What would your suggestions be for better temporal immersion?

[Josiah Gibbonson]

In the current game, the whole "temporal" idea feels kind of tacked on in my opinion The temporal stability mechanic doesn't blend very well with the rest of the gameplay, and I don't particularly enjoy settling down somewhere, only to realize it has poor temporal stability as the blue gear between my health and hunger bars subtly drains.

The monsters don't mesh very well with the rest of the world, the portals are thin and very early access-ish, (Don't know if that's what I'm looking for)

I haven't gotten to the story areas yet, I'm sure they're handled much better there. I don't want to go homo sapiens mode, because I enjoy combatting the monsters, and I like the lore and stuff. I just feel like it could be handled in a more immersive way, so to start us off, here are some of my suggestions:

The portals would be handled better if you could actually see another dimension on the other side, with the ability to travel between them seamlessly. You could see a dimension (the rust dimension) on the other side, which would help immersion (the monsters wouldn't just pop into thin air) 

as for the rust dimension itself, I would visually give it a complete overhaul. I don't think it's very effective to have it just be the overworld, but nauseating. I'd add oceans of black tar, lots of metal, decaying structures. A red sky, caused by a constant sunset. 

For monsters, I'd restrict them to only show up from said portals, or in said dimension, outside of story locations and structures.

which brings me to the next point that I think more structures that link the world more closely to the apocalypse would be better as well. What are your thoughts or suggestions for improving the immersion of the whole "temporal" aspect? 





 

[ifoz]

10 minutes ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

as for the rust dimension itself, I would visually give it a complete overhaul. I don't think it's very effective to have it just be the overworld, but nauseating. I'd add oceans of black tar, lots of metal, decaying structures. A red sky, caused by a constant sunset. 

The thing with the Rust world is that while it's leaking into our own, we never actually go there. The effects we see (giant gears, red lighting, wobbly screen) are symptoms of its effects on our own world rather than what it is actually like to be in the Rust world proper.

 

10 minutes ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

(the monsters wouldn't just pop into thin air) 

I've always liked this kind of idea, yeah. Have the monsters actually emerge from rifts instead of just spawning in around them. This especially goes for temporal storms. It'd be a way to connect the rift mechanics with the storm mechanics, instead of having the two be entirely separate, disconnected spawning systems like they currently are.

 

10 minutes ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

which brings me to the next point that I think more structures that link the world more closely to the apocalypse would be better as well.

I don't really know what you mean by this. If you mean structures from the time of the old world, that's pretty much every ruin currently in the game. There have been some trader ruins teased, but we don't know if they'll make it into 1.22 or not.
Or if you mean structures directly linked to rifts/the Rust world, there's a certain story structure I won't spoil that is quite Rusty!

Edited February 13 by ifoz

[zartax35]

Definitely want to actually visit the rust world, like another hellish place in an another block game. 

I just posted another thread talking about something like this but my biggest complaint was I wish alcohol restored some temporal stability or something. 

As for the storms, hiding in a coffin isn't very fun, neither is towering up and just hiding to wait it out. I need to feel like there's a reason I would want to brave the storm instead of just hide. Of course there's loot, but in the past I found everything I could manage to kill had just despawned by the time I could actually cut them up. Them spawning behind you no matter what also complicates things, which is actually awesome, but also hard to manage unless you just put a bunch of clutter on the ground which kind of feels like a cheap work around. 

I like the concept of the storms, just not the execution. 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

44 minutes ago, ifoz said:

I don't really know what you mean by this. If you mean structures from the time of the old world, that's pretty much every ruin currently in the game. There have been some trader ruins teased, but we don't know if they'll make it into 1.22 or not.
Or if you mean structures directly linked to rifts/the Rust world, there's a certain story structure I won't spoil that is quite Rusty!

I guess just more completed ruins. A lot of them I find are just the same Stoney piles of rubble, it'd be cool to see a rare structure spawn that's just a completely ruined town. Or perhaps fallen towers or the like. More links to what was once there!

[ItzWalterino]

 

5 hours ago, zartax35 said:

Definitely want to actually visit the rust world, like another hellish place in an another block game. 

