Zane Mordien Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 (edited) I just wanted to see other people's thoughts. Berry Bushes: As long as they don't take away the ability to eat berries for new players in when they first start playing, I think it is a cool change. I thought it was sort of stupid before that you could just break the plant and move it. I'm not a big berry bush farmer so my opinion may be biased. I do hope they can finally make fruit trees bloom in the first year though. I rarely play more than 1 year in a playthrough so I miss out on fruit trees. Smithing: I went in thinking it was cool idea, but I was sure I was going to find it too tedious with the extra pumping of the bellows. At first it was a little annoying, but then I got into a rythm and I can't say I notice much of a difference. I just made my first chainmail piece of armor and it wasn't bad. I feel like the changes to how fast metal heats up and cools down sort of makes up for it. Fishing: umm well I never fish in any game I play. I did make a rod and get worm and tried it for .1 seconds and gave up. Has anyone really tested this out? How well does it work? Spears: I don't love it but I'm not ready to get my pitchfork and torch out. Someone said the Devs commented that it was overdone so I hope they back off the nerf a little bit. Windmills: I haven't built mine yet, but I'm glad they added a new windmill since they nerfed the old one. Are you even building a old style windmill? I am skipping right to the new one in my playthrough. Waterwheel: I haven't built one and I guess I'm not going too until there are rivers. I don't really like having to build my base near a random water spawn near a mountain. It's a cool add though. I'll probably use it if I end up with a world that it makes sense to me. Quenching, Tempering and Grinding wheel: I like the concept. I think it will get nerfed some because the damage is probably more than they will want to add, but overall a good add. New Trader Posts: I give it an A. The new designs are awesome. It's a nitpick, but I would have rather seen trader settlements with 2-3 traders together instead of single traders. I want traders to be easier to find as well, becuase well they are supose to be traders and not hidden. I think the game should generate path blocks that lead to them about 50 blocks out or so that highlight them. Traders could be more rare if they were easier to find even. The treasure hunter trader could be a lone guy because he is an odd duck. Glacier Ice: I'm 100% behind this change if they also made it so lake ice melts in the middle of summer. I haven't gotten that far yet. Firepit heat changes: I like this change. I was trying to cook some flint and it was driving me crazy at first but then I realized now you can use peat or wood to heat the entire stack up to 900C before you use coal or charcoal. Nibblers: I thought the change to animals not eating crops was to nerf people who created rabbit traps. I had no idea it was not intentional, because I say a lot of content creators that were exploiting rabbits trying to get crops to farm red meat. Cabinets and storage: I haven't done anything with this yet and I probably won't. It's cool but I'm not into pretty designs of my own. I do love other's peoples designs they post so I'm excited to see them. Fat rework: I'm not sure why, but okay why not. It is a little more work now to render the fat, but overall it's not a big deal. Fennel and licorice: Fennel takes to long to grow for only 50 sat. It's not worth growing unless they change it. Mushrooms: trippy man Lamps: cool I like that it just isn't a bowl now Ladders: I'm not a fan. I just want generic ladders that mix together, but I can see how people would want cool specific ladders. If there is a mod that changes all ladders that are player built back to generic I will download it. Ceramic: I don't care, but why is it every release they make the default ceramic uglier? Tongs: I kind of like that tongs down wear out. It's not a major issue to get new tongs. BEARS!: What is up with the bear spawns? I hope this is not intentional because so far in 1.22 all bears come at a minimum of 2 and up to 5 at a time in one location. That is way way way to many. Edited March 7 by Zane Mordien 3
LadyWYT Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 6 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Berry Bushes: As long as they don't take away the ability to eat berries for new players in when they first start playing, I think it is a cool change. I thought it was sort of stupid before that you could just break the plant and move it. I'm not a big berry bush farmer so my opinion may be biased. I do hope they can finally make fruit trees bloom in the first year though. I rarely play more than 1 year in a playthrough so I miss out on fruit trees. Pretty much my same thoughts as well. I'm really looking forward to playing around with the bush traits and cultivation, as well as just excited about having some new berry options in general. I wouldn't say variety is a priority, but it is appreciated. 