age Ages/Epochs Mechanic

[Captain Oats]

Hello Vintage Story community (and hopfully a few eyes of the vintage story team).

In the game there are listed in the survial guide several 'ages' that you go through in the game but these are just words on a page that only loosey equate to the mechanics of the game. I do understand that this is mostly there to act as a guide or tutorial but I believe that adding in age mechanics could be a intresting way to help pace the game.

Without waffling on too much I will get into what I prepose:

A set of modifers/special effects with each age that only change to the next era after you hold a certain item in your main slot. This would be on a player by player basis, so each player would a have a fair chance on server to experence all the ages  These modifers would be in addtion to other modfiers such as classes.

Nomadic/Stone Age:

Spoiler

"You awake in a new world and want to explore but the urgent and ever pressence of hunger slows down your progress to a crawl. Prehapes you have chowed down your 1000th cat tail root and after hours of irl time, you now have found your perfect spot for your base. But was it FUN getting there? or is it a means to an end where you can finally start having fun when you get to your destination and not before?"

This is where a simple modifer might help both new players and old. The former being allowed a little leway when they start their first game and the latter being able to spend more time looking for that perfect base spot.

Suggestion 1:

A percentage hunger rate decrease. e.g 20% - 40%

Increase forage drop rate.

Increase wild crop drop rate.

Suggestion 2:

Increase In animal harvest drop rate.

Increase forage drop rate.

Increase wild crop drop rate.

 

Pottery age:

Spoiler

 

By now you will of found a place to set up at least for several days. As you begin to settle down you will need clay (for pots) and firewood (for cooking and charcoal pits).

How to progress to this age: Scoop a meal into a fired crook

Suggestion 1:

A percentage hunger rate decrease. e.g 10% - 20%

Increase in clay drop rate. e.g 30% - 60%

Double log drop rate (for house/cooking/charcoal purposes).

Suggestion 2:

A percentage hunger rate decrease. e.g 10% - 20%

Reduced clay usage in pottery making.

Unique skill/trait to allow for a more efficent way to make firewood. e.g better recipe

 

Copper Age:

Spoiler

Scouring the surface for coppper bits you wlll soon find you way into the copper age. What is vital here is to find every single bit of ore to make sure you can be fully equipt with tools.

How to progress to this age: Hold a copper pickaxe/Ingot in your main slot

Suggestion 1:

A percentage ore drop rate increase. eg 10% - 20% (to really squeeze all you can out of those ores)

Bronze Age:

Spoiler

"Surely by this point you must have a farm?"

With the devlepment of bronze you now have stronger and tougher tools at your command. By this point you are probably sitting comfortabley, maybe you even survived winter or are just about to.

How to progress to this age: Hold any bronze ingot in your main slot

Suggestion 1:

A percentage ore drop rate increase. eg 5% - 10% (to really really squeeze all you can out of those ores)

Iron Age:

Spoiler

You hard work has paid off you have delved the depths and gotten yourself iron. But you feel yourself starting to soften, perhaps a pie or two might make you feel better?

How to progress to this age: Hold a iron ingot in your main slot

Suggestion 1:

A percentage hunger rate increase. e.g 10%

Damage against foes reduced. e.g 5%

Suggestion 2:

Hitpoints reduction. eg 1-2

Steel Age:

Spoiler

You've made it, the pinnicle of what the game has to offer is within your grasp but you have grown lazy and become accustomed to luxuries others could only dream of.

How to progress to this age: Hold a steel bar in your main slot

Suggestion 1:

A percentage hunger rate increase. e.g 20%

Damage against foes reduced. e.g 10%

Suggestion 2:

Hitpoints reduction. eg 2-4

I think if the devs stick with the idea of progression of ages they should put more into defineing each age as a more clear thing. This I believe will bring more focus and direction for the game in general and for the players. With each age having clear bonus/negative and goal it will provide a 'narrative' that I think the game is going for (which I believe is a progression of civilisation). Also the game while has ability to go further than the steel age I believe it would be key to focus on what we already have to provide a stable bedrock for future updates/implementations of things.

