerns I see in other video game forums.

Software development is not as linear as some folks assume. You don't get better quality or faster features if you completely finish one thing before starting another. Some parallelism is much more effective. Moreover, fixing all the bugs in software of any size is literally impossible. Bug fixes, enhancements, new features, and experimental projects pretty much all have to run in parallel. That's just how software engineering works.

Tyron has already described how the current team structure is bottlenecked by the guardians of consistency. Adding more developers is not going to make development of VS faster. A AAA game studio has to break development up into many more pieces that can run in parallel semi-autonomously. That brings its own risks, and Anego has already decided against those risks. One may not agree with that decision, but it's a valid one, and that's how it's going to be.

Moreover, every game studio pays for new projects with the proceeds of the old ones, so I don't see how "Vintage Story dollars" even makes sense. It sounds like early features might be released in a Vintage Story game mode as more of an open alpha. That should give Tyron and co. enough information to decide whether the project is better as a VS game mode or a separate game entirely using the same engine, and they'll change direction appropriately.

I view VS as more a subscription game without the, um, subscription. Chapters drop over time, and we expect to play each one and explore it before the next one drops.

[dakko]

[delete]

Nevermind.. I'm getting too annoyed by the antagonistic comments. The whole tone here has become like the Steam forums.

Edited July 7, 2025 by dakko

[Maelstrom]

9 minutes ago, Oto Nokyo said:

Tyron basically told us in this thread that everything on the roadmap, including the next chapters in the game, may never exist. If it's on the roadmap it's not promised so it's not a roadmap at all. Just a pipedream of potential possibilities. 

Holy jumping to conclusions Batman!!!

At one time in the past the roadmap had Alchemy.  It no longer is on the roadmap being replaced by "Herbalism / Brewing system".   The roadmap is a reflection of the current vision the dev team has for the finished product.  Because the project is so ambitious taking a lot of time to complete and the vision of the devs may evolve over time the communicaiton of that vision expressed on the roadmap can, AND WILL change.  What about early access do you not get?  SMH

[Echo Weaver]

8 minutes ago, Oto Nokyo said:

Tyron basically told us in this thread that everything on the roadmap, including the next chapters in the game, may never exist. If it's on the roadmap it's not promised so it's not a roadmap at all. Just a pipedream of potential possibilities.

I wouldn't use the term "pipedream," but I admit that I wouldn't use the term "roadmap" for that list, and that's obviously what they call it. It's a checklist of cool stuff that the team thinks ought to be in the game. It's not, as said many times, either a timeline or a set of promises.

My remark was intended to point out that VS development is working as intended -- it's a journey of updates, not a single completed thing that gets done. Each chapter is essentially an expansion, except they're not priced that way.

[Echo Weaver]

12 minutes ago, dakko said:

[delete]

Nevermind.. I'm getting too annoyed by the antagonistic comments. The whole tone here has become like the Steam forums.

And literally every other game forum I've ever been a part of. Whenever topics like the direction of game development come up, the thread is always the same -- no matter if it's a AAA title, an indie game with a couple of developers, or something in between. It kind of astonishes me.

[Maelstrom]

3 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

And literally every other game forum I've ever been a part of. Whenever topics like the direction of game development come up, the thread is always the same -- no matter if it's a AAA title, an indie game with a couple of developers, or something in between. It kind of astonishes me.

Re-reading my last comment, I'm with @dakko seeing how my emotional investment is getting childishly large affecting how I post in a less than mature way.

 

At this point it seems locking this thread would be prudent.

[Echo Weaver]

Just now, Maelstrom said:

At this point it seems locking this thread would be prudent.

I just hope Tyron isn't getting pissed off and considering going back on the whole plan. It's a great plan, and when it gets going, it will generate a lot of excitement.

I don't think I could handle working in game development for this very reason. You pour your soul in to building something that is explicitly supposed to be fun for people, and then you get this kind of pile-on whenever you discuss your ideas in any open-ended way.

[Blitcut]

59 minutes ago, Oto Nokyo said:

Tyron basically told us in this thread that everything on the roadmap, including the next chapters in the game, may never exist. If it's on the roadmap it's not promised so it's not a roadmap at all. Just a pipedream of potential possibilities.

That's nothing new though. The introductory paragraphs on the roadmap has said that from the start.

[fromtia]

I came to VS very recently , I've put about 200 hours into a single player world now, I come from 15 years of mine craft mostly. This game is just staggeringly good and an absolute joy. It has been created lovingly and with great care. Roadmaps, development teams and so on , yeah that all seems pretty great , this team seems to know what they are doing, I'm not a game developer, but this all seems pretty sober and reasonable. Great job everyone! Hytale folded? Bring some people on board to do a new game mode? yep, sounds great , Elves and dwarfs? I'm in you son of a bitch! If y'all can make a game this good , I trust that you know whats up and you'll  do pretty much a great job. 

The level of just eye wateringly juvenile hostility is breathtaking. For everyone serving up the Haterade, why not just do what was done by others and go make your own game? If you are the experts you say you are on development and design and everything else, why not just go for it and go do it the way you think it should be done? Hmm?

For everyone involved in VS - keep up the amazing work, I'm excited for the future of VS and whatever else! 

[Echo Weaver]

While being defensive of the team and the existing game, I don't think I mentioned that I am TOTALLY PSYCHED for a game by this team with high fantasy RPG.

[dakko]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

I don't think I could handle working in game development for this very reason. You pour your soul in to building something that is explicitly supposed to be fun for people, and then you get this kind of pile-on whenever you discuss your ideas in any open-ended way.

Same here. My concern is that some on the team may be more prone to burnout under these conditions - I know I would. I hope the team is wearing their non-stick armor so that the comments slide off!

(eta for clarification: our community should be able to discuss opposing views and their rationale without devolving into disparaging comments or trying to force our own view above all others)

Edited July 7, 2025 by dakko

[Foe Hammer]

18 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

While being defensive of the team and the existing game, I don't think I mentioned that I am TOTALLY PSYCHED for a game by this team with high fantasy RPG.

I am as well! I am a big fan of the fantasy/high fantasy aesthetic so I am very excited to see what they come up with, even if I never decide to play the "Adventure Mode". It would be cool to see how far they can take the VS engine, which based on some mods I have seen, is probably to the moon and back.

[Rudometkin]

On 7/5/2025 at 6:12 AM, Tyron said:

Vintage Story will remain the gritty uncompromising wilderness survival you know today - with more survival mechanics to be added in the future. Saraty would kill me if that were to ever change

I love to hear it!!