How are 8 story chapters with (potentially) 8 bosses/dungeons going to be balanced?

[ignoramus]

Currently we have the Resonance Archives, which demands Bronze as a minimum progression tier - but getting Iron is more realistic if you don't want to hate your life. Also the second dungeon which pretty much requires Steel.

So... assuming we get more dungeons and bosses past these, how are they going to fit in with tech progression? From what I understand there are currently unimplemented Titanium ingots, so I would imagine dungeon 3 will require Titanium weapons and armor. Or maybe the current dungeons will get nerfed to make them more fair with Copper/Bronze gear? Not to mention the distances from spawn. Will they be moved closer as more are added or are we going to have to travel >100,000 blocks out for dungeon 3 or 4?

I'm sure the devs have all this figured out, I'm just trying to take a few guesses. I think more tiers of metal with increasingly difficult smelting/working processes would be fun but obviously the most difficult to implement compared to nerfing existing content. We already have some chemical processes like those for Sturdy leather, maybe some simplified version of the Kroll process for Titanium? Or advanced iron/steel working techniques for an "in between" tier? Cast iron is more brittle and weak than wrought but I'd also love to see cast iron implemented, just for the sake of having a cast iron skillet to carry with me

[marmarmar34]

Honestly, I'd prefer if story progress dungeons were more puzzle based than boss based. The combat is serviceable at best, and the bosses are nothing more than a gear check.

[LadyWYT]

How are the story chapters going to be balanced? By whatever metrics the devs deem appropriate for the story they want to tell and the game they wish to make.

1 hour ago, ignoramus said:

so I would imagine dungeon 3 will require Titanium weapons and armor.

I highly doubt this. Tier 2 equipment(bronze) is required for Chapter 1, and Tier 3 equipment(iron) is the minimum for Chapter 2, although I would wager it's manageable with bronze/gambeson thanks to the changes that have been implemented. Chapter 3 would likely require steel equipment, which is Tier 4, if it requires tougher equipment at all. Titanium would likely be a requirement beyond steel, and I would more expect to see some sort of Jonas tech power armor, potentially, than pure titanium.

 

1 hour ago, ignoramus said:

Or maybe the current dungeons will get nerfed to make them more fair with Copper/Bronze gear?

I don't think it's a good idea to downgrade the current difficulty to Tier 1. Tier 1 equipment is fine for early game and basic surface survival, but it's not going to hold up at all to the nasties lurking within story locations.

 

1 hour ago, ignoramus said:

Not to mention the distances from spawn. Will they be moved closer as more are added or are we going to have to travel >100,000 blocks out for dungeon 3 or 4?

You can already change the story location distances at world creation. The option can be found under the World Generation tab. I'll also note that some Chapter 2 locations have already had their distances shortened since their introduction. The distances are also there to help keep the player from discovering things too early and missing pieces of the story, since it's very possible to skip locations and chapters entirely. At least two locations are easily discovered without the map markers as well, and one of those is visible from a couple thousand blocks away, minimum.

As for where new locations are placed, the only real answer is wherever the devs wish them to be placed in order to tell the story. I definitely expect more traveling, but perhaps not to the same extent as Chapter 2. Given that Chapter 2 was focused on traveling, it makes sense to include a lot of running around, but I daresay Chapter 3, at least, will tone it down a little as a break.

1 hour ago, ignoramus said:

I think more tiers of metal with increasingly difficult smelting/working processes would be fun but obviously the most difficult to implement compared to nerfing existing content.

Given that the overall tech level is the late Middle Ages, I don't think we need another tier past steel, unless it's Jonas tech. Steel is a rather solid end game material, and I think it's fine to have fewer but more defined tech levels, than several different ones that just feel like a copy/paste of one another. 

[MKMoose]

2 hours ago, ignoramus said:

From what I understand there are currently unimplemented Titanium ingots, so I would imagine dungeon 3 will require Titanium weapons and armor.

Titanium was first discovered well after the time period that Vintage Story is set in. The Kroll process is a 20th-century industrial process - if anything, expect something closer to the Hunter process.

Titanium's real-life applications are almost exclusively a consequence of modern technological advancements and it wouldn't be feasible to use it for late medieval or early modern armor or weapons even if it was known and available in appropriate quantity. If we ever see significant applications for titanium beyond the current use of ilmenite in refractory bricks, it will almost certainly be Jonas tech or some highly specialized applications, not as the next generic metal tier.

