Game didn't quite live up to "Uncompromising Wilderness Survival"

[Thorfinn]

3 hours ago, Ceepert said:

Balancing a game like Vintage Story around the "cozy gamer" I feel like doesnt match.

Sure. This ended up as a, well, really, several contentious threads a few months ago. Someone noticed the game is supposed to be an uncompromising wilderness survival game, that it says so right on the tin, and that it wasn't living up to it, and we were off to the races. I'll tell you what I tried to tell him. If you end up with all the sliders cranked and you still don't feel the challenge you want, there's always mods, and the game itself was designed to make it easy for the more avid gamer to dial it up to 11. If you want kobolds to put holes in your buckets, or slit straps of your armor so it breaks in battle, or spoil/steal all your stored food, or trample and ruin your crops and livestock, by all means, do it! If that's the kind of thing you find fun, knock yourself out! The only one keeping your from your fun is you.

Before you insist the game isn't or shouldn't be this or that, though, you should take a look at the servers out there. Seems there is quite the player base for a more relaxed game. People who would rather spend their precious free time on accomplishing something like finishing the chiseling on their entryway, not toil on doing tedious maintenance on their homesteads, which fell apart because they had to spend all day at work instead of being in the game for the month that elapsed and their gardens turned to weeds and their stored food turned to rot. Who didn't get to see all the immersive changes in plant growth because they were too busy making sure the TPS reports had the right cover sheets.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

People who would rather spend their precious free time on accomplishing something like finishing the chiseling on their entryway, not toil on doing tedious maintenance on their homesteads, which fell apart because they had to spend all day at work instead of being in the game for the month that elapsed and their gardens turned to weeds and their stored food turned to rot. Who didn't get to see all the immersive changes in plant growth because they were too busy making sure the TPS reports had the right cover sheets.

Or basically, when pretend maintenance simulator tries to compete with real life maintenance tasks, real life is going to win every single time.

While it may be a paradox in some ways for a hardcore survival game, I do think that the "cozy" vibe fits outstandingly well. Why? The player actually has to work pretty hard and think carefully in order to achieve that state in the game. Achieving the cozy state could be just making sufficient progression to have a good base built up with the very best tech, but it could also mean figuring out how to tune the settings or install relevant mods to achieve the flavor of game one desires. At any rate, it's definitely a quality that the player has to earn for themselves, and not a quality just handed to them right out the gate.

[Zane Mordien]

15 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Or as Dostoevsky put it in Anna Karenina, all cozy games are alike; each hardcore game is hardcore in its own way. Or something like that. It's been a while. I'm not even sure what he was getting at there, but I am sure it was deep because it was required reading. And had that gold embossed lettering on the binding.

I just want to acknowledge your Dostoevesky reference. That was unexpected in this forum. I don't recall that in the book but its been 20 years. Ive still never made it more than 100 pages into the Brothers Karamazof.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

8 hours ago, Ceepert said:

I mean there is always the option of having it as a toggle option in the advanced settings for those who dont like it. Balancing a game like Vintage Story around the "cozy gamer" I feel like doesnt match.

or just install the mod that does that...:P

[Alonso7]

I had the opposite experience. Winter was really hard for me (I posted about it). I started playing the game without knowing much about it and thought winter would be similar to living in a snowy area in Minecraft. I couldn't go outside for long and ran out of food quickly because I hadn't prepared crocks. Berries disappeared unexpectedly. I hunted all the animals and fish in the region, and since I was freezing to death, I had no choice but to survive on mushroom soup.

I think the difficulty is perfect for people who are entering the game for the first time, it makes you feel like you are really surviving in the wilderness. That said, I love your idea of heating rooms. I would also love to see some thirst and overheating mechanics.

[Bruno Willis]

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Likewise, as @Thorfinn already noted, there are already mods that tried to add mechanics like this, and said mods weren't popular at all. The farming mods that are popular tend to be the ones that add more crops, which I think is a better way to increase the difficulty without increasing the tedium. More crops means that players will either need to choose carefully which they plant, or put in the effort to make bigger farms. More crops also potentially distracts the player from other activities, in that if they spend too much time exploring for different things to plant they'll end up progressing very slowly, or perhaps even be underprepared for winter.

I think new plants could be a way to let players choose 'hard mode': You have common plants available which are pretty easy to farm, have little depth (as now).

