More Chores?

[Cleitus]

This might be a bad take, and I am willing to hear why it's so, but it feels like they keep adding more needless chores every update. I mostly get this feeling when reading the new patch notes (I haven't played 1.22 yet). Here are some examples of what I am talking about.

• Mechanical power changes. I love the water wheel (even though the new flowing-water type is a little immersion-breaking), but the changes that make your builds catch fire if they are too powerful are a little much. Even when they do implement stronger parts, it seems like it will just add more grind to what mechanical power already is. 
• Berry bushes. There's not really much more to say about the way these are in the update. They were always a pretty lame food source, but now that you have to work harder for them, what's the point? 
• Fat changes. Now you have to worry about it spoiling unless you render it, which just adds unnecessary work that doesn't improve the game.

The current version has its own set of issues, too. My biggest pet peeve is how long it takes to get some of my favorite building blocks. Ashlar blocks take hours of quarrying, wattle and daub take forever to gather all the ingredients, and plaster takes an eternity to make. Plus, the tedium of forming and firing enough clay shingles to make a roof. 

Overall, so many features feel like a tax on my time. I love the game, but I don't have the ability to sink hours into unfun busywork. Am I alone in this line of thought? Do I just need to find a different game? What do you guys think?

[Zane Mordien]

If you are limited on time then I would find a mod that gives you the playstyle you want. Every release definitely adds more chores.  

That's a lame comment sometimes but the game is definitely a time sink and if you don't have time, then make it work for you.

[LadyWYT]

9 minutes ago, Cleitus said:

Mechanical power changes. I love the water wheel (even though the new flowing-water type is a little immersion-breaking), but the changes that make your builds catch fire if they are too powerful are a little much. Even when they do implement stronger parts, it seems like it will just add more grind to what mechanical power already is. 

Friction is a real concern when designing machinery, especially if the parts are wooden. If those parts heat up too much, they should logically catch fire. From a game balance standpoint, I think this change is meant to prompt the player to think a little more carefully when it comes to designing machinery, and cut down on the "Frankenmill" designs that exploit game mechanics to make stuff like the helve hammer operate at warp speed.

The Create mod for Minecraft had similar concepts, I think, as did some other tech mods. Basically, if the machinery or wiring was under too much stress, parts would grind to a halt, break, or the wiring might burn up if the voltage was too high, etc. 

14 minutes ago, Cleitus said:

Berry bushes. There's not really much more to say about the way these are in the update. They were always a pretty lame food source, but now that you have to work harder for them, what's the point? 

Berry bushes weren't very realistic before, given that the player could easily break bushes and plunk them back down at base for large yields of fruit with little effort. While there are certainly different opinions on what the most realistic change should have been, it's not entirely unrealistic to need to propagate new bushes via cuttings and fertilize the plants annually to keep them healthy and producing.

From the gameplay standpoint, this should give players more chances to have their own berry patches in multiplayer, as under the old system it was a common occurrence for all bushes within a reasonable distance of spawn to get transplanted elsewhere. In singleplayer, it tips the balance of the game pacing to the player needing to rely more on hunting and foraging their first in-game year while they get themselves established.

18 minutes ago, Cleitus said:

Fat changes. Now you have to worry about it spoiling unless you render it, which just adds unnecessary work that doesn't improve the game.

Realistically, fat needs to be rendered or it will spoil, so for a game that wants to lean heavily into realistic natural processes this sort of change makes sense. I will note that the fat renders rather fast, and only one stick of firewood is needed to render a full pot of fat(which is currently 6, and could stand to be more in my opinion).

 

21 minutes ago, Cleitus said:

Overall, so many features feel like a tax on my time. I love the game, but I don't have the ability to sink hours into unfun busywork. Am I alone in this line of thought? Do I just need to find a different game? What do you guys think?

I think @Zane Mordien is pretty spot-on. I wouldn't call VS a game that grinds for the sake of grinding, since the grind does have meaning aside from just making the player play longer. However, I do think that it's intended to be slow-paced game, in that it's one the player completes over the course of several play sessions rather than a single weekend of play. 

