Make firepits without tools

[DeanF]

A point that came up in another thread is that firepits are locked behind stone axes and knives, which does seem wrong.  Toolmaking does pre-date the controlled use of fire historically- at least at the hand ax stage- but we're not talking about history, here.  We're talking about a survival situation, and you sure as hell can make fire without an axe and a knife.

I propose that we should only need sticks to make a firepit, though of course firewood should still work as well.  If sticks cannot already be used as fuel, well, they should.  And we should probably be able to gather grass by hand, too, although much more slowly.  Then firepits are no longer locked behind stone tools, and we could, for example, have things like fire-hardened wood-only javelins.

No, none of this is essential.  I'm not saying that it is.  But sort of like the antler picks that I proposed elsewhere, this would all be very useful for players who want to try challenges, like the folks who do stone-age only games, etc.  I could easily see someone wanting to try a jungle start challenge in a flint- and stone-constrained setting, for example.

Edited yesterday at 02:03 PM by DeanF

[Grummsh]

I keep reading this suggestion threads that try to show that things were possible without tools - like here firepit. Or without metal tools - pick for gatering ore, etc. And sure it is all true and accurate if were talking real like - but still however real You want Vintage Story to become - its is still a GAME. A survival game that has to have some sort of progression of both materials and tools. Thats my honest opionion at least

[williams_482]

It doesn't seem particularly helpful for the gameplay to create an alternate way of doing things without flint tools, when flint tools are something you can usually create within moments of starting a new save. It just adds extra room for confusion while doing nothing for the vast majority of players. 

Extra mechanics to allow a no-tools challenge run might be a fun mod for some, but it's not a fit for the base game. 

[LadyWYT]

I'd like a few extra ways to build firepits without needing firewood, but I'm not sure what the point of removing the tool requirement entirely is. The player needs tools to do pretty much anything in the game, and I think also too many players get caught up on the "realistic survival" aspect and assume Vintage Story is a caveman simulator when it's not. Yes, realistic survival is part of the game, and a player can pretend to be a caveman if they want, but the survival aspect is really only the start of the game, as once the player acquires copper tools they have what they need to focus on homesteading and things other than just eeking out a bare minimum existence in the wilderness.

5 hours ago, DeanF said:

And we should probably be able to gather grass by hand, too, although much more slowly. 

For gameplay purposes, no. Realistically, yes, you can go outside and start ripping up grass with your bare hands, but from a gameplay standpoint players might want to clear the grass for whatever reason, but don't necessarily want to fill their inventory with it. Tossing it just creates clutter in the world that takes a while to despawn and can be easily picked back up by accident. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

There are two different concepts at play here. Progression and what the title of the thread suggests this is about, being able to make firepit without tools. And personally, I don't think the two got much to do with eachother. First off, do we actually consider making a firepit progression? Depending on starting climate, spawn area and luck scavenging, you don't need one before you have need to make flint tools for other reasons. Live off of berries at the start (or be disappointed how much more work it was to poke a fish to death back in 1.21 with a crafted stone spear, then butcher it with a stone knife, then cook the filet just to have barely more satiety than the berries) and you don't need a campfire until you want to cook something - aka. are in the clay age, past the stone age where you "unlock" the campfire. Have a more dire start and cooking anything that moves or is a cattail root is your only chance of survival. Doesn't feel like much progression and as such, doesn't feel like much change to or bypassing of progression if we could make a campfire with sticks instead of firewood and rip grass right out of the ground. Speaking of which, realism aside I'd argue it would be a much more intutive thought for a fresh newbie player to get grass as one of the first resources before anything else - because it's grass. You can rup it out with bare hands IRL and many peopl come from Minecraft where literally punching grass is one of the first things you do. It requiring a tool may at best act as forced guidance to "Hey, welcome to not Minecraft - you can make a stone knife" but otherwise more like the oposite of game progression. Forcing progression in other parts by arbitraty limitation.

