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 Sunday at 01:46 PM 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 Sunday at 02:07 PM 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 Sunday at 02:13 PM 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 Sunday at 02:36 PM 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 Sunday at 08:43 PM 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.

[MKMoose]

What frankly baffles me in this whole discussion is that distance is given so much weight, while what the player can do over that distance gets seemingly thrown to the wayside.

There are plenty of games which have the player travel huge distances over the course of a playthrough, and the best of them tend to be characterized by several traits:

• travel follows a clear trail of story-focused sub-objectives which lead the player between distinct regions of the world with carefully managed periods of tension and rest,
• the world is dotted with various quests and minor points of interest which provide plenty of variety between major locations and prompt to explore before moving on,
• the player is able to carry practically everything that they need, and inventory systems are mostly limited just to keep players from accumulating garbage,
• what the player can't carry is instead placed in key points of interest, like traders in cities,
• risk is minimized to a local scope, so that the player never loses an excess of progress.

There is plenty that can be discounted on the account of theming, desired experience or inherent limitations of the game, but when the game just skips almost everything that facilitates engaging travel, then how can you expect players to enjoy it?

A common argument seems to be roughly that the current or generally longer distances better incentivize the player to prepare and they make travel feel more impactful, and yet in my experience they quite literally don't do that. You could double the distance, and I will still run day and night fueled by berries and spite, and would be completely unimmersed and bored throughout. You could halve the distance, and I might actually prepare adequately and that trip would feel like a single, cohesive experience, in large part just because preparation no longer feels like a fool's errand.

 

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

23 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.

FYI, you're arguing here that ~70%+ of the current distance scaling wouldn't work for Chapter 2 (not even considering the cave because it's actually very close).

 

Once we aren't considering clearly undesirable extremes, there is no coherent way to say what distance is better, especially when getting into differences as small as 5k vs 7k, except maybe through statistics like player retention in a random trial, and we clearly don't have that option. Doubly so because a lot depends on context, and changing that context could actually be the best way to widen the window within which story structure distance is acceptable.

I believe that nothing would help with travel distances more than (1) world generation and movement tweaks to make travel itself more engaging and enjoyable, and (2) features like pack animals and tents to facilitate long-distance travel with large amounts of cargo and quick camp or outpost setup, as well as potentially some changes to respawning that have been discussed in this thread somewhat. Simply give the player the means to do what you want them to do. And if you want travel to be challenging, then make it so intentionally through regions of resource scarcity and threats, instead of making the whole process just tedious and boring with the biggest threat being random sinkholes.

Edited Monday at 01:07 PM by MKMoose
Rearranged some points.

[CastIronFabric]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

FYI, you're arguing here that ~70%+ of the current distance scaling wouldn't work for Chapter 2 (not even considering the cave because it's actually very close).

 

What baffles me in this whole discussion is that distance is given so much weight, while what the player can do over that distance gets seemingly thrown to the wayside.

There are plenty of games which have the player travel huge distances over the course of a playthrough, and the best of them tend to be characterized by several traits:

• travel follows a clear trail of story-focused sub-objectives which lead the player between distinct regions of the world with carefully managed periods of tension and rest,
• the world is dotted with various quests and minor points of interest which provide plenty of variety between major locations and prompt to explore before moving on,
• the player is able to carry practically everything that they need, and inventory systems are mostly limited just to keep players from accumulating garbage,
• what the player can't carry is instead placed in key points of interest, like traders in cities,
• risk is minimized to a local scope, so that the player never loses an excess of progress.

There is plenty that can be discounted on the account of theming, desired experience or inherent limitations of the game, but when the game just skips almost everything that facilitates engaging travel, then how can you expect players to enjoy it?

A common argument seems to be roughly that the current or generally longer distances better incentivize the player to prepare and they make travel feel more impactful, and yet in my experience they quite literally don't do that. You could double the distance, and I will still run day and night fueled by berries and spite, and would be completely unimmersed and bored throughout. You could halve the distance, and I might actually prepare adequately and that trip would feel like a single, cohesive experience, in large part just because preparation no longer feels like a fool's errand.

 

Once we aren't considering clearly undesirable extremes, there is no coherent way to say what distance is better, especially when getting into differences as small as 5k vs 7k, except maybe through statistics like player retention in a random trial, and we clearly don't have that option. Doubly so because a lot depends on context, and changing that context could actually be the best way to widen the window within which story structure distance is acceptable.

I believe that nothing would help with travel distances more than (1) world generation and movement tweaks to make travel itself more engaging and enjoyable, and (2) features like pack animals and tents to facilitate long-distance travel with large amounts of cargo and quick camp or outpost setup, as well as potentially some changes to respawning that have been discussed in this thread somewhat. Simply give the player the means to do what you want them to do. And if you want travel to be challenging, then make it so intentionally through regions of resource scarcity and threats, instead of making the whole process just tedious and boring with the biggest threat being random sinkholes.