8 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Smithing: I went in thinking it was cool idea, but I was sure I was going to find it too tedious with the extra pumping of the bellows. At first it was a little annoying, but then I got into a rythm and I can't say I notice much of a difference. I just made my first chainmail piece of armor and it wasn't bad. I feel like the changes to how fast metal heats up and cools down sort of makes up for it. I find the new smithing a lot more fun. It was okay before, but honestly...it got really tedious hammering out everything, even with a helve hammer. The new smithing can still be a bit tedious to me as well, but working the bellows and getting things just right for quenching/tempering breaks it up enough to help keep me focused longer. 11 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Fishing: umm well I never fish in any game I play. I did make a rod and get worm and tried it for .1 seconds and gave up. Has anyone really tested this out? How well does it work? I keep forgetting the worms exist. I've been using bushmeat stinkbait myself. So far the fishing seems to work rather well, and the fish actually feel pretty rewarding to catch since they bite baited hooks rather quickly and yield quite a bit of meat. I also really like that there are special trophy catches, and that fish in general can soaked in borax and hung on the wall. 13 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Spears: I don't love it but I'm not ready to get my pitchfork and torch out. Someone said the Devs commented that it was overdone so I hope they back off the nerf a little bit. The dev comment in question: 14 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Windmills: I haven't built mine yet, but I'm glad they added a new windmill since they nerfed the old one. Are you even building a old style windmill? I am skipping right to the new one in my playthrough. Depends on what you mean by "old style", but I do intend to be using the basic small windmill as temporary starter power, or devoted power for things like querns/pulverizers. 15 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Waterwheel: I haven't built one and I guess I'm not going too until there are rivers. I don't really like having to build my base near a random water spawn near a mountain. It's a cool add though. I'll probably use it if I end up with a world that it makes sense to me. They're expensive, but useful for running a helve hammer 24/7 if you happen to have access to rapids. 16 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Quenching, Tempering and Grinding wheel: I like the concept. I think it will get nerfed some because the damage is probably more than they will want to add, but overall a good add. It's one of my favorite changes. The balance also feels pretty solid to me at the moment, but I won't really be shocked either if it gets some adjustments before stable. 18 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: New Trader Posts: I give it an A. The new designs are awesome. It's a nitpick, but I would have rather seen trader settlements with 2-3 traders together instead of single traders. There are proper trader settlements--I've seen one. They are on the rare side though. 20 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Firepit heat changes: I like this change. I was trying to cook some flint and it was driving me crazy at first but then I realized now you can use peat or wood to heat the entire stack up to 900C before you use coal or charcoal. I like the change too, but it feels like it might need some adjusting when it comes to cookpots. Cookpots that have several servings seem to take a bit more fuel now than they did before. It's not bad though, but it could be tweaked a bit. 23 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Cabinets and storage: I haven't done anything with this yet and I probably won't. It's cool but I'm not into pretty designs of my own. I do love other's peoples designs they post so I'm excited to see them. It's something I look forward to playing around with, but keep forgetting is now an option in the game. 24 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Fat rework: I'm not sure why, but okay why not. It is a little more work now to render the fat, but overall it's not a big deal. Pretty much. I had kind of wondered before why the fat wasn't prone to rotting like everything else, despite not being processed. 25 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Fennel and licorice: Fennel takes to long to grow for only 50 sat. It's not worth growing unless they change it. I think fennel and licorice are meant to be more for stinkbait and less for meals. They can still be cooked into meals like other vegetables, they just aren't as filling. 26 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said: Ceramic: I don't care, but why is it every release they make the default ceramic uglier? I think it depends on what color of clay you use. Red clay fires into the earthy orange color. Blue clay will fire into the original dark brown. Fire clay...I'm not sure, but if a player has access to fireclay they probably aren't using it for basic pottery. 2
