No cost of living

[Veronica Hohenheim]

I like isekais the same way I like sandbox survival games. I can experience the fantasy of having complete autonomy over my life. Right from get go you have a land,and there is no limit to where you can settle.You can make your house in a way you want and you dont need to keep paying a fee to exist in it.You get the plant food,harvest and feed on it.Even tho it has hardships they are managable with efforts, to a degree you do not have to worry about them after a while.I dont know,even not having to make a fee to exist is big thing on its own.Not the mention ability to do what u want,how u want with ur own time schedule because there is not a constant fear incentive.Have you also realized similiar reasons you enjoy this/+type of games ?

[Tom Cantine]

Personally, I have always had a strongly simulationist streak in my gaming. I like to use simulations to explore aspects of reality, even if the simulation is highly abstracted like chess or sudoku. And sometimes if it deviates sharply from reality, such as if there's temporal storms where inexplicable horrors manifest outside your dirt hovel, even the ways it differs can bring more understanding of the real world.

In Minecraft, I always found myself trying to understand the logistics of how villages and towns form and connect to each other through roads or other means, what kinds of infrastructure gets built where and why. I had elaborate house rules to help me guide my experiments, usually in solo play, but tried a few things out on larger servers too where we were trying to form communities. I find that Vintage Story is (MOSTLY) better suited for a lot of this, and incorporates organically many of the sorts of things I made my own house rules for. (There's still some things, like redstone, I haven't found an adequate parallel for.) And because I've become quite active on a public server here, I am getting to delve much more deeply into the problems of organizing a village, managing social resources and conflicts, designing rules and social norms to make for a sustainable and prosperous community.

[ArrayPointer]

15 hours ago, Veronica Hohenheim said:

Have you also realized similiar reasons you enjoy this/+type of games ?

Loved your thought provoking post, and yes, absolutely. Before I continue, I will admit that when I was a much younger man, I thought work was a drudgery to suffer through. It took years of 'toil' for me to understand that without the regularity of work, existence loses vital comparative dynamics. But that has nothing to do with Vintage Story. 

Your observations remind me of when I used to play Minecraft and I attempted to explain to non-players what the draw was. I always defaulted to some version of, "It's like a digital Eden." Even more so with Vintage Story. I completely agree about the autonomy.

One way it was particularly satisfying was the first time I played either game, the sounds of monsters outside my primitive hut made me feel ironically cozy. The knowledge that danger was all around me but I was shielded by one layer of impenetrable dirt was gratifying. In these sorts of survival games, the perfection of the cubic meter blocks is a visceral plus for me rather than an aesthetic minus.

In both games, all of it works together to immerse me to the point where I can better suspend my disbelief and more easily imagine I'm actually in the virtual world. Vintage Story adds considerable additional realism that makes the experience even more convincing.

The first game that made me feel that immersion was Myst, back in '95 or '96 I think (I waited until it was in the bargain bin). The next one after that was the original Tomb Raider. Up until Vintage Story, the game that gave me the strongest feelings of immersion was the original Unreal and its expansion, together now referred to as Unreal Gold. What a campaign!

Regards,

ArrayPointer

[Kaldo]

This is probably a depressing take but I think I like them because of how your effort is always rewarded, the game is built with the idea that if you put in the time you also get results. RL is hardly ever as straightforward and easy as that  The fact that there is no deadline and fees hanging above your head is also a plus (well, besides hunger but that's manageable). I also mostly like sandbox games that let you grow at your own desired pace instead of forcing some scaling unwanted threat, so I think there's something to what you're saying.

Also, digging a hole irl is so much harder than ingame, so unfair

[ArrayPointer]

2 hours ago, Kaldo said:

forcing some scaling unwanted threat

I have to say, this is the second post of yours I've read, and the second time I've been impressed at your accuracy in terms of expression. Being astute enough to identify the genuine problem is a useful talent indeed. Well done.

The notion of fairness can be perplexing in our shared construct. I have some practical ideas regarding the realities of living on this planet, but they are unsolicited at the moment.

Regards,

ArrayPointer