Give a use/value for building with better materials and decorations.

[Silent Shadow]

While I like the aesthetics the game offers for buildings, there is currently there is no difference to living in a nice house made by the player and a dirt hole in the ground. Since the game is about progression through materials, there should be an incentive to using better materials in the player's structures. Artwork has about the same problem and currently it is quite tempting even for a player who likes shiny digs to sell the artwork found in ruins. I also think that everyone curses their luck when finding another luxury, furniture, or art trader as the stuff they offer is generally way less useful than the other traders' wares. Fancy and expensive clothes are similar as nobody would buy them when their insulation is poor

Possible incentives for players to build with higher tier blocks and to decorate could be a slower temporal stability loss or a bigger buffer for it, longer sleeping times, less hunger loss during sleeping, pushing the spawning of drifters away, or something along those lines.

As for implementing it, the game already has a room mechanic so perhaps modifying it to look at the blocks making it up and giving the player a buff based on an average value of the blocks making up the room. Art and displayed items could then add onto the value. For each block and item there is a value in gears for the traders already so the buff value for the blocks/artwork could be based on that.

I think this would add to the game by giving more value to three of the traders and items like gold/silver/gems/art, and to give the player more choices they need to make (spend time making better housing vs getting better tools, and whether to prioritize gears or artwork/clothes).

[junawood]

2 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

I also think that everyone curses their luck when finding another luxury, furniture, or art trader as the stuff they offer is generally way less useful than the other traders' wares.

In my experience, the artisan trader is the best to have near your base, because he doesn't only sell beautiful pottery you can't really get anywhere else, but he's the one you want to visit regularly because he buys a lot of stuff and you can make a good amount of rusty gears very easily.

Luxury and furniture traders also sell special things, so it's nice to find them if you want some of the stuff that's hard (or impossible?) to find elsewhere.

 

3 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

there is currently there is no difference to living in a nice house made by the player and a dirt hole in the ground

Of course there is. When it looks nice, it looks nice. I mean, if you like things to look nice (and everyone has a different definition of what looks nice), then you build it that way and feel great about it. And you feel way less great when the game forces you to build a certain way. It already does if you want to make a building drifter-proof or fit the definition of a room or greenhouse for some temperature effects, and that can be a pain in the butt. So adding another layer of having to build a certain way would really suck in a game where a big part of the fun is to be able to build awesome stuff, no matter what your definition of awesome stuff is.

[Silent Shadow]

Don't get me wrong I really like building a nice looking home and workshops and with this idea, building a nice structure is rewarded and gives the player something else to do after they are setup. It also gives something else to do when winter is around and exploration of the surface is discouraged. Players that do not care about nice looks can still have their hole in the ground as this implementation would not penalize them (there's no debuff and the buffs are enough to encourage pretty buildings but are not critical to succeed). This would add value to a lot of items in the game that would otherwise just be ignored (like gold/silver), get sold off, or left only to players like us to appreciate.

[Michaloid]

The Temperature could be an incentive, if you build a dirt house it's colder than a coblestone or wood house. I think the temperature should be it.

[Maelstrom]

I see this as an optional impact to the game.  If you don't enhance your living space, nothing changes and no sweat off of anyone's back.  If you want the benefits, then you can build to activate them.  It wouldn't be a forced mechanic, like spending untold "hours" crafting pottery for your early needs (food, tool crafting, storage, etc.)