Some small but required mods for Vintage Story:

[TεʞoшiИ]

Hi, I was thinking that some of my ideas for official mods would be fantastic:

1- Crawling.

2- Fire arrows: one that functions as a torch for a short time and another that starts fires.

3- Keys for doors and chests, so certain people can access other people's properties.

4- Carriages.

5- Monocle.

6- Schedule with the date and time of online worlds.

7- Bone tools (like spears or fishhooks, for example).

8- Lasso and grappling hook for climbing.

 

Edit:

*5- I got confused because in Spanish it's pronounced like "Monocle", I meant telescope or spyglass.

*2- Also, the arrow that starts the fire could have the flame at the tip, while the one that serves as a torch has it at the tail...

Edited June 6 by TεʞoшiИ

[Vexxvididu]

I'm sure a lot of those could be fun....  but not sure what you mean by "official" mods?  modders have a lot of freedom to do what they want of course, but I don't think most of these should be "official" or in the base game.

 

..in particular, fire arrows weren't really a thing in the middle ages since when you fire them, it would blow them out without modern chemicals.

 

I'm also curious what you mean by "Monocle"?  I know what a monocle is, but what about them would you want to see in this mod?

[BurgerDaddy]

I am also intrigued by #5.

I believe I am pro monocle, for what it’s worth.

[LadyWYT]

10 minutes ago, Vexxvididu said:

..in particular, fire arrows weren't really a thing in the middle ages since when you fire them, it would blow them out without modern chemicals.

I dunno...there were "fire arrows" after a fashion, but they don't exactly work as they're often portrayed in movies and other media.

For actual addition to the game...I don't really see a point. It would be more interesting to have poison-tip arrows, or perhaps a bodkin versus a broadpoint so the player can have an arrow that's better at punching through certain armor versus an arrow that's more suited for hunting(causes bleedout but lower armor penetration).

[BurgerDaddy]

There’s definitely a point to an arrow that casts light. Not saying I agree one should be added, but it would be a game changer for some situations.

[Zane Mordien]

This has to be the first "required" mod list that I've seen that doesn't list Carry On. 

[CastIronFabric]

Try traveling 10k blocks to a warmer climate with standard settings and no bed-spawn mod.

I would add bed spawn mod

 

[Maelstrom]

18 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

I would add bed spawn mod

No.   VS is an uncompromising survival game.   Bed spawn eliminates a LOT of the challenge to this game.  Add the optional mod if you like, but it should most definitely NOT be in base game mechanics.  VS ain't TOBG.

[Chrondeath]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom said:

No.   VS is an uncompromising survival game.   Bed spawn eliminates a LOT of the challenge to this game.  Add the optional mod if you like, but it should most definitely NOT be in base game mechanics.  VS ain't TOBG.

If keepinventory can exist as a world setting without destroying whatever masochistic ego effect it is you're getting from thinking of VS as THE HARDEST HARD THING EVER, so could bed spawning.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Chrondeath said:

If keepinventory can exist as a world setting without destroying whatever masochistic ego effect it is you're getting from thinking of VS as THE HARDEST HARD THING EVER, so could bed spawning.

I mean...if we're gonna just copy TOBG, then why bother making Vintage Story at all? If I'm recalling correctly, Tyron himself clarified the spawn thing in Oscillascape's interview a while back--the ability to choose a spawnpoint is quite powerful, and he wanted that choice to actually mean something.

If a bed spawn mechanic has to be added, then the player should need to work for it. Sleep in the same bed 20 times in a row to reset spawn. Allows an "easier" method while still being different from TOBG and making the choice actually matter since the player can't just reset it on a whim.

[Maelstrom]

16 minutes ago, Chrondeath said:

If keepinventory can exist as a world setting without destroying whatever masochistic ego effect it is you're getting from thinking of VS as THE HARDEST HARD THING EVER, so could bed spawning.

I didn't say VS is the hardest thing ever.  What made you thing I said that.   If you want a "hardest video game ever", go play the original Rayman on playstation.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom said:

No.   VS is an uncompromising survival game.   Bed spawn eliminates a LOT of the challenge to this game.  Add the optional mod if you like, but it should most definitely NOT be in base game mechanics.  VS ain't TOBG.

came here to say this.

19 minutes ago, Chrondeath said:

If keepinventory can exist as a world setting without destroying whatever masochistic ego effect it is you're getting from thinking of VS as THE HARDEST HARD THING EVER, so could bed spawning.