Agreed! I hope something like that will be added in the future, as in you going there and once and for all clear up the source of the problem!

[Broccoli Clock]

Two things,

1) Could a mod merge all these "temporal storm discussion" threads? It seems like one is posted every week now. No shade at the OP, but it only benefits everyone if it's kept in the same place. Otherwise it's just a set of repeating posts.

2) For me, I don't want to be able to visit the Rust World, and for several reasons. One being the fact that you can't visit, and only get mere glimpses, is part of the "horror". It fits neatly into the Lovecraftian vibes; you do not visit them, they visit you - uninvited and unwelcome, into your world, and in doing so challenging what you consider to be normal. Visiting them would not only lessen that, it would effectively negate any "fear" or "power" the Rust World has. If you can easily move between the realms then YOU are now the monster. A fundamental, and complete shift, in terms of the current meta. One other reason, would be to avoid a direct analogue with Minecraft. If I'm being honest, it's just lazy meta. MC has an alternate biome, why can't VS have one. Aside from the reasons above, if you did allow people to travel there, all you are doing is massively lessening the impact of the Rust World for what? Nothing effectively, you've not moved on the lore, you've not gained any knowledge, unless you want the Rust World to have all it's own lore, loot, mobs, buildings/ruins, etc.. in which case you are asking the developers to double the workload - in a game that is technically 1/4 finished after 10 years (I base that on the storyline being 2/8ths complete).

As for why the Rust World/Temporal Storm exists, I believe (and happy to be corrected on this) that this is the influence of Sarta, who is keen on the supernatural weirdness, whereas Tobias is more into realism. It's not as clear cut as that, obviously, but I believe this to be the gist. If that is the case, then anyone coming to the game and assuming the idea of temporal storms/horror elements are just tacked on in an ad-hoc basis is plain wrong.

 

All this is personal opinion, of course. I have no special insight into the development process, or what sort of meta the dev team want to aim for.

 

 

[Broccoli Clock]

 On a side note, and apart from the above, I was playing Namalsk the other day, it's a modded map for DayZ which is loosely based on Stalker. As most will know Stalker has an "emission" threat, and this is mirrored in Namalsk. The emission event could be considered similar to the temporal storms of VS, albeit the storms last much longer. However the reason I mention it is the build up to that event. It starts off with really creepy "children sounds" with very deep bass and other environmental sounds like thunder and an increasing deep bass sound in the background, this builds up and becomes a storm, this all lasts about 2 minutes, finally you get hit by the emission (where you need to be in shelter or you'll get damaged). Here is a (very old, although it demonstrates it well enough) video of someone encountering a storm..

Nalmask/Stalker storm build up.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not asking for temporal storms to be like the stalker/namalsk emissions, but I do think the build up to those emissions is a format that VS could embrace, and for the better imo.

However, I do think a console message to the user is like a "place holder". I am not against it being in the game as it allows accessibility but for the most part I'd like to see no textual warnings of the incoming storm, instead the user is informed of the incoming storm by environmental cues.

[CastIronFabric]

9 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

In the current game, the whole "temporal" idea feels kind of tacked on in my opinion The temporal stability mechanic doesn't blend very well with the rest of the gameplay, and I don't particularly enjoy settling down somewhere, only to realize it has poor temporal stability as the blue gear between my health and hunger bars subtly drains.

The monsters don't mesh very well with the rest of the world, the portals are thin and very early access-ish, (Don't know if that's what I'm looking for)

I haven't gotten to the story areas yet, I'm sure they're handled much better there. I don't want to go homo sapiens mode, because I enjoy combatting the monsters, and I like the lore and stuff. I just feel like it could be handled in a more immersive way, so to start us off, here are some of my suggestions:

The portals would be handled better if you could actually see another dimension on the other side, with the ability to travel between them seamlessly. You could see a dimension (the rust dimension) on the other side, which would help immersion (the monsters wouldn't just pop into thin air) 

as for the rust dimension itself, I would visually give it a complete overhaul. I don't think it's very effective to have it just be the overworld, but nauseating. I'd add oceans of black tar, lots of metal, decaying structures. A red sky, caused by a constant sunset. 