Expansion of this idea could include:

• Exclusive crafting recipes for each age OR unlock as you progress through the ages meaning you can still craft bronze age armor in the steel age. e.g bronze age armor.
• Different bonuses/debuffs for each age.
• The bonues/debuffes could be set by difficulty. (Easier for the new players but could be set to be harder for those seeking a harder experience)
• These could be made to be easily moddable just like classes. (So people can add there own twist on things)
• Story elements that are still to be added could be hidden behind Age progression

Thanks for taking the time to read my suggestion!

Edited June 29, 2021 by Captain Oats

[ruggbean]

For the sake of consistency, I would say have the Copper Age also be "Hold a copper Ingot in your main slot" instead of a copper pickaxe or tie the progression of each age [at least for the earlier ages] to both tools and ingots.

I would also like to make a suggestion that plays on the ingots being the main source of transitioning from one age to another, if it is possible from a coding perspective, by tying the progression to copper and bronze ingots that you make yourself rather than those that you might find about the game. In the same way that you can access the lore books once for each entry, but if you have the same entry, you can't access the same lore book, tying the first copper and bronze ingot to a mold, but once you access the age, then you can't keep getting fanfare for reaching the age over and over again.

For iron and steel, I agree that holding the ingot would be optimal, only because you cannot tie their creation to a mold and as far as I am aware, you cannot find them willy nilly in the game.

A few questions for your progression, just for the sake of clarification - 

1. What happens if you happen to find enough tin and copper nuggets for bronze, in that you skip the Copper Age and go right into the Bronze Age? 
2. Or if you find a bronze pickaxe and a hammer (by chance) and you also find iron close by? 
3. Do you get all of the bonuses tied to the previous ages or do you just get the bonuses of the ages that you hit? And if the second one, do you get to go back and access the ages that you missed or should you be required to hit all of the ages chronologically? I know that in the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, there are certain story characters that, if you kill them, you can still go about with your game but you may not be able to access the main storyline if they are killed too early and the game makes you aware of this by saying "With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created." Some people might not care about the earlier bonuses if they are skippable, but some people might.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

Not fond of this. Today you happen to spawn without tin nearby you can prefer to stay in copper age, but if the benefits of reaching bronze age are to great you are forced to keep on advancing. Today the game is pretty open, you can choose your own focus, i prefer it that way.

[l33tmaan]

I think the modifiers are WAY too far, as well. It seems extremely arbitrary and pointless to include.
Seriously, I get to iron age and lose HP? No thanks, bro.

[Streetwind]

I'd like to add some food for thought here -

Story-wise, the game is already placed in a specific age of civilization. You can find pieces of lore during gameplay, and reading them reveals that a renaissance-era world [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS], which through various events leads to [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and the eventual appearance of the Seraph (also known as the player character).

The Seraph retains the knowledge of the renaissance-era world. He/she/it must start from scratch, obviously, and thus must use stone tools in the beginning. But they are not a caveman - not a stone-age person limited to stone-age tech until chance inventions pave the way for a more civilized approach. No, they already know how to make steel when they spawn into the world. They just have to build up the required infrastructure to where it's feasible to attempt the feat. And in this regard, the game design does a bit of creative straddling of two approaches, namely real life techniques on one hand, and a tiered progression game system on the other hand. Because ultimately, a game is meant to have gameplay, and real life is often a fairly poor model for good gameplay.

Now, if someone wants to play Vintage Story as a stone-age simulator, that's perfectly fair. There's even mods available right now which are specifically built to enable that. But I don't think there's any chance that the base game will ever implement a civilization-ages system. It would not fit its backstory.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

4 hours ago, Streetwind said:

I'd like to add some food for thought here -

Story-wise, the game is already placed in a specific age of civilization. You can find pieces of lore during gameplay, and reading them reveals that a renaissance-era world [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS], which through various events leads to [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and the eventual appearance of the Seraph (also known as the player character).

The Seraph retains the knowledge of the renaissance-era world. He/she/it must start from scratch, obviously, and thus must use stone tools in the beginning. But they are not a caveman - not a stone-age person limited to stone-age tech until chance inventions pave the way for a more civilized approach. No, they already know how to make steel when they spawn into the world. They just have to build up the required infrastructure to where it's feasible to attempt the feat. And in this regard, the game design does a bit of creative straddling of two approaches, namely real life techniques on one hand, and a tiered progression game system on the other hand. Because ultimately, a game is meant to have gameplay, and real life is often a fairly poor model for good gameplay.