You're reading between the lines text that simply isn't there. There is a bit of tongue-in-cheek with emphasizing that VS is an uncompromising game, but it doesn't make the underlying sentiment any less true. Anything that can be seen as a compromise for the sole purpose of making the game easier probably shouldn't be included. I had no idea that keep inventory was a thing in VS, but now that I do, I don't want it. This isn't Minecraft and we should stop treating it as such.

[Chrondeath]

Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is a mistake.  The thing that makes VS attractive is how the difficulty adds meaning and incentivizes specific interesting behaviors--it is *more interesting* to build a windmill in VS because the windmill isn't decorative.  All the starvation and winter mechanics are necessary because all the food preservation technology isn't meaningful without the pressure of food being necessary and with varying seasonal availability.

I do not find that "avoid getting killed by wolves" stops being interesting just because it stops risking the loss of hours of progress.

I think building a bedroom is *under*-incentivized--right now, there's no reason to sleep at all, and the meta play is to never sleep and maximize what you can get done before winter by finding tasks that you can do at night.  It would be more interesting with something like Valheim's comfort system, although (a) that's a little too linear and (b) there isn't a stamina or xp system to tie a bonus to.  I don't know that spawn-setting is the right mechanic for a bed, but I don't think "find a rare-drop magic item from the zombie equivalent" is a very compelling alternative either--what realistic world process is that incentivizing?

Maybe if beds set spawn *once* per full night's sleep?  Incentivizing both sleep and death avoidance?  Hmm....

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, Chrondeath said:

I think building a bedroom is *under*-incentivized--right now, there's no reason to sleep at all, and the meta play is to never sleep and maximize what you can get done before winter by finding tasks that you can do at night.  It would be more interesting with something like Valheim's comfort system, although (a) that's a little too linear and (b) there isn't a stamina or xp system to tie a bonus to.  I don't know that spawn-setting is the right mechanic for a bed, but I don't think "find a rare-drop magic item from the zombie equivalent" is a very compelling alternative either--what realistic world process is that incentivizing?

I don't think respawning needs to follow a real-world process, since it's not exactly a realistic mechanic to begin with. It is, however, part of the lore, and shattering an esoteric item with similar properties to the player is believable enough, as well as a fair design choice to get the player to think a little about how and when they use that kind of power.

I do agree though that beds don't really feel incentivized enough. They're great for passing the time, but for a game that's trying to lean into realistic survival, staying up all night and going entirely without sleep is kind of silly. There should be some drawback to going without sleep, but it's also very easy to get that kind of penalty wrong--just look at Minecraft, for example. I think this is where the status effect system will come into play, in that going a couple nights without sleeping won't hurt the player, but going longer than that without any sleep will start to rack up penalties. Maybe the player finds themselves moving more sluggishly the longer they go without sleep, or perhaps they become more susceptible to disease.

27 minutes ago, Chrondeath said:

Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is a mistake.  The thing that makes VS attractive is how the difficulty adds meaning and incentivizes specific interesting behaviors--it is *more interesting* to build a windmill in VS because the windmill isn't decorative.  All the starvation and winter mechanics are necessary because all the food preservation technology isn't meaningful without the pressure of food being necessary and with varying seasonal availability.

Difficulty for the sake of difficulty can be a mistake, but so can convenience for the sake of convenience. It depends on the devs' design philosophy and goals. In the case of Vintage Story, having a keepinventory rule feels fair to me, because some players prefer a more relaxed experience with less challenge, and that kind of setting takes some of the pressure off without removing the challenge entirely. A bed spawn setting goes too far though, since it's both a copy of TOBG/commonly used, and removes whatever challenge is left from the game. 

[williams_482]

48 minutes ago, Chrondeath said:

Maybe if beds set spawn *once* per full night's sleep?  Incentivizing both sleep and death avoidance?  Hmm....

I can see a case for this. I think it would have to require a proper bed, not just a hay bed. Aged beds might give more respawns, in accordance with their rarity. 

If such a thing were implemented, the game would have to be smart about fallbacks. On death, first check if the player slept in a qualifying bed which still exists in the world. If none, then check if their most recent temporal gear spawn point still has respawns left, then finally default to world spawn. Bed respawns permanently overriding temporal gear spawn points would be very bad.