For monsters, I'd restrict them to only show up from said portals, or in said dimension, outside of story locations and structures.

which brings me to the next point that I think more structures that link the world more closely to the apocalypse would be better as well. What are your thoughts or suggestions for improving the immersion of the whole "temporal" aspect? 





 

It should be a place you go to instead of come to you and there should be a reward for doing it but done in a way that its not a requirement.

For example: you have a deed area, just as an example lets say 15x15 blocks but it can be extended by purchasing deed extensions from any trader, portals and monsters will not spawn in that are. When you get a notification of a TP storm you go to a portal (which plenty will spawn when a storm is coming) and then you jump into that portal and there you are.

Whatever special items you can loot there via combat can also be gone in game play without doing that but it will take considerably more time and be more grindy, lets say a LOT of panning for example. There is nothing in the lore that suggests storms must be global and not a place you go to.

 

done.

 

Edited February 13 by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

11 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

The monsters don't mesh very well with the rest of the world, the portals are thin and very early access-ish, (Don't know if that's what I'm looking for)

I will note that is kind of the point--the monsters aren't supposed to feel like part of the natural world, because they aren't natural themselves. I think even little helper bots, when we get them(pretty sure we will at some point) will likely feel just a bit out of place given that the setting is mainly late medieval tech and that such automatons are implied to be just a little unnatural themselves when it comes to whatever animates them.

 

11 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

The portals would be handled better if you could actually see another dimension on the other side, with the ability to travel between them seamlessly. You could see a dimension (the rust dimension) on the other side, which would help immersion (the monsters wouldn't just pop into thin air) 

I don't think this would be a very good change, for reasons similar to what others have given. It makes the game too much like Minecraft, for starters, and one of the appealing things about Vintage Story is that it's very different. The crafting process is more involved, the gameplay is more challenging, and there's an actual story and lore to find.

As for traveling between dimensions, the fact that the player can't travel to the Rust World is part of what keeps the Rust World special. All the player has to work with are descriptions of the place and the little slivers that manage to leak through into our reality; the rest is left up to their own imagination. In that case, the player can imagine pretty much anything they want, and change that picture however often they want to keep things fresh. The imagery can also vary from player to player, so one player might imagine something like classic 1800s style steampunk architecture and creatures, while another might imagine cyberpunk Tokyo with a bunch of gundams flying about. In contrast, the Minecraft Nether is all laid out for the player, so there's not a lot of wiggle room for imagination, and the Nether itself becomes a bit stale as players quickly figure out what resources are available there, and how to get those resources for the lowest risk.

11 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

For monsters, I'd restrict them to only show up from said portals, or in said dimension, outside of story locations and structures.

As for monsters crawling through the portals instead of popping into thin air, that I would like to see. But I don't think the Rust World should be visible through the portals, for the above reasons. That being said, I also suspect that the player may get to witness the Rust World, and perhaps venture to a small pocket of it very briefly, as a one-time occurrence for a future story mission, but that remains to be seen. That kind of experience I think is fine, since it's very limited and preserves most of the realm's mystery.

11 hours ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

which brings me to the next point that I think more structures that link the world more closely to the apocalypse would be better as well.

As @ifoz already noted, that's what all, or at least most, of the ruins in the game are. Most are remnants of the Old World, though it's possible that some were built post-apocalypse and died out for whatever reason. I think we'll probably see more ruins added as time goes on, but most ruins will likely remain pretty simple so that the game can run smoothly on a wider variety of hardware. The more complex ruins I expect to be reserved for procedural dungeons and story locations, where the extra detail is needed more.

[marmarmar34]

I would hope there's more subtle visual indicators for temporaly unstable regions in the future. May it be sound ques or particles, anything would be better than just your HUD gear slowly rotating. 

As for structures. There is the More Structures mod that even adds large ruins like story areas. But be warned, some of the new structures are pretty OP. I was able to skip making an anvil for a saw by finding stacks upon stacks of old boards. 

[Ceridith]

Temporal instability makes perfect sense in lore locations that have it, both from a lore and gameplay perspective. The arbitrarily unstable areas below and particularly above ground ground make less to no sense in the context of gameplay, and often only serve as an annoying mechanic that detracts from gameplay rather than adding anything.

