Temporal storms are a bad implementation of a good idea.

[Stralgaez]

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

There actually is a story location that shows the long-term consequences of prolonged exposure to the Rust World. It is completely devoid of animals and functionally a wasteland. The devastation you are looking for is there, just not exactly how you are describing it.

That said, the storms themselves are not the root problem. They are a symptom of something much larger going wrong.

In the lore, the storms were originally far more violent and frequent, and have gradually diminished over time. That detail alone suggests they are part of a broader temporal imbalance rather than the core threat.

If you want Chapter 2 spoilers, see below.

Oh, I am aware - That is something you get relatively late as you, in the earliest case, be there in Y2 or even 3 before you get enough information.

I'd rather have it pulled from other, easier accessible sources to roughly puzzle it together for yourself at the very start : The Traders and Treasure hunters could spin you a few tales about it, and you then decide to brave those temporal storm affected pockets (which may be generated nearby upon accepting the investigation) for fill in the blanks. And once you got enough information to piece yourself a story together, you could finally get ready to brave Chapter 1.

Edited March 4 by Stralgaez

[Calmest_of_lakes]

I'm in the camp that likes temporal storms, but I do have to say that the fact that the mechanic is completely divisive says that it has really glaring problems. 

I would go as far as to say that the Temporal Storm mechanic might have some fundamental flaws with it. How would you even be able to make storms simultaneously engaging, balanced, fair, and not be able to be completely ignored? How would you make them constantly present, without them becoming old or annoying? The fact that mods really haven't been able to fix some of the more despised aspects of it doesn't fill me with much hope, ehe.

 

Some changes off the top of my head that they could make:

Have mobs be able to destroy blocks/doors? Then it would become like Rimworld, in that it would become even easier to cheese with killboxes and exploiting the AI, annoying builders who would have to remember to patch broken doors/walls/chiseled blocks, and punishing less well off/less skilled players.

Have a block/item that completely neutralizes it? Then, the resource cost wouldn't matter, as players would just bite the bullet and rush to get it. It would be a waste of a mechanic later on, too.

Replace the "no spawn restrictions" gimmick for enemies with more intense dark areas, as someone earlier suggested? Can be trivally mitigated by making a ton of lighting, and can even be exploited.

 

Add trap blocks/mechanics? Still would end up like Rimworld, and doesn't fix the problems with it (though, I will say that those would be welcome additions to the game.)

 

Incentivise engage with the storms? I don't think that would address any of it's problems, though

Edited March 4 by Calmest_of_lakes

[williams_482]

46 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

'because of the lore' is a version of that. If the only or even the first answer one can come up with is instinctively 'because of the lore' then because of that being the most important default answer its likely that it needs to change. Lore is not written by an immutable god and its not a card that one can play thinking its a sacred answer that should never be questioned.

Frankly, as far as the development of this game is concerned, the lore is written by an immutable god. The developers clearly care about their lore, they clearly aren't going to make massive changes to it, and anyone asking them to do that is tilting at windmills. This is ultimately their project and they are only going to continue working on it if they feel free to make the changes they think are correct. 

The title of this thread is bang on. Temporal storms mostly suck to deal with, and the way they suck is especially punishing to new players. I don't think it's a coincidence that the staunchest defenders of this mechanic as currently constructed are also the highest volume posters and likely most experienced players. You guys are easily at the skill level required to make your first storm in a world manageable and even fun, without relying on unpleasant cheese strats like "cocoon yourself in dirt for 10 minutes and go read a book". You know all of the tricks of the game to help you win fights, stay alive, and crucially recover as well as possible from dying. New players largely don't, and are quite vulnerable to learning some extremely un-fun lessons in subjects like "how to get into a death loop and lose all your best stuff". You are well aware that getting one-shotted by a T4 drifter while panning in your home is quite unlikely, context that a newbie who just lost that low percentage die roll does not have and will assume the worst from. Etc, etc. 

That logic could be blindly extrapolated towards suggesting that any difficult mechanic should be dumbed down as to not make new players feel bad. I am emphatically not saying that. Some elements which are highly random (like start locations) could do with some optional cushioning, but that's very much a secondary issue. Temporal storms are on a whole 'nother level. 

