What would make combat better: xp or loot?

[AngryRob]

The xskils, xlib mods by Xandu really add a lot to the game for me. Before those mods combat was not only a chore, but an extreme detriment. Why fight? we see it in the limited youtube content, during temporal storms people nerdpole over pits or sleep in bunkers. Combat is pointless and unrewarding. It's minecraft lame. However, after adding xskills and xlib, i found myself engaging in combat again. why? because there was a reward to it. You gain skills, it's no longer a pointless waste of time. Even if the skills were pointless, or did nothing, it is still a bigger reward than the random trash that the drifters have. 

The crafting and exploring are pretty good so far. But for a game with a combat mechanic like temporal storms where you will have a situation that may force you to fight; the combat needs a drastic improvement. Something rewarding. Either better loot, like ore nuggets, or a skills system that gives some sort of pay off.  It would also add some life to the game. I have noticed that once people hit the tech plateau, where they have built up the tech tree, they stop playing. outside of crafting and building, the game ends. Youtubers that hit this plateau move on to modded versions of other games, either darkness falls or some minecraft mod, or even Osiris new dawn... 

In fact, i am coming back to VS after a long bout with Elona+, but i am having a hard time getting back in because the action is lacking. Thankfully the mod scene adds some great content, and i appreciete the efforts from the mod community. The game is in early access, and as such feedback is encouraged. I enjoy many aspects of this game, but not the combat. 

 

Please take this into consideration. 

[l33tmaan]

I think the issue with people quitting once they build up tech is because that's really the only form of progression the vanilla game has right now. This is why something as simple as XSkills feels so good. 
The game needs some kind of goal to strive for, but what that is could be a lot of things. You could have a final big boss like in Minecraft, a series of bosses that gate progression like Terraria, escaping the world like in Rimworld, cleanse the world of instability, or a whole bunch of other things. 

To be more on topic, I think both are good. XP is great for intrinsic character growth, while loot offers extrinsic growth. If I have a lot of XP, then my character can be naked in the wilderness and still useful. If I have a lot of loot, then I can have signed onto the server 5 minutes ago and grabbed it all. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and I don't think picking one over the other is a good idea. Combat should build towards whatever the end goal is supposed to be, but I don't know what that is at this point.. 

[Thalius]

For me, personally, neither skills nor loot would ever be a significant personal goal nor a satisfactory one to chase as an end game pursuit.  If either or both are the driving force of game involvement, then eventually I have maxed out skills and nothing more to work toward, or I have more loot than I can do anything with, and going after more gets dull.

Don't get me wrong- both could be a great bonus along the way if done right, but for me to enjoy the game long term I need challenges. I need much more than loot and skills, and more than just a final boss fight or a big boss critter to take down like a dragon.

I want to see things along the lines of what the goblin camps mod brought- baddies in the world spawning in dynamic and complex ways and affording me and my fellow players the challenge of taking them down, with unique and not so unique weapons, armor and treasure to gain in doing so. 

Troll like critters spawning under bridges and around ruins.

Dark things crawling in the depths of the earth or swimming in the deep waters of a seemingly bottomless lake.

Polar bears hunting me down in the north, and jaguars stalking me in the jungle.  I want the fun and challenge of hunting them down in return, and, if I prove the victor in the hunt, to be able to mount their head in a trophy room.

I look forward to procedural dungeons of some type to explore.

I want to be able to push back the temporal stability of the world- and push it back again as it tries to reclaim the parts of the world I've purged it from.

I look forward to and hope for recurring challenges and obstacles in the world; Less a world to be conquered and more along the lines of one where peace and security first have to be won, and then kept.

~TH~
 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Thalius

[l33tmaan]

C'mon Thalius, I was trying to avoid talking about Nests again. 

[Thalius]

1 hour ago, l33tmaan said:

C'mon Thalius, I was trying to avoid talking about Nests again. 

[AngryRob]

I don't know if the game really needs a goal or not. Kenshi had no goals, yet people get sucked into that game with thousands of hours because of how insanely fund the grind is. 7 days to die is also missing goals, and that game sucks people in as well. Meanwhile games like skyrim have goals, but does anyone remember much about the "big aldruin" fight? or how mehruns dagon was defeated in oblivion? Dagoth Ur is kinda an exception, because he had some cool lines, followed by a hyper disappointing ending. Another game i need to mention, is dragon quest builders 2. I liked it up to a point, then lost interest. When they sucked me away from the main island i was building as part of the main quest, i stopped caring. All that time invested into a new kingdom, and boop, gone. Killed the experience for me. Yet DQB2 is the most goal focused voxel sandbox game i am aware of. 

So we have this weird contrast where ,in my case at least, sandbox games without goals get more hours then the big sandbox games with the goals. I am of the belief that the journey is more important then the destination, so how does one create an infinite journey? I avoid talking about minecraft, because that game was unplayable to me without mods. IC2, dragon block c, thaumcraft, those were the big mods that made the game playable. Dragon bloc c is the more important mod for me, because it fixed the trash combat of minecraft. It translated too well, because you could do ki attacks that destroyed mountains, and goku punched trees for wood in the anime. 

