What is missing and what is too much (Only my opinion)

[Skandarella]

The world seems empty, there are traders but nothing more human.

 

It would be nice if there where human events like wandering traders, bandit raids, people who are in struggle(fallen into a cave, getting attacked by animals, starving) and you can rescue them to get a reward.

Perhaps not villages, but camps with local people would be nice and a faction system. If you are using resources in near of their camp they are going to hate you and attack, if you are trading with them, they will like you. The camps are scaling their tech level with you, if you have constructed specific items, their camps will upgrade.

 

There are also too few mob varieties, it makes the world boring.

 

Mobs which are missing:

 

Cow, Corcodile, Bird of Prey, Ostrich, Goose, Kangaroo, Horse, Camel, Bear, Beaver, Seal, Whale, Fish, Monitor Lizard, Crab, Rhino, Elephant, Monkey, Parrot, Turtle, Anteater, Lion, Hippo

 

Small Animals like Crickets, Rats, Ants, Sparrows, Butterflies

 

The Biomes doesn't look different enough, especially deserts and dry zones just look like empty and not really like natural landscapes, specific structures, rocks, plants are almost missing. There should be also specific music to the Biomes, standard soundtrack doesn't fit well with them, also with the jungle Biomes.

The pine trees doesn't look much different from birch or oaks, the leaves should get new textures, not moving so strong in the wind and a new overall shape. Almost all trees in the game are looking not much differentiated enough. Needles don´t move so strong like leaves.

There are maple and pine standing together, almost looking the same shape, only textures differ.

 

The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless, why a sepia option to make it look much more boring? Saturation boost option would be much better.

 

What I most don't like about this game are the clouds. Too massive, too high, ugly, transparent giant skyscraper-like objects. It would be better if they where much more flat, not transparent.

 

Second worst: Skin color. You cannot look like a human, only in a decaying state, like a zombie. Please more human like skin colors: sand, pink, brown, black.

[Ubu]

I recommend learning well about the game's "Road Map" in the "Devlog" page since a good portion of your suggestions are already within that map.

 

The world is indeed empty but there are plans to add more and more life over time, that includes villages and civilizations, and if you have checked the Dev's posts in "Discussions" you'll notice that the next update will be focusing on Homestead and adding more animals such as birds.

 

The biomes will look more interesting the more nature-focused content is added, such as vegetations and trees, but that's not the priority, especially, for the outer reaches like jungles, deserts that only a few care to travel to. And personally, with the few contents we have so far, I think biomes managed to look gorgeous and interesting, especially the mountain formations. Although, I'd really like to see beautiful rivers and oceans with beaches, especially deep extremely large ones.

 More music is cool but it's the least important thing right now.

 

Trees.. This is my favorite part. Or rather.. my least favorite one.. Trees bugged me a lot in this games, not only visually but also functionally.

I don't like to compare the game to Minecraft.. but the trees look and function almost just like Minecraft. Especially, with the floaty, slow decaying leaves funk (when you don't cut a tree with an axe directly).. Really disappointed me.

• Visually:

I know the games tries to stay faithful to the blocky voxel-based art style, but.. the trees.. really really look uninteresting with these same sized full blocks they have right now.. It really bugs me to see birch the same thickness as oak, the bulky same looking blocks really limit the shapes you can have with trees and makes them look very comical sometimes. I'd love to see more thickness variation, actual branches and things that make a tree look like a tree and not a pile of leaves on a stick. I think the Dev can take Inspiration from the famous Minecraft Mod: "Dynamic Trees". 

• Functionally:

For instance, the growing mechanic is very unrealistic and immersion breaking.. Plant a sapling, turn your back, wait 4-8 days, turn around. A tree pops up right into your face.. Kind of silly.

Would be nice to see a growing mechanic like Minecraft's Dynamic Trees Mod! (again) But if that's too heavy on the code, maybe just better growing stages? Fixed stages like crops? Perhaps longer growing time too. The older the tree the better the harvest. Longer time to mature also encourages logging in forests, rather than just cramming a bunch of saplings in your backyard and making your own forest in a matter of days. It makes wood a more valuable resource and logging a more dangerous task, since forests are the home to wolves and hopefully other dangerous creatures in the future. It also gives forests more purpose other than.. honestly right now.. just finding beehives..

