How worth it is pushing on with story stuff/is it just me or are the default distances kind of silly?

[Jubal]

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

it kind of boils down to individual player preference

The core point here for me still being that you, an experienced player who has played many worlds, have all the information you need to adjust the game to your exact preferences, and a new player doesn't. But anyway, I'll leave it there, I don't really think there's any point carrying on this discussion: fundamentally given your bar for 'casuals' goes up to people who merely invest triple rather than quadruple figures of hours into a game, and you want the baseline game/plot to gate out a bunch of people who would like to enjoy playing it because of a sense of purism about it needing to be sufficiently 'serious', we're just not going to agree and that's not a design philosophy I'm ever going to endorse. I totally get wanting to be challenged by a game, and I think it's good when games have lots of ways to provide variance and extra difficulty for hardcore players, but I don't think I'm ever going to understand this philosophy of actively wanting new players to be kept out of or put off things they'd enjoy especially when that doesn't actually need to affect your personal experience of play at all. So yeah, let's leave it there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As regards the temporal gear discussion: I think from my perspective finding ways to make trading a bit more interesting would maybe be a useful element, I'd like to do more trading but it's not hugely interesting at present and I suspect there could be more mechanical interest added. This might be partly connected to the lack of groundedness in the whole trading system at present so hopefully it's something that can be developed.

I also agree with CastIronGear's assessment above re where most players are likely to be re the temporal gear stuff.

[DarkGold]

2 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

I feel fairly confident that in a full playthrough the large majority of people do not have a ton of T gears to be throwing around about 10 times while they make a trip to 20,000 blocks and back.

This is something that makes me think.

Firstly, if this was the intended strategy, it would be nice if the game let me stack temporal gears. Carrying 3 on my elk and 1 around my neck is nice, but far less than the 10 I'd want to carry.

Secondly, this is what has led me to try and build a terminus teleporter; to avoid spending that many gears. I have relatively high confidence that I could get to my destination without dying too frequently, which means that it would cost me less gears to respawn when I die than to preemptively reset my spawn point every so many thousand blocks or so, to avoid retreading ground if I die on the journey.

The problem I see is that if I change my respawn point at the destination of a story location (because I expect it to be dangerous), I can no longer use a base return teleporter to get back to my base. Which means I have a choice:

• Do not reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to foot the cost in temporal gears when I die several times.
• Do reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to take the long journey back, employing the incremental respawn update strategy to make the cost of retreading ground on death lower.

This ignores the challenge of making these machines in the first place, which is no small challenge, as you can't choose to hunt for specific Jonas parts. I am 1 part away from being able to build a terminus teleporter, so I'm interested in trying to get that final part. I don't think I'm close to being able to build the base return teleporter.

It would be nice to be able to set the base return teleporter to a specific block, rather than wherever the respawn point is currently set to.

Edited 13 hours ago by DarkGold
Added thought about change to the base return teleporter.

[Facethief]

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

When it comes to planning journeys, NPCs shouldn't have to tell you to bring food, weapons, armor, or medical supplies--that should really be a given. If an NPC is saying an area is dangerous, it's a very good idea, I've found, to take those warnings very seriously, since those warnings aren't just narrative dressing.

The problem with this is that in most games, the warnings are entirely narrative dressing, so the base expectation may be that something similar to the rest of the game will be present at the story event.
However, the NPC telling you about chapter one (which is the one that I’m mostly sure has a warning of its dangers) should by all means have an excellent idea of what the player should bring with them, at least in general; it is their job, after all, to go on that kind of adventure.

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I suppose if the argument is that the location distances are too far, then the question to ask is...what exactly constitutes a reasonable travel distance then? It's easy to argue they should be shorter, but what does shorter actually look like, and how does such a change impact the story and game as a whole?

IMO, a good distance would be 5-6km between different things. That’s about a strenuous day’s travel, so this would probably work for my personal taste if applied to chapter two. Although, I don’t think that the chapter one location really needs to move.