For arguments against, I recall a post from a while back (I've tried to find it, no dice) from someone who had just bought the game with their friends and started up a small server together, asking what the point of food was. After a long and confusing back and forth (what do you mean there's no reason not just starve to death?), somebody figured out that they had installed a bed respawn mod from the start, and whenever they died of starvation it took them right back to their house to keep doing exactly what they were doing before, with effectively no interruption. The bed respawn became a crutch to avoid needing to engage with food at all, which cut out a big chunk of the interesting early gameplay and left them unprepared to do any real exploring once this pattern was established. 

Respawning in a chosen place is a powerful ability; it should be expensive enough that a clueless new player isn't likely to stumble into it before they've figured out how to play the game. 

Edited June 5 by williams_482

[CastIronFabric]

3 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

No.   VS is an uncompromising survival game.   Bed spawn eliminates a LOT of the challenge to this game.  Add the optional mod if you like, but it should most definitely NOT be in base game mechanics.  VS ain't TOBG.

On the list for this thread:

8- Lasso and grappling hook for climbing.

I am suggesting that if one is going to have a list of 'must have mods' that contains something like 'Lasso and grappling hook for climbing' that perhaps a mod that makes it realistically possible to live somewhere other than within 5000 blocks of your first spawn could be on that list as well given how many of us like to live 10,000 blocks from spawn but also do not want to just start there via the settings.

That is all.

 

[Maelstrom]

45 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

for a game that's trying to lean into realistic survival, staying up all night and going entirely without sleep is kind of silly. There should be some drawback to going without sleep [emphasis added]

Why?   Given a certain ability seraphim have in a certain location, the need for searphim to sleep may be non existent.  Adding an emphasis for sleep?  Be careful what you wish for, you might end up with phantoms.

[CastIronFabric]

27 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Why?   Given a certain ability seraphim have in a certain location, the need for searphim to sleep may be non existent.  Adding an emphasis for sleep?  Be careful what you wish for, you might end up with phantoms.

I do not want to invest too much into this conversation but

The OP is talking about 'official mods' which I assume would still work like the tons of settings we currently have. I think having a setting is not a violation of the game principles, we already have plenty of settings one can choose to use or not.

Edited June 5 by CastIronFabric

[Teh Pizza Lady]

17 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

I do not want to invest too much into this conversation but

The OP is talking about 'official mods' which I assume would still work like the tons of settings we currently have. I think having a setting is not a violation of the game principles, we already have plenty of settings one can choose to use or not.

I imagine a list of "official" mods supported by the VS dev team would have more utility than a monocle, but that's just me.

[LadyWYT]

39 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Why?   Given a certain ability seraphim have in a certain location, the need for searphim to sleep may be non existent.  Adding an emphasis for sleep?  Be careful what you wish for, you might end up with phantoms.

Right, which is why I said that penalties should only start to occur after a few days. It probably also wouldn't be a bad idea to let that kind of feature have some sort of toggle so that server admins can turn it off, as otherwise players can end up having to essentially "time out" since not all players might share the same schedule. From a singleplayer perspective, needing to sleep once in a while doesn't feel as intrusive as it does in Minecraft, since days in Vintage Story are actually long enough to get stuff done while Minecraft days are relatively short. I think there's also a difference between slapping the player with a small debuff after a few days, that could be safely ignored for a few days longer before it absolutely demands attention, and dumping some monsters on the player to harrass them until they sleep(monsters that are tough to deal with because they're fast fliers, no less).

To be fair, it could turn out to be a monkey's paw.  But I've been testing a mod system out for a friend lately and the general idea(without spoiling too much) is to buff the player and make those buffs stronger with work, but with the built-in drawback of progress slowing the longer the player goes without resting. In this case though, "resting" can either be sleeping in a bed(which decreases the exhaustion faster), or simply taking it easy/going AFK for a bit(which is slower, but better for multiplayer).

19 hours ago, TεʞoшiИ said:

Monocle.

Since monocles seem to be a major point of discussion, it's worth noting that technically, monocles are already in the game since you can occasionally find traders wearing them. It's just not an accessory that's available to players...yet.

[Maelstrom]

I like being able to play without sleeping at all.  In all the 4 or 5 years I've played I think I may have sleep the night through less than 2 dozen times.  Seraphim being non-human in nature also argues against needing sleep unlike carbon based life-forms.  I've thought about the whole respawn thing from a "does it break my suspension of disbelief" aspect.  Given the angelic, non-physical implication of the character it seems reasonable to me that 1. not needing sleep is totally reasonable as we are not limited by human limitations and 2. respawning is simply creating a new instance of a physical body to house the non-physical entity the seraph is after the previous container was damaged beyond usability, a lot like the human cylons in SyFy's Battlestar Galactica.