That on top of the realism factor of a firepit usually starting with easier to ignite kindling (like leaves or, well, sticks) and only then fueled by longer burning firewood and Tl;dr making a campfire with sticks and grass is a very reasonable thing that I am in favor of adding to the game. And maybe punching grass. No need for wood javelins though.

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

For gameplay purposes, no. Realistically, yes, you can go outside and start ripping up grass with your bare hands, but from a gameplay standpoint players might want to clear the grass for whatever reason, but don't necessarily want to fill their inventory with it. Tossing it just creates clutter in the world that takes a while to despawn and can be easily picked back up by accident. 

On the one hand, if this deliberate distinction between "wants to remove grass" and "wants to harvest grass" is truly important - harvest it with right click. Both on the knife and the hands. Clear distinction between two mode of operation. On the other hand - even if you remove grass, it's one of the few things in VS that just comes back out of thin air. So if the player just wants to get rid of grass... nature already has other plans. And furthermore, you need tons of grass and can just use it as campfire fuel if you have too much, so the problem of throwing it away to clutter the world and accidentally picking it back up is less of an issue.

Edited yesterday at 07:34 PM by Rainbow Fresh

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

First off, do we actually consider making a firepit progression?

Yes. If you can't make a firepit, you're not cooking food, smelting basic ores, or otherwise staying warm. It's very basic progression, but it is progress.

18 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

many peopl come from Minecraft where literally punching grass is one of the first things you do

I don't dispute that a lot of players have a background in Minecraft, but as far as I'm aware, punching the grass isn't the first thing players do in Minecraft. Most players, I'm pretty sure, go punch trees. Which they'll quickly figure out does not work in Vintage Story.

10 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

On the one hand, if this deliberate distinction between "wants to remove grass" and "wants to harvest grass" is truly important - harvest it with right click. Both on the knife and the hands. Clear distinction between two mode of operation. On the other hand - even if you remove grass, it's one of the few things in VS that just comes back out of thin air. So if the player just wants to get rid of grass... nature already has other plans. And furthermore, you need tons of grass and can just use it as campfire fuel if you have too much, so the problem of throwing it away to clutter the world and accidentally picking it back up is less of an issue.

Which is also introducing yet more controls, which some players have noted in other threads that the current controls already feel too complicated in some cases. Personally, I prefer just letting the grass breakage be left-click, and using a knife or scythe if I actually want that grass to be anything usable.

And yes, grass will eventually grow back if the player breaks it(outside of the special scythe mode), but it also takes a little while. Yes, grass can be burned as fuel, but it's not really the most useful thing as fuel and I don't think players want to be dumping it in firepits every time their inventory fills up with it. Especially not when there's a simple solution that stops that kind of clutter from happening in the first place(current game mechanics).

As a side note on a "no tools" survival challenge, it's also not enough to just add a way to make firepits without tools. Firestarters technically being tools aside, the player needs a knife to harvest animals, most crafting requires tools, and weapons are a tool for combat. With a strict "no tools" rule, the only option the player really has is living off whatever they can scrounge up for berries, mushrooms, and perhaps the occasional bug or beehive raid. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

16 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't dispute that a lot of players have a background in Minecraft, but as far as I'm aware, punching the grass isn't the first thing players do in Minecraft. Most players, I'm pretty sure, go punch trees. Which they'll quickly figure out does not work in Vintage Story.

Granted, that is true for most parts. And it's been some 10-odd years since I was new to that game and there was no grass back then so I can't say how the order of experimentation would be for a completely new player; however, at the end of the day I don't know anyone there who would ever use or consider needing a tool to punch grass, something most anyone will do early on to get their first wheat seed(s) for farming. Which, even in vintage story, you do by just punching readily grown wild crops, not needing any tools.

19 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Which is also introducing yet more controls, which some players have noted in other threads that the current controls already feel too complicated in some cases. Personally, I prefer just letting the grass breakage be left-click, and using a knife or scythe if I actually want that grass to be anything usable.

