r/UnpopularOpinion .. what's yours?

[Broccoli Clock]

For those who don't get the reference, r/UpopularOpinion is a subreddit where people admit to having an opinion people will dislike. With that in mind, what is your unpopular vintage story opinion? Extra points go to ones that would not only possibly break the game but mess with people's playthroughs. Not that I'm looking for the extremes, but things you genuinely believe should be implemented.

Here's mine, and it's mostly about lighting... 

1) You should not be able to place a lit torch into your inventory. If you do, you should either start to burn, it blocks you from doing so, or it extinguishes it when it does.
2) This should apply to oil lamps too, and what's more oil lamps should not be placed in water. At present they provide a nice uplighting, but really when placed there they should turn back into a bowl (much like the way a bowl or rot works when you throw it into water).
3) Lanterns should only work under water when they have been sealed in some way (beeswax, animal fat?). 

While these suggestions are "realistic" and "make sense", I feel they would f*ck with people's game play style that it would be considered an unpopular opinion.

 

What are yours?

[Crabsoft]

Combat is fine.

[Broccoli Clock]

3 minutes ago, Crabsoft said:

Combat is fine.

ooh, I like that. Short, just three words, but enough to trigger many. Well done!

 

* whispers*  if you had added in 4th, "mostly", you'd have my full agreement 

Edited December 15, 2025 by Broccoli Clock

[CABLES]

Oh, I have several.

1. The player's very limited inventory space is a fine choice from a realism perspective, but clashes badly with the incredible amount of item bloat that this game has, and the hoops the player needs to jump through in order to get a slightly larger inventory are tedious at best and annoying at worst. Plus, the realism idea is out the window anyway -- the player can comfortably carry 640 cubic meters of soil without any inventory upgrades (around 700,000 - 800,000 metric tons).
2. Combat Overhaul is a good mod that's held back by limp animation, and that problem is exacerbated by locking each class into a specific weapon type with the proficiency trait system.
3. Flax is a terrible crop that warps the entire farming experience around itself.
4. Mob loot shouldn't be reduced if the mob is hit by lightning or falls to death.
5. Mobs should make footstep sounds. All of them. Every mob.
6. Brigandine and plate are pointless.
7. Cracked tool vessels are too common and too generous with their drops.

[Vexxvididu]

34 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

3) Lanterns should only work under water when they have been sealed in some way (beeswax, animal fat?). 

My own thought is that maybe lanterns should just be the only light source that by default works underwater.  Everything else gets put out.

My direct sort of unpopular opinions:

1) The game is hard enough and doesn't need old content to be made even harder in the name of realism or anything else  ...with a few very minor exceptions below!  lol.

2) I think many surface animals are too strong (especially foxes), but would actually make some of the weaker monsters stronger. I think it's a bit weird that wolves are so much stronger than many of the lesser monsters.

3) Bushmeat doesn't really make any sense.  I get it as a "gameplay mechanic" but it doesn't really make sense that it's so much worse than meat from less hostile animals.

4) One of the FEW things I'd make more expensive is Barrels.  A 50 liter barrel should need more than 3 boards... maybe 9.

5) Echoing the maybe more popular opinion that flax is needed in too large a quantity.

[Zane Mordien]

1 hour ago, Broccoli Clock said:

2) This should apply to oil lamps too, and what's more oil lamps should not be placed in water. At present they provide a nice uplighting, but really when placed there they should turn back into a bowl (much like the way a bowl or rot works when you throw it into water).

This one has always bothered me, but I also almost never use oil lamps.

1 hour ago, Broccoli Clock said:

3) Lanterns should only work under water when they have been sealed in some way (beeswax, animal fat?). 

I like the idea, but then again how does a candle burn inside a sealed container? What light source can you take underwater. Maybe stuff a bunch of the glowing "worms" from the caves into a lantern?

[Zane Mordien]

Oh for my unpopular opinion.

 

1. Inventory is fine the way it is. You are already wearing 4 baskets/backpacks.. a chest then attached onto your back makes no sense. 

2. Wolf Pups should be killed on sight. I've watched so many streamers gush over how cute they are. Meanwhile I'm bashing their heads in with whatever I can find.