Oh, let's not forget the awkward and wonky wood cutting, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who experienced that funkiness with the leaves or logs disappearing from other trees that you aren't trying to cut. Trees overlapping with each other whether through touching leaves or branches or logs are recognized as one tree for some reason by the game. It doesn't only make thing look weird after cutting but it also hurts the durability of yours tools really badly because you can't tell the game that it should only cut down this specific tree. Unless you manually break the connection by removing all the touching leaves, branches or logs.. It's a frustrating issue.

Better tree felling, preferably something like Dynamic Trees, (and again) would be much much appreciated. I'd really love it if the Dev gives attention to trees as soon as possible, hopefully in the upcoming update since it does mention the addition of fruit trees. I believe it's a good opportunity to at least experiment.

 

I don't agree about the colors at all, stronger and more vivid colors are usually a poor design choice in my opinion for games like this one, it would be fitting if the game had a happier theme or atmosphere.
The game is about the darker mysteries of a seemingly peaceful world and the cosmic horror that lies about, it's called vintage story and it has a lot of emphasize on time and rust and tragic history. The gloomy sepia strengthens these vibes and gives it a vintage feel. Making it live to its name. But honestly, it's not even that saturated and boring like you say, the humid areas in warmer seasons are actually very vivid and full of lively green colors. Also, dropping the Sepia level to zero helps in your case to be honest.

 

Clouds.. I have mixed feelings about them, but I learned to live with them. I rarely look at the sky and my view distance is low anyways. Functionally they are great, I like the dynamic system and the shapes. Nothing wrong with the heights and sizes are great too.

The transparency and overall look however is.. mmmmmeeeeh... I wish they looked more smooth and connected..??? Having a hard time describing my issue with them... but I think hiding the inner faces of the cubes would make them look better??? They look very choppy, the individual blocks i mean.. aaand.. can't find the right words.. but please Dev do something about it, haha..

 

The skin is something the community has decided on via voting and the option for humane skin tones didn't make the cut. I personally support this decision and think the community chose well. If you knew your basic game lore you'd have realized that you are not human in the first place in this game, but a tall humanoid creature called Seraph, which are known for having bluish skin tones. I love the alien looking skin color personally. So, yeah, don't think this suggestion will be taken into account now.

[caffeine9999]

On 1/6/2021 at 9:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless, why a sepia option to make it look much more boring? Saturation boost option would be much better.

Please don't. There are enough cartoonish-looking MC clones

[Hal13]

As Ubu already posted many points of the critique are already adressed and will be changed later.
And others (like Player characters skin color being more humanlike) were voted against by the community.

With flat clouds you can't really see much difference between cloud types without using the weather command. Weather cycles and cloud formations are leaned on real life weather, therefore seeing a specific cloud formation gives the player the possibility of predicting the weather to come. Therefore the used way of implementing clouds is imo the right choice. I even think the way the tranparent textures are used is quite good in reflecting thickness of the cloud even from directly below (something you can even do in real life).

15 hours ago, caffeine9999 said:

Please don't. There are enough cartoonish-looking MC clones

Please don't call them MC clones (many have less in common with MC than VS), as MC itself is only a long developped infiniminer clone (even Notch did say it) saying any bloxel based game would be a Minecraft clone takes away from the creator of the original bloxel game idea. But you are right, most bloxel based games seem to look even more cartoonish than MC.

 

Now to the trees

I haven't seen that similar looking trees yet, but most of the time the trees i see are either standing that close you can't make out which one is which, basically larger bushes or easily discernable.

I have seen oaks that are a single tree with stems up to at least 2x2 blocks big (not sure if there was one 3x3 oak, but i think there was) and about 200+ log blocks (i once chopped down an oak which filled over 24 slots with stacks of 32 logs each, in hind sight i should have used it in a build instead, but i needed oakwood and there were nearly no oaktrees around) plus leaves. But never have i seen birches, maples or pines generating that way, on the other hand i have seen pines about 50+ log blocks high. I don't think there isn't enough variance between trees that got generated together with the world.