I've read that thread aswell and do agree with the author of which in the point that some controls could certainly be streamlined, bar the "everyone is already used to how it is". But streamlining "interacting" and "breaking" consistently would not do any harm in my eyes. You "break" an animal with left click, then harvest the loot with right click. You break a log with left click, but harvest the resin with right click. So why wouldn't you break grass with left click, and harvest it with right click? And harvesting crops is done with always left click no matter the tool either - though that is more because crops don't differentiate between harvesting and breaking; harvesting IS breaking and the loot depends on crop stage.

24 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Yes, grass can be burned as fuel, but it's not really the most useful thing as fuel and I don't think players want to be dumping it in firepits every time their inventory fills up with it. Especially not when there's a simple solution that stops that kind of clutter from happening in the first place(current game mechanics).

Personally, I have finetuned my burn times on e.g. cooking with leftover sticks/grass to save more potent fuel every now and then. I also needed to go out and cut new grass about as many as I mowed the lawn to clear building areas. If not using grass as campfire fuel, pit kilns will eat up your stockpile. And there is no going around that.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

It just adds extra room for confusion while doing nothing for the vast majority of players. 

That's really the most interesting way I've seen someone say, "This is better suited as a mod".

17 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

As a side note on a "no tools" survival challenge, it's also not enough to just add a way to make firepits without tools. Firestarters technically being tools aside, the player needs a knife to harvest animals, most crafting requires tools, and weapons are a tool for combat. With a strict "no tools" rule, the only option the player really has is living off whatever they can scrounge up for berries, mushrooms, and perhaps the occasional bug or beehive raid. 

This "no tools" challenge... is that NO tools at all, or just no crafting of tools (like you can still loot the cracked tool vessels)?

If it's no tools AT ALL then this this doesn’t meaningfully improve the experience it’s targeting, and it risks undermining progression elsewhere. It will also only appeal to a minimal handful of players and will either go ignored or unused by the rest of the players. Either way without tools, you can't harvest dead animals so you don't really need a firepit except to cook porridge and fish. You won't be chopping wood so no pies or other baked goods. You will be stuck in the pre-stone age with no weapons, no armor, and no way to really defend yourself or survive except for praying that you can find food and the next wolf/bear won't send you back to spawn...

And even then the only fuel you'll be able to use is either more sticks or peat which are readily available but hard to obtain in barren areas.

I don't see any value in this suggestion.

[LadyWYT]

8 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

This "no tools" challenge... is that NO tools at all, or just no crafting of tools (like you can still loot the cracked tool vessels)?

Beats me. Some of the reasoning behind removing the tool requirement for firepits seemed to be so that the player could do some sort of special challenge or otherwise play without needing tools, hence why I pointed out that if that's the case, the firepit is still going to be pretty useless because the player needs tools to do most everything in the game. It might be a fun challenge for a player to attempt just to see how long they can survive, but it's also a very niche challenge better covered by mods, as like you and others have said...it doesn't add value for most players.

 

[DeanF]

I have read the rebuttals, and I do not find them compelling.  No offense meant, but I don't.  My counter is this- why not do it this way?  All of the proposals thus far for why not ring very hollow to me.

Allowing the hand gathering of grass is intuitive, useful, more realistic, presumably simple to implement, and does not in any meaningful way break the progression aspect of the game.  A firepit is one of the first things a player makes no matter what, yet it might make a difference for a player at some point (not unlike the antler pick).  Its a fun feature that might come up for someone in a fringe situation. And a lot of naive new players are going to try to do it, anyway, since it is so obvious.  I did.  So did many other "first time" players on videos that I have watched since.  So let them.  Screaming "No!  You must follow the game's planned progression and flint knapping comes before fire!" at them is going to ring hollow and just annoy them.  It isn't like how stone comes before copper comes before bronze comes before iron, which I think everyone understands.  It's all primitive stuff.  Not being able to rip out some grass by hand is actually surprising.