Then you add in interesting plants, - plants that use 2 types of nutrients, plants which need trellises and get blown over in high wind, plants which die if they get too wet, plants which get diseases and need to be pruned and maintained regularly, plants which only give seeds if treated just right. The more complex plants would need to be worthwhile in some way, but the main purpose would be to let people who like to garden give themselves extra challenges, and then let them show off when they manage to grow a really difficult crop. 

It'd be really interesting if players could go down a gardening rabbit hole and forget they ever promised a bronze pickaxe to that guy in the valley over.

[Ceepert]

On 11/22/2025 at 2:21 AM, Thorfinn said:

I like to keep an eye on ModDB to see what kind of game players are choosing for themselves. There are mods that make things more difficult, or at least more tedious, but those generally don't get many downloads, while mods that let you convert crops to sees, or increase the number of seed drops are usually between 5 and 20 times as popular. Whether we are talking crops or trees or sticks or ores or terra preta high fertility soil or prospecting or whatever else, mods that make it less intense, even cozy are much more popular. I'm not for nerfing what's there, by any means. Just not sure whether it needs to be harder on the n00b. The learning curve was plenty steep when I started.

Or as Dostoevsky put it in Anna Karenina, all cozy games are alike; each hardcore game is hardcore in its own way. Or something like that. It's been a while. I'm not even sure what he was getting at there, but I am sure it was deep because it was required reading. And had that gold embossed lettering on the binding.

Sure, but again, thats what the sandbox settings are for. The development of the game should not be limited cause some people like it easy. Thats why things can be toggles in the world settings.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Ceepert said:

Sure, but again, thats what the sandbox settings are for. The development of the game should not be limited cause some people like it easy. Thats why things can be toggles in the world settings.

Right, but it's also not possible to cover everything in the vanilla settings either, hence where modding comes into play. Mods are still completely optional, but allow for much greater customization.

[Thorfinn]

4 hours ago, Ceepert said:

Thats why things can be toggles in the world settings.

Maybe at some point. Now? When every third question seems to reveal that someone didn't see the color map toggle, or the source blocks toggle, or the surface copper/tin setting? Add even more settings that most people won't even notice, let alone use?

What's wrong with getting the rough outlines of gameplay established, then going back in and fleshing stuff out? For those with too high of a time preference, there's mods.

Edited November 28, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Add even more settings that most people won't even notice, let alone use?

I also look at it as, the more settings you include in vanilla, the more cluttered and confusing the menus get. It's great to have a high level of customization and all, but there's a reason that running jokes exist about players spending more time in menus just configuring things, than they spend actually playing the game. 

 

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

What's wrong with getting the rough outlines of gameplay established, then going back in and fleshing stuff out? For those with too high of a time preference, there's mods.

Not to mention that mods are a great way to test various ideas and see how well different implementations could actually work. Plus mods are a great way to customize one's game to very specific preferences, without changing the game for everyone else in the process.

[Ceepert]

6 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe at some point. Now? When every third question seems to reveal that someone didn't see the color map toggle, or the source blocks toggle, or the surface copper/tin setting? Add even more settings that most people won't even notice, let alone use?

What's wrong with getting the rough outlines of gameplay established, then going back in and fleshing stuff out? For those with too high of a time preference, there's mods.

Im confused by what you mean? I personally dont care if the change would be a toggleable option or not, you mentioned that alot of the most downloaded mods are those that make the game easier and my point was that difficult mechanics could always be tweaked in the world settings.

Edit: also again, people being idiots and unable to read options is not a valid reason to not have them. See it as a learning experience for those that need to learn that letters ordered in certaint patterns create words and sentences with meaning behind them as they describe what mechanics the options change.

Edited November 28, 2025 by Ceepert

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Ceepert said:

my point was that difficult mechanics could always be tweaked in the world settings.

And mine was that you don't even need to do that. Just download a mod (or make it yourself) and no one else has his performance degraded by your preferred settings. That's been what others have asked, several times now, and so far, crickets. If there was a good reason, maybe I could see clear, but so far, no one has offered anything except, "Yes, but you could just add an option."

[Bumber]

11 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Just download a mod (or make it yourself) and no one else has his performance degraded by your preferred settings.

TBH, this particular talking point is nonsense. VS is already doing so many checks per tick that any option not enabled is a pebble on a beach.

The real issue is development time. A game needs to work for any combination of features, so it needs to designed and tested as such. It's the developer's responsibility.

The tradeoff with mods is that they will break with other mods and future updates. A mod creator can disappear without giving permission to use their code, and then the mod is permanently broken unless someone makes another from scratch or violates intellectual property guidelines.