There are lots of ways in which this mechanic can improve without detrimentally affecting the lore, many of which have been referenced with explicit approval by emphatically pro-storm LadyWYT in this thread. The reason these conversations keep happening, and feeling so frustratingly circular, is that none of these actions are taken by the development team which has so many things it could be doing and cannot possibly keep everyone happy, so we stay in the same place squabbling over exactly which parts of this badly implemented mechanic are precisely how bad in our very personal opinions. 

It's really quite a bother. 

Edited March 4 by williams_482

[Calmest_of_lakes]

8 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

The reason these conversations keep happening, and feeling so frustratingly circular, is that none of these actions are taken by the development team which has so many things it could be doing and cannot possibly keep everyone happy, so we stay in the same place squabbling over exactly which parts of this badly implemented mechanic are precisely how bad in our very personal opinions. 

And the intent behind the mechanic guarantees that there won't be able to be an easy/simple fix to it. 

[LadyWYT]

33 minutes ago, Stralgaez said:

Oh, I am aware - That is something you get relatively late as you, in the earliest case, be there in Y2 or even 3 before you get enough information.

I'd rather have it pulled from other, easier accessible sources to roughly puzzle it together for yourself at the very start : The Traders and Treasure hunters could spin you a few tales about it, and you then decide to brave those temporal storm affected pockets (which may be generated nearby upon accepting the investigation) for fill in the blanks. And once you got enough information to piece yourself a story together, you could finally get ready to brave Chapter 1.

The main issue here is that the reason certain events of Chapter 2 are so shocking, is that is the first time the player really sees just how bad things can truly get. If the player could experience similar but smaller areas like that earlier in the game, then Chapter 2 becomes much less interesting because, well, the player's seen it before. Even Chapter 1 would be more underwhelming, I think, because the strangeness that happens there pales in comparison to that kind of mess.

As it stands now, the player can uncover enough in the early game via ruins, lore books, and tapestries to figure out that some pretty bad stuff happened, and certain things are definitely wrong with the world now as a result. But the player won't really be able to start understanding just how dire the situation really is until reaching certain points in the main story.

11 minutes ago, Calmest_of_lakes said:

I'm in the camp that likes temporal storms, but I do have to say that the fact that the mechanic is completely divisive says that it has really glaring problems. 

I would go as far as to say that the Temporal Storm mechanic might have some fundamental flaws with it. How would you even be able to make storms simultaneously engaging, balanced, fair, and not be able to be completely ignored? How would you make them constantly present, without them becoming old or annoying? The fact that mods really haven't been able to fix some of the more despised aspects of it doesn't fill me with much hope, ehe.

 

Some changes off the top of my head that they could make:

Have mobs be able to destroy blocks/doors? Then it would become like Rimworld, in that it would become even easier to cheese with killboxes and exploiting the AI, annoying builders who would have to remember to patch broken doors/walls/chiseled blocks, and punishing less well off/less skilled players.

Have a block/item that completely neutralizes it? Then, the resource cost wouldn't matter, as players would just bite the bullet and rush to get it. It would be a waste of a mechanic later on, too.

Replace the "no spawn restrictions" gimmick for enemies with more intense dark areas, as someone earlier suggested? Can be trivally mitigated by making a ton of lighting, and can even be exploited.

 

Add trap blocks/mechanics? Still would end up like Rimworld, and doesn't fix the problems with it (though, I will say that those would be welcome additions to the game.)

 

Incentivise engage with the storms? I don't think that would address any of it's problems, though

I've had similar thoughts running through my mind. It's not really bad to have such a divisive mechanic, but it does make it a hard one to balance in such a fashion that every type of player will enjoy it. The better option overall, I think, is probably just to ensure that temporal mechanics are as mod-friendly as possible, since my understanding currently is that is one area of the game that is incredibly difficult to mod. If modding such things were easier, then players could adjust it however they'd like, and we'd have a wider range of options to play with in addition to the devs' vision.