Edited 22 hours ago by DeanF

[DeanF]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

For gameplay purposes, no. Realistically, yes, you can go outside and start ripping up grass with your bare hands, but from a gameplay standpoint players might want to clear the grass for whatever reason, but don't necessarily want to fill their inventory with it. Tossing it just creates clutter in the world that takes a while to despawn and can be easily picked back up by accident. 

I don't see supposed the gameplay issue, here.  If you don't want it in your inventory- which seems like a much less likely use case than wanting to hand gather it- then you can hit it with a stick or any other non-tool.  Or heck, just right-click instead of left.  Not hard.  So I don't really see a downside to allowing very slow grass collection by hand.  I don't need a shovel to pick up sand, gravel, or dirt, and that's much more game-breaking if you ask me.  Who can't rip grass out by hand, yet can shove a metric ton of gravel into their inventory by hand in minutes?

Imagine it's the middle of a moonless night, you just died and respawned, and you cannot see anything.  (Or any other situation where you are in the middle of nowhere without a light source and your knife just broke.)  You might not find a stone, and would have a hell of a time knapping it if you did. But you'll find grass, and hopefully a stick, and if you could just hand gather the grass you could make a torch and fire starter... or firepit.  And that torch lets you see to bootstrap yourself again, instead of just being completely screwed.

Edited 22 hours ago by DeanF

[DeanF]

2 hours ago, williams_482 said:

It just adds extra room for confusion while doing nothing for the vast majority of players. 

My mind boggles that you find the concept gathering grass by hand to be confusing.  No controls would change, for instance.  And it in fact seems intuitive to me.  I tried to gather grass by hand on my first game, and a lot of other naive players will.  Several "first time" players in videos that I have since watched also tried to do it.  So let them.

Heck, it annoys me that I cannot burn my excess thatch roofing.

Edited 22 hours ago by DeanF

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, DeanF said:

Heck, it annoys me that I cannot burn my excess thatch roofing.

It's a definite oversight, but in case you didn't know, you can use a knife to turn excess roofing back into thatch, which you can then burn.

31 minutes ago, DeanF said:

I have read the rebuttals, and I do not find them compelling.  My counter is this- why not do it this way?

In an effort to keep it simple, I think it's fair to say that the opposite applies as well when suggesting a change--sure, things could be done that way, but if the reasoning for the suggestion isn't a very compelling one then why say "sure, okay, let's do it that way instead"? Changing the way the firepit works requires changing to the code, which likely isn't as simple as just swapping textures/models or adjusting a numerical value. Since it requires a change in controls, essentially(at least that's how I see it), it seems likely that such changes could cause unforseen issues elsewhere.

Does it really hurt to let the player make firepits before they have tools(and thus can do anything with the firepit)? No, but it doesn't seem very useful either, especially given that stone tools and firestarters are incredibly easy to craft in most cases, and the player should have a knife on them at all times anyway. The more compelling argument I see is to relax the firewood requirement for firepit creation so that the player can craft one from scratch from other reasonable fuel sources, like peat. Peat is readily available, and has a decent burn time making it a practical fuel choice; I don't always want to go raid my woodpile to create a new firepit, nor do I necessarily want to go make an axe and chop down a tree for firewood. 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

So why wouldn't you break grass with left click, and harvest it with right click?

I think the better question is why would the player ever bother with picking grass by hand when it's much faster to use a knife? Knives are perhaps the most useful/important tools in the entire game, and easy to make. There's really no reason not to carry a knife, thus I don't see a point to adding a mechanic like this one.

47 minutes ago, DeanF said:

Imagine it's the middle of a moonless night, you just died and respawned, and you cannot see anything.  You might not find a stone, and would have a hell of a time knapping it if you did. But you'll find grass, and hopefully a stick, and if you could just hand gather the grass you could make a torch and fire starter... or firepit.  And that torch lets you see, to bootstrap yourself again.