The decision for which route a feature goes should be based on if it fits the dev's vision for the game and can be implemented without ugly workarounds.

[Thorfinn]

3 hours ago, Bumber said:

TBH, this particular talking point is nonsense.

Have you read through the server logs, or thought about the implications of how mods are implemented? It's all compiled at runtime. Some of the checkbox options are optimized out; they don't end up in RAM. Every slider I've spent any time investigating ends up with something in RAM. Pebbles on a beach, maybe some of them, but pebbles have a tendency to accumulate.

3 hours ago, Bumber said:

The real issue is development time.

True. Many have said this in the past, many different ways. People don't seem to be able to grok the idea of opportunity cost -- that time spent on implementing feature X cannot simultaneously be used to develop feature Y. Is feature X the best use of limited dev time? Read through all the suggestions. How many make any case for why it's a good thing other than "immersion" or "realism", which, of course, means something different to everyone.

3 hours ago, Bumber said:

The tradeoff with mods is that they will break with other mods and future updates.

That is also true of changes and additions to the official codebase. As you add fluff, it gets harder and harder to justify adding a feature that you know is going to break a lot of it. Happens a lot in commercial code, where they rush something through that is not going to play nicely with the future direction of the project. Many times, they do not even know where the project is headed in any detail. It just ends up with, om, technical debt, I think is the current jargon.

3 hours ago, Bumber said:

A mod creator can disappear without giving permission to use their code, and then the mod is permanently broken unless someone makes another from scratch or violates intellectual property guidelines.

All due respect, people who are committed to a third party's vision of VS might not be the ideal temperament for an early access game. The point of EA is to fund a project while simultaneously drafting a large but informal QA team. That's one of the reasons I play the heck out of vanilla at every release. Because I know for every one of me, there are lots of impatient folk out there.

Edited November 29, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Bumber]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Have you read through the server logs, or thought about the implications of how mods are implemented? It's all compiled at runtime. Some of the checkbox options are optimized out; they don't end up in RAM. Every slider I've spent any time investigating ends up with something in RAM. Pebbles on a beach, maybe some of them, but pebbles have a tendency to accumulate.

You're talking about mods here, which are unpacked from .zip files each time you start the game because that's how Anego implemented modding. There are also .dll mods (mostly involving shaders), which are compiled (making it harder to check for malicious code) but still need to be hacked into the game using Harmony.

Recent updates have added large amounts of models and sound files. I don't see you complaining about these non-optional RAM hogs. (Maybe you really enjoy listening to insects and watching uncatchable fish?) Anego actually has the option of just adding lightweight compiled code for "uncompromising" gameplay changes, but there's always a bunch of .json files anyway to support modding (i.e., your suggested solution). If the option sliders themselves use any significant amount of RAM, then there's an optimization problem on Anego's end, and suggesting people use mods is just an excuse to ignore the problem.

Edited November 29, 2025 by Bumber

[Thorfinn]

54 minutes ago, Bumber said:

You're talking about mods here, which are unpacked from .zip files each time you start the game because that's how Anego implemented modding.

No, I'm not. You can prove it to yourself. Go into one of the base game .jsons and change something. Change the drops from Cooper's reeds from 1 to 64. Start the game and see what happens. How did that happen if it doesn't read them into RAM at runtime?

The .dll type mods are obviously compiled, and linked in at runtime, true. But if you look at the things I'm talking about, not one of them requires that level of coding. It's all .json editing.

[Venusgate]

To put in my two cents on the original topic:

There's an easy and lore friendly way to make both of these things much more tenuous without tacking on more features: lower global precipitation and lower starting climate temperature.

And of course there are self-imposed challenges that make this feel more desperate, like limiting yourself to low-fertility soil and only farming pumpkin and flax.

As a matter of survival realism, eventually you will cross over with reality - and historically speaking, one farmer could feed several people with their daily labor. Since there is not several people to feed or lords to tax your grains, VS is not far off the mark of how much you could overproduce on your behalf.

[Bumber]

21 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

No, I'm not. You can prove it to yourself. Go into one of the base game .jsons and change something. Change the drops from Cooper's reeds from 1 to 64. Start the game and see what happens. How did that happen if it doesn't read them into RAM at runtime?

22 hours ago, Bumber said:

Anego actually has the option of just adding lightweight compiled code for "uncompromising" gameplay changes, but there's always a bunch of .json files anyway to support modding (i.e., your suggested solution).