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't think respawning needs to follow a real-world process, since it's not exactly a realistic mechanic to begin with. It is, however, part of the lore, and shattering an esoteric item with similar properties to the player is believable enough, as well as a fair design choice to get the player to think a little about how and when they use that kind of power.

Frankly, it is amazing to me how seemingly the more a design decision in VS gets justified with lore, the worse design decision it is. I mean, not that you're saying that it's good because it's justified by the lore, just a general pattern. There is a case to be made for mechanics to be informed by lore, but I've seen way too many cases across many games where developers seemingly ignore obvious problems or the community seemingly blindly defends the developers just because the mechanic is seen, in the extreme case, as some kind of sacred artifact that cannot be tampered with due to its lore significance.

It is tedious and frustrating to have to slog a long distance to the point of death to retrieve dropped items, just to come out roughly even and not grossly negative, and that's assuming the items haven't disappeared entirely. The "solution"? Spend at least two temporal gears - one to set the respawn near wherever I'm active, and another to presumably reset it back to the long-term home. Or, you know, just circumvent it with commands.

There are two very simple ideas that make me believe that the current design of death and respawn mechanics is misguided:

• heavy frustrators are the first priority for developers to address,
• a penalty that significantly exceeds the bounds of the challenge is an excessive penalty.

 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I do agree though that beds don't really feel incentivized enough. They're great for passing the time, but for a game that's trying to lean into realistic survival, staying up all night and going entirely without sleep is kind of silly. There should be some drawback to going without sleep, but it's also very easy to get that kind of penalty wrong--just look at Minecraft, for example. I think this is where the status effect system will come into play, in that going a couple nights without sleeping won't hurt the player, but going longer than that without any sleep will start to rack up penalties. Maybe the player finds themselves moving more sluggishly the longer they go without sleep, or perhaps they become more susceptible to disease.

This would be almost the exact same mechanic as Project Zomboid has, and it would inevitably end up the same - disabled in multiplayer. Even if you gloss over a range of problems and exploits that this would create, it is in most cases virtually impossible to regularly coordinate a larger group to sleep all at once without people just getting fed up with it.

 

19 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

fire arrows weren't really a thing in the middle ages since when you fire them, it would blow them out without modern chemicals.

Fire arrows very much were a thing in the Middle Ages, although granted, their primary use cases are almost entirely absent from VS as it stands. The value of setting something on fire from a distance was often way too great to pass up even if a large portion of simple flaming arrows would extinguish themselves before reaching the target. Larger arrows with a cage holding something like hot coals were also a thing. And so were Chinese arrows which utilized resin-soaked cloth and gunpowder. I'm reminded of Rain World's explosive spears, which would be a blast to throw into a cave.

 

20 hours ago, TεʞoшiИ said:

Monocle.

If not purely cosmetic, then it seems to me that the most obvious pointer to what a monocle should do is just to make it related to the temporal mechanics. A "Lens", if you will.

Edited June 5 by MKMoose

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom said:

I like being able to play without sleeping at all.  In all the 4 or 5 years I've played I think I may have sleep the night through less than 2 dozen times.  Seraphim being non-human in nature also argues against needing sleep unlike carbon based life-forms.  I've thought about the whole respawn thing from a "does it break my suspension of disbelief" aspect.  Given the angelic, non-physical implication of the character it seems reasonable to me that 1. not needing sleep is totally reasonable as we are not limited by human limitations and 2. respawning is simply creating a new instance of a physical body to house the non-physical entity the seraph is after the previous container was damaged beyond usability, a lot like the human cylons in SyFy's Battlestar Galactica.

I almost never sleep but I use the bed spawn mod because I want to start at spawn and run to 10k collecting all the stuff I need and can carry to start a base in the south. So there is that.

Edited June 5 by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

37 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Frankly, it is amazing to me how seemingly the more a design decision in VS gets justified with lore, the worse design decision it is. I mean, not that you're saying that it's good because it's justified by the lore, just a general pattern.

I disagree here, because there are a lot of designs that get labeled as "good" or "bad" due to the individual preference, and that goes for games in general, not just Vintage Story. If someone really hates a particular feature and doesn't find it fun, you're probably not going to convince them it's a good design, because to them, it's not. 

I think it's also worth noting that a lot of older games have "bad" designs when it comes to their mechanics; things are inconvenient, clunky, confusing, too complicated...the list goes on and on. Many newer games tend to prioritize player convenience. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, exactly, but it seems to me that older games tend to hold up better over time and attract new players, while newer games tend to fall to the wayside and get forgotten. 