To be frank, if the player dies in the middle of the night and respawns out in the dark somewhere, they're pretty much straight out of luck until daylight arrives or unless they had "keep inventory" enabled. However, I would also point out that if they can manage to find sticks and grass without dying to a creature or falling in a hole, then they should be able to find rocks as well. In which case, they can make a knife(nighttime doesn't hide the wire frame for knapping, last I checked), collect a bit of grass, and then use the firestarter to either light a torch or set the local plant life on fire while they collect more stuff. 

At the very best, it seems a very marginal beneficial option for a very specific scenario. I still don't think it's worth the effort to code.

 

[Demoncyborg]

I kinda have always shared a similar sentiment about firepits. it's always felt like it should be drygrass + other stackable fuel. trying to set up a quick crucible and ugh, gotta get firewood just to take it back out again so I can put charcoal in.

but dry grass with fists? Dry grass is like a ton of other items in the game gathered with a tool, it's used for an insane amount of recipes vanilla or modded, so you need to collect a lot of it. There's scythes to make this easier, but a knife starts you off.

without the knife or scythe being needed, you'd be pretty tempted to just forgo making any of those wasteful tools with things like durability and instead, take ages ripping out grass with your hands. I think it fosters better gameplay to just not let you do that, lol. You could make the argument that dirt already does this, but I don't think that's really relevant considering it's not as valuable of a crafting component at all.

[DeanF]

1 hour ago, Demoncyborg said:

Without the knife or scythe being needed, you'd be pretty tempted to just forgo making any of those wasteful tools with things like durability and instead, take ages ripping out grass with your hands. I think it fosters better gameplay to just not let you do that, lol. You could make the argument that dirt already does this, but I don't think that's really relevant considering it's not as valuable of a crafting component at all.

I think you missed the proposal that hand-gathering grass should be mind-bogglingly slow.  So, handy to make a torch or a fire pit in a pinch, but morning should come before you can make a hay bed that way, and winter should come before you can thatch a house that way.  (Bit of hyperbole, there- forgive me.)

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's a definite oversight, but in case you didn't know, you can use a knife to turn excess roofing back into thatch, which you can then burn.

Huh.  Good to know.
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

In an effort to keep it simple, I think it's fair to say that the opposite applies as well when suggesting a change--sure, things could be done that way, but if the reasoning for the suggestion isn't a very compelling one then why say "sure, okay, let's do it that way instead"? Changing the way the firepit works requires changing to the code, which likely isn't as simple as just swapping textures/models or adjusting a numerical value. Since it requires a change in controls, essentially(at least that's how I see it), it seems likely that such changes could cause unforseen issues elsewhere.

Still not very compelling- it is pretty clear (to me, at least) that we should be able to make a firepit with grass and sticks without tools.  And yes, I would bet you that in fact it is as simple as changing a few files, unless you want to get OCD about the firepit model that shows firewood, in which case that's not really a big coding challenge either.  (Not that there might no be downstream effects that need to be fixed, but heck, every update changes hundreds of things already.)  Fuels clearly already have a trait that describes how long and how hot they burn, so that just has to be added to sticks.
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Does it really hurt to let the player make firepits before they have tools(and thus can do anything with the firepit)? No, but it doesn't seem very useful either, especially given that stone tools and firestarters are incredibly easy to craft in most cases, and the player should have a knife on them at all times anyway. The more compelling argument I see is to relax the firewood requirement for firepit creation so that the player can craft one from scratch from other reasonable fuel sources, like peat. Peat is readily available, and has a decent burn time making it a practical fuel choice; I don't always want to go raid my woodpile to create a new firepit, nor do I necessarily want to go make an axe and chop down a tree for firewood.

You sort of make my argument for me, there.  "The player should..."  That's railroading.  They might not, or might choose not.  And it's a simple change.  So my question is essentially unanswered- why not?  And yes, it annoys me as well that peat cannot be used to make a firepit- throw that issue into the same bucket.  If you think that peat should be viable, then it's very hard to understand why you oppose sticks.

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think the better question is why would the player ever bother with picking grass by hand when it's much faster to use a knife? Knives are perhaps the most useful/important tools in the entire game, and easy to make. There's really no reason not to carry a knife, thus I don't see a point to adding a mechanic like this one.