[CastIronFabric]

22 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Frankly, as far as the development of this game is concerned, the lore is written by an immutable god. .

that logic fallacy because that would mean ALL features in the game are made by an immutable god and there is not point in having a conversation about ANY feature in the game becasue its not up for discussion because its been made by an immutable god.

but no..its ONLY Lore where we use that logic...why is that?

Its interesting how it appears many people think debating over how spears are implemented or cooking or berries or combat and that is all up for debate and palaver but if its connected to 'lore' specifically then its not. same god created all of it.

 

Edited March 4 by CastIronFabric

[williams_482]

13 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

that logic fallacy because that would mean ALL features in the game are made by an immutable god and there is not point in having a conversation about ANY feature in the game becasue its not up for discussion because its been made by an immutable god.

I did not say that, and no that does not automatically follow. 

13 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

but no..its ONLY Lore where we use that logic...why is that?

Because the lore is a story, something the creator surely has a connection with and emotional attachment to? Because they went out of their way to put "Story" right there in the title of the game? Because they've made clear that they care about this?

Game mechanics are a core building block of this (and any) game. Important, but unlikely to evoke deep personal feelings in the creator, and much more likely to be temporary, tweaked and replaced as circumstances dictate.

The story is the game's soul. There's no getting around that. 

Edited March 4 by williams_482

[Calmest_of_lakes]

25 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The better option overall, I think, is probably just to ensure that temporal mechanics are as mod-friendly as possible, since my understanding currently is that is one area of the game that is incredibly difficult to mod.

One problem with that, as I mentioned, is that because of how it works and the intent behind it to begin with, I don't know how it could be improved to begin with

[LadyWYT]

22 minutes ago, Calmest_of_lakes said:

One problem with that, as I mentioned, is that because of how it works and the intent behind it to begin with, I don't know how it could be improved to begin with

Right, but my reasoning was basically just...make sure temporal storms and related mechanics are very easy to mod.  Then players can balance those things however they'd like. I'm not entirely sure why those areas are hard to mod. It seems like it's a portion of code that's not easy to access or something? I'm not really sure how accurate that impression is either, but it's the impression I've got and it seems a reasonable explanation as to why there aren't many mods that really alter temporal storms, despite there being plenty of suggestions on how storms could be altered.

 

27 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Because the lore is a story, something the creator surely has a connection with and emotional attachment to? Because they went out of their way to put "Story" right there in the title of the game? Because they've made clear that they care about this?

Game mechanics are a core building block of this (and any) game. Important, but unlikely to evoke deep personal feelings in the creator, and much more likely to be temporary, tweaked and replaced as circumstances dictate.

The story is the game's soul. There's no getting around that. 

Pretty much. Lore is important because those are the established rules that stories and settings must follow. Changes can be made, but must be done with care, or else the story loses integrity because it doesn't follow its own rules. And a story that doesn't follow its own rules isn't worth investing in, because what's interesting one moment might not present at all the next, and major plot points like hero/villain deaths don't really mean anything if the same character is just going to turn up again later for arbitrary reasons.

It's no different for videogames, movies, or other media. One reason the Hobbit movies didn't do so well is they weren't very faithful to the books, whereas the LotR movies remain popular because they did their best to remain faithful to the source material.

Edit: It's also why studios have, or at least used to have, "lore bibles" for their various franchises. Keeping lore organized and consistent across multiple forms of media, products, and teams of people can be difficult, so it's a good idea to have some sort of in-house encyclopedia to keep everything in order. From a fandom standpoint, it's why wikis for things exist--it helps the fans keep a record of what's known about the setting and related characters, so they know who did what where, and when, and why it's important.

Edited March 4 by LadyWYT

[CastIronFabric]

42 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

I did not say that, and no that does not automatically follow. 

Because the lore is a story, something the creator surely has a connection with and emotional attachment to? Because they went out of their way to put "Story" right there in the title of the game? Because they've made clear that they care about this?

Game mechanics are a core building block of this (and any) game. Important, but unlikely to evoke deep personal feelings in the creator, and much more likely to be temporary, tweaked and replaced as circumstances dictate.

The story is the game's soul. There's no getting around that. 

story is not the soul for a game and I would challenge you to provide evidence that it is, I do not agree with that at all whatsoever. That is a belief, not a fact.