I'll think of more later!

 

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Crabsoft said:

Combat is fine.

I'll second this, as it was something I was going to write too.  Otherwise:

Temporal storms are a well-balanced challenge in terms of both gameplay and lore, with good customization options. The only design tweak that's needed is more immersive warnings.

Temporal stability is also a well-balanced challenge for both gameplay and lore, with decent customization options.

Requiring a temporal gear to reset one's spawn, rather than a bed, is a great design choice. It makes sense from a lore standpoint, is more interesting than a bed, and balances a game mechanic that is very powerful.

[MKMoose]

46 minutes ago, Vexxvididu said:

5) Echoing the maybe more popular opinion that flax is needed in too large a quantity.

I feel like the large amounts of flax in recipes is a stand-in for the processing time that's presumably gonna be necessary once proper weaving is added. Currently, flax processing is practically instant, so some other way of time-gating linen isn't completely unreasonable.

 

1 hour ago, CABLES said:

The player's very limited inventory space is a fine choice from a realism perspective, but clashes badly with the incredible amount of item bloat that this game has, and the hoops the player needs to jump through in order to get a slightly larger inventory are tedious at best and annoying at worst.

31 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

Inventory is fine the way it is. You are already wearing 4 baskets/backpacks.. a chest then attached onto your back makes no sense.

I love the contrast between these two. Also, I think that you should have to place down your bags to access the items inside.

 

41 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

Maybe stuff a bunch of the glowing "worms" from the caves into a lantern?

This is a cool idea. I'd say it should be a different item and not just a lantern with something else inside, but that's a minor detail.

[HalfAxd]

Give me building blue prints so I can make something that isn't a box without my head exploding.   

NPC villages and villagers that I can recruit to my box city to do all the work for me so I can explore. 

A good margarita recipe for those days when I visit my box villa in the southern climate.   

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Let's see how many people I can trigger with one comment....

1. The game is fine, perfectly balanced, and needs nothing aside from more content, features, and story.
2. Bears actually need a speed boost. They need to be about 6-7 times faster than they are now. (They actually can run about 35mph which is 7x faster than the average human. but I couldn't resist dropping a 6-7 joke. )
3. Drifter loot doesn't need buffing. They are other-worldly mobs, it makes sense that they shouldn't drop much of anything that's useful.
4. Playing on anything other than the standard default difficulty should preclude you from complaining about the game on the forums.

5. 2 hours ago, Crabsoft said:

   Combat is fine.

   110% agree. Players just need to learn how to utilize its strengths and weaknesses better.

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Drifter loot doesn't need buffing. They are other-worldly mobs, it makes sense that they shouldn't drop much of anything that's useful.

OBJECTION! It needs buffing, because they can't use all the cool loot that drops from the monsters they kill!

Oh...oh wait, not that kind of drifter loot...

[Slam]

125% hunger rate should be regular hungerate, the only reason it isn’t is new player.

1 hour ago, Vexxvididu said:

Echoing the maybe more popular opinion that flax is needed in too large a quantity.

Yeah, I would love alternatives to flax, since the only real way to get a decent amount is farming. We have sheep, let me use that for gambeson at-least.

Prospecting is too strong, you never have to go into a cave, if I could make maps like Minecraft in vintage story, I would just play wilderness survival.

Mods aren’t solutions. I don’t like mods in my games, only ones I get is to make games run better. Mods items are typically feel out of place, or make it easier unless it going out of its way to make it harder. If you enjoy mods, go ahead, is there times I wish I had mods for small things? Yes, but most of time there’s another solution, such as using trapdoors as cabinets, or chiseling a cabinet already partly open.

[dakko]

3 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

3) Lanterns should only work under water when they have been sealed in some way (beeswax, animal fat?). 

And then only as long as the oxygen holds out? Water tight is also oxygen tight; candles won't burn without oxygen.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 minute ago, dakko said:

And then only as long as the oxygen holds out? Water tight is also oxygen tight; candles won't burn without oxygen.

typically air molecules are smaller than water molecules so water-tight doesn't necessarily mean air tight. If you fall, you should have a chance of breaking your lantern if it is held in either hand and not be able to use it again until you repair it with a hammer, add new glass, and a fresh candle.