 

For when one does not have a knife, as I already explained.  Or more likely, when one only has an almost-broken knife and wants to preserve it for some other task.  And again, why not?  I'm not saying that it should be a priority, but it should obviously be possible.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, DeanF said:

I think you missed the proposal that hand-gathering grass should be mind-bogglingly slow.

I didn't miss it. But I don't think "it's super slow" is a very good argument for going to the effort of adding it considering the player is going to have a knife, and on the off-chance they don't(or their knife is about to break), it's easy to make a new one.

 

7 minutes ago, DeanF said:

If you think that peat should be viable, then it's very hard to understand why you oppose sticks.

Not really. If a player is going to the effort of building a firepit, that probably means they intend to actually use the firepit for something. In which case, they're going to want something that actually serves as fuel--ie, burns a while. Makes more sense to me from a gameplay standpoint to lock firepits behind proper fuel, and not just anything burnable. 

[DeanF]

8 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I didn't miss it.

Ok.  Just FYI, that was not a response to you.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

17 minutes ago, DeanF said:

Ok.  Just FYI, that was not a response to you.

It's an open forum. Anyone can respond.

I would ask what is the purpose of being able to make a firepit without tools, but first I need to know a few other things:

1. What is your exact definition of "tools". The game classifies a lot of items as tools, including firestarters.
2. If no tools are required, what should be required then? Obviously resources, but what about a skill level in harvesting the resources? I've seen some comments suggesting that you should be allowed to freely gather grass with your bare hands. Have you tried ripping up grass with your hands? It's not easy.
3. Who should be allowed to do this? All players from the start of the game or only those who've progressed enough to know how to build a fire in the first place the normal way?
4. What stops this from making the existing requirements for building fires pointless?

This also raises a question about how the game onboards new players. The game's tutorials guide you to making your very first knife and stone tools. Are you suggesting that this should be irrelevant?

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

the player should have a knife on them at all times anyway

I largely agree with this. The knife is useful for so many things, cutting hides, harvesting animals, looting rotbeasts etc. It can even serve as a weapon in a pinch. A good quality steel knife is a godsend because it's long durability!

You've already responded to this quote from LadyWYT here:

45 minutes ago, DeanF said:

You sort of make my argument for me, there.  "The player should..."  That's railroading.  They might not, or might choose not.  And it's a simple change.

I'm not sure we're using the same definition for "railroading" here. Can you define railroading for me, please?

The point I'm trying to make is that nobody is FORCING you to carry a knife with you at all times. Nobody is forcing you to carry only one. The choice is yours to make at all times. Your player agency is intact. What you're bumping into and why you're making this suggestion isn't because the players are being railroaded into specific choices, it's game mechanics. Mechanics are coherent, deliberate design choices that define how players are allowed to interact with the game world to achieve the desired outcomes. The tool requirement isn't restricting your agency, it's defining the terms of how you are allowed to play the game.

Furthermore, suggesting that fires be allowed to be made without tools is a bit of a contradiction to what the game is all about. Vintage Story is a game that markets itself as an "uncompromising wilderness survival" game. Difficulty building a fire because you need a knife to cut grass isn't an arbitrary restriction, it's a deliberate choice. Asking to remove this isn't asking for more agency, it's asking the game to stop requiring you to adhere to its rules. You need thing, you use tool to get it. Same for chopping wood, or smithing another knife on the anvil or grinding grains into flour.

Yes it is a simple change to allow grass to be harvested without a knife. But a simple change in the wrong direction is still the wrong change to make.

 

One final thought: Players who actually want the option to remain toolless already have that option. There are several things you can obtain throughout game play without ever crafting a single tool. You can forage for food, you can run around collecting rusty gears and eventually trade them to get your first lantern. But without that knife, a lot of the game's systems will simply be locked to you.

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

The knife is useful for so many things, cutting hides, harvesting animals, looting rotbeasts etc. It can even serve as a weapon in a pinch.

