Villages

[ECI]

Villages would add a lot to VS.  They give players more reasons to explore.  They also make the game feel less lonely and more lively. 

When adding villages to VS, don't make the same mistakes that MC did. Don't make them dull. Villages should add life to the game. Have them interact with each other and do jobs. Additionally, unlike in MC, don't make them have a weird currency. 

Here is what I think the village in VS should be like. I will divide this into two parts. Part 's ideas are more realistic and less difficult to implement while part 2 is more far fetched. Before I begin, I am no programmer so I don't know how hard any of this would be to implement.

Part 1. Villages should, obviously, have different professions and actually go about and complete them. Some example professions are: blacksmith, farmer, tanner, etc. I think there should also be guards and soldiers. These would make the village seem less dependent on you, which makes sense because you weren't always there to defend the village. Additionally, Villagers should do more than just their jobs and sleep. Even villagers need some fun. Villages should also be compact and inside walls. This would make sense, because after the great disaster event people would want to be inside walls and this would cause them to squeeze together. Additionally, the compactness would make the village feel like 1 big structure which is a cool feeling.  Compactness also makes it easier to add atmosphere to a village. Here are some MC custom villages that are similar to what I am thinking.  I will show videos at the end for what type of village I am talking about. I also think that the towns should not seem to exist only for the player. They should seem to exist for themselves. Finally, the villagers should be the same species as the player. 

Part 2. Villages should have some sort of society with interacting villages that trade, battle and form allies. Some examples of what I am thinking are MC mods Millenaire and Improved Villagers. 

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions. I would love for you guys to discuss this and add your own ideas. 

 

 

[Brandybuck]

I tend to agree, but won't say so explicitly because I'll get flamed again.

But from my way of looking at things, we already have traders, and their stuff is already protected, and they sometimes appear in groups. So why not villages? They could have farms with protected crops to players have to trade for them instead of looting them. The game mechanics are already in place. Just stop drifters from spawning on of them of them like zombies due in MC.

[ECI]

I think you should be able to loot a village if you conquer it. This could mean killing all the villagers or maybe just the guards. This would cost you though. It would take away trading in that village. You could also make it so that if you kill a villager, you have a worse reputation with villagers. This would bring you worse trades and eventually cause guards to attack you. So, you could loot a village, but it will cost you. 

[AngryRob]

On 10/21/2020 at 10:05 PM, Brandybuck said:

I tend to agree, but won't say so explicitly because I'll get flamed again.

But from my way of looking at things, we already have traders, and their stuff is already protected, and they sometimes appear in groups. So why not villages? They could have farms with protected crops to players have to trade for them instead of looting them. The game mechanics are already in place. Just stop drifters from spawning on of them of them like zombies due in MC.

I would not mind seeing underground settlements, or using a temporal gear over a village ruin to go back in time to trade with them. 

[ECI]

Yeah, I agree with the underground settlements. That would make sense with what I have heard about the lore. I don't think the going back in time thing would be a great idea. It seems like it would be hard to implement. 

[AngryRob]

3 hours ago, ECI said:

Yeah, I agree with the underground settlements. That would make sense with what I have heard about the lore. I don't think the going back in time thing would be a great idea. It seems like it would be hard to implement. 

I was thinking the player would be sucked into a special dimension that would be similar to the area, but with a village and people. when you walk out of the boundaries you get teleported back to the spot you used the gear. 

It could very well be difficult to impossible to implement, then again, i have seen modders do insane things that even developers thought would be impossible, and from what i understand, Tyron used to be a modder...

[Sukotto82]

I could be wrong so correct me if I am but I think villages are already on their road map of things they will/want to add eventually. just need to be patient they have a lot of stuff to work on and it doesn't all magic itself into being overnight but yeah it will be nice to see full villages at some point.

[AngryRob]

Another thought, is that instead of villages being places on the map, they can be places we build? When we trade with a trader we can buy an npc bed and then in a few days a settler will show up, and if the bed is in a well lit place they will move in and can be given work. Maybe even have skills that they level up like in hearthstone and they can do stuff around the village? 

[ECI]

14 hours ago, AngryRob said:

Another thought, is that instead of villages being places on the map, they can be places we build? When we trade with a trader we can buy an npc bed and then in a few days a settler will show up, and if the bed is in a well lit place they will move in and can be given work. Maybe even have skills that they level up like in hearthstone and they can do stuff around the village? 

I like the idea of building a village. But I think you should find a small town (maybe 2-4 buildings) and build off of that and upgrade the village. And in return the villagers will help you. 

[Astrayo]

Thread might be a little old, but I do think that villages of this sort would be great. I think that villages should not necessarily be protected from the player messing with them, though.

I feel like in a game of this sort, it would be good for the player to have the freedom to do whatever they want in a village, even if what they want to do isn't really that smart. To add to the idea of villages feeling more alive, the player's actions in villages (Especially more reprehensible actions) should have an actual impact on that village and the villagers within. For example, I think players should be able to break/steal things (And get away with it if they aren't caught).

Another thing is that villages (if possible) should actually produce things for trading. Like a farmer selling crops, seeds, and food that they themselves have produced, blacksmiths actually taking commissions to make certain tools/weapons (As well as selling some that they've already made, bonus points if you could actually watch the blacksmith creating the tool), fishermen selling fish that they've caught (whenever fishing gets added), etc.

Would also be nice to be able to have things like a job board and NPCs offering you different jobs themselves. Would be nice to be able to do different odd jobs to earn some extra rusty gears, and would also make villages that much more worthwhile.

Here's some examples of things that would be cool to be able to do in villages.