Also, I do not see any evidence that a developer has a stronger emotional connection to a story in a video game that it does its mechanics. How do we know for sure they are not just as committed or more to a representation of realism in mechanics? we dont and speaking for myself if I was creating a game I would absolutely be more emotionally attached to mechanics of realism then I would a story. Just because the story is the most important aspect to YOU does not mean its also the most important aspect for the developer. I also would challenge you to sit and actually think the following 'do YOU really play the game mostly for the story? is the story itself the most compelling part of the game for you?' or do you just say that to yourself because you think you are supposed to? because if your answer is even 'well maybe not exactly' then how can you be sure it is for the dev?

 

 

Edited March 4 by CastIronFabric

[Zane Mordien]

5 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The problem with this solution is that it locks players who chose to turn the storms off out of an entire branch of the gameplay. While I do think the story is better with storms enabled, I also don't think it's bad if players turn off the mechanic. Players who do so shouldn't, however, be missing out on story-related goodies if they do so.

If the "special crafting" only yields stuff that can be easily obtained by other means though, I'm not really sure it's solved anything aside from upset the players who want to do the crafting but don't like the process it involves.

There can always be an alternative. Just like almost everyone gets tin bronze and never look at the other types of bronze, but sometimes Bismuth bronze is the way to go because you have zinc and bismuth readily available right next to your base and no tin. Then there was that one playthrough where I ended up with a black bronze anvil by some freak of RNG. Similiarly, there could be a main path of using the storms to progress some mission for the lore or alternatively Tobias can give you a fetch quest to a bunch of locations where you are able to get the same result and both would advance the story and mesh in with the lore.

 

2 hours ago, Blaiyze said:

It isn't about creating a mechanic that ends up being a benevolent gift to the player, it just creates a REASON beyond "LORRRRRRRE" to have the mechanic in the game in the first place. 

I agree with you and one thing we need to remember is the lore doens't even define them. It just says they exist and they used to be worse in the past. People on the forums attribute all kinds of things to the LORRRRRE that aren't written in the lore. If berry bushes and forging can change then so can the sacred Temporal storms IMO. 

[CastIronFabric]

20 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

 

 

Pretty much. Lore is important because those are the established rules that stories and settings must follow.

complete disagree.

D&D is a good example, that ruleset came from table top war gaming and all the details of the rule set was set out long before they ever introduced story telling to it. The foundation of a game is not the story, its the rule set (and the ruleset is NOT the story).

 

[CastIronFabric]

7 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

There can always be an alternative. Just like almost everyone gets tin bronze and never look at the other types of bronze, but sometimes Bismuth bronze is the way to go because you have zinc and bismuth readily available right next to your base and no tin. Then there was that one playthrough where I ended up with a black bronze anvil by some freak of RNG. Similiarly, there could be a main path of using the storms to progress some mission for the lore or alternatively Tobias can give you a fetch quest to a bunch of locations where you are able to get the same result and both would advance the story and mesh in with the lore.

 

I agree with you and one thing we need to remember is the lore doens't even define them. It just says they exist and they used to be worse in the past. People on the forums attribute all kinds of things to the LORRRRRE that aren't written in the lore. If berry bushes and forging can change then so can the sacred Temporal storms IMO. 

The thing is, at some point in the late 90s the video game industry started marking video games as story telling mechanisms and they sold that theology HARD. I mean super hard, they convinced an entire generation that the heart of a video game is the story. Execpt that is not true.

The heart of a video game has much more to do with cadence of a feedback loop and a player being able to test their skills (either twitch or intellectual or both). This has been true about games for thousands of years. Story in games have really only existed for 60 years despite the fact that its been possible for thousands of years. In fact, D&D itself was a ruleset FIRST, story telling device AFTER the Chainmail ruleset was already being played by many people. If story telling was the foundation of gaming that history would have been story first, ruleset second but that is not how it worked out. Not to menition the implied idea that most people play Vintage Story or Call of Duty or Minecraft or even Skyrim because of the story is just flat out absurd. I perfer to not be hyperbolic but good god people

Edited March 4 by CastIronFabric

[Zane Mordien]

3 hours ago, PineReseen said:

A more out there idea would be to make no place truly safe, so the player has to fight for their life instead of hiding in a corner, but I'm not sure how to execute this effectively.