kal_culated Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 (edited) Bellows are... something. I'm very confused how they work? I've been messing with them since day 1, at this moment I'm recording timings and reading the survival repo's generic bellow code, and I'm just... Very confused. I got on the forums to start a write up on them, actually. Smithing is one of my favorite hobbies in Vintage Story, and bellow seemed like an awesome addition. A way to manage fuel, of speeding up heating vs shorter fuel time, or accepting lower max heats for better fuel. But current implementation feels half-finished and confusing. Like. The first time you bellow, it lasts 5s and heats up the piece 50c. Regardless of bellow type, fuel, ect. But subsequent bellows add less heat, over less time, until eventually you're bellowing repeatedly to get it to go up at all. And the forge itself sort of has a built in heat, like if you swap out the heated piece for another piece already at 700-750c, it'll start heating up pass the resting temperature for a few seconds - then stop. Like, the forge already lost all its 'bellowed heat' after a few seconds, even if you just pushed a piece up to 1250~. So you always have to re-bellow a piece up. And then sometimes the fuel time ends up being longer than the 'regular' fuel time after you bellowed. Ex, charcoal lasts for 10 hours at full capacity in a lit forge. Then after bellowing an item up, it'll drop down to 6.4~ hours, rapidly climb up to about 8~ hours, then gradually go back up to... 10.4 hours. Its so....... confusing? But regardless of how it works, it's asboslutely just reptitive right now. I don't think its current iteration does anything for smithing except making it more tedious, and as @LadyWYT mentioned exemplify, some folks already don't like smithing, so tacking on a new piece of tedium to it isn't going to help imo. I don't know. I keep making clips and writing down timings/temperatures and reading the code and chewing on it, and I just can't wrap my head around bellows at the moment. Especially since all 3 of them seem to be identical. Beside crude bellow's durability. And large bellows visually takes up 2 squares, but only has a slab's collision for one square. Edited March 7 by kal_culated 4
ifoz Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 1 hour ago, Zane Mordien said: New Trader Posts: I give it an A. The new designs are awesome. It's a nitpick, but I would have rather seen trader settlements with 2-3 traders together instead of single traders. I want traders to be easier to find as well, becuase well they are supose to be traders and not hidden. I think the game should generate path blocks that lead to them about 50 blocks out or so that highlight them. Traders could be more rare if they were easier to find even. The treasure hunter trader could be a lone guy because he is an odd duck. As LadyWYT has already said, there are rare multi-trader outposts, which are really cool. I like the new dwellings a lot, as well as the remodelled traders. Their scrappier post-apocalyptic look fits the vibes of the ramshackle houses a lot more than the old trader models did, since they looked like they were doing decently well for themselves. I hope their outfits become obtainable by stable release, since internally they are all Seraph-sized and then cropped a little to fit on the traders. I asked Saraty, and she said she hoped they'd have time to implement that, though couldn't confirm it since it would be a last-minute addition. Still, with any hope, they might add the trader clothes to the stocklists while they're adding the other new clothes to the stocklists. 1 hour ago, Zane Mordien said: Ladders: I'm not a fan. I just want generic ladders that mix together, but I can see how people would want cool specific ladders. If there is a mod that changes all ladders that are player built back to generic I will download it. You can make crude ladders out of sticks, which aren't woodtyped and will all stack together, but yeah I can get that it might be a little annoying for certain players to have the board ladders of different woodtypes not stack. Personally I like the woodtyped ladders quite a lot though, since now ladders finally match with the woodtyped trapdoors. 1
kal_culated Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 38 minutes ago, ifoz said: You can make crude ladders out of sticks, which aren't woodtyped and will all stack together, but yeah I can get that it might be a little annoying for certain players to have the board ladders of different woodtypes not stack. Personally I like the woodtyped ladders quite a lot though, since now ladders finally match with the woodtyped trapdoors. I'd like it if one day we got a painting tool to change wood types, rather than having a bunch of types for a bunch of items. Easier stacking. 1