Tyron has said in an interview a while back that there is no plan for any more metal tiers beyond steel, except perhaps stainless steel and some specialized types of steel for specific purposes. Titanium could feasibly be used as an alloying element then.

 

2 hours ago, ignoramus said:

Will they be moved closer as more are added or are we going to have to travel >100,000 blocks out for dungeon 3 or 4?

Why 100k? There were already complaints that the structures are too far, at which point they were adjusted and are now a more reasonable distance away. There is zero reason to move them completely out of proportion again, and they will stay a couple thousand blocks apart. If that doesn't satisfy you, the distance between story structures can be adjusted in world configuration.

 

2 hours ago, ignoramus said:

Cast iron is more brittle and weak than wrought but I'd also love to see cast iron implemented, just for the sake of having a cast iron skillet to carry with me

Cast iron is a pretty common but also a pretty big request, and it's very likely to be implemented sooner or later. A number of mid-game items could be produced from it, like cookware, stove, fences, gates, lanterns, decorations, pipes or chutes, certain tools. I think it would have to be a primary feature of one of the major updates.

While it would be technically possible to just add crucible cast iron, I would consider it more likely to come with a blast furnace, potentially pulling with it a separate setup for non-ferrous smelting and sand casting, as well as a finery forge for wrought iron. Additionally, I wouldn't expect significant new features related to metalworking until the temperature system is overhauled, which will hopefully be the next major update.

Edited Friday at 05:35 PM by MKMoose

[williams_482]

In order for tech progression beyond mere metals to be more holistically integrated into the story, the Chapter 3 dungeon will feature a boss who is deathly allergic to blue cheese. 

[Vexxvididu]

2 hours ago, marmarmar34 said:

Honestly, I'd prefer if story progress dungeons were more puzzle based than boss based. The combat is serviceable at best, and the bosses are nothing more than a gear check.

Agreed, I don't play this game for the combat.  I don't even really want them to "fix" it so much as make more non combat based content.

[Stralgaez]

1 hour ago, Vexxvididu said:

Agreed, I don't play this game for the combat.  I don't even really want them to "fix" it so much as make more non combat based content.

Sure, but I don't mind the 'danger of the unknown' kind of thing if you delve into forgotten ruins and buildings and find out they are not as empty as you hoped.

The bell alarm 'gauntlet' was a good moment of tension in the Archives to never fully let your guard down, though the 'boss' fight was pretty bad to deal with.

[Zane Mordien]

3 hours ago, williams_482 said:

In order for tech progression beyond mere metals to be more holistically integrated into the story, the Chapter 3 dungeon will feature a boss who is deathly allergic to blue cheese. 

That would definitely block my progression.

[jerjerje]

6 hours ago, ignoramus said:

From what I understand there are currently unimplemented Titanium ingots, so I would imagine dungeon 3 will require Titanium weapons and armor

There are real life reasons why titanium wouldn't work well for tools. As the game is trying to be at least somewhat realistic, these should be considered as well. Titanium is indeed a very strong metal, but people tend to underestimate just how strong steel is. To quote Wikipedia: "Commercially pure (99.2% pure) grades of titanium have ultimate tensile strength [...] equal to that of common, low-grade steel alloys". What we have in game would certainly be some form of "low-grade" steel, so titanium would likely be comparable. (A major reason we use titanium in the real world is due to its low weight, compared to steel.)

Now to be clear, this quote is regarding tensile strength. Tensile strength measures how much you can pull something apart, before breaking. This isn't particularly relevant for something like tools. In this case, you would want to measure how resistant titanium is to shock wave or compression stress. Sadly, finding good data on this is rather difficult, unless you want to search through scientific studies on this. If someone wants to do that, please let me know what you find.

I am in no way an expert on the topic, so I might be misinterpreting this. But from my understanding, titanium would at best be on a similar level to steel. Almost definitely not better.

If the devs ever want to add another tool tier, it should likely be some form of "high-grade" steel.
But personally, I would say that another tool/armor tier is not really needed. At least not how the game is right now.