You're essentially modding the game in your example, so you're pointing out that there are inefficiencies in the way we're allowed to modify game data. As mods cannot be created without access to game data, this is 100% at odds with you telling players to mod things they don't like.

The alternative is that Anego puts the Cooper's reeds drops in compiled code. Then you can't change the number of reeds dropped. You definitely can't give them a chance to drop some dry grass. There is no Wild Farming mod to let you craft more reeds, because a flexible system that lets you specify a cattail root and a bucket of water as a recipe would take up too much precious RAM. (We'll just have a code loop that iterates crafting slots for integer IDs of items, and a little function to check the contents of a bucket, then rule out recipes using "if" statements. No need for a "liquidContainerProps" attribute or anything human-readable to make dough. Just store an integer for a bucket's fluid type and a float for the amount. The program knows the memory offsets of these fields for the item type; nobody else needs access.)

What it comes down to is that allowing mod customization in the first place has a far greater RAM cost compared to exposing an internal variable to an in-game menu.

Edited November 30, 2025 by Bumber

[Thorfinn]

I don't believe you understand how that works. All the key/value pairs from the ./assets directory are loaded first, then mods are loaded, many of which simply overwrite the key/values loaded from vanilla assets. That's a hit at load time only, and only consumes extra RAM if the tokens themselves occupy more space. Which they generally do not, unless you created new assets. If all you did is change skeps to use sticks instead of reeds, that should make no difference at all, apart from the time spent on loading the change.

I'm not asking for that to change. That's what others are asking to change. It would make the game less adaptable to have sliders or whatnot than to be able to go in and specify exactly what values you want. We hear this complaint all the time. You have five and only five starting climates, instead of "I want to start at the tropic of Cancer (or Capricorn, I forget), 23°26′N."

 

[Mowdan]

Going back to the op topic. The problem with making it too rough in terms of food is you have what I call the upkeep problem. Upkeep is any task you do just to stay at your current state of progression at a given time. When you are paying upkeep you are not doing the other things in the game. Maintain current gear level and location. That mean when you die the upkeep goes up because to stay equal you must either return to where you died or reacquire everything you loss.

There is also progression time, how long does it take you to gain or progress a certain amount. So you are trying to move forward and upkeep slows it down. That is the key it just slows you down, Oh you made it through winter? Uh yeah on standard you can just stand still and just repsawn over and over until winter comes and then ends...See the goal isn't to just get through winter, it is to progress through winter.

Sounds like some players payed their winter upkeep upfront by stashing and gathering food making huge farms. That is sort of what I did to some extent, In fall I was slowing down because I was stashing food, Hopefully it doesn't just rot or maybe I don't have enough? There are all sorts of things that can slow you down so I think it is fine.Only way to make it truly harsh is harsher deaths. So while you are building your farm the local bear comes by to stock up for the winter too and is here to inspect your armor. This would be a bigger time loss depending on the settings..For me making a farm was just a slow down so I made it quite small.So I may have to struggle along more now.

The problem with very high upkeep is the game becomes more of a grind and it doesn't really stop your progress unless you are on hardcore. It just slows it down and makes the game boring for a lot of people. The game become less free and controls what you can and can't do. The game options and setting are more than enough for me.

 

TLDR winter is just additional upkeep not a roadblock.Food is just upkeep and not a roadblock.For a roadblock  play with harsher death.

[labtop 215]

I'm not sure if it has been asked yet but...  Have you tried playing on 30 day worlds with normal hunger rates?  Your food takes longer to get in most instances.  Crops take longer to grow, bushes take longer to regrow produce, animals take longer to gestate, and young animals take longer to grow up.

 

Edit:  The trick is that food that you prepare in the world takes the same amount of days (or to the game... hours) to rot in a world with a season length of 9 days as it would take to rot in a world with a season length of 30 days.  And of course, you basically need to eat an extra 21 days of food per month ingame.  (So...  You basically need 3.3 times as much food to keep going.)

Edited December 1, 2025 by labtop 215

[Broccoli Clock]

Is it just me or do other people think that the emphasis from the guide, and the community in general, on the Winter is perhaps over egging the pudding a little?

I get that people should be told, but from a standard vanilla start you are what.. 70 odd days away from it? I'd imagine most people do a second start (it's like a second breakfast) after they've learnt how the game works, and want to do a proper run at it, resulting in a much prepared player for the colder challenge.