Incidentally, this is also why I don't really view the knife requirement as a big deal. It's a vital survival tool, and players that don't have one aren't going to last very long. Other tools have more specific uses and aren't really things that the player will want/need to have on them at all times, aside from maybe the weapons in order to effectively deal with threats.

[Demoncyborg]

1 hour ago, DeanF said:

I think you missed the proposal that hand-gathering grass should be mind-bogglingly slow. 

I did not, and it doesn't change any of my points. Like I said, dirt would be a good counterpoint, but it's not vital to learning basic gameplay like making your first tool is.

4 hours ago, DeanF said:

And a lot of naive new players are going to try to do it, anyway, since it is so obvious.  I did.  So did many other "first time" players on videos that I have watched since.  So let them.  Screaming "No!  You must follow the game's planned progression and flint knapping comes before fire!" at them is going to ring hollow and just annoy them.

The entire game is based around this kind of progression, forcing the player to learn how to knap to keep warm and use light is practically a tutorial mechanic. Just because some new players coming from minecraft fumble doesn't mean the game needs to change for them. They just need to learn how to play!

4 hours ago, DeanF said:

Imagine it's the middle of a moonless night, you just died and respawned, and you cannot see anything.  (Or any other situation where you are in the middle of nowhere without a light source and your knife just broke.)

You get a player-glow upon respawning to help you, so it's not that hard to find flint to make a knife and torch after you die, you'll probably wanna get some more to make a spear anyways.

If you're in the middle of nowhere without a light source and your knife just broke? Welcome to the uncompromising survival of Vintage Story. You could just as easily spawn into a multiplayer server at night, in the middle of winter, during a temporal storm. You could break your cellar without realizing and make all your food rot before winter. Poor planning on a players part doesn't mean the game mechanics need to change, just go find some flint.

Having to make a tool to do anything is a core mechanic of the game, making grass collectible with fists is simply a confusing thing to add when that's already established.

Yes, it'd be convenient to have, yes it'd make the game a touch easier in some departments, but none of your points are a solid, nor compelling reason to add it to the game.

 

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, Demoncyborg said:

You get a player-glow upon respawning to help you

You know, I forgot that's a thing.  Just goes to show that the devs already had a contingency plan for when players respawn in the dark!

[Rainbow Fresh]

Too many different points to quote so I'm not gonna bother. Seeing as both sides of this discussion don't seem to be getting anywhere in convincing the other side, I'mma just gonna add my opinion one last time.

I think that by this point most of us agree here that it would be a non-game-breaking QoL improvement if you could create a firepit using any common fuel source, much like you can create a pit kiln with firewood, peat or coal (I think, only ever used peat). Seeing as adding at least peat to the options already negates the tool requirement for that half of the process though, I'll still vote for sticks should work aswell. Gives more versatility in when and where you can create something as basic as a firepit while not changing anything about the "progression requirements" quite yet. For the "people who create a firepit would want to use it and as such want to use fuel that lasts longer than 0.5s" argument; right now you are already creating a firepit with firewood just to immediately swap it out for other fuel depending on the situation. Sticks are no different with the added side effect that you likely have sticks on you or find them around you before you have firewood, peat or coal.