[Zane Mordien]

45 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

7x faster than the average human.

But we are not human. As a sereph I choose to believe we are fast runners. I've never played homo sapiens so there it makes sense for them to outrun and eat you.

[dakko]

Just now, Teh Pizza Lady said:

typically air molecules are smaller than water molecules so water-tight doesn't necessarily mean air tight. If you fall, you should have a chance of breaking your lantern if it is held in either hand and not be able to use it again until you repair it with a hammer, add new glass, and a fresh candle.

Good points. I suppose the water itself would prevent new air coming in.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

40 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

OBJECTION! It needs buffing, because they can't use all the cool loot that drops from the monsters they kill!

Oh...oh wait, not that kind of drifter loot...

this comment is confusing to me

[Tom Cantine]

Aesthetics and subjective quality.

Something like the comfort mechanic in Valheim, but more individualized and possibly subjective. Maybe a hidden set of variables within each food. The hidden set of variables in the food production could be derived from such factors as what kind of wood it was cooked over, how big a batch it was, how close to spoilage the ingredients were. Making cheese: what kind of picked vegetable was used to curdle the milk? What species animal gave the milk, what generation? Making wine: How close to spoilage were the fruits, and how close to spoilage was the juice before it was sealed, and what time of year was it sealed? Was it raining when it was sealed? Was the soil under the berry bushes high fertility, low fertility? 

All these things would contribute to the hidden taste variables of, I dunno, maybe 16 bits of data total. And then these get compared to a preference key in the seraph who consumes the food, and most seraphs would have the same preference key but maybe one bit would be randomly flipped, so that two seraphs wouldn't get exactly the same reaction to the same food, but they'd MOSTLY agree that THIS cranberry wine is a superior vintage to THAT cranberry wine. 

[Loosebearings]

2 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

But we are not human. As a sereph I choose to believe we are fast runners. I've never played homo sapiens so there it makes sense for them to outrun and eat you.

My headcannon is that seraphs have a higher matabolism than a regular human. They are able to run continuously for (ingame) days on end without breaks, yet they only starve in about 2 days.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

typically air molecules are smaller than water molecules so water-tight doesn't necessarily mean air tight. If you fall, you should have a chance of breaking your lantern if it is held in either hand and not be able to use it again until you repair it with a hammer, add new glass, and a fresh candle.

Are you saying that because a certain character of mine keeps breaking his lanterns in my stories? 

 

2 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

this comment is confusing to me

It was a joke about players dropping their items on death.

[Loosebearings]

1 minute ago, Tom Cantine said:

most seraphs would have the same preference key but maybe one bit would be randomly flipped

Maybe what you've previously had would influence your preferances? If you eat something repeatedly you learn to like it more.

Or the opposite, maybe you get bored of it?

[Loosebearings]

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

It was a joke about players dropping their items on death.

Unpopular opinion:
Clothes and armor should be dropped on death (you better hope you reach your class specific clothes before they despawn!)

[Teh Pizza Lady]

9 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It was a joke about players dropping their items on death.

oh I get it now

[MKMoose]

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Temporal stability is also a well-balanced challenge for both gameplay and lore, with decent customization options.

See, I'm immediately pulling my hair out over this one (and a few other ones in here), because I feel like only a small part of it is unpopular. From what I've seen there's very few people who dislike temporal stability as a whole compared to the number of people who would yeet surface instability out the window the first chance they get. Dumping the two together ain't doing you favors.

Also, though I can't claim to have seen them all, I actually don't recall any argument about stability customization that did not revolve around surface instability being inseparable from all other instability. There's no reason to put underground instability in the crossfire when it doesn't get nearly the same flack. Or in other words, focus on improving what doesn't work instead of panicking that the baby shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater.

Feel free to consider this my potentially unpopular opinion, which kind of gets more reinforced with each new game I pick up: long-time fans of various things tend to be too worried about it getting ruined with poorly thought out suggestions (which is largely but not entirely justified) to genuinely entertain the possibility of improving undercooked features that they've already grown accustomed to.