Adding to the respawn discussion, I think maybe having set respawn points at some locations would work well. For two in particular, it would make quite a bit of sense. As for how they could work, I’d have them need a simple interaction to activate, and have them deactivate once the player gets far enough away, although how far “far enough” is would likely depend on the distance between the nearby story locations.

[CastIronFabric]

26 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

This is something that makes me think.

Firstly, if this was the intended strategy, it would be nice if the game let me stack temporal gears. Carrying 3 on my elk and 1 around my neck is nice, but far less than the 10 I'd want to carry.

Secondly, this is what has led me to try and build a terminus teleporter; to avoid spending that many gears. I have relatively high confidence that I could get to my destination without dying too frequently, which means that it would cost me less gears to respawn when I die than to preemptively reset my spawn point every so many thousand blocks or so, to avoid retreading ground if I die on the journey.

The problem I see is that if I change my respawn point at the destination of a story location (because I expect it to be dangerous), I can no longer use a base return teleporter to get back to my base. Which means I have a choice:

• Do not reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to foot the cost in temporal gears when I die several times.
• Do reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to take the long journey back, employing the incremental respawn update strategy to make the cost of retreading ground on death lower.

This ignores the challenge of making these machines in the first place, which is no small challenge, as you can't choose to hunt for specific Jonas parts. I am 1 part away from being able to build a terminus teleporter, so I'm interested in trying to get that final part. I don't think I'm close to being able to build the base return teleporter.

It would be nice to be set the base return teleporter to a specific block, rather than wherever the respawn point is currently set to.

the 'indented way to play' is to play how you want to. This obsession in the community to fixate on playing 'how the game should be played' in a game that is 1. a sandbox by definition 2. one of the most customizable games ever made can get exhausting for sure.

So on that, here is what I am doing on my playthrough, I am making multiple bases BEFORE any one base is completed on purpose. Not only do I want multiple bases, I do not want to wait until absolute end game so that all I am doing is building bases for no reason. So I am applying my own personal rule set that gets me out in the world making multiple bases.

 

Now, I gotta ask you? How many people have an elk and about 10-20 T gears to waste while going down 20,000 steps to get some Poppy seeds for the alchemy mod in mid game?

 

[CastIronFabric]

2 hours ago, Jubal said:

The core point here for me still being that you, an experienced player who has played many worlds, have all the information you need to adjust the game to your exact preferences, and a new player doesn't. But anyway, I'll leave it there, I don't really think there's any point carrying on this discussion: fundamentally given your bar for 'casuals' goes up to people who merely invest triple rather than quadruple figures of hours into a game, and you want the baseline game/plot to gate out a bunch of people who would like to enjoy playing it because of a sense of purism about it needing to be sufficiently 'serious', we're just not going to agree and that's not a design philosophy I'm ever going to endorse. I totally get wanting to be challenged by a game, and I think it's good when games have lots of ways to provide variance and extra difficulty for hardcore players, but I don't think I'm ever going to understand this philosophy of actively wanting new players to be kept out of or put off things they'd enjoy especially when that doesn't actually need to affect your personal experience of play at all. So yeah, let's leave it there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As regards the temporal gear discussion: I think from my perspective finding ways to make trading a bit more interesting would maybe be a useful element, I'd like to do more trading but it's not hugely interesting at present and I suspect there could be more mechanical interest added. This might be partly connected to the lack of groundedness in the whole trading system at present so hopefully it's something that can be developed.

I also agree with CastIronGear's assessment above re where most players are likely to be re the temporal gear stuff.

The way to play the game as its indented is to play the game as you like. I do not know if the developers have said that specifically but considering the fact that the game is 1. a Sandbox game if not even the first choice to use an example for describing what a sandbox game is 2. is one of the most if not THE most customizable game ever made.

Having said that, although I have only been playing this game for about 1 1/2 years, I am retired and I spend nearly every day either playing or watching videos of people play. I personally know people who play, I have been on public servers and I have watched many different youtube channels covering VS lets play from heavily modded ones, newbie ones, tutorials, live streams etc.