The mechanic needs more coherent reasoning to why it's applied to locations. Maybe there's large ruins, a broken translocator, etc. But the mechanic should also present more reasons to interact with it, or not, beyond just having your sanity meter deplete. Temporally unstable locations should also be more prone to spawning rifts, and having stronger entities spawning from them, as well as spawning enemies during the day, which would give more reason to avoid the locations earlier in the game but also make them a potential location to more easily gather Jonas parts when the player is more prepared for the challenge. Temporally unstable areas should also come with more incentive to want to enter them, such as more or better cracked vessels and broken chests, that could also possibly respawn after a time -- they are in a place that's temporally unstable after all.

I'd also like to see ways for players to impact temporal instability of areas. If an above ground area is going to arbitrarily be temporally unstable, at least give players the opportunity to construct a Jonas device to stabilize the area. I've had countless times where I've found an otherwise ideal spot to build a base save for the fact that it's in an unstable location, which is just annoying.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Ceridith said:

Temporally unstable areas should also come with more incentive to want to enter them, such as more or better cracked vessels and broken chests, that could also possibly respawn after a time -- they are in a place that's temporally unstable after all.

I don't think that all lootables should respawn, as that's just a bit strong. For procedural dungeons though, I think it's probably fine to have some respawn after the first clear, since such locations will require the player to fight some monsters and/or complete some puzzles in order to claim the treasures within. While it's an obvious videogame mechanic to keep the location "fresh" over the course of a long playthrough, it could be explained as new monsters creeping their way in after a time and bringing a few goodies with them.

[MKMoose]

4 minutes ago, Ceridith said:

Temporal instability makes perfect sense in lore locations that have it, both from a lore and gameplay perspective.

Temporal stability is paused in story locations, just so you know.

[Josiah Gibbonson]

49 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I will note that is kind of the point--the monsters aren't supposed to feel like part of the natural world, because they aren't natural themselves. I think even little helper bots, when we get them(pretty sure we will at some point) will likely feel just a bit out of place given that the setting is mainly late medieval tech and that such automatons are implied to be just a little unnatural themselves when it comes to whatever animates them.

Well, yes, they are out of place. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be much reason for their appearance, they're just sort of there. Popped into existence from nowhere, with pretty much no in-world indicators of why or where they came from apart from story locations I assume. I'd prefer if you could find more lore-based structures scattered throughout the world, and if the monsters had a more immersive way of spawning in. ((all my opinion, of course)) 

 

52 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't think this would be a very good change, for reasons similar to what others have given. It makes the game too much like Minecraft, for starters, and one of the appealing things about Vintage Story is that it's very different. The crafting process is more involved, the gameplay is more challenging, and there's an actual story and lore to find.

You misunderstand my idea for the portals. They aren't just "walk into them, load screen", they're immersive in that you can actually, visibly see what's on the other side and walk through seamlessly. Which, I argue, is much more similar to "Portal"'s way of handling portals than Minecraft's. I would much prefer to see where these creatures come from, because again I argue, just having them spawn at night without reason is way too similar to Minecraft than my portal suggestion. Is it hardware intensive? Definitely. Not something to add anytime soon, but I think it should be the end goal. I want to explore the rust dimension myself, it'd help tie the whole theme together rather than have these flat portals appear, for no purpose other than to lower temporal stability and spawn said monsters. . .And make spooky noises.

 

56 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

As for traveling between dimensions, the fact that the player can't travel to the Rust World is part of what keeps the Rust World special. All the player has to work with are descriptions of the place and the little slivers that manage to leak through into our reality; the rest is left up to their own imagination.

We can agree to disagree on that. I want to actually see the Rust world. Like, again, if these creatures are coming from it through portals or rifts, why can't we see the other side through said portals or rifts? Currently I have my own image in my mind of what the rust world is, but it makes me want to explore it. It does not satisfy my sense of adventure. It seems creepy, and dangerous, and actually interesting! 