Regarding Travel, here is what I am doing. 

I am planning for a very long play run. very long.

I currently have two bases (with 2-3 more in the plans). One near spawn that effectively is the main base and another one at 2,000 blocks south (I found an awesome Better Ruins location) which I use for offloading, re up on cooking, boiling water (I have a mod) and I stay there for a few days while I get what I need. Now unless I absolutely need something, what I find at that base I leave at that base and I do not allow myself to bring too many tools to the base. So as an example of an exception is that the  base currently is close to the only iron I have found so Iron I can bring back to any base.

Now, I plan to build a road not only to this base but eventually all the way to 20,000 blocks where I found a Better Ruins Village which undoubtedly has all the goodies 20,000 blocks has. I am also using the Cartwrights Caravan mod in which I plan to use a cart on my travels to make the road that eventually goes 20k blocks. So along that road there will likely also be small little makeshift bases I made along the way on building.

Also, there is another Better Ruins location I plan to build another base along the way to the 20,000 end point. So before end game I plan to have about 4-5 bases. 

I plan to do most of this without translocators although I might do it in later game.

 

Now a few observations about that.

1.Did I need a story to compel me to do this? no

2. Would a story be required to compel a implemented game mechanic balance that would compel a person to do that without role playing it like I am? no a story would not be required.

3. I would argue that Better Ruins Mod alone builds compelling reasons to travel better than any feature or other mod out there.

4. Just do it. The game does not need to give you permission. Make your own rules RP style.

Is my option compelling for to you? I do not know but one can make their own compelling RP reason because the default game play at least for me does not provide compelling reasons to travel because 1. I do not care about the story missions very much and 2. the trading system seems lacking. I can not put my finger on it exactly but trading feels like its more bother than its worth other than to get the money for an Elk. Not to mention, at least until a year ago pretty much 100% of the travel one would be compelled to do is was over by the time they were qualified to get an Elk. So the game is not perfect, balance of that kind is not easy so its not a moral failure to not get it perfect and its ok to RP or adjust settings.

In conclusion, for me personally all that is needed for compelling reason to move is an amazing new location to move to because working in the same location for 200 hours can get a bit old. A story is not required. For other people that might not be enough though and I get that.

EDIT: Here is a compelling way to encourage travel. For a late game item or build you need a material that only spawns in savanna but you can not carry it by running and your walk speed is reduced greatly because its heavy.

 

 

Edited Monday at 01:15 PM by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, MKMoose said:

FYI, you're arguing here that ~70%+ of the current distance scaling wouldn't work for Chapter 2 (not even considering the cave because it's actually very close).

The point I was trying to make there is a much shorter distance isn't really going to feel like a real journey unless there's several obstacles there for the player to overcome. That is, the distance could be as short as 4-5000 blocks, but if it still takes the player 3-4 days to actually reach the location then it will still feel like a proper trip. With the current setup, it's easy enough to clock 7000 blocks or more in a single day, so all shortening the distance really accomplishes is turn the expedition from a journey into a weekend getaway. 

Personally, I don't think it's a very good idea to shorten the distance and pile on a bunch of challenges, because that tends to frustrate the player and cause problems elsewhere. It's kind of like trying to go somewhere in Skyrim--the distance isn't actually that far, it just feels like it is because you had to fight your way through three different bandit groups, two pairs of necromancers, a handful of trolls, and whatever else decided to crawl out of the woods and hang out by the road.

4 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I believe that nothing would help with travel distances more than (1) world generation and movement tweaks to make travel itself more engaging and enjoyable, and (2) features like pack animals and tents to facilitate long-distance travel with large amounts of cargo and quick camp or outpost setup, as well as potentially some changes to respawning that have been discussed in this thread somewhat. Simply give the player the means to do what you want them to do. And if you want travel to be challenging, then make it so intentionally through regions of resource scarcity and threats, instead of making the whole process just tedious and boring with the biggest threat being random sinkholes.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at in my original posts, before things got derailed into knocking heads over distance exclusively. Adding more procedural dungeons for the player to get distracted by, more flora and fauna to see, and more environmental conditions(sickness, injury, mount condition, scarcity of regional resources, etc) would give the players a few more things to manage on longer trips, as well as add interest to the daily activities while the player isn't traveling. Pack animals are a great idea as an option for players to manage their travel as well; managing more creatures at once will slow the travel a bit, for sure, but it would also allow the player to take a lot of supplies with them and camp more comfortably, or bring a lot more loot back home.

I still really like @Facethief's idea about placing temporary checkpoints at certain story locations. 