In aggregate of all that experience what I can say based on that experience is this, I am confident that the vast majority of people likely do not really care much about the story or lore other than a side note at best. Regarding farming for TP gears during storms, I have personally experienced one time on a public server of people doing that one time in about a month of game play. I have seen about a total of 2 videos of people farming for TP gears during a storm. Now just becasue people are not recording a video of them doing it does not mean they are not doing it, but it does mean they do not see it as compelling content because most people likely do not care about that. It also might be possible that youtube algortim knows I do not care and thus does not show me but on that I doubt it highly that it gets that granular within one game.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

20 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

the 'indented way to play' is to play how you want to. This obsession in the community to fixate on playing 'how the game should be played' in a game that is 1. a sandbox by definition 2. one of the most customizable games ever made can get exhausting for sure.

By intended, I just mean "supported and encouraged by the base game". By all means, you can play however you want, and that can involve modding the game to avoid certain challenges or create new ones. I can fill my a lot of my inventory with temporal gears, it just creates the logistical challenge of not being able to carry other things that I might want to. Sometimes that will be a frustration players want to grapple with. Sometimes there might be a different way to solve the problem that avoids that frustration.

I like to play the game without mods (on my first play through at least) because I like to try and solve the problems the devs designed with the tools the devs provided. The game is still unfinished (most of the story is not implemented yet), so it's possible (maybe even likely) there will be other ways to solve problems in the future, and creative mode is always an option, but I am interested in playing the standard version of the game.

You could say I treat the game as a series of puzzles to be solved, and I presume the puzzle designers wanted me to have fun while solving it. So if the first way I come up with to solve the puzzle isn't very fun, I look for another way to solve it that is more fun, without trying to change the bounds of the puzzle.

Edited 12 hours ago by DarkGold
Added thought about game as a puzzle.

[CastIronFabric]

26 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

By intended, I just mean "supported and encouraged by the base game". By all means, you can play however you want, and that can involve modding the game to avoid certain challenges or create new ones. I can fill my a lot of my inventory with temporal gears, it just creates the logistical challenge of not being able to carry other things that I might want to. Sometimes that will be a frustration players want to grapple with. Sometimes there might be a different way to solve the problem that avoids that frustration.

I like to play the game without mods (on my first play through at least) because I like to try and solve the problems the devs designed with the tools the devs provided. The game is still unfinished (most of the story is not implemented yet), so it's possible (maybe even likely) there will be other ways to solve problems in the future, and creative mode is always an option, but I am interested in playing the standard version of the game.

You could say I treat the game as a series of puzzles to be solved, and I presume the puzzle designers wanted me to have fun while solving it. So if the first way I come up with to solve the puzzle isn't very fun, I look for another way to solve it that is more fun, without trying to change the bounds of the puzzle.

I am suggesting it goes much deeper than 'allows you to play as you want' I am suggesting 'play as you want' is a core tenet, fundamental, main pillar, it IS specifically 'exactly how its indented to be played'. Now I am not saying the developer has said that, I am saying the evidence suggests that its likely accurate.

In a game where 'making it mod friendly' has been a core pillar for the architecture of the game from the start it begs the question, doesn't the developer intend for you to use mods?

EDIT: To be clear if how you personally want to play is the default settings that is of course your personal choice, but those settings do not make them 'correct' becasue there really is no 'correct', its just an option nothing more.

Edited 12 hours ago by CastIronFabric

[DarkGold]

36 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

In a game where 'making it mod friendly' has been a core pillar for the architecture of the game from the start it begs the question, doesn't the developer intend for you to use mods?

I believe (based on the background the developers have in modding, and the positive experiences they have regarding mods) modding is an intended option for the game. This is also a strategic move for the game as a product being sold by a business; having a vibrant modding community is good for the product, good for sales.

39 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

I am suggesting 'play as you want' is a core tenet, fundamental, main pillar

Mods definitely support this. Having multiple ways to solve a problem in game supports this too.