((And when your temporal stability reaches zero and it "leaks" into your world, it's just nauseating visual effects and a constant health sapper. That should be made more interesting as well, like have a huge rift tear open the sky or somewhere and have all the rust and stuff leak out. Don't just blink and watch as an acid trip unfolds before your eyes...)

 

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Minecraft Nether is all laid out for the player,

On this note, the Nether is intended as sort of a mid-game destination. To keep the rust world dangerous, have it be that you would not *dare* go through those rifts until late game, and even then at a caution. You shouldn't just be able to go through the rifts and fiddle-fart around, you should go through the rifts and be struck with such a sense of "I don't belong here, I'm out of my league" that you hesitate to return even in your best gear. Doesn't even need to be intended to be easily traversed at any point, would just be nice to see the origin of where the creepy monsters come from.

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

The more complex ruins I expect to be reserved for procedural dungeons and story locations, where the extra detail is needed more.

I find that such a bummer. The ruins we have now don't tell me much of anything, they're just piles of cobble with the occasional basement underneath. I'd like to find entire ruined towns, broken down towers and the like, and such other things so I could actually tell that "hey, there used to be a civilization here." Even old forgotten roads would help! As it stands now, the ruins just aren't very interesting to look at or speculate on. They're in too much collapse to really say anything aside from being a pile of rubble. At least the ones I've found. ((So I decided to get the "more structures" mod, or whatever it's called. And given it's the most downloaded mod out there, I have a feeling I'm not alone. Although I do agree performance would have to improve, because that mod in particular does cause lag spikes during generation lol))
 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

7 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Temporal stability is paused in story locations, just so you know.

kind of makes sense they'd have to do it that way, which unironically makes it even weirder that the places that should be the most unstable are the most stable lol

[Josiah Gibbonson]

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

For me, I don't want to be able to visit the Rust World, and for several reasons. One being the fact that you can't visit, and only get mere glimpses, is part of the "horror". It fits neatly into the Lovecraftian vibes; you do not visit them, they visit you - uninvited and unwelcome, into your world, and in doing so challenging what you consider to be normal.

I never got to the story locations yet, so speaking as someone who hasn't gotten to get any glimpses at all aside from these flat, red portals that spawn creepy entities. . .Not a lot of horror there, it feels like describing a jumpscare. I'd rather experience the jumpscare for myself, not read it on a piece of paper. ((maybe I have no imagination, but the creepy monsters feel so immersion breaking because they seemingly just come from nowhere. Like walking spaghetti monsters- with how late in the game the story locations are, you aren't going to have much explanation for their appearance until much later. If I could at least see where they originate from, it'd feel less like the weird Minecraft feeling of "why did that witch/zombie/skeleton just pop into thin air at nightfall?"

 

 

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Visiting them would not only lessen that, it would effectively negate any "fear" or "power" the Rust World has.

I mean, if they made the Rust world an early to mid-game area, sure. But if they made it intentional that you weren't supposed to explore the area without at first preparing a *lot* in the late game, and even then at a large risk, it'd still serve as a place of fear and power. You'd never become so strong you just walk about there freely- the only reason you'd even go there is to experience the immersion, and occasional lore piece. It'd be much more pleasant to see that, rather than the stale, red texture on the portals. 

 

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Minecraft. If I'm being honest, it's just lazy meta. MC has an alternate biome, why can't VS have one.

Minecraft didn't invent alternate dimensions lol, think of it more as Doom, where you go from earth to hell itself. Except we're not the Doom guy, and never will be T-T
((I just want it to be more immersive, I don't think "copying Minecraft" in that monsters just spawn out of thin air is an any better solution)) 

 

6 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

which case you are asking the developers to double the workload - in a game that is technically 1/4 finished after 10 years (I base that on the storyline being 2/8ths complete).

I mean, yes. Obviously stuff like this wouldn't be a priority or even anything to worry about anytime soon, just an end goal. We all have our "wacky, resource intensive" hopes and dreams for this game, doesn't mean we shouldn't share or suggest them from time to time.