What's more, while it can definitely get cold and that is a direct threat to your health, there is still "tons of food" if you know where to look. Sure animals might give less meat, but they still give meat (and fat, for that extra sat) and cattail roots don't freeze/die in the winter. I would be genuinely surprised if the average gamer, after 40+ days in game, and with a quick shufty at the handbook, is struggling for food. It won't be as easy as summer, and yes no crops, but still it's not like it's a completely barren wasteland (heh, unless you set map gen to place you in a completely barren wasteland and in that case you've only got yourself to blame!).

In my mind, and because it seems to be the mantra - "prepare for winter it will be hell", I feel that average gamers hit the cold and are like "wow, this isn't really the challenge I expected of it". VS has lots of realism (or pseudo realism with tweaks for gameplay/balance), I don't think it needs to sell Winter as being the big challenge.

Edited December 1, 2025 by Broccoli Clock

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Is it just me or do other people think that the emphasis from the guide, and the community in general, on the Winter is perhaps over egging the pudding a little?

Kind of, but I would also say it's warranted. A lot of players arrive at Vintage Story after cutting their teeth in the other block game, and probably aren't going to be thinking in terms of "winter is coming, and it's cold. I should prepare". I recall reading one account from a new user recently who said as much--he was expecting wintertime to be like living in a cold biome in the other block game, and got a very rude awakening(though he did seem to enjoy the experience). 

I would also say it's a case of...VS veterans really like helping out new players. When someone asks for advice, we try not to spoil too much, but we're also...uh...perhaps a little overly helpful in regards to giving tips on how to avoid hardship in the game. 

3 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I would be genuinely surprised if the average gamer, after 40+ days in game, and with a quick shufty at the handbook, is struggling for food. It won't be as easy as summer, and yes no crops, but still it's not like it's a completely barren wasteland (heh, unless you set map gen to place you in a completely barren wasteland and in that case you've only got yourself to blame!).

I would say that I would be surprised...the average player really shouldn't be starving to death, yet it seems to be a thing that happens. There are plenty of opportunities and ways to go about solving the problem, but it's worth bearing in mind that the player needs to utilize the options themselves in order to solve the problem. A good chunk of learning how to play Vintage Story is just figuring out how to think outside the box and use the options you have available, which depending on worldgen may not be the "best" options in terms of meta strategy(like needing to resort to shells for tanning due to a lack of borax/lime supply).

[jerjerje]

On 11/19/2025 at 4:04 PM, jerjerje said:

For food, I feel like the main problem was the unrealistically long spoilage times. I think shorter spoilage times (below one year in a cellar) would do a lot to make food feel less trivial.

Interestingly, it seems that 1.21.6 indirectly did do exactly what I asked here.
The patch notes say "Fixed: Storage vessels were applying double the perish rate bonus".
I checked in game and the spoilage times have shortened a lot, because of this bug fix. Vegetables that previously lasted 2,1 years in a storage vessel in my cellar now only last about 100 days (slightly below one year). Grain was also affected, going from over 10 years to about 6.
I'm not sure if this bug applied to all worlds, but it certainly applied to mine. Maybe that's why I felt the perish time was so long. These new max values feel more reasonable to me. I guess I'll have to see whether it makes much of a difference when playing.

[Crabsoft]

On 11/19/2025 at 9:41 AM, LadyWYT said:

However, I think the standard difficulty is just fine as is. The game overall is uncompromising, in that the player absolutely will get punished for making mistakes. However, if the player prepares themselves well for the challenges, then the player is likely to have a fairly easy time as a result. That's just the reward for playing the game well.

While I do think of this game more as Harvest Moon++ super chill cozy game than something like Unreal World, what you've said here is a harder "problem" to solve than most people give it credit for. It's always been a hot debate in fighting games whether the difficulty of inputs is a valid balance point or self-aggrandizing gatekeeping. In any game that balances around good decision making, rather than execution, you'll eventually end up feeling like it's easy. 

I think that we could take a page from grand strategy games and focus on the value of tradeoffs to keep it interesting. Doing one thing means not doing another and not having that done should leave you open to real risk. Right now, it's a little too easy to cover all of your bases at once. You never /really/ get nailed to the wall for being unprepared (except falling in holes with no blocks to climb QQ). It's very hard to strike a balance that remains fun and not tedious. Just personally, I think balancing half a game is almost always a waste of time and we shouldn't expect to see that kind of thing until much later.

I will say that playing permadeath does make you respect all the mechanics a bit more - and maybe that's enough.