39 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said:

those settings do not make them 'correct' becasue there really is no 'correct', its just an option nothing more.

Agree, "intended" does not equal "correct" or "only way". However, Vintage Story is still a game (with a story), and not a pure sandbox compared to a product like Gary's Mod (which is closer to a set of tools one uses to make games). It is still designed with the intention that players can play it without being required to add anything further to it for it to function and be fun.

The developers still deliver "their vision" of the game. Their vision has been expressed to be a work in progress. One of the other benefits of having mod support is that while a game doesn't have as much content as you envision for it to have, and your development resources limit how quickly you can add content, others can provide content that can entertain the community while you focus on developing your vision of the game.

When developers are building a game that does not require mods to function, they are actively setting challenges for players to solve and giving the players tools to solve them. If the game can have bugs, we acknowledge that the game has intended behaviour. We can take this further by saying if the game has a puzzle, the devs probably designed one or more ways to solve that puzzle (or maybe that part of the game isn't finished yet, if a game is in active development). If the game is not fun, we can acknowledge either A) we are not the intended audience (Elden Ring is not everyone's cup of tea, despite being a game many people enjoy and not a broken or unfinished game), or B) the design of the game could be improved to be more fun. Most developers are probably trying to produce a product where the design of the game supports a lot of fun without the player being required to modify the game.

In either case, if you want to buy the product and modify it to suit your tastes, and doing that is fun for you, fabulous; money and time well spent. If you want to buy the product and play it without modifying it, that should also be a fun experience, and if it's not, you could look at refunding the game or modifying the game to make it more fun. Or you could wait and see how the game evolves since it's in active development, maybe send suggestions to the developer since they have a place for you to do that.

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, DarkGold said:

 

 However, Vintage Story is still a game (with a story), and not a pure sandbox compared to a product like Gary's Mod (which is closer to a set of tools one uses to make games). It is still designed with the intention that players can play it without being required to add anything further to it for it to function and be fun.

 

I could not disagree more and I plan to refrain from engaging in explaining why.

All I can say is that I feel very confident given my experience with the game playing with others and watching likely hundreds of hours of game play that the story and lore is lower on people list of game play experience priorities by a long shot than what people on the forums seem to think it is.

I will refrain anymore from debating over 'how the game is indented to be played because that will always go sideways

 

 

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Jubal said:

I totally get wanting to be challenged by a game, and I think it's good when games have lots of ways to provide variance and extra difficulty for hardcore players, but I don't think I'm ever going to understand this philosophy of actively wanting new players to be kept out of or put off things they'd enjoy especially when that doesn't actually need to affect your personal experience of play at all.

I could make the same point about always changing things to fit the desires of new players; if things always change to make the game more convenient/accessible to them, then what the game is telling veteran players is that their experience and what they enjoyed about the game doesn't matter, and the game ends up turning into something else entirely. That's not always a bad thing, but I think it's fair to say that's why a lot of players left Minecraft for Vintage Story, or otherwise walked away from other games and IPs they once enjoyed. I've been one of those "new players" in a few cases, and in hindsight, those grumpy old veterans that I didn't listen to at the time were right about a few things. 

 

5 hours ago, DarkGold said:

The problem I see is that if I change my respawn point at the destination of a story location (because I expect it to be dangerous), I can no longer use a base return teleporter to get back to my base. Which means I have a choice:

• Do not reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to foot the cost in temporal gears when I die several times.
• Do reset my spawn at the destination, be prepared to take the long journey back, employing the incremental respawn update strategy to make the cost of retreading ground on death lower.

This ignores the challenge of making these machines in the first place, which is no small challenge, as you can't choose to hunt for specific Jonas parts. I am 1 part away from being able to build a terminus teleporter, so I'm interested in trying to get that final part. I don't think I'm close to being able to build the base return teleporter.

Honestly, I figure the base return teleporter could probably be made a little cheaper than it is, especially since it's a single-use item. It shouldn't be so cheap that the player just takes one on every long walk, but if it were a little cheaper and perhaps more accessible toward the mid-game, then it might help push players to utilize tech more and be more ambitious with their exploration.