[KyoShinda]

My last trip to pick up my remaining items at the 3rd story location took ~20 hours one way. Full sprint almost the whole time avoiding mountains and lakes. I've done a lot of night riding so I'm used to that, even did it during a heavy temporal storm which was hard AF cuz the ground gets wavy. Something to note, I don't have 'item drop on death' on because the whole running back to where you died with no gear got aggravating although I rarely die now but stupid deaths happen. Also, I use one temporal gear on the location I'm going to and set up a little base and when I'm done use another gear at my house. Even though surface drifters are annoying they are a pretty good source of temporal gears because they're so numerous.
also, if i fall in a hole I use a rope ladder to climb out then use the elk flute to warp it out

also also, i have my shears selected in my hotbar for whenever I run into leaf block hell

Edited Monday at 11:45 PM by KyoShinda

[Pentatope]

On 6/13/2026 at 3:53 AM, Jubal said:

I know some people differ but I don't think stumbling across plot locations early is or should be a problem: I think I'd be more motivated to keep playing and to introduce other people to the game if it was easier to go "look there's these cool locations you can find" more than "so if you play for six real-world months you might get to go to a small village". I do think that future chapters involving even further travel would either have to involve a lot more fast travel, or a change of the spawn mechanics/penalties, or would just be prohibitive for any normal player (bearing in mind that none of us in this thread, by virtue of being here, are in any sense normal players). Part of the question I try to approach this stuff with is "given how VS works, could I recommend it to friends" and I think this is the sort of thing where the answer becomes "maybe, but" rather than "yes definitely".

I definitely agree with this sentiment honestly. Don't get me wrong, I love the richness of this game and the complexity that enforces the need to take things slow. It seems like the saturation of time intensive activities is baked into the structure of the game and time is something that the game expects you to forfeit hand over fist. Which has both positives and negatives aspects to it. 

Allow me to use the leather-working process as an example. Assuming that the player never sleeps, the average IRL time that it takes to prepare leather from start to finish is 6.664 hours (wherein 48 = the number of IRL minutes one single day of Vintage Story takes, 48 * (3 + 4.5 + 0.83) = 399.84 minutes / 60 minutes per hour = 6.664 IRL hours). This is an egregious amount of time wherein the player is simply waiting for leather working to be complete. The important thing to mention about leather working is that the player is likely preforming other tasks while waiting for the curing processes to occur, so the 6.664 hours is not for waste. So when the player, after several hours of waiting (possibly over several play sessions), finally obtain their precious leather- it can feel very satisfying. The wait was long, but there is a lot to accomplish in 6.664 hours, so it doesn't feel boring and it feels like a reward for waiting so long. This is the positive examples of how Vintage Story uses time well. It rewards patience, while not enhancing tedious (or boring) gameplay loops. This rewards the brain with dopamine from the delayed gratification of completing the task. 

You absolutely can achieve the same delayed gratification dopamine from the long trek to the story locations. However, unlike with our leather-working example, the trek to the story location is the only thing that the player is accomplishing during that trek. Depending on the world settings, the long trek is unlikely to force the player to see anything interesting or allow the player to find new resources (at least in my three times completing Chapter 1, I have never found anything "cool" during my adventure). And the trek could be simply annoying depending upon the conditions of the terrain, which could limit/slow travel, which extends the amount of time it takes to reach their destination (anyone like those short but jagged "hills" that spawn with just enough space between them that it is inconvenient to cross & are also low-key ugly?). So, if a player reaches the story location and finds the story location to be lack-luster or uninteresting... then yeah... suddenly your story locations have become a good representation of one of the downsides of major time requirements. If the player feels like they wasted their time (and not just a little bit of time either, mind you), then the player may just not pick up the game again. If a game doesn't respect the player's time, then the player won't get that dopamine, and the brain will lose interest.

Unfortunately, this comes down to a player mentality. Some players will be more tolerant to spending absurd amounts of time, while others... not so much. Certain players have more IRL responsibilities, obligations, etc. and don't have the time to give hours and hours into a game trying to craft leather or travel to a story location. 

Which is why I often stumble into the hard decision whenever I'm recommending Vintage Story to people. The "maybe, but" sentiment is real. And in my opinion, mostly comes down to time availability & attention span. If a friend doesn't have the MANY hours to spend on a game, then I can't in good faith suggest VS. Which is a real shame, because the game is so beautiful and rich and intricately crafted.

[Vratislav]

7 hours ago, KyoShinda said:

My last trip to pick up my remaining items at the 3rd story location took ~20 hours one way.

Yes, it is possible to play it this way after one is experienced. I have realized that after hours riding elk to local traders and for exploration, falling into pits just stops happen. The last time I did C2, I was confident enough to use only two temporal gears before entering these two difficult locations of four (and died only in the second one as I am really bad in parkour  ). Traveling in night or even during temporal storms is fully possible, as you need solid armor for the story locations, and it can be worn when riding the elk without speed penalty (this should be maybe changed a bit, I wouldn't mind like 1/2 of speed penalty from armor when riding elk). 