So why do i bring up this stuff here? Because vintage story does a lot of things significantly better then those games. It is the best survival game in the genre. It does a lot of things right, like food spoilage, seasons, and hypothermia. Crafting, prospecting and exploring are solid as well. The built in mod loader is almost as good as steam workshop. The current weaknesses are lore, combat, and end game. 

So the combat is lacking. Thanks to the good mod system, this has some great solutions, but what about the long run? what and how should combat be done? The temporal storm mechanic should be considered into this as well. Other threads are asking for bosses, and i have to agree with this. Instead of going to the bosses, the bosses come to us? Ok. But what do we get out of these fights? What would balance out the risk and the rewards? I think an xp system with skills is the best start. But how do we fit that into the game? 

I have recently been playing Elona+, which has one of the best skill systems out there. I enjoyed the skill system in that game, and would like to see similar systems in other games. It's  another learning by doing system, but the biggest draw is that attributes are not gained so much by grinding skills, but by having good nutrition. So that fits in well here. So a system in which if we are well fed, our attributes increase as we increase skills. This would have an added effect where that if we are high level, we stop being skinny and start looking swole, or if we only craft all day we look fat. 

 

Just tossing some ideas and thoughts out. Maybe something will stick and be helpful?

 

 

[l33tmaan]

Perhaps 'progression' would be a better thing to focus on than 'goals'. Minecraft doesn't have very good progression, but Thaumcraft does. But your progression is still (theoretically) tied to what the overall goal of the game is. I certainly wouldn't be averse to Elona+ style skills, but I like skill grinds in general. The problem with survival games like Kenshi and Minecraft is that there's not really much to do after a certain point and you just aimlessly stop playing, and most importantly, this happens once you feel like you have nothing left to do. This is what happens when people reach steel production in VS.

In many games, people just kind of start building stuff at this point. In a game as dynamic as Elona+ or Dwarf Fortress or even The Sims, once you reach a point where you feel kind of 'safe' and established, there's always so much going on around you to respond to that there's still a reason to keep playing. I think working on more dynamic systems would be the way to go for VS, too. It already feels so realistic and immersive, so leaning harder into that would help fill out its niche. 

To make this related to your thread, I would make drifters and other enemies more dynamic. Animals should have Nests that they spawn in and live around, which the player can replicate. I should be able to kill some wolves and take the pups back to my animal pen where I've set up little beds for them to rest in, and after a while that becomes their Nest and they start treating it like home. Wolves past a certain generation could turn into dogs, which 'resets' their generation back to 1 and subsequent generations can be taught more and more 'tricks', like attacking enemies, guarding your home, or patrolling areas. Dogs that are unfed for an in-game year turn feral and attack whatever they want. 
I should be able to track a wolf out of its Nest to its hunting grounds to find rabbits and chickens, or see its markings in the environment so I know I'm entering its territory. This behavior can easily be extrapolated to more dangerous animals like bears, bison, elephants, lions, whatever. 

Drifters have more leeway in how they can be handled. I think they should only spawn in areas that have low light and are temporally unstable. Perhaps their mere presence causes instability, and as they make the land more unstable more drifters start to spawn there. Unattended areas of the surface can get totally messed up and start spawning corrupt drifters in broad daylight and stuff. This should probably be accompanied by visual representations of instability in an area, like grass slowly turning into metal spikes or gears growing out of the ground or something. Even something as simple as this would give people reasons to 'clear out' areas, especially if drifters naturally spawn in ruins and dungeons with treasure and lore stuff in it.

 

[AngryRob]

Hmmm, so maybe dynamic temporal bosses based on what you have made? where you have been, and what lore you found? that would be kind neat. Also limiting the drifter spawns would help with those first nights, because lately i have been fighting groups of them off with a stick. I have been thinking that we need more machinery in this game, like even temporal machines that need a temporal mill that only works during those storms, and that powers those machines. the problem is what do those machines do? Maybe raise the dead? make end game metals? reveal the world map? Lift a bunch of chunks into the sky? 

Having a need to be working during a temporal storm, and machines that attract horrible time monsters would add some fun, and fun is the end goal. I have too many temporal gears, because i spend all night shifting though sand. it's a waste because transloators are very cool, but they are the only use for the gears at the moment. 

Starforge had a kickstarter goal of a procedurally generated horror. I have been intrigued in that idea ever since that game failed. Could you imagine different horror mobs showing up? like the groak or skinwalkers? These mobs would be special and target players and their spawn points based on rng and other factors. 

Thaumcraft was a very cool mod, the corruption, the cults, the weirdness along with everything else it added really changed minecraft. As i play vintage story, i have been thinking that instead of the thaum magic, it would have "dark physics" based things found, things studied, lore read, etc etc. That would add some life to the game, but how to make it different and special to vintage story escapes me at the moment. 