There is not supposed to be a safe place. Anything you do to block the spawn of the drifter is basically an exploit. They have slowly patched them out and as far as I know a drifter can spawn directly on top of you in a hidey hole, it is just extremely rare. 

[Zane Mordien]

7 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

The thing is, at some point in the late 90s the video game industry started marking video games as story telling mechanisms and they sold that theology HARD. I mean super hard, they convinced an entire generation that the heart of a video game is the story. Execpt that is not true.

The heart of a video game has much more to do with cadence of a feedback loop and a player being able to test their skills (either twitch or intellectual or both). This has been true about games for thousands of years. Story in games have really only existed for 60 years despite the fact that its been possible for thousands of years. In fact, D&D itself was a ruleset FIRST, story telling device AFTER the Chainmail ruleset was already being played by many people. If story telling was the foundation of gaming that history would have been story first, ruleset second but that is not how it worked out. Not to menition the implied idea that most people play Vintage Story or Call of Duty or Minecraft or even Skyrim because of the story is just flat out absurd. I perfer to not be hyperbolic but good god people

True, but you have to accept that the creators of the game want there to be Lore. Tyron and his wife have made that decision so when suggesting ideas it is better to suggest something that fall in line with their vision of the game.

[CastIronFabric]

19 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

What loot is that? Pointless Jonas parts?

 

I'm a broken record, the storms are just boring time outs until you build a cheese base and then you cheese them. They are sort of fun at first but after a few storm time outs it's boring.

Here is what I think is the core 'block' for many. The special effects of the storm itself is very unique and well done and frankly awesome. 

However, I think people are confusing that experience with the 'concept of storms' as they put it. When something is visceral like the special effects of storms it can be hard to separate the emotional response to that specific experience to that of the point of having it at all. Mechanisms of the storms themselves, if that makes sense. I might be digging myself a deep hole I will regret but never the less there it is.

 

Edited March 5 by CastIronFabric

[CastIronFabric]

5 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

True, but you have to accept that the creators of the game want there to be Lore. Tyron and his wife have made that decision so when suggesting ideas it is better to suggest something that fall in line with their vision of the game.

but again..that is true for how fishing works, how berries work, how everything works.

so many are just defaulting to 'they want the story this way so that is how it should be' but they do not use the exact same logic to any other aspect of the game OTHER than the story even though the reasons for not questioning the story would logically be EXACTLY word for word the same for farming mechanics.

Edited March 5 by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

complete disagree.

D&D is a good example, that ruleset came from table top war gaming and all the details of the rule set was set out long before they ever introduced story telling to it. The foundation of a game is not the story, its the rule set (and the ruleset is NOT the story).

 

Which is fine. Though I would argue that D&D is also a good example of why it's a bad idea to go messing too much with established lore and mechanics. As I understand it, modern editions of the game aren't doing as well as older editions due to changes that WotC made to both mechanics and established lore and settings. D&D and other tabletop games are also a bit of a special case given that the entire idea behind them is for the players to use the rulebooks and lorebooks as guides and tailor the actual game to their own tastes. It's a little harder to do that when it comes to books, videogames, TV, and movies. For videogames in particular, the closest it comes is whatever settings the developer decides to include, as well as mods, if mods are available for the game in question.

I would say the original Transformers cartoon is also a pretty good example of why it's not a good idea to go making drastic changes to a story for reasons outside the story. As I understand it, the older toys weren't selling as well, so Hasbro opted to kill most of the main characters in the movie, or otherwise turn them into completely new characters. That's not to say that the movie was bad, or that the show that came after the movie was bad either. But a lot of people were very upset about beloved characters getting killed off, and lost interest in the show because they weren't interested in the new characters. The show also changed focus from robots fighting on Earth to adventures with robots in space and galactic diplomacy, which wasn't bad but it was a pretty drastic tone shift. Viewers who preferred more grounded(relatively) adventures on Earth rather than a space opera also lost interest, since the show content was no longer something they enjoyed. To my knowledge the most popular episodes of that show are the couple of episodes that feature Starscream(as ghost...which is never really explained), and Optimus Prime's return.