Now, if someone wants to play Vintage Story as a stone-age simulator, that's perfectly fair. There's even mods available right now which are specifically built to enable that. But I don't think there's any chance that the base game will ever implement a civilization-ages system. It would not fit its backstory.

I beg to differ. I claim most games if not all to a larger or smaller degree is based on reality. I would say the most successful is the one that makes the mechanics and gameplay feel realistic. Sure, you don't want the game to be too realistic in most cases, making it take a week to shop down the trees for a house and two weeks to bring the logs home to your base is not going appeal to very many players. But i think that most players choose vintage story over minecraft because they feel that they can relate to a "sort of" realistic struggle to survive that don't exist in minecraft. Moving away from that is not going to cut it for me. If i magically change my hunger rate by holding a bar of copper, that is not going to cut it for me. If it was magic by adding scrolls, potions or anything lite that, fine i can see it adding content to keep the grind less imposing (translocaters are sort of that, unless you call them some sort of alien technology) and i don't have to use it if i don't like it, but this - no.

About Seraphs, we don't why they know the technology of making steel. Does everyone have that knowledge? Does they learn some bits from traders or other players? Isn't that there for gameplay, to make all crafting options open to every player. Sure, there is a collapsed civilization, that "your" seraph might have been part of, but what of it's knowledge been transferred to your seraph? With current lore i feel it's up to every player for themself too decide who much knowledge he/she has.

Edited July 1, 2021 by Fredrik Blomquist
spelling (and a small addition)

[Streetwind]

53 minutes ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

I beg to differ. I claim most games if not all to a larger or smaller degree is based on reality. I would say the most successful is the one that makes the mechanics and gameplay feel realistic. Sure, you don't want the game to be too realistic in most cases, making it take a week to shop down the trees for a house and two weeks to bring the logs home to your base is not going appeal to very many players. But i think that most players choose vintage story over minecraft because they feel that they can relate to a "sort of" realistic struggle to survive that don't exist in minecraft.

You claim to differ, yet you confirmed what I said precisely

Let me explain in more detail: I said "real life is often a fairly poor model for good gameplay". When I said that, I did not mean "the only good games are those that go full on fantasy". I meant that if you strive to replicate real life in full exactness, you will be bogged down in an endless morass of finnicky details, because real life is absurdly compex. And your players will eventually call it quits as well, because there's only so many hoops they're willing to jump through for something that other games present in a more streamlined way.

You don't want "realistic". You want "believable". The kind of simplification and abstraction that results in an experience where the player feels immersed because it is "close enough" to the real thing, even if it is not the real thing. The very thing you meant when you said "a 'sort of' realistic struggle for survival".

Tanning hides in Vintage Story is believable. It requires a setup. It has multiple production stages. It has individual steps that real tanners also performed. It includes the most important chemical, and an authentic low-tech way to procure it.

But tanning in Vintage Story is not realistic. As in: it doesn't replicate the process in full, nor does it replicate the time it takes, nor the entire infrastructure and toolset, nor the long-term health problems and social ostracism that tanners often faced, nor even the sheer physical discomfort of living beside an active tannery because good grief they stank to the very heavens. And trust me: even if you were presented with the option to have the full, 100% real life equivalent simulated in your game, you too would choose the gamified, simplified variant. Because the other one would be a royal pain in the behind. Hence: real life often makes for poor gameplay.

Often. Not always. Dedicated, narrow-focused simulators have their place. Of course, you could argue that even they gamify and simplify a thousand little details - even in the most realistic air combat simulator, the ones with the full-button cockpits and fifteen minute preflight checklists, you don't need to make sure your pilot goes to the bathroom before liftoff. Still, some genres are better suited to a deep dive into the precise mechanical replication of something than others. Typically, the narrower the task, the better. It's no accident that 'operating complex machinery from a fixed seat' is wide and far the most common simulator-style game.