As for the debate about whether you should be able to harvest grass with your bare hands or not and the philosphical discussion about railroading the player's experience or not; The reason as to why we aren't getting anywhere is because both sides have decent, but no more than that arguments and as such I'm inclined to agree with the "if changing doesn't do anything notable, why change" side putting the concept of hand-harvesting grass to a potential mod anyone who wants it that way to install.
After all, on the one hand there are arguments for grass punching - I, personally, can attest that there are players (me) with the "Why use durability when can spend more time for free" syndrome who would certainly rather punch grass than ever use a knife for the task, much I'd rather punch dirt for an hour instead of crafting and breaking a shovel. And with the ongoing railroading discussion, I'd very much say that if the game allows me to punch solid ground and not need a tool, not allowing me to do the same for something much simpler is kinda railroading by only offering a chosen selection of options for a task that, in other parts of the game, as multiple options. Then again on the other hand, we are talking about a mechanic here whose sole effect would change about the first 5 minutes of the game, and maybe have a nieche usage in that 1 in 100 situations you come across. So it's certainly not like we're discussing making a stone saw to bypass the need for copper to make planks for a nice looking house (and the dozens of crafting recipes requiring it). Speaking of progression and the tutorial nature of guiding the player to their first tier of progress (knapped tools) via the requirements for a campfire - that's not necessarily true, and wouldn't really change too much even with hand collected grass. A campfire has three uses: Cooking food, giving light and warmth, and smelting pre-iron ores. The latter of which you will only encounter in the pottery age, the middle of which is mostly a cold climate/winter thing (torches are the more versatile light source), leaving only really cooking. Depending on the spawn, you will probably live off of berries. The only thing requiring a campfire to cook but don't yet require you learning to knap to make a weapon are cattail roots. Which, themselves, already teach you "you can punch the plant and get the cattail. Buuuuut, with a knife, you could ALSO get the roots which you can cook and eat". In none of these scenarios does the campfire act as the initial guide to knapping. As such, in none of these scenarios would the path you take or level of guidance you get at the start of the game change even if you could make a campfire by just punching grass and picking up sticks.

But alas, as mentioned, tl;dr - at this point we can probably agree that the campfire should be able to be created with multiple starting fuel sources as a QoL change, and punching grass is better kept to modding.

[Broccoli Clock]

I'm not against the ability to make fire without tools, after all we all know the classic "rub two sticks together" bit. It works, it's really inefficient but it works.

However mankind has been using fire for far less time than it has been using tools. You could argue that tools date back to 3 million years ago, some evidence suggests nearer 4 million, whereas fire itself was only really harnessed about 800,000 years ago. There is evidence of man using fire up to 2 million years ago, but that evidence points to them using already existing fire (wild fires, lightning strike, volcanic eruptions, etc). We can tell from genetics when the human lineage started eating cooked meat, and again that was probably accidental rather than intentional to begin with.

In short, tools came before fire (in a general sense).

[Demoncyborg]

I think the only reason I'm against sticks specifically for fire is because there's no vanilla crafting for them. They aren't finite but they're much, much better spent on tools and recipes rather than fuel at any point. its not a huge reasoning but teaching the player at the start to use sticks might make a waste of sticks. Peat/charcoal to start your pit sounds great

[MKMoose]

58 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I'm not against the ability to make fire without tools, after all we all know the classic "rub two sticks together" bit. It works, it's really inefficient but it works.

However mankind has been using fire for far less time than it has been using tools. You could argue that tools date back to 3 million years ago, some evidence suggests nearer 4 million, whereas fire itself was only really harnessed about 800,000 years ago. There is evidence of man using fire up to 2 million years ago, but that evidence points to them using already existing fire (wild fires, lightning strike, volcanic eruptions, etc). We can tell from genetics when the human lineage started eating cooked meat, and again that was probably accidental rather than intentional to begin with.

In short, tools came before fire (in a general sense).

The classic "rub two sticks together" bit is exactly what we already have in the game in the form of the firestarter. Gating the firepit behind tools is only a consequence of the Seraph being incapable of setting up the firepit without using firewood. What's better, they're perfectly capable of removing that firewood without actually burning any of it right after building the firepit.

And to top it off, whether tools came before or after fire is only relevant to Homo Sapiens.

 

47 minutes ago, Demoncyborg said:

They aren't finite but they're much, much better spent on tools and recipes rather than fuel at any point.

Matter of playstyle. I tend to predominantly use sticks for fuel with zero issues, because most of my firewood goes straight into the charcoal pit and the clay oven.

Adding more ways to obtain sticks in bulk besides breaking branches off of trees also seems like a perfectly fine method to alleviate any early association issues that allowing to use sticks for the firepit might cause.