Just now, Zane Mordien said:

True, but you have to accept that the creators of the game want there to be Lore. Tyron and his wife have made that decision so when suggesting ideas it is better to suggest something that fall in line with their vision of the game.

Pretty much. I swear I saw a bit somewhere that described Tyron pitching the initial story idea to the lead writer, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. That being said, if the story and lore weren't important, I'd think they wouldn't be advertising the story as a prominent feature on the homepage, or putting so much effort into building cool locations, cool lorebooks and tapestries, and interesting characters to meet.

[CastIronFabric]

7 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Which is fine. Though I would argue that D&D is also a good example of why it's a bad idea to go messing too much with established lore and mechanics.

I do not think you understand what I said.

1. The CORE..the HEART of D&D is the ruleset NOT the stories, NOT the lore. That is evidence by the history of its creation 

2. we still remain the problem that everyone is fine with talking about how to change/improve storms except that they are not because storms are related to lore. (perfectly circular logic)

3. everyone is without dispute ok talking about perhaps changing game mechanics not tied to lore, like lets say berries or spears or armour etc. But for some random reason lore and specifically only lore is immutable because 'its what the developers want'? why? again, circular logic 'they want it this way becasue it is this way'. ok..does that logic not apply to farming as well? 

 

 

Edited March 5 by CastIronFabric

[Zane Mordien]

 

2 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

2. we remain the problem that everyone is fine with talking about how to change/improve storms except that they are not because storms are related to lore. (perfectly circular logic)

Actually, I would say most people in this thread, even @LadyWYT, is okay with changes as long as they mesh with the story. 

[CastIronFabric]

1 minute ago, Zane Mordien said:

 

Actually, I would say most people in this thread, even @LadyWYT, is okay with changes as long as they mesh with the story. 

however that is also not true.

I made the suggestion that storms be a place you go to rather than something that happens globally. That does not conflict with lore but I was told that such a change is not acceptable because it would conflict with the lore even though it does not. So which changes specifically is acceptable I ask?

Now, to be clear, I reject the core principle of the argument that lore is immutable or that its the core of a game but even if I was to not reject it, my example above is in accordance with number 2 on my list.

 

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, CastIronFabric said:

2. we remain the problem that everyone is fine with talking about how to change/improve storms except that they are not because storms are related to lore. (perfectly circular logic)

I don't think anyone's exactly opposed to discussing changes for the storms. The main problem, I think, is that the storms are a very divisive feature, and what would be a good change for one type of player would be a very bad change for another type of player. @Calmest_of_lakes did a pretty good outline of various commonly suggested changes, and what problems those changes can introduce. I'll also note that, while players might be open to discussing changes, this particular topic is one that no one really likes to discuss that much anymore, because the suggestions are often the same and player opinions are often quite polarized on what they would/wouldn't like to see change.

Or to put it another way, whatever change happens to temporal storms is almost guaranteed to upset a decent portion of players. The only thing that really changes, I think, is which players love it versus which hate it. 

3 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

 

Actually, I would say most people in this thread, even @LadyWYT, is okay with changes as long as they mesh with the story. 

Precisely. I don't mind change that much, but change that clashes with the established setting and lore I decidedly do not like, because then the story feels unimmersive. That doesn't mean that every single game mechanic needs to track 100% with how things would realistically be in that setting(for example, I appreciate being able to kill large metal monsters with a sword, despite the fact that doing so is wildly unrealistic), but it does mean that the game ought to be taking its own setting seriously. To paraphrase what someone else said about realism in a different thread: gameplay needs to be realistic enough to be believable, but not so realistic that it's an exact copy of real life.