However, Vintage Story is not a game that's narrowly focused on one specific mechanic. In fact, you could call it the exact opposite. As such, going for full-on realism in any single individual area is a bad idea. You want "believable" instead, and a solid foundation of gamification to guide the player throug VS' complex world and create a solid core gameplay loop with sense of progression. This is why we have metal tiers, for example, and certain ores requiring certain metals to mine. It's not realistic; heck, it's not even believable. But it creates both short-term and long-term goals, ensures newcomers can focus on a reduced featureset at first, and lets the player 'level up' upon reaching a breakpoint. Removing these systems in favor of more realism would actually make the game worse, not improve it.

I hope that clears up the misunderstanding. We do mean the same thing - we were just using different words to say it.

[Fredrik Blomquist]

16 hours ago, Streetwind said:

You claim to differ, yet you confirmed what I said precisely

Let me explain in more detail: I said "real life is often a fairly poor model for good gameplay". When I said that, I did not mean "the only good games are those that go full on fantasy". I meant that if you strive to replicate real life in full exactness, you will be bogged down in an endless morass of finnicky details, because real life is absurdly compex. And your players will eventually call it quits as well, because there's only so many hoops they're willing to jump through for something that other games present in a more streamlined way.

You don't want "realistic". You want "believable". The kind of simplification and abstraction that results in an experience where the player feels immersed because it is "close enough" to the real thing, even if it is not the real thing. The very thing you meant when you said "a 'sort of' realistic struggle for survival".

Tanning hides in Vintage Story is believable. It requires a setup. It has multiple production stages. It has individual steps that real tanners also performed. It includes the most important chemical, and an authentic low-tech way to procure it.

But tanning in Vintage Story is not realistic. As in: it doesn't replicate the process in full, nor does it replicate the time it takes, nor the entire infrastructure and toolset, nor the long-term health problems and social ostracism that tanners often faced, nor even the sheer physical discomfort of living beside an active tannery because good grief they stank to the very heavens. And trust me: even if you were presented with the option to have the full, 100% real life equivalent simulated in your game, you too would choose the gamified, simplified variant. Because the other one would be a royal pain in the behind. Hence: real life often makes for poor gameplay.

Often. Not always. Dedicated, narrow-focused simulators have their place. Of course, you could argue that even they gamify and simplify a thousand little details - even in the most realistic air combat simulator, the ones with the full-button cockpits and fifteen minute preflight checklists, you don't need to make sure your pilot goes to the bathroom before liftoff. Still, some genres are better suited to a deep dive into the precise mechanical replication of something than others. Typically, the narrower the task, the better. It's no accident that 'operating complex machinery from a fixed seat' is wide and far the most common simulator-style game.

However, Vintage Story is not a game that's narrowly focused on one specific mechanic. In fact, you could call it the exact opposite. As such, going for full-on realism in any single individual area is a bad idea. You want "believable" instead, and a solid foundation of gamification to guide the player throug VS' complex world and create a solid core gameplay loop with sense of progression. This is why we have metal tiers, for example, and certain ores requiring certain metals to mine. It's not realistic; heck, it's not even believable. But it creates both short-term and long-term goals, ensures newcomers can focus on a reduced featureset at first, and lets the player 'level up' upon reaching a breakpoint. Removing these systems in favor of more realism would actually make the game worse, not improve it.

I hope that clears up the misunderstanding. We do mean the same thing - we were just using different words to say it.

Sorry, might have misunderstood your point, you might have guessed i'm not a native english speaker

I feel that a lot of effort been put in to making tanning and metal smelting believable (even if not realistic), and it would feel sad if the feeling that gives the game was taken away. I might have small things i would like to change that would make the game even more believable but still not make the game more grindy or boring. But, know the developers ar quite busy and i think the game mainly needs more interesting content (and maybe some tweekning), so i think i'll wait with those suggestions.

[EreticKB]

On 6/29/2021 at 12:01 PM, Captain Oats said:

Steel Age:

  Hide contents

You've made it, the pinnicle of what the game has to offer is within your grasp but you have grown lazy and become accustomed to luxuries others could only dream of.

How to progress to this age: Hold a steel bar in your main slot

Suggestion 1:

A percentage hunger rate increase. e.g 20%

Damage against foes reduced. e.g 10%

Suggestion 2:

Hitpoints reduction. eg 2-4

 

we all know that if you swings heavy hammer every day (coz we need forge any steel tool, that we need)  you become weak and lazy... *sarcasm*

[Marlim]

The idea is interesting, but not good.