• Visit a tavern and interact with NPCs and get food and drinks while also looking for work
• Steal crops at night or when no-one's looking, lowering the village's food supply and causing food prices to go up, possibly even causing villagers to starve if done too much
• Break into homes to steal valuable items, using them yourself or selling them at another village, or even the village you stole it from at risk of them realizing that the items are stolen
• Set fire to the farms or a building and see what happens

Might be a bit morbid, but in any case I do think freedom in a game like this is important. If something is messed up, then let the player decide that for themselves instead of arbitrarily limiting them to specific things. Though it probably would be good to give an option to disable it in multiplayer so that players can't just destroy villages so nobody else can use them.

One last idea for villages would be the ability for players to start their own villages. I think it'd be a lot of fun for players to be able to start their own villages and build them up to have their own traders and taverns and whatnot.

[ECI]

I agree. Everything that you mentioned, would make villages feel much more lifelike. 

[l33tmaan]

I always liked that lonely feeling I got from early Minecraft, so maybe having an option to spawn villages that don't have villagers and have a bunch of rotted food/rusting tools would be a nice compromise. 

[ECI]

Even in worlds with live villages, there should be dead villages like you mentioned above. These would be more complete than the ones we have now.  

[Christina BlackFeather]

I hope they do get villages in.  I can't log in to minecraft.   When it ported to microsoft it broke my login badly.  I only do creative there.   My survival mode has become Vintage Story and I love it.

 

But I feel very lonely.  I miss my villages.

[Blazer]

I personally would prefer having to attract villagers/traders yourself to your own built up village. Keep worldgen largely devoid of man-made constructs as is. Would make building up your own village much more rewarding, as well.

[Fernando Chacon]

On 9/28/2021 at 2:06 AM, Blazer said:

I personally would prefer having to attract villagers/traders yourself to your own built up village. Keep worldgen largely devoid of man-made constructs as is. Would make building up your own village much more rewarding, as well.

i agree. One of the problems that villagers may have is that they discurrage players to build their own bases or the players may destroy them to get resorses if they find them early in the game. i thing that wondering villagers locking for a home would be great but villagers with actual profesions. True NPC like peasants, miners, traders, knights and bandids.

[Screwy]

Building your own villages sounds so minecrafty. A bit like animal husbandry, just with seraphs.

I find the idea great, that villages are fully working and damn complex. But this is only partially necessary. The trader does not need to sell you the exact fish he just caught, because you don't watch him all day long anyway. 

Freely building in a city makes no sense, as well as starting up a new settlement. After all, the player is not God like in... Let's say... Other games.

For the stealing part, a simple lock picking mechanic should work well to get access to chests. Could be a reason for better padlocks, even in multi-player. A malfactor would then have a bonus on that skill and success should heavily depend on the material tier of the padlock minus the tier of the lockpick (bronze lockpick on steel padlock = not so good) 

Also I'm thinking about land claims for players, which you could buy or rent, to have your own house in a village. Why not? What's wrong about "discouraging players to build"? Voxel block games should encourage a variaty of different playstyles. Just has to add up with the lore, shouldn't disturb another kind of playstyle, should be fun for at least some players. If this is achieved by letting players live in peaceful, dense villages, go for it. 

Finally I have to say, that all of the ideas in this rather old thread sound good, but also sound like rather something for the modding area, at least by now. 

[Screwy]

Aaand the trading system. I think it is not necessary to give every village a variaty of traders. A few very specialized ones for dayly consumption would be sufficient. The traders outside in the wilds need to have still a big advantage over the ones in villages. Maybe the trading offers stay basically the same within one village, so you need to go out to collect different stuff.

Also I would totally like a travel schedule for cart traders, so that they have 3-4 different locations to move their cart to, despawning the current one and spawning a new one at the next location, teleporting the trader there. 

A sign could be left spawned to inform the player, when the trader will return, where he is now (coordinates) and when the trading options are refreshed. 

In that way we don't need more traveling traders to compete with the ones in villages, because they are easier to access without long travels, and it feels more emersive to find traders in carts, rather than in huts.

[Hal13]

there was quite a lengthy discussion about villages and towns and stuff already, not sure why it was necessary to start a completely new one (sorry just found it again it was a derailed discussion about temporal storms that went in the villages/towns/"huge cities" direction)... i'm still thinking scattered homesteads instead of actual villages and towns would be more likely with the traders species basically being more powerful combat wise than seraphs which themselves are way more powerful than humans, as it is now, assuming the traders aren't significantly stronger than the average of their species, there would be little incentif to form big communities for them, a family or two with one to three houses and maybe some specialised building for a craft and a few fields would feel more immersive for me than a village of these people, especially as such a village may inhabit quite some space and like with trader wagons probably wouldn't be able to be changed by the player.

the craftsperson living there might only be able or willing to process stuff for a fee if the player gives them the necessary ressources (maybe they have some sort of exclusive deal with the traders when it comes to trading?) maybe a homestead tailor will only repair clothes, maybe a homestead farmer sells only a handfull crops each time trades refresh, a homestead smith might pay for ore or metal ingots, and only if they have it in their inventory they'd sell items made from it to the pc?

and i like that mechanic @Screwysuggested, maybe there always is a traveling trader point next to the homestead? and maybe there could be additional trading hub points where two trader routes overlap in which case both traders occassionally will be there at the same time? BUT on the other hand that would limit player building stuff quite a bit as each of the locations the wagon can spawns would be claimed by the trader and couldn't be built in. but maybe a single trader only goes to 2 homesteads and 2 hub points? that would limit the impact on building freedom such a mechanic could have...