As for future story locations, I don't think that they have to keep getting harder and harder. More detail in the spoiler:

Spoiler

Personally, I would say, that chapter two was already much much easier than chapter one (Note: I only played it in 1.21. I don't know how hard it was before). I used steel plate for both chapters.
You only needed to fight for the lazaret and the boss. In the lazaret, I mostly used the thin staircase to prevent multiple enemies from reaching me at once. This made this rather easy. There are enemy spawn in the devastation of course, but I just ran past all of them (in my tailored gambeson armor) and I didn't need to fight anything. The boss fight itself was also rather easy. I didn't really try to dodge much and just pelted it with arrows. I still had over 3/4 of my hp left. I never even used the timeswitch ability to dodge. It just wasn't necessary.
And despite all of that, I would say that I enjoyed chapter two more than chapter one. Significantly.
All that is to say: Story chapters don't need to get constantly harder (combat wise), to be interesting. 

7 hours ago, ignoramus said:

Will they be moved closer as more are added or are we going to have to travel >100,000 blocks out for dungeon 3 or 4?

As for the distances, I would not assume, that you would have to travel anything near 100k blocks for future chapters. With default settings both the equator and the North Pole are only 50k blocks away. But I wouldn't assume that future story chapters would even go that far out, either. We will definitely still have to travel for future chapters, but I would assume at absolute most 20k blocks for one chapter. But even that might be a stretch.

Slight spoiler for end of story chapter two:

Spoiler

It also seems like we will likely be getting more Rickety Translocators for quick travel to some future story locations. These story locations with teleportation access can then also be used as a starting point for future chapters. So for example, one chapter could send us 10k blocks north, but give us a Rickety Translocator. Then a later chapter would require you to go 20k blocks north, but you can skip half of that, via teleportation. This way there would be potential for placing story locations very far out, without requiring the player to travel all the distance at once. (Sadly, Tobias Rickety Translocator can't really be used for this, since you can't fit your elk through the slim door out of the room.)

[LadyWYT]

26 minutes ago, jerjerje said:

Note: I only played it in 1.21. I don't know how hard it was before

It was quite different. I'm not sure which changes happened when, but:

Spoiler

The basement section of the Tower puzzle did not exist at release(1.20). Likewise, it wasn't possible to call the elevator at all, until you reached the very top and activated it. There was no campfire or bed, and the Tower did not have a constant temperature, meaning that players could not sleep through the night or warm themselves up if cold. 

The Devastation area was a lot more prone to spawning enemies, and shivers could spawn on top of the tower during the boss fight. I'm not sure if that was a bug or a feature at the time, but it was rough.

The Crow fight itself was very tough, with the Crow having much faster attacks and a greater tendency to divebomb the player, which made it a long fight despite the player not needing to damage the Crow as much in order for it to fly away. While the fight itself was more dangerous and unpredictable than it is now, it was also easily cheesed due to the Tower's construction at the top. Rather than climb ladders outside to reach the very top, the player would ascend a staircase from the interior. Said staircase was covered by trapdoors, making it very easy to sit in the staircase and avoid most of the knockback from the Crow's attacks while attacking the Crow. 

While I do miss the hectic nature of the original fight in some ways, the changes make the fight much better than it was at launch. The player needs to deplete the Crow's health fully to make it fly away, which is more than before but a fair trade for more predictable attack cycles and less confusion for the player about whether or not they've won the fight.

 

[jerjerje]

11 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It was quite different. I'm not sure which changes happened when, but:

I heard about the elevator change before, but that really is a lot they changed. Guess we'll have to wait and see how future story chapters will be balanced. (Hopefully they won't require an entire update focused on rebalancing them)

[williams_482]

15 hours ago, jerjerje said:

Slight spoiler for end of story chapter two:

  Hide contents

(Sadly, Tobias Rickety Translocator can't really be used for this, since you can't fit your elk through the slim door out of the room.)

 

Spoiler

The Elk's inability to fit through the doorway shouldn't be a problem, because the Elk's magical teleportation powers will rescue it if summoned via bone flute from outside the cave. However, I've been unable to get my rickety translocator to respond to the elk at all, whether I am riding it or not. 

My rickety translocator is bugged anyway (it only works after teleporting to Tobias via commands, going through his translocator, and then back through mine in the same play session, and even then only once) but that doesn't seem it should be connected. I just translocated myself to Tobias's cave with the elk standing next to me on the platform, and it stayed right there as I beamed out and back again. 

 

Edited Saturday at 02:38 PM by williams_482

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, jerjerje said:

I heard about the elevator change before, but that really is a lot they changed. Guess we'll have to wait and see how future story chapters will be balanced. (Hopefully they won't require an entire update focused on rebalancing them)

I think the main reason that so many changes got applied after the initial launch, is that 1.20 had been cooking for a while and players were antsy, so it maybe launched a little sooner than it should have. That was also around the time that there were more new players than expected, to the extent the web services were struggling to keep up with them all. 