 

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

The problem with this is that in most games, the warnings are entirely narrative dressing, so the base expectation may be that something similar to the rest of the game will be present at the story event.

Right, which is why I tend to harp on a lot as a factor of Vintage Story's design--it really does require some major shifts in one's thinking. Personally, I don't really think that's a bad thing. It's nice to have warnings that actually mean something, and have the game trust me enough to make my own decisions.

 

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

However, the NPC telling you about chapter one (which is the one that I’m mostly sure has a warning of its dangers) should by all means have an excellent idea of what the player should bring with them, at least in general; it is their job, after all, to go on that kind of adventure.

Maybe, but it also seems like that NPC doesn't really know much about what's inside the location. There's also stuff that they would realistically recommend bringing, that the player actually shouldn't due to the protections on the story locations. Granted, I don't think it'd be appropriate to have the NPC try to explain location protections, but it's probably a good idea to put a note about that in the handbook. Call it "General Adventuring Notes" or something, put it in the guide section, and give a brief overview of location protections and a very basic list of supplies(food, armor, medical, etc) to give players an idea of what to pack and what to generally expect. I think that would probably be a pretty fair way to ensure that players have some extra pointers if they need it, without resorting to explicit hand-holding as many games tend to do.

I would also note that story locations could potentially draw some more inspiration from older game designs here as well. It used to be that players would know a boss fight or other tough challenge is coming up simply by the placement of healing items and other useful consumables. Depending on DM styles, it's a trick in TTRPGs as well--make a little supply room and place it conveniently before the boss area, or give the players a rest to recover spell slots before they go fight the big bad monster. That being said, if you want players to manage their resources carefully, you don't want to provide rests or supply drops every time, since that ends up teaching them that the game will always cover the shortcomings.

5 hours ago, Facethief said:

IMO, a good distance would be 5-6km between different things. That’s about a strenuous day’s travel, so this would probably work for my personal taste if applied to chapter two. Although, I don’t think that the chapter one location really needs to move.

I don't think this really works unless travel is made much more challenging. Right now travel is fairly easy to handle with some halfway decent supplies and experience maneuvering the elk; the only hazard I can think of is falling in a hole, getting completely blindsided by an enemy, or forgetting to bring a cookpot and bowl. Falling in a hole isn't much of an issue, since the elk is quite tough and will soak up the damage, and can be teleported out of the hole via the flute. Enemies aren't really a problem since the elk can outrun them easily. Forgetting a cookpot and bowl isn't the end of the world, but it makes scrounging up food more of a hassle if you need to supplement your supplies with hunting and foraging.

If the player could potentially get sick due to traveling in inclement weather, needed to care for their mount, needed to sleep, or otherwise had more things that would significantly impact their travels, then I'd be more inclined to agree that this would be a more reasonable distance in general, since traveling would have more teeth to it and managing all those at once is going to be rather tough. Basically, the distance might be shorter, but it'll still take the player a few days to get there and a few days to return. As it stands currently, I would say that 5-6k is more half a day's travel, since mounts don't need rest and neither does the player.

One thing I do want to note specifically on chapter two--yes, the distances are quite long, but it is intended to be a journey. Chapter two also establishes the precedent of the player not needing to make that trip every single time, since the player unlocks a "fast travel" option. Future story chapters that involve travel may not be quite so intense, and will likely also have some sort of "fast travel" for the player to unlock as well. In that case, I don't think having a long journey as a one-time thing is all that bad, and the distance also acts as a bit of a narrative break, allowing the player to mull over what they know and imagine what could be coming. It hits especially hard on the third location of chapter two, both riding to that location and returning from it. Having that kind of distance for one journey also helps the world to feel believably big, which helps it hold up better over time.

5 hours ago, Facethief said:

Adding to the respawn discussion, I think maybe having set respawn points at some locations would work well. For two in particular, it would make quite a bit of sense. As for how they could work, I’d have them need a simple interaction to activate, and have them deactivate once the player gets far enough away, although how far “far enough” is would likely depend on the distance between the nearby story locations.