And i think making sapling spawned trees all similar is not the worst way to reflect that these worldgenerated trees are really old and you should think about chopping them down for the wood.

Sapling growth rate can be changed, if you think 8 days is way too short a period, why not make it 30 in the world settings when creating the world or go all out and make it 999 days via /worldconfig saplingGrowthDays? Even the 8 days are 8 days longer than in Minecraft, where you can grow trees instantanously with the right setup (no other randomtickable blocks other than saplings in a 128 radius around the player) or fertilizer.

Wood cutting is possibly not that easy to change, you'd need to differentiate not only between logs and leaves, but worst case make every tree an entity. Other than in Minecraft trees in VS don't grow (or better generate) always just straight, the wood cutting mechanic does have to take that in account, therefore you cut down any logs higher or same height and within 1 block of the other and all leaves that may have generated by them. Yes maybe you could relatively easy differenciate between log types and leave types, but it is relatively much coding for relatively little benefit, as you'd still have the same problem if the forest/plantation you cut down is of the same tree type. It's definitely more a polishing issue than a pressing matter and therefore should be adressed after all the planned basics are in, especially as there will be more tree types to come and it would have to be adressed again each time a new type is introduced.

[Ubu]

Thank you Hal13 for the technical input. I completely forgot about the options for growth rate.

I gotta praise this game for how flexible and customizable it is, truly one of its powerful aspects.

Sorry, my tree feedback sounded more like a rant, haha.. but I just see mods like Dynamic Trees or TerraFirmaCraft Plus and their trees and get star-struck.

I really love this game and expect only top-shelf content from this small hardworking team. The game truly has a great great potential, but I always keep in mind that it is a WIP. So setting the basic foundations is most important! 

Brainstorming is fun, but I'll always be happy with whatever this game offers. I know it will deliver.

 

[junawood]

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

there are traders but nothing more human.

Yes, it's lovely.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

Butterflies

They are already in the game.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless

There are areas with different saturation levels in the game and the colors change throughout the year. Explore a bit more, and stay away from the more desaturated ones if you don't like them.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

What I most don't like about this game are the clouds. Too massive, too high, ugly, transparent giant skyscraper-like objects.

I can only guess that you didn't spend enough time in the game to see other cloud types?

Edited January 9, 2021 by junawood

[Mikel Monleón]

On 1/6/2021 at 2:32 PM, Ubu said:

maybe just better growing stages? Fixed stages like crops?

I like this idea. Would be cool to see the different stages of growth. Would fit nicely with the current mechanics of the game too. 

[Epihnea]

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless, why a sepia option to make it look much more boring? Saturation boost option would be much better.

this is in my opinion the biggest issue , visually . It make all the landscape look the same , and it looks very tasteless . I mean i love autumn , but other seasons such as spring and Summer are not very well handled . It really feels unatural and it doesn't help to find a specific place when lost because everything looks the same . For me a color boost/update ( colors not blending but having better contrasts ) is the way to go. 

[Joseph Fowler]

Wait there are birds coming in the next update?

 

[Joseph Fowler]

Honestly I dont see anything wrong with the seasons, Ive played through an entire in game year now and my only complain is that spring and summer are practically identical visually. Spring could either use more color, or go for the muddy, wet, and misty look. Also the game is inspired by some horror games like silent hill, so the colorless, vintage anestetic fits the tone of a broken world better. Also when it comes to the livelness of the world, i feel like the dynamic animal behavior makes the world feel alive. This isnt minecraft, that pig isnt just going to sit there and humor you as you salughter its brothers and sisters, no its going to flee for its life or its going to try to kill you, heck in my world there is this one boar that always tries to kill me when ever i get even remotly close, yet this one pig that ive had lying around my base camp since day 2 has been the chillest pig in existence, its like its used to my player, unfortunately his offspring do not like me as much, I cant really confirm this but Im pretty sure that animals that are around the player more often become less likely to attack. 