And don't get me wrong, I like the creepy, horror aspects and the lore aspects and the whole temporal idea. But right now it just doesn't feel immersive. The storms just kind of appear, the temporal stability mechanic doesn't feel well thought out, and the portals/rifts just feel early access. I just want to brainstorm how in the future said things might be improved. 





 

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, Josiah Gibbonson said:

I would much prefer to see where these creatures come from, because again I argue, just having them spawn at night without reason is way too similar to Minecraft than my portal suggestion. Is it hardware intensive? Definitely. Not something to add anytime soon, but I think it should be the end goal.

Given what's going on with computer hardware right now, and what's likely going to continue being an issue until supply can catch up with the demand...I don't think it's a good idea to set an end goal to be something that is hardware intensive. 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Given what's going on with computer hardware right now, and what's likely going to continue being an issue until supply can catch up with the demand...I don't think it's a good idea to set an end goal to be something that is hardware intensive. 

Oh, definitely. Only of they can figure out a way to do something like that without it massively bogging down the game first

[TFT]

A traversible rust world would be nice if only that the game could then have the infrastructure to handle dimensions and subworlds for modders to make their own. As for how it'd fit into the game, I'd make it very late game/story content. Horror never lasts forever, you eventually get used to it and any unease is sanded down by understanding mechanics. The feeling is already gone for experienced players who knows how spawning works so they can spawnproof their base. Making it one of the last things you do means you're at the point you have functionally mastered the game and its systems so pulling back the curtain isn't detrimental as it is a formality at that point.
Either way something like that looks like it's being worked on if I am not misunderstanding the roadmap plans. "Version 1.23 will be the next major lore update where we will make more extensive use of the new dimension mechanics."

[Thorfinn]

22 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As for monsters crawling through the portals instead of popping into thin air, that I would like to see.

Not me. Like another poster keeps mentioning, players will learn to meta out anything interesting in a game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but how many fence sections would it take to negate a portal if that were the case? So now we have to introduce rusties destroying fences or walking through them? Players switch to blocks. Then chiseled blocks. Not tough to see where this all ends.

At least with a 25(?) radius, containing spawns from a single portal entails a significant amount of time and material.

I think instead of a portal, maybe it would be better to have something that looks kind of like a rift ward, but works exactly the opposite. Maybe it's the rust perversion of the rift ward. Or maybe the rift ward is Jonas' reverse engineering and creation of the opposite effect. Which necessarily shares a lot of the same look.

Edited February 14 by Thorfinn

[CastIronFabric]

37 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Not me. Like another poster keeps mentioning, players will learn to meta out anything interesting in a game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but how many fence sections would it take to negate a portal if that were the case? So now we have to introduce rusties destroying fences or walking through them? Players switch to blocks. Then chiseled blocks. Not tough to see where this all ends.

At least with a 25(?) radius, containing spawns from a single portal entails a significant amount of time and material.

I think instead of a portal, maybe it would be better to have something that looks kind of like a rift ward, but works exactly the opposite. Maybe it's the rust perversion of the rift ward. Or maybe the rift ward is Jonas' reverse engineering and creation of the opposite effect. Which necessarily shares a lot of the same look.

Maybe I misunderstand here but what is the point in creating game mechanics that intentionally force players into a situation they clearly do not want to be involved in?

Again, maybe I misunderstand but this seems very...well..wrong really.

To clarify: If a developer creates a challenge and the community finds away around it and most people use that method then that is a really good signal that people are not interested in the core game challenge in the first place. If people WANT to engage in that challenge they will not use said hack on a large community scale. make sense?  

Edited February 14 by CastIronFabric

[Thorfinn]

6 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

Maybe I misunderstand here but what is the point in creating game mechanics that intentionally force players into a situation they clearly do not want to be involved in?

Again, maybe I misunderstand but this seems very...well..wrong really.

And they provided a very easy way of accommodating that gameplay. Understandably, shutting off rusties also shuts off lore. Traders? Murky at best. I'd just chalk it up to early access, and focusing on making the game Tyron and Saraty want to play.

We are free to go along for the ride, mod it to our liking, find another game more appealing, or, ideally, producing our own game that has the features we want.