So, like a checkpoint? If it's just for certain story locations, that might be all right, since it can make specific areas a little more forgiving while still leaving the world at large dangerous.

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, DarkGold said:

Is it reasonable to just have a setting that lets players do less of any of the 3 possible activities (fighting, trading, panning) and get the same result as players that like to do more of those activities in much less time (eg, drop rate is increased, treasure hunters guaranteed to always be selling temporal gears)? This doesn't introduce any new sources, it just limits the amount of the game players don't enjoy that they have to engage with, and they can change that amount according to skill (if players get really good at killing things later in the game, they can change the setting back to normal). I assume this would be a world setting mostly experienced in single player (so has no effect on other players' enjoyment), but I don't see why it couldn't be a player specific setting on servers, like standard/creative game mode is. This approach would not impact the believability of the game world (it is clear the world should be harder, a player chooses to make it easier).

The problem with giving everything an equal outcome regardless of the risk involved, is that it renders choice meaningless and pushes players into opting for the easiest option every time. After all, why risk life and limb in a temporal storm to acquire a pile of temporal gears if you can just spend the same amount of time panning and get the same amount of gears, without the risk? The appeal of low-risk actions is that the player doesn't need to invest very much, but the return, although modest, is basically guaranteed. The main drawback of such actions is that they tend not to be very exciting since safety is a priority. In contrast, high-risk actions require the player to invest more resources, that can easily be lost since the returns aren't guaranteed, but the actions tend to be more exciting as a result, and produce rewards appropriate for the risk involved for players who can manage that kind of challenge.

 

10 hours ago, DarkGold said:

Would these methods be viable and fun for players that like to spend their time doing these safer activities without disincentivising the more involved activities the game currently supports? Or does panning gravel/sand/bony soil already sufficiently fill this niche?

The above is how panning is already set up. It's a very safe way to collect copper for your first tools, but not a very exciting one. Scouting for surface deposits or delving for deep copper is much riskier and more expensive, since it requires tools and leaves one open to monster/animal attacks or accidents, but it has a bigger return and tends to be a more interesting task to do, partly because of the risks involved. If panning were more lucrative or exciting, players probably wouldn't be bothering with mining and scouting unless they absolutely had to, because acquiring copper would be as easy as digging up the nearby beach and panning it from the safety of boxed-in puddle.

[DarkGold]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

The problem with giving everything an equal outcome regardless of the risk involved, is that it renders choice meaningless and pushes players into opting for the easiest option every time.

I agree, that would be a problem if a) all outcomes were equal and b) this was the default mode of the game. I would not want this as the default setting for the version of the game I play. This is why I framed it as a setting that could be modified, like the spawn distance of locations, which the game currently supports.

Instead of all outcomes being equal, you could either:

1. Raise the drop rates of all equally, so panning is still a lower drop rate than fighting a high tier creature, but all rates are higher than base. This still incentivizes fighting over panning for convenience.
2. Have a separate setting for each source.

I believe players are likely to choose 1 strategy based on their preferred play style. Or at least favour 1 strategy as their primary means of acquisition for significant periods of the game.

The problem we are trying to address by adding this setting is that some players simply do not want to engage with the existing options at all, because they don't find them fun. Panning has always been an option that is safe. Why do people still not have gears if they can do the safe thing? Because spending time to do that isn't fun. It's more fun for them to entirely skip the challenge (and use creative mode or a mod to solve the problem instead).

By attempting to add an optional setting or an alternative source, we look for a solution that isn't "skip the content entirely" and instead makes it more rewarding to engage with content, or lower the barrier to entry.

Eg; fighting is currently very rewarding. If players fundamentally don't want to fight, that means they won't get gears from this source. Or if they do, it feels like pulling teeth for them. If instead of trying and failing to kill the hardest enemies or having to kill 100 basic enemies, they could just kill 1 or 2 basic enemies (a high effort task for this player, comparable to a much harder task a more combat centric player could complete with the same effort), would they not feel more rewarded for their troubles? Would they be more interested in attempting to engage with this part of the game rather than simply ignoring it?