Comparing with the first journey: it was in 1.20 testing so the distance was twice as far (yes, it is already halved now). I did not know what is waiting there (intenitionaly skipped all spoilers), was inexperienced with elk riding (it was also more janky then), so riding in dark was not an option. Some things making the progress in that D. location easier were not yet implemented, and I did not bring one nice item that helps a lot.

Spoiler

The lift in the tower was not yet working and who might assume that the glider schematics is not in the Resonance archive just for fun.

I have underestimated amount of food needed (started the journey in February) and got to give up the first attempt of the D. due to hunger and went foraging and trading for several days to get some food. On the other side, trades were more welcoming then with their beds then, that helped a bit. Still, it got me from the comfort zone of uninterrupted basebuilding progress and I was satisfied with the result. 

 

1 hour ago, Pentatope said:

the trek to the story location is the only thing that the player is accomplishing during that trek. Depending on the world settings, the long trek is unlikely to force the player to see anything interesting or allow the player to find new resources

This is the part I have entirely different experience. If I remember well, in the entirely first journey to C1, I have found surface marble deposit. In the longest played world, I dug out small limestone deposit nearby my base and was very happy to find chalk eleven thousand blocks far on the C2 journey. Also, I have found enough olivine to move to the second tier of refractory bricks at the time. In the last gameplay, I have found basalt I needed for build just when traveling to the C1 and limestone that I was missing at whole my neighborhood (replaced by borax, but not for plaster) when traveling to the C2. 

So as I can recall, I have almost always find something valuable from journeys to the story locations, maybe except the first C2 run that was difficult other way and the story locations satisfied me, so I do not remember if there was something usable outside story locations. But for repeated journeys, there is a lot to be interested in. Maybe the first time, when the journey feels demanding, people tend to be focused only on the travelling as fast as possible so they miss the opportunity to really explore the land and use as much from the journey as possible. The elk's speed is counterintuitive to the exploring for the resources. But setting secondary goals for the journey beforehand (as looking for particular missing resources), helps for sure to make to journey worthwhile by more ways than just by stepping to the next chapter. 

 

[Jubal]

3 hours ago, Pentatope said:

Unfortunately, this comes down to a player mentality. Some players will be more tolerant to spending absurd amounts of time, while others... not so much. Certain players have more IRL responsibilities, obligations, etc. and don't have the time to give hours and hours into a game trying to craft leather or travel to a story location. 

Yeah, I think this is a big chunk of what some of this thread comes down to. And I agree, I think the game is pretty good at making the leather process slow but rewarding enough, whereas with the journeying side it really doesn't feel like the game does respect the time invested into playing it, especially when the likely outcome of playing in a more interesting way is a sanction of "burn real hours more time". Wanting to be able to access the plot of a game I already invested stacks of time into, in something like a normal-ish amount of playthrough time for a computer game, doesn't feel like it should be a terribly unreasonable thing to ask. (I'd almost say that if VS' design intention is to gate people like me out of being able to play in a normal human amount of time, it would be kinder of it to do so in a much more up-front way and really front-load unpleasant combat stuff that we'll find unplayable purely to make it obvious that we should just get a refund rather than dragging it out and shifting the goalposts to gate progression off many tens of hours into gameplay.)

I think also reaching the first location of C2 particularly hits that exhaustion button hard, because you get there, you work through it, and it's not super big and doesn't unlock anything new except the location of the next place which is even further away from you than you are from home. So there's a major feeling of "congrats, you did the big uninteresting slog, here's your reward of a bigger uninteresting slog that you didn't have any way to know to prep for, so also you're going to have to do the first slog again twice to resupply with boxes even if you did bring enough other stuff". Which is... not super interesting game writing.

I do agree with the points about adding some more environmental challenges and more pack animals for the longer travel, those definitely do sound like good ideas for improving the experience, and the idea of checkpoints for plot locations makes a lot of sense too. I think it'd be good if environmental challenges pushed the player away from the current dominant strategy of travelling on hilltops as much as possible, a thing people rarely actually do because being hit by a storm on a hill ridge with no shelter is quite unpleasant. And moving away from the major problems of travel being gotchas and insta-kills would generally feel more in keeping with the grounded feel the game is trying to give its real-world elements, IMV.

[CastIronFabric]

I am slighting interrupting this broadcast for a quick side note on the topic of 'encouraging players to travel'

As a side note, I just got finished watching all the Better Ruins videos they have on their Mod page. Oh..my...god

All I can say is this when it comes to encouraging players to travel, Better Ruins...full stop, that is 100% the reason I am excited to travel.

In fact, just last night I worked on my road system for way longer than I should have

-Now back to regular programing