I'm guessing that might be why 1.22 is taking a while as well. It's usually better to take some extra time and get it right at launch, than it is to try to play catch-up afterwards.

[Zane Mordien]

I'm hoping the next chapter will be something different and not another dungeon crawl or parkour park with a boss at the end. I like bosses in general but 8 chapters of boss fights will get a bit stale. 

[LadyWYT]

39 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

I'm hoping the next chapter will be something different and not another dungeon crawl or parkour park with a boss at the end. I like bosses in general but 8 chapters of boss fights will get a bit stale. 

I suspect maybe a brief venture into a "pocket dimension", perhaps--a very small sliver of the Rust World. Or perhaps travel to a different settlement to find some allies, perhaps. The most likely option though, I think, is probably another sort of location similar to the Resonance Archive. Some monsters to fight, some puzzles to solve, and some lore to find, but otherwise fairly straightforward. It's hard to say for sure though.

What I do expect though, is a focus on whatever new mechanics are being added for that update. Chapter 2 had some story-specific additions, yes, but it also served to showcase one of the main features of the update: travel options like the elk and sailboat. The sailboat, of course, being a bit underwhelming since coral reefs and ocean life were delayed, and aquatic features still being something relatively underdeveloped as a whole.

[DishonoredHero 2]

I think something that isn't being discussed enough is how all the story locations will be spaced out with regards to the material tiers IE: will the last 4 story locations just be expecting us to have steel equipment? Seems like it might become a bit of a slog to just travel from one location to another with nothing to do in the meantime if you've already maxed out your equipment and are just trying to wrap things up so to speak. Of course, that's assuming all of the story locations will be of equal length, so it's possible the story speeds up towards the end to not drag on I suppose? Maybe it's just too early on to accurately speculate so far ahead though

[LadyWYT]

15 minutes ago, DishonoredHero 2 said:

I think something that isn't being discussed enough is how all the story locations will be spaced out with regards to the material tiers IE: will the last 4 story locations just be expecting us to have steel equipment?

First off, welcome to the forums! It's unknown how many more story locations will be added to the game. All we really know is that of an eight planned chapters, only two have been implemented. If each chapter introduces a new location, that's six new locations minimum, though it could easily be more than that if a later chapter follows a similar design as chapter two's locations.

 

17 minutes ago, DishonoredHero 2 said:

Seems like it might become a bit of a slog to just travel from one location to another with nothing to do in the meantime if you've already maxed out your equipment and are just trying to wrap things up so to speak.

Maybe, but I think that there will be plenty to do at the end of each chapter. Chapter One can be completed with bronze equipment, while Chapter Two generally requires iron. Different armor sets may be ideal for different chapters depending on what each requires(for example, higher mobility armor like chain versus more protective, low mobility armor like plate).

Overall, there are things like livestock, fruit trees, and just general base improvements that players can focus on when not working on the story. Likewise, players usually get some nifty gizmo to build as a reward for completing a chapter(so far), that will probably take a bit of time to acquire. Most players will probably also want to take a small break and relax and restock before heading out on their next adventure.

22 minutes ago, DishonoredHero 2 said:

Of course, that's assuming all of the story locations will be of equal length, so it's possible the story speeds up towards the end to not drag on I suppose? Maybe it's just too early on to accurately speculate so far ahead though

I think how long a story chapter ends up being depends heavily on world generation settings and player skill. Some players might struggle with Chapter Two while others breeze through it; same goes for Chapter One. As for world generation, some seeds are harder than others in certain areas, and if the player changed the distance scaling for story locations then the story will take longer or shorter depending on how they scaled that setting.

I do agree with the last statement though--it's really too early to make many solid guesses. 

[jerjerje]

10 hours ago, DishonoredHero 2 said:

Seems like it might become a bit of a slog to just travel from one location to another with nothing to do in the meantime if you've already maxed out your equipment and are just trying to wrap things up so to speak

This should also be remedied somewhat by having more endgame content. The roadmap lists, for example: "More ways to mechanize task with mechanical power" and "Early Steam power technology". When these are implemented, I would imagine that you will still have plenty to do at your base, even in the very late game.

Of course, you could always finish the entire tech tree without doing any story quests. But there is little that the devs can do about that.