This is the principle all difficulty settings in games work on, right? Make it easier or make it so you have to do less of the thing you struggle with. And in a single player game, difficulty settings are generally a positive?

Edited 6 hours ago by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

So, like a checkpoint? If it's just for certain story locations, that might be all right, since it can make specific areas a little more forgiving while still leaving the world at large dangerous

Yeah, the locations built by or with the help of... a certain individual... would probably have been built with some knowledge of how seraphs tick, especially given the purpose of the second one.

[LadyWYT]

50 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

I would not want this as the default setting for the version of the game I play. This is why I framed it as a setting that could be modified, like the spawn distance of locations, which the game currently supports.

 

50 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

The problem we are trying to address by adding this setting is that some players simply do not want to engage with the existing options at all, because they don't find them fun. Panning has always been an option that is safe. Why do people still not have gears if they can do the safe thing? Because spending time to do that isn't fun. It's more fun for them to entirely skip the challenge (and use creative mode or a mod to solve the problem instead).

By attempting to add an optional setting or an alternative source, we look for a solution that isn't "skip the content entirely" and instead makes it more rewarding to engage with content, or lower the barrier to entry.

This is why the game is geared to heavily support mods, and make creating mods as accessible as possible. While it would be nice to have a setting for everything, it's not really feasible to do so simply because there's no way to account for each individual playstyle. Menus will get cluttered, and code will get very complicated very quickly since changing certain values can have unintended consequences elsewhere, and it's not always possible to separate everything into neat little isolated boxes. Players who break their game just by changing settings also, understandably, get rather frustrated, so it's generally a good idea to make sure that there's as few chances for that to happen as possible(hence why certain VS settings have warnings about potentially making the world unplayable).

 

56 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

Eg; fighting is currently very rewarding. If players fundamentally don't want to fight, that means they won't get gears from this source. Or if they do, it feels like pulling teeth for them. If instead of trying and failing to kill the hardest enemies or having to kill 100 basic enemies, they could just kill 1 or 2 basic enemies (a high effort task for this player, comparable to a much harder task a more combat centric player could complete with the same effort), would they not feel more rewarded for their troubles? Would they be more interested in attempting to engage with this part of the game rather than simply ignoring it?

Honestly, I would say that if the player isn't interested at all in fighting, not even with the creatures set to "never hostile" or settings otherwise adjusted to make the combat easier...Vintage Story probably isn't the best game for them. And I don't think it would be a very good idea to allow them to change the settings(outside of mods) to do things like let every surface drifter drop temporal gears, since that sets an expectation that the game will always bend to the player's will rather than require the player to engage the game on its own terms and improve their own skills. That's harsh to say, but I don't think it's unfair. I think it's also fair to say that a player who struggles with combat probably won't find it exceptionally fun at first, but as their skill improves they'll likely start to enjoy it more, because their efforts will have clearly meant something.

To attempt a bit of a silly example, I suppose it would be like me trying to play GTA but expecting there to be an option to complete the game without going to strip clubs, stealing cars, or acting like a criminal. The entire point of the game is to do crime stuff; the game itself doesn't need to change or otherwise add options to accommodate players like me.

1 hour ago, DarkGold said:

This is the principle all difficulty settings in games work on, right? Make it easier or make it so you have to do less of the thing you struggle with. And in a single player game, difficulty settings are generally a positive?

Eh...kind of? Difficulty settings are there because not all players are going to be playing at the same skill levels, and not all players want the same amount of challenge. Some players just want to play the story and have a relaxed experience, while some will accept nothing less than the ultimate permadeath setup. Typically, difficulty settings tend to be rather generalized, with maybe a handful of specific options for accessibility reasons or controversial features. If a player wants to have a specific tailored experience, that's where modding comes into play. Mods allow players to season the game to their exact preferences, without changing the game for everyone else.