53 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

It is tedious and frustrating to have to slog a long distance to the point of death to retrieve dropped items, just to come out roughly even and not grossly negative, and that's assuming the items haven't disappeared entirely. The "solution"? Spend at least two temporal gears - one to set the respawn near wherever I'm active, and another to presumably reset it back to the long-term home. Or, you know, just circumvent it with commands.

There are two very simple ideas that make me believe that the current design of death and respawn mechanics is misguided:

• heavy frustrators are the first priority for developers to address,
• a penalty that significantly exceeds the bounds of the challenge is an excessive penalty.

Or just...turn on keepinventory and don't worry about losing stuff? I'm pretty sure that's why the devs added that feature. I'm not saying the game needs to constantly grind players into the dirt, but...it's advertised up front as "uncompromising survival". I can't say that I really understand what the point of making challenges or that kind of setting is, if the end result is going to be giving the players the options by default to strip out every single challenge from the general experience. Or for that matter, I don't really understand why some players keep playing VS despite begging for it to copy some other game's mechanics. Wouldn't they be happier playing the other game that was designed with X mechanics in mind? What works in one game doesn't necessarily work in another, and part of what kills some games is they change the features that endeared them to fans in order to try to appeal to a broader audience. Sometimes the game doesn't die, but it will be haunted by its past--just look at Minecraft--and won't have the hardcore following it perhaps once had.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

Frankly, it is amazing to me how seemingly the more a design decision in VS gets justified with lore, the worse design decision it is. I mean, not that you're saying that it's good because it's justified by the lore, just a general pattern. There is a case to be made for mechanics to be informed by lore, but I've seen way too many cases across many games where developers seemingly ignore obvious problems or the community seemingly blindly defends the developers just because the mechanic is seen, in the extreme case, as some kind of sacred artifact that cannot be tampered with due to its lore significance.

It is tedious and frustrating to have to slog a long distance to the point of death to retrieve dropped items, just to come out roughly even and not grossly negative, and that's assuming the items haven't disappeared entirely. The "solution"? Spend at least two temporal gears - one to set the respawn near wherever I'm active, and another to presumably reset it back to the long-term home. Or, you know, just circumvent it with commands.

There are two very simple ideas that make me believe that the current design of death and respawn mechanics is misguided:

• heavy frustrators are the first priority for developers to address,
• a penalty that significantly exceeds the bounds of the challenge is an excessive penalty.

> Heavy frustrators are the first priority for developers to address.

Says who and by what framework? Some of the most beloved games are specifically beloved because death has fangs.

Dark Souls -- the whole identity of the franchise is built around death being your instructor. If you die, you did something wrong. Learn from it.
Any number of roguelikes -- Hades, Dead Cells, Caves of Qud, Dwarf Fortress on hardcore mode -- Dying means losing a run you've invested HOURS into and that's the point.
Minecraft (believe it or not) before the death system was reworked -- death used to mean game over. Now it's been revamped into it's own hardcore permadeath game mode.
Rust -- Death means you lose ALL your items. Strip that out and you have a walking simulator with base building. Nobody wants to play that.

The holding pattern is that a meaningful and somewhat punishing death gives weight to failures, instead of brushing them off like they're not a big deal. If anything the death mechanics of VS are somewhat lenient compared the games I mentioned since you at least get to keep your clothing and get a handy map marker showing you where you died.

> A penalty that significantly exceeds the bounds of the challenge is an excessive penalty.

False, with exception. The whole structure of a true survival game (pick any) is that death is supposed to be a setback. Expecting a neutral outcome from the event will only lead to frustration. If you can always return to your corpse and come out roughly even, then death has no weight and neither does the tension that makes exploration worth anything. You never know what might be around that corner, be it a bear, a sawblade locust, or worse.

The lore point instead carries the majority of the weight in this thread. Temporal gears are not just flavor text slapped on a mechanical band-aid over a broken respawning system. They actually represent the temporal energy that allows the seraphs to even exist. By shattering a gear and giving that energy a place to focus, you redirect the temporal flow to the place where you want to respawn, for a while. It's not lore being used to justify a bad decision but rather a decision made on the basis of the already established lore.

If death in VS is a heavy frustrator, that frustration is doing exactly what it needs to do. It's showing you the cost the game attaches to mistakes and signaling to you that something needs to change in your approach or the same thing will happen again.

Edited June 5 by Teh Pizza Lady