Cleitus Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 First time on the forums in a while, and this is also my first time looking at the upcoming changes, so here is my initial reaction. A lot of this seems likely to just make the game more tedious and complicated. Berry bushes, fat, ladders, and some of the smithing sounds pretty rough. I'm looking forward to rivers and waterwheels, though. Also, is item bloat of any concern? Doesn't it make searching for anything harder? 2
MKMoose Posted March 7 Report Posted March 7 (edited) My overall impression is that it's a very good update soured by two extremely poorly thought-out features - heat treatment and certain parts of the berry bush rework. 16 hours ago, Zane Mordien said: Quenching, Tempering and Grinding wheel: I like the concept. I think it will get nerfed some because the damage is probably more than they will want to add, but overall a good add. Arguably the root problem here is that realistically, quenching should never be done more than once, except as a way of retrying after a failed or unsatisfactory attempt (at least in the context of a regular forge, not precisely-controlled industrial or laboratory contexts). And that's only the first issue. Made a whole detailed post on it, so I'm not gonna repeat myself too much here. 16 hours ago, Zane Mordien said: Berry Bushes: As long as they don't take away the ability to eat berries for new players in when they first start playing, I think it is a cool change. I thought it was sort of stupid before that you could just break the plant and move it. I'm not a big berry bush farmer so my opinion may be biased. The dominant community sentiment as far as I can find is that several changes were perfectly justified and are welcome, but other changes take it too far. It's also a bit of a communication disaster in regards to the fertilizer requirement (also preventable with more intentional design), because people are freaked out about excessive maintenance, yet if you actually look at the nutrient consumption then you might notice that most people literally won't need to fertilize at all after the initial cost of ~2-4 bone meal. You, for example, if you rarely play more than one year, will be largely unaffected by it, because a bush planted on medium fertility soil and fertilized with two portions of bone meal will be able to bear fruit three times at full yield in the current balance. The trait system is detrimental to the game in my eyes, if only because cuttings with different traits don't stack. At the same time, the traits aren't even good, and pretty much none of them really make a meaningful difference. That said, to some extent it also renders the fertilizer requirement even more irrelevant than it already is, by incentivizing to propagate new bushes with good traits instead of maintaining older ones. My personal thought is that berries should spawn in massive patches (almost like grass or shrubs), and be seasonally bountiful, but limited by a relatively short availability window. Incentivizing food preservation and variety. Promoting a gathering gameplay style and making berries into a plentiful but inefficient food source, perfect for the early game. Planting a garden at home should still be viable at some upfront cost, but no arbitrary and unrealistic maintenance - if anything, it should be possible to prune and fertilize the bushes as an optional boost to yields. 16 hours ago, Zane Mordien said: I do hope they can finally make fruit trees bloom in the first year though. I rarely play more than 1 year in a playthrough so I miss out on fruit trees. Pizza has said in the Discord recently that she doesn't know why fruit trees are unavailable in the first year, and she agreed that they should be changed. Edited Saturday at 06:39 PM by MKMoose Correction due to soil degradation. Clarify fertilizer requirement and a couple other things. 3
Hafthohlladung Posted Saturday at 03:04 PM Report Posted Saturday at 03:04 PM 12 hours ago, Zane Mordien said: I do hope they can finally make fruit trees bloom in the first year though. I rarely play more than 1 year in a playthrough so I miss out on fruit trees. Fruit Tree's are an anti speed-running mechanic. 6 hours ago, MKMoose said: Pizza has said in the Discord recently that she doesn't know why fruit trees are unavailable in the first year, and she agreed that they should be changed. Yes let's just throw the attempt to simulate Vernalization straight out the window. 1 1
LadyWYT Posted Saturday at 03:56 PM Report Posted Saturday at 03:56 PM 10 hours ago, Cleitus said: Also, is item bloat of any concern? Doesn't it make searching for anything harder? I wouldn't say that item bloat is never a concern, but the devs do a pretty good job of optimizing the game so it's not something that I'm particularly worried about when they choose to add more options. As for searching things in the handbook, as far as I can tell the handbook is getting some more polish so that things should be easier to search for. How easy that is in actual practice I'm not entirely sure, but I've not had any issues aside from the standard bugs that come with unstable releases.