Likewise, I think it's fair to note that making the game more accessible to the general public by removing the "difficult" parts isn't always a good thing in the long term. Skyrim did this, and while it was a successful game...it really doesn't hold up that well over time, especially when compared to its predecessors. To cite a specific issue with it--the player can pretty much do all the quests on a single character, and thus see most guild stories and everything in one playthrough. This is great for more casual players who aren't familiar with RPGs, since it lets them have fun without locking themselves out of content, but for those who enjoyed the RPG aspects of what TES games were it's a terrible feature, because it means that player choices no longer have any meaning. What does it matter if you join the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild, if no one's ever going to call you out on the bad behavior? Likewise, what's the point of playing a heroic character if you can act like a complete scumbag and still get the same results? In previous titles, player choices actually mattered, since helping an NPC(or choosing not to help them) could affect how other NPCs saw you. They might be more difficult games to get into, but they hold up better because they're catering to a specific audience.

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

Yeah, the locations built by or with the help of... a certain individual... would probably have been built with some knowledge of how seraphs tick, especially given the purpose of the second one.

Maybe like Apocrypha from the Dragonborn expansion in Skyrim? As I recall, the player was technically killable in that realm, but rather than die when their health hit 0, they would fall to their knees and just be kicked out to wherever they read the associated Black Book. Reading the Black Book again would drop them back in at the start of whatever chapter they were on, making it relatively easy for them to just try again without the risk of getting caught in a quicksave deathloop.

Now to be fair, I don't think that system really works for the first two chapters in Vintage Story. However, it would probably be an interesting way to expand on what was introduced in chapter two, as well as a good way to handle challenges in more far-flung story locations when they get added.

[DarkGold]

13 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

if the player isn't interested at all in fighting, not even with the creatures set to "never hostile" or settings otherwise adjusted to make the combat easier...Vintage Story probably isn't the best game for them.

The mandatory fighting in certain story locations certainly leans this way, when it comes to playing through the story.

I've just looked through the other game modes to see how they tweak the experience. Exploration mode makes creatures passive, so one would be unlikely to die unless they starve or fall to their death. They may still need to change their respawn points, so demand for gears doesn't disappear. Monsters still spawn so they could go and beat them up without them fighting back to easily get gears in this mode?

If that's a little too easy, Standard lets one boost player health and weaken enemy strength down to 25%, so they can certainly make combat easier if they wanted an experience where enemies still attack, but it wouldn't be so hard to survive and kill them.

It seems like there are decent number of options baked into the game at the moment.

In the cases where temporal gears are still in play, it seems like the game still wants you to do the same actions you would be doing by default to get them, but you could make combat easier, if not the other 2 sources. This doesn't so much make temporal gears more plentiful for players, but it does make it easier to handle combat.

41 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

This is why the game is geared to heavily support mods, and make creating mods as accessible as possible. While it would be nice to have a setting for everything, it's not really feasible to do so simply because there's no way to account for each individual playstyle.

I guess it's fair to say that if you want something as tailored as a higher drop rate for temporal gears, when the game is providing other difficulty adjustments already, you could look for that in a mod, rather than the base game.

I do think, given the wide variety of player expectations, it's fair to expect players test the standard experience, find it doesn't suit them in one way or another, and decide to modify the settings after some time in game. It looks like you don't have to start a new world to change any of the survival settings in your world, and they are all pretty clearly labelled, so that experience isn't bad.

[LadyWYT]

43 minutes ago, DarkGold said:

It looks like you don't have to start a new world to change any of the survival settings in your world, and they are all pretty clearly labelled, so that experience isn't bad.

It depends on the setting. World generation settings tend to be the most dicey, since trying to fiddle with those after world creation can produce ugly transitions in landscapes or strange behavior, if not break the world entirely. When it comes to story locations specifically, they all generate at world creation, so changing that particular setting after creation isn't going to do anything except maybe apply the new value to future story locations, or perhaps only apply if there's some command to regenerate the structures specifically--to my knowledge such a command doesn't exist.