[junawood]

On 1/11/2021 at 11:06 PM, Epihnea said:

On 1/6/2021 at 8:12 PM, Nena Kaesebier said:

The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless, why a sepia option to make it look much more boring? Saturation boost option would be much better.

this is in my opinion the biggest issue , visually . It make all the landscape look the same , and it looks very tasteless . I mean i love autumn , but other seasons such as spring and Summer are not very well handled . It really feels unatural and it doesn't help to find a specific place when lost because everything looks the same .

"The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless", "look the same", "tasteless"?

Do the three screenshots I added look like that to you? o_O

 

[Epihnea]

4 hours ago, junawood said:

"The whole game colors are looking bland and colorless", "look the same", "tasteless"?

Do the three screenshots I added look like that to you? o_O

 

Alright the colors are Ok , i'd prefer some more saturated ones but this ones are OK . What's disturbing me the most is that THE GROUND has the exact Same colors as the LEAVES and this is making it tasteless . Again that's my opinion i've played a lot and many plains and woods look the same , you can easily get lost because it's like a 1 color soup on your screen .

[l33tmaan]

Sakura trees when?

[Skandarella]

I spend over 20 hours in game, so it is not that I don't explored the zones. I did this in creative mode ad I don't really liked what I saw.

Yes, the pictures do look different in that sens that the zones differ a tittle bit, but not such much. The biggest point is that in a zone, everything really looks the same.

I don't get the feeling of being in East Africa when I am in a dry zone like in picture one with the hyena, it just don't look like East Africa. Minecrafts simple savannas look more like the original, even if the game is much lower in graphical quality.

Acacia trees naturally have a different color than the grass on the floor:

https://pixy.org/728801/

Even scarce landscapes like birch forests have more contrast then in the game:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Offenes_Feld_mit_Birken_im_FFH-Gebiet_am_Teufelssee_bei_M%C3%BCggelheim.jpg

 

In Game:

 

 

Real Forest:

 

https://pixabay.com/de/photos/teutoburger-wald-fluss-wald-natur-4789840/

 

Sad Forest:

 

 

The problem with the rain-forests/tropical zones is that they are always mixed with trees and soils which look Central European, here is what I mean, the EU-Trees on the hill:

 

 

This destroys the feeling of being really in a jungle, The same goes for the bamboo forests.

I think a big problem is the floor, if there would be more variety in the grass colors, more different colored herbs and bushes, Stone and Sand patches, the biomes would not look so sad.

An example: There is Heidekraut in the game, but this usually don't grow on grassy soils like in game, but on sandy soils in reality.

And no, I am not a high-end graphics junkie, I just like it natural, neither over saturated cartoon-like nor funeral-like sad colorless.

And no, I think not that the game is bad, it is promising. But I think the current graphical state is not so much pleasuring for people who like natural colors and contrasts.

And no, the clo(u)ds don't look better in different stages or places, enjoy this plastic roof sky:

 

 

Statistical Diagram cloud:

 

[Mikel Monleón]

I really appreciate the more realistic color palette. Minecraft is too saturated for my taste, feels like i'm in lego land.

I'd keep the colors the way they are, though I do agree that the clouds could be improved on.  

Edited January 19, 2021 by Mikel Monleón

[Gage Zierk]

This game needs functionality with springhouses



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_house

It would be cool to have water flowing through a structure that will better refrigerate similar to a root cellar, but with the water temp cooling the structure and items inside.

[Dra6o0n]

If you want a true jungle experience, then instead of hills, it's more of flat plateaus with different areas connecting to them with ramps, and cliffs, and lots of tall trees.

This way you can have a lot of dense forests in a small area, and you see out in the distance more trees, instead of ground tiles going up and down hills and such.

Jungles are the kind of biomes where you can get lost because you can't tell which direction is which at times. All you would see is tree trunks in all direction, at even elevation to where you are standing.

A way to make a full jungle biome work is if you can create sub-biomes that is always connected to a jungle plateau, to create ramps to different elevations.

Plateau 1 connects to Ramp 1, which connects to Plateau 2. This creates lots of flat area, but outside of this small section can be cliff walls, or ramps that leads above the cliff, this also enables you to create lots of caves in jungle biomes.

Edited April 8 by Dra6o0n