 

 

 

 

[l33tmaan]

One important thing I think VS could rip off from Thaumcraft or Bloodborne is some kind of "hidden world" in conjunction with our own - maybe the Rust World I've heard rumors about. After a certain point in the progression, whether it's by crafting an item or raising an Insight stat or whatever, the player is capable of "seeing" the Rust World in its true glory, and you can see all sorts of new monsters and bosses and resources. Most importantly, this is not separate from the regular world, but you're just seeing what was actually there all along. With this, even a well-established player with a good base can have new enemies introduced near them without having to go to another world. It would be cool to see a giant temporal monster a few hundred blocks from your base in an area you've heavily used before.

Having machinery that interacts with this 'Rust World', or temporal stuff in general, is another aspect of progression I think the game should lean into. You can't have all this cool mechanical stuff in a Lovecraft-themed game and not have them do something together. You could have temporal beacons, which attract or repel certain monsters, or you eventually gain the ability to make your own transporters, or make temporal weaponry that teleports things you hit into the Rust World and vice-versa. Perhaps part of the progression is 'discovering' the Rust World, making machinery to traverse it safely, then gain loot from exploration/bosses that unlocks more ways of progressing through the world? I really think a cool end-game goal (like, once you "beat" the game) would be giving the player access to Creative mode flight. It would be very satisfying to "win" Vintage Story and be able to fly around your world at leisure. Sure, you can always type /gamemode 2, but that's not the same, is it?

[Thalius]

9 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

One important thing I think VS could rip off from Thaumcraft or Bloodborne is some kind of "hidden world" in conjunction with our own - maybe the Rust World I've heard rumors about. After a certain point in the progression, whether it's by crafting an item or raising an Insight stat or whatever, the player is capable of "seeing" the Rust World in its true glory, and you can see all sorts of new monsters and bosses and resources. Most importantly, this is not separate from the regular world, but you're just seeing what was actually there all along. With this, even a well-established player with a good base can have new enemies introduced near them without having to go to another world. It would be cool to see a giant temporal monster a few hundred blocks from your base in an area you've heavily used before.

Having machinery that interacts with this 'Rust World', or temporal stuff in general, is another aspect of progression I think the game should lean into. You can't have all this cool mechanical stuff in a Lovecraft-themed game and not have them do something together. You could have temporal beacons, which attract or repel certain monsters, or you eventually gain the ability to make your own transporters, or make temporal weaponry that teleports things you hit into the Rust World and vice-versa. Perhaps part of the progression is 'discovering' the Rust World, making machinery to traverse it safely, then gain loot from exploration/bosses that unlocks more ways of progressing through the world? I really think a cool end-game goal (like, once you "beat" the game) would be giving the player access to Creative mode flight. It would be very satisfying to "win" Vintage Story and be able to fly around your world at leisure. Sure, you can always type /gamemode 2, but that's not the same, is it?

You had me up to the acquiring creative flight abilities suggestion, l33tmaan. 

Acquiring a way to navigate the world via flight maybe, but creative mode flying- I'd have to down vote that one.

But all the rest- I big thumbs up to all of it.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Thalius

[l33tmaan]

I'm the kind of guy who likes BIG, FLASHY bonuses. Doesn't matter what kind of game or genre it is, I'm an unrepentant power gamer. 
I'll take limited flight, but I want it before I beat the game.

[AngryRob]

I forgot about rust world, Isn't that sad? We have this mechanic, this big blue gear that spins and looks cool, and yet i have never been to this place, ever. Talk about under utilized stuff. 

Thaumcraft had that corrupting equipment, maybe vintage story can have temporal unstable armor? I like old dive suits, so a big, bulky, temporal combat suit with a drill? sure it rips off bioshock, but aside from being cool you can configure a visor to see underground deposits? Maybe the bigger the deposit, the bigger it glows through the ground? You would have to have a special setup to enter the armor, like pic below. 

Now this has gotten me thinking, what if inside each big ore deposit, we had a temporal instability crystal? this would aid prospecting greatly! Suddenly you are getting into rust world more often, but out of necessity, and these crystals will have other uses too, like high tech machines, but you need to store them in lead boxes because they make the area unstable. That would also be a great power source for high end equipment, and it would have to be charged in temporal storms... 

While that would be some very cool end game stuff, it still does not fix the combat. Maybe have the drifters drop some sort of food loot or seeds? currently drifters are the only hostile mob that does not provide delicious meat, so they have an insidious danger in the beginning of causing you to lose hunger fighting them. So maybe have them drop a food bar or something?  Then again, if he adds combat animations, then a skill system where we can use skill points to learn combat moves would fix this problem too. So i might be overthinking things a little....

 

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by AngryRob

[Dizuki]

I'd really enjoy "loot". But I don't think loot in the traditional sense is what I'd want. I would really enjoy killing things to be useful because right now enemies are only a hinderance. Even if they made more uses for the temporal gears that would be a huge improvement. Perhaps also you have some enemies drop the occasional sheet of chainmail or some scales, things that wouldn't break the game, but are useful to find. But i wouldn't want to find a +6 flaming longsword of doom, it would seem a bit out of place.