LadyWYT Posted Saturday at 04:10 PM Report Posted Saturday at 04:10 PM @Zane Mordien@MKMoose It looks like wild fruit trees might be able to fruit in the first year now, judging by the recent patch notes. Quote Fixed: Wild fruit trees not fruiting in the first year 2
Blaiyze Posted Saturday at 04:35 PM Report Posted Saturday at 04:35 PM I haven't yet loaded or played the latest update yet - I always wait for the first stable build (and for my fav must have mods to update) before I truly give it a test run, but I definitely was a biiiit concerned with some of the things. Mostly, I like the looks of the update and understand that there's going to be balancing to come. So, definitely eyeballing people's feedback here. 8 hours ago, MKMoose said: The dominant community sentiment as far as I can find is that several changes were perfectly justified and are welcome, but other changes take it too far. It's also a bit of a communication disaster in regards to the fertilizer requirement (also preventable with more intentional design), because people are freaked out about excessive maintenance, yet if you actually look at the nutrient consumption then you might notice that most people literally won't need to fertilize at all (or maybe just one piece of compost or something). You, for example, if you rarely play more than one year, will be practically unaffected by it, because a bush planted on medium fertility soil will be able to bear fruit three or four times at full yield in the current balance. The trait system is detrimental to the game in my eyes, if only because cuttings with different traits don't stack. At the same time, the traits aren't even good, and pretty much none of them really make a meaningful difference. That said, to some extent it also renders the fertilizer requirement even more irrelevant than it already is, by incentivizing to propagate new bushes with good traits instead of maintaining older ones. My personal thought is that berries should spawn in massive patches (almost like grass or shrubs), and be seasonally bountiful, but limited by a relatively short availability window. Incentivizing food preservation and variety. Promoting a gathering gameplay style and making berries into a plentiful but inefficient food source, perfect for the early game. Planting a garden at home should still be viable at some upfront cost, but no arbitrary and unrealistic maintenance - if anything, it should be possible to prune and fertilize the bushes as an optional boost to yields. On one hand, I like the look of adjusting berry production. As it presently stands, they're the cheesiest early game mechanic, just slap the bush with your hands/knife/axe and uproot the entire thing and bring it back home. That's a liiiiiittle too simple in a game that has very in depth mechanics elsewhere. I am a bit concerend about the fiddly looking mechanics for propagation and fertilizer requirement however - I think it would be better served to simply be able to harvest seeds from berries that you can replant, give them a similar type of mechanic as the fruit trees - wherein some of the planted seeds have a chance of not surviving - and tie their berry growth to seasons as mentioned above. With option to fertilize to increase bounty on harvest. While I love the majority of the in depth crafting, harvesting, cooking mechanics etc - there's also the possibility of going TOO far with that, and making the game so cumbersome that it will feel too burdensome, especially to solo players. On a server with a group of people I'm sure it's not that bad as the work gets spread around. So then it becomes a balancing act between ensuring enough content for the multiplayer servers, and not being too burdensome on the solo or 2-3 co-op players. 5
Cleitus Posted Saturday at 08:37 PM Report Posted Saturday at 08:37 PM 4 hours ago, Blaiyze said: I haven't yet loaded or played the latest update yet - I always wait for the first stable build (and for my fav must have mods to update) before I truly give it a test run, but I definitely was a biiiit concerned with some of the things. Mostly, I like the looks of the update and understand that there's going to be balancing to come. So, definitely eyeballing people's feedback here. On one hand, I like the look of adjusting berry production. As it presently stands, they're the cheesiest early game mechanic, just slap the bush with your hands/knife/axe and uproot the entire thing and bring it back home. That's a liiiiiittle too simple in a game that has very in depth mechanics elsewhere. I am a bit concerend about the fiddly looking mechanics for propagation and fertilizer requirement however - I think it would be better served to simply be able to harvest seeds from berries that you can replant, give them a similar type of mechanic as the fruit trees - wherein some of the planted seeds have a chance of not surviving - and tie their berry growth to seasons as mentioned above. With option to fertilize to increase bounty on harvest. While I love the majority of the in depth crafting, harvesting, cooking mechanics etc - there's also the possibility of going TOO far with that, and making the game so cumbersome that it will feel too burdensome, especially to solo players. On a server with a group of people I'm sure it's not that bad as the work gets spread around. So then it becomes a balancing act between ensuring enough content for the multiplayer servers, and not being too burdensome on the solo or 2-3 co-op players. This sounds like the best way to ballance bushes to me. 1