Also you brought up a great point about there being some inconsistency in the lore regarding temporal storms strength, or at least I think you were the one that mentioned it earlier. In the lore, storms are stated to have been at their worst post-calamity, diminishing in strength as time goes on. In actual practice, however, the storms start as weaker and become stronger as the game progresses. To be fair, there could be a lore reason for this that has yet to be discovered in a later story chapter, but as it is currently, I think it's a decent example of making a needed exception for the sake of the player's enjoyment. Players aren't equipped to handle strong storms when they first start the game; likewise, the player would probably be disappointed to work their way up to steel equipment and then find out that now the storms are very weak, making their accomplishment feel less satisfying. It's an exception that works in this specific case, but doesn't necessarily hold true for every suggested temporal storm change.

[CastIronFabric]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't think anyone's exactly opposed to discussing changes for the storms. The main problem, I think, is that the storms are a very divisive feature, and what would be a good change for one type of player would be a very bad change for another type of player. @Calmest_of_lakes did a pretty good outline of various commonly suggested changes, and what problems those changes can introduce. I'll also note that, while players might be open to discussing changes, this particular topic is one that no one really likes to discuss that much anymore, because the suggestions are often the same and player opinions are often quite polarized on what they would/wouldn't like to see change.

Or to put it another way, whatever change happens to temporal storms is almost guaranteed to upset a decent portion of players. The only thing that really changes, I think, is which players love it versus which hate it. 

Precisely. I don't mind change that much, but change that clashes with the established setting and lore I decidedly do not like, because then the story feels unimmersive. That doesn't mean that every single game mechanic needs to track 100% with how things would realistically be in that setting(for example, I appreciate being able to kill large metal monsters with a sword, despite the fact that doing so is wildly unrealistic), but it does mean that the game ought to be taking its own setting seriously. To paraphrase what someone else said about realism in a different thread: gameplay needs to be realistic enough to be believable, but not so realistic that it's an exact copy of real life.

Also you brought up a great point about there being some inconsistency in the lore regarding temporal storms strength, or at least I think you were the one that mentioned it earlier. In the lore, storms are stated to have been at their worst post-calamity, diminishing in strength as time goes on. In actual practice, however, the storms start as weaker and become stronger as the game progresses. To be fair, there could be a lore reason for this that has yet to be discovered in a later story chapter, but as it is currently, I think it's a decent example of making a needed exception for the sake of the player's enjoyment. Players aren't equipped to handle strong storms when they first start the game; likewise, the player would probably be disappointed to work their way up to steel equipment and then find out that now the storms are very weak, making their accomplishment feel less satisfying. It's an exception that works in this specific case, but doesn't necessarily hold true for every suggested temporal storm change.

you claimed that my suggestion to make storms a place you go to instead of global breaks lore.

1. It does not

2. cite me an example of a change that has been suggested that you think does not affect lore and as such is ok to discuss

 

[williams_482]

Obviously the story is not the "soul" of any given game. Clearly the developers care deeply about it in this game. You don't, that's fine, but trying to fight for something that clearly will not happen (changing the lore) instead of things that probably will (changing the mechanics of exactly how temporal storms function) is doing you no favors. 

5 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

however that is also not true.

I made the suggestion that storms be a place you go to rather than something that happens globally. That does not conflict with lore but I was told that such a change is not acceptable because it would conflict with the lore even though it does not. So which changes specifically is acceptable I ask?

Now, to be clear, I reject the core principle of the argument that lore is immutable or that its the core of a game but even if I was to not reject it, my example above is in accordance with number 2 on my list.

 

The storms don't have to happen globally all at once, but they do have to happen unavoidably in any given place. There is a location where NPCs tell us they have to defend themselves from storms, and if storms could be avoided by living somewhere else, they obviously wouldn't have chosen a storm zone to settle in. 

I actually like the idea of storms as a local phenomena, leaving "run away" as an plausible option, and creating the possibility of running into a storm by accident while traveling. There's nothing in the lore which would rule that out. 

[Tabulius]

I still haven't seen anyone provide a reason as to how simply reverting the storms back to pre-1.21 where enemies wouldn't spawn in your house is bad or has any downsides. I still think it's not where storms should ultimately go because regardless I find storms to be pretty boring and a barebones implementation of a cool idea. But at least as a placeholder I can't see how anyone would be more upset with this then the current state of things.