Dilapidation as a Difficulty Option.

[That1GameGuy]

I think it would be interesting to not only build up your little homestead, but also having to maintain it as well. As an optional difficulty setting (like soil instability and cave-ins) player made structures will slowly take damage and crumble or collapse. Most blocks will have a damaged state, which, if left alone, will accelerate the decay of nearby blocks. Things like roof and wall collapses will occur if too much damage isn't repaired in time, potentially leaving behind rubble usually only seen in ruins. Storage containers are also vulnerable, turning into their damaged variants if left out in the elements. Blocks and items stored in rooms have a much lower rate of decay. (At least until the room collapses!) Ideally, if given enough time, all player created structures would disappear completely.

Some other things that would go along with this system:

Block overlays like moss slowly accumulate on buildings.

Farmland turning back into soil.

Forests growing back.

 

A major hangup here would be chiseled blocks. I'd want them to decay too, but there should be easy methods of restoring them without having to re-chisel.

[jerjerje]

As an optional difficulty option, this seems like a very cool idea. But, I do see two main problems with this system.

1. Performance: A system like this would likely be quite performance intensive (particularly on servers). It might be possible to implement it with acceptable performance, but it would take a lot of development time to optimize this.

2. Development time: This system would have to be very complex to functions as you described. Implementing something like this would take a lot of development time. Just the new assets that would be needed are immense (The player would need to see that blocks need repairs, so pretty much every player build block would need to have broken states (preferably multiple broken states to show how broken it is).) And that's not to mention the time it would take to implement this system in code! The implementation, too, would be very time intensive.

The needed development time is my main reason why I don't think the devs should implement this right now. I would prefer the devs deal focus on other things first, instead of spending this much time on an optional setting.

With that said, though, I could see the devs implementing more optional challenges like this when the game is more finished (or maybe even after the game has left early access).

[Broccoli Clock]

I love the idea that over time your structure decays, if it could be put into place while still working at the granular level (ie: it degrades your chisel work, not just replacing whole blocks) and that it happened organically then that would be amazing, add in foliage taking it over for the last steps would be.. * chef's kiss * ..but as a dev that sort of idea fills me with dread. There's just too much work (and testing) to get it to be "perfect".

The idea of wandering through a wood, say an ingame year into your playthrough, and you come across your initial spawn shack and it's all dilapidated? ..  

 

[That1GameGuy]

3 hours ago, jerjerje said:

 A system like this would likely be quite performance intensive (particularly on servers). It might be possible to implement it with acceptable performance, but it would take a lot of development time to optimize this.

This system would have to be very complex to functions as you described. Implementing something like this would take a lot of development time. Just the new assets that would be needed are immense (The player would need to see that blocks need repairs, so pretty much every player build block would need to have broken states (preferably multiple broken states to show how broken it is).) And that's not to mention the time it would take to implement this system in code! The implementation, too, would be very time intensive.

When it comes to performance, at least what I imagined was that the game would do a once over on player builds on a configurable time frame (daily, monthly, yearly). Then again that might only relegate lag to big spikes during those times. I'll admit I completely forgot about servers. 

I don't know exactly how VS's code works, but maybe instead of new blocks, damage could be represented using the block overlays?

I understand it could take a boatload of dev time. I just thought it'd be a fun idea to try to plant in the dev's heads. Maybe it could be considered if/when the team implements the Rot.