Now that being said, the devs are quite good about providing a variety of options for players to use to tailor the game to their own liking, which includes making things easier or harder as needed. Likewise, the players themselves are also quite good at making mods to tailor the game further. If you're having trouble finding a way to adjust certain things in the game it also doesn't hurt to ask around the community to see if anyone knows of a fix.

I also want to note too that when major changes to mechanics roll out, it's not unusual for things to get a little uncomfortable for a while since old strategies become obsolete and it takes players time to figure out new ones. In the event something proves to be undertuned/overtuned, it typically gets adjusted sooner or later.

[Shoom]

Your concern is understandable, honestly though from my experience with 1.22 so far these changes don't really change the game all that much.

Machinery catching fire sounds way worse than it actually is, you need to downshift several times in order to get RPM high enough for things to start smoking, you'd have to go out of your way to achieve this, it's not something that will happen by accident.

Rendering fat is a quick process just takes a few pieces of firewood and a cooking pot, which you have to make anyway.

The berry bush overhaul is the largest and most controversial change of this update but the only real difference here is that you can't gather a few stacks of bushes during your first week and coast through the first summer/autumn on nothing but berries.

[QueenGeeBee]

Genuinely, I think a lot of people are reading the changes and reacting to them without trying them out.

Ive seen several posts saying they havent played the update yet but they dislike the changes, and they really arent as bad as people are assuming imo. Maybe its just a playstyle difference but im drowning in bones for bonemeal and the gears arent going to catch fire with thought out set ups.

Fat processing is whatever though to me. I guess it makes sense and timewise is forgiving enough to get it done.

[PoisonedPawn777]

I quite like the berry bush changes, now I can propagate a berry farm without stripping the surrounding area of my emergency backup food source. The quenching/tempering system is a little.. eh. Otherwise, happy with the changes.

[Blaiyze]

I mean, I picked up this game *because* of the intricate crafting systems - it was evident right from the hop that there was going to be a lot of busy work to doing anything and progressing in this game. That said, it is something that will have to be balanced so that you always have something to do but not too terribly bogged down at the same time. So far I'm enjoying the balance, there's always stuff to be working on and towards. 

But this is also why I wait until a stable release before jumping in on an update - there's always refinements to be done before the stable version drops.

[ArgentLuna]

I doubt that most players with normal set ups are going to have them catch fire, more the people with eldritch abominations of windmills going into the patch and its there now to encourage you to spread the load out.

As with everything in the game if you dont like whats coming then dont progress to that patch as long as your content with all that is releashed so far being your limits (or find a/ make/ get a mod made to suit your whims)

 

The busy work is one of the things i really like about the game, was talking a friend thru how steel working was going to go and other people in the chat are like this is fun? and i said yes much fun.

[Broccoli Clock]

19 hours ago, Cleitus said:

This might be a bad take, and I am willing to hear why it's so, but it feels like they keep adding more needless chores every update. 

This is called expanding the complexity of the game, this is a good thing.  

In years to come, people playing the VS version of the time will comment, "wow, remember when this game was so empty of stuff?". Trust me, that's how it works. This game is more of a shell than people think, and that's not me either throwing shade or suggesting there isn't a ton of stuff in the game as it is now. I say this as I've watched tons of indie games grow and develop over decades.

As for "what is fun", well that's all subjective, isn't it? I love cottage core stuff, I will literally geek out to mundane simple things. Chores or not.

What I would say is this, and it aligns with Zane's comment earlier, there are people out there who are either time poor, or less abled, where "houseworking tasks" are for whatever reason not possible. The game; either through accessibility features, world settings, or mods, should be able to provide that limited/stripped down/streamlined experience. However the the generic vanilla experience is always going to be grindy. 

The devs are adding new content to a game that we all know is still in development, the development map is pretty clear and the progression doesn't seem like it's tailing off any time soon. What's more, and this is the kicker for me, this game is built on "chores", to paraphrase Pratchett, it's "chores all the way down".

You open with "this might be a bad take", so I guess you know you are going out on a limb, and that's fine... because, by the gods, I'll happily throw out a shit opinion onto this forum just to see what sticks (as anyone reading my posts will know), but.... yeah.. to me, this is a "bad take". 

Edited 9 hours ago by Broccoli Clock
edited to stop sounding so miserable! :P