Zane Mordien Posted Saturday at 11:53 PM Author Report Posted Saturday at 11:53 PM 7 hours ago, Blaiyze said: I haven't yet loaded or played the latest update yet - I always wait for the first stable build (and for my fav must have mods to update) before I truly give it a test run, I can't help myself personally. I also test out every new release in the same seed so I can see what sneaky things in the world generation got changed. They have tweaked the world generation a few times and never mentioned it in the patch notes. Nothing crazy, but I just like seeing how things slightly change. 4
Sirsucksalot Posted Sunday at 06:53 PM Report Posted Sunday at 06:53 PM I just hope the game remains fun and relaxing rather than becoming stressful and ballbusting. It's a hard balance but I think that so far the game has done a good job of it and I don't want the devs to go in the direction of something like Project Zomboid which has design choices exclusively made to make things harder for players rath than for the sake of fun or even realism. As long as wild bushes don't need to be fertilised, I'm not going to complain but nerfing spears seems arbitrary to me. I don't know what it actually looks like since I'm only going to update once mods are compatible with 1.22 but spears being a reliable all-round weapon isn't a problem at all, hell I would say that means they're working as intended and our ancestors would probably agree. If you want the falx to stand out, then make it stand out. Give it a meaningfully faster attack or something. If some tit wants to fill out his hotbar with 10 bronze spears to lob at bears instead of 1 bow and a stack of arrows, how is that affecting me, really? If spears must be nerfed, then I'd rather have it done in a way that maintains their effectiveness within their role instead of gimping them, eg they do less damage under a certain distance or give the throw a windup for full damage that slows you down more so that the falx has a niche of being effective for fighting monsters in caves or any other up-close combat. I hope that fishing gets expanded. I don't think it makes any sense for a single person to be able to deplete the ocean's fish stocks like is currently possible in Primitive Survival so I'd prefer if they go with the difficulties that actual commercial fishing had. Obviously there aren't any fish runs since there aren't rivers and actual ecologies so I think a nice way of simulating it would be if there are random spawns of large fish shoals that maybe are marked by birds circling overhead so you get out in your nice big sailboat, catch a hundred fish with a net and then realise "crap, this is all going to rot in 2 days". I'd consider that sort of dilemma to be far more engaging as a player than just "uuhhhh sorry buddy you caught 5 fish, ocean's empty. better luck next year."
ifoz Posted Monday at 03:18 AM Report Posted Monday at 03:18 AM 8 hours ago, Sirsucksalot said: I'm not going to complain but nerfing spears seems arbitrary to me. I don't know what it actually looks like since I'm only going to update once mods are compatible with 1.22 but spears being a reliable all-round weapon isn't a problem at all The problem with spears in 1.21 was mostly that they weren't just a reliable all-round weapon, they were the best weapon in the game by far, with bronze spears outclassing steel falxes in terms of DPS. To me the spear changes have felt okay from the small amount I've messed with them, and even with their now reduced damage, you could get that back up with the new quenching and tempering system. The main change has been that their windup to throw is considerably longer, so you can't shotgun them at enemies and rapidly deal insane amounts of damage. 2
LadyWYT Posted Monday at 03:42 AM Report Posted Monday at 03:42 AM 21 minutes ago, ifoz said: The main change has been that their windup to throw is considerably longer, so you can't shotgun them at enemies and rapidly deal insane amounts of damage. Unfortunately that seems to have been changed in rc1. I don't know that the windup is as fast as previous game versions, but I'm not going to be surprised if spears become even more of the standard weapon if the windup remains that fast.
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