[CastIronFabric]

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

And they provided a very easy way of accommodating that gameplay. Understandably, shutting off rusties also shuts off lore. Traders? Murky at best. I'd just chalk it up to early access, and focusing on making the game Tyron and Saraty want to play.

We are free to go along for the ride, mod it to our liking, find another game more appealing, or, ideally, producing our own game that has the features we want.

so there is likely a lot of hacks a player can do for all kinds of various game play functions. I can not think of one off the top of my head but for the sake of example lets just use 'going into creative' as an example.

If most players really did not like clay forming they would go into creative and just spawn the clay items. if most players were engaged by such a feature then they would not go into creative. The important word here being 'most'

So, going back to the subject if most players take an advantage of a method to avoid interacting with an intended feature then logically that means most players are uninterested in that feature, as such why change the game so that they can not use that in game avoidance method and forcing most players to interact with a feature of the game they clearly have demonstrated they want to avoid? its not logical

Also, I think if most players are trying to avoid a specific game feature/experience the people who need to step back and reflect are the minority of people who want it and ask themselves 'why not just engage in said feature rather than trying to find ways to force everyone else to engage in it as well'. aka, if you do not like a hack, do not use a hack and let others alone.

 

Edited February 14 by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

47 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Not me. Like another poster keeps mentioning, players will learn to meta out anything interesting in a game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but how many fence sections would it take to negate a portal if that were the case? So now we have to introduce rusties destroying fences or walking through them? Players switch to blocks. Then chiseled blocks. Not tough to see where this all ends.

At least with a 25(?) radius, containing spawns from a single portal entails a significant amount of time and material.

A fair point. In this case, I would say that the animation could still play as normal, and pop the monster out on the nearest available block, which could be on top of a fence if necessary. Or the monsters simply crawl out of the air/ground/whatever block is within range of the rift.

To my knowledge, a block can be placed on top of a rift without destroying it, and getting close to a rift is already dangerous due to the stability drain and monsters. Thus to actually block spawns by placing blocks, the player would need to be placing quite a lot of them, and fast, in order to actually block the spawns before running out of stability. In other words, I'm not sure that it's something that could be patched out entirely, or even needs to be if it could, since blocking spawns like that is likely a lot of effort for a very temporary benefit. Not to mention it creates an ugly mess that the player will need to clean up if they want to use that space, or reuse that material.

5 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

So, going back to the subject if most players take an advantage of a method to avoid interacting with an intended feature then logically that means most players are uninterested in that feature, as such why change the game so that they can not use that in game avoidance method and forcing most players to interact with a feature of the game they clearly have demonstrated they want to avoid? its not logical

Also, I think if most players are trying to avoid a specific game feature/experience the people who need to step back and reflect are the minority of people who want it and ask themselves 'why not just engage in said feature rather than trying to find ways to force everyone else to engage in it as well'. aka, if you do not like a hack, do not use a hack and let others alone.

I think the root of the issue is how convenient the hack is for the player to achieve. It's possible to cheese prospecting by placing blocks of stone on the surface, three blocks apart, and then just mining those instead of digging holes or searching for caves/cliff faces. However, it's not one the devs intend to patch out at this time, to my knowledge, since the effort required to get stone blocks outweighs the benefit of the prospecting, at least to them.

Otherwise...I mean if there is easy cheese, players will absolutely abuse it. Some won't, but just having fun intended mechanics isn't enough to stop cheese, if the cheese is incredibly lucrative. Far example, if the intended game design is the rifts being dangerous because they produce monsters, and the player stops that by developing gadgets to safeguard areas, then it's really not going to matter how fun it is to build the gadget if the player can just stop spawns by placing rocks everywhere. Rocks are cheap. The player could build the machine, if they really want, or they could just use rocks and use the expensive materials for other things.

[CastIronFabric]

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think the root of the issue is how convenient the hack is for the player to achieve.

I think there is some level of truth to that however I think in most cases the question I propose needs to be contemplated in deep mediation and taken seriously and not discounted before any 'work around a hack' features is installed. I know of a game that did this constantly until it just effectively killed the entire game for most players, the dev was just wanting to force everyone into a game experience that the community did not even want.

 

Edited February 14 by CastIronFabric