Few negative impressions after playing 1.15 (up to .1)

[heptagonrus]

So 1.15.1 is out, the stable release.

The things are either not addressed or addressed just slightly.

Many of the new non-rare trees are still not much farmable.

• Greenspire cypress after "buff" still gives around 0.9999 seed per tree, so my initial 5 seeds after around 10 iterations are still 5 seeds (were 8 at some point).
  So I just wasted all this time and tool durability.
  The tree is not rare and has no purpose except being decorative. Why such harsh limitations are still applied to it?
• Bald cypress - seems a bit worse, stopped my attempts to propagate.
• Larch - around 1.1 seeds per tree. Probably slowly farmable, but feels not enough for trading or decorations.
  I have already payed by travelling north, surviving cold and searching for them, why asking more for this non-rare tree?

Redwood seems fine. Walnut seems fine.

Ebony and purpleheart - I don't even want to touch that again. Acceptable for solo but not for MP, too many people cutting all down. And the mechanics is just not fun imho, I can't do much with them, considering the current logistics limitations.

Crops - an unpleasant russian roulette, I don't enjoy farming any more, always afraid to lose them, always having zero clue if they would survive, zero clues about how temperature behaves etc.

Oh, and with the new undisclosed moisture mechanics (it is more important now but no idea what it even means), old farm field designs are bad now, need to make new ones where water and various blocks take more space than the actual farmland and crops, requiring more space and more claims.

Also added section about the new wind mechanics, pushing players. Also don't see much reason for this to be in game, except a horror element for "lovecraftian survival", which is fair enough, just I don't like horror games.

And btw the claim system is still in the same not user-friendly initial state, basically I can't edit the claims, if changed my build slightly. Can only add new cuboids (5x5x5 min), can't see my other claims at the same time, can't merge them, so my current claim with multiple cuboids is now not very manageable. Or delete claim and claim anew. Again, instead of just a small claim adjustment when adjusted build a bit, have to spend some time on this.

So in summary I found myself spending too much time on all the mundane tasks of dangerous farming, risky tree farming, food preparation etc instead of building things and improving public server infrastructure.

For now I got too frustrated and stopped playing, just don't feel like returning to the game.

[Mikel Monleón]

This new crop mechanic made my base obsolete. I built a floating island way up in the sky, where it is cold. I have spent a long time building a massive greenhouse inside of the island. Now my crops can't survive one night. 

I get that the new crop mechanics have an intended playstyle, but I do think it discourages people to get creative with their builds.

[l33tmaan]

Is there no way to increase the temperature of that room? Or is it because you have one giant warehouse this is a problem to begin with? Floating gardens are cool and shouldn't be punished to the point of making them impossible to maintain.

[Erik]

7 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

Ebony and purpleheart - I don't even want to touch that again. Acceptable for solo but not for MP, too many people cutting all down. And the mechanics is just not fun imho, I can't do much with them, considering the current logistics limitations.

I think these are part of a more general problem area: Multiplayer. For singleplayer or coop these are not really big issues imo. Some trees being a rare and importantly limited good is imo a good decision, as it makes them more into a treasure or luxury of sort, much like aged wood although less extreme. Making them indefinitely farmable would ruin that status. In multiplayer however they aren't just rare, they can quickly turn unobtainable because of other players, which is a issue. Though I'd rather have a wood trader be added that sells or buys medium quantities of these for high prices, also opening them up as a real trade good, than just making them infinitely farmable.

7 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

Crops - an unpleasant russian roulette, I don't enjoy farming any more, always afraid to lose them, always having zero clue if they would survive, zero clues about how temperature behaves etc.

This is also mostly a multiplayer issue. While I, as stated before, think a "forecast" system is necessary, the issue is only really exaggerated in multiplayer, when not playing "frequently enough" can see your crops dead quickly and your food rotten. Keep in mind that developing such a system takes time and just that 1.15 is now released doesn't mean that it won't be added in the next version nor that it will.

The big issue with multiplayer is the time focused aspect of the game, that the world keeps progressing even when the player is not around. This can be a great thing if playing singleplayer and venturing out into the world will still have the unloaded chunks process, providing a real sense of time. In multiplayer however, even when your not playing, the time will likely resume as someone is likely playing. That means crops will grow and die, food will rot, seasons will pass. So you log in after a while, only to find that it's night, during a temporal storm, in winter, while all your crops are dead and your food is rotten. Then your option is only really to log out again, hoping next time you log in it will be summer, so you can actually play the game rather than just having to focus on finding scarce food in winter.

I don't really have a solid idea of how to fix this. One small improvement might be to let the player decide where he wants to spawn when spawning as a new player. And by where I mean which hemisphere, as that will offer reversed seasons, maybe longitude could even provide different times of day. Though that would not fix the issue, just hide if from new players.

Currently there is a compromise with the default setting between multiplayer and singleplayer, that arguably makes singleplayer too easy and multiplayer too hard. The year is really long in singleplayer and everything takes more time than it should maybe reasonable do, while food decay is also really slow. In multiplayer, a year is often really short, multiple months often having passed after a player logs in again after one or two days. Since the time only passes when there is at least one player on the server, the speed of time is also variable, making proper planning near impossible. Personally I recommend playing singleplayer or coop with tweaked settings if you don't want to experience the same required daily time investment as games like Rust or Ark. Or playing on a server which has seasons turned off and slow food decay.

8 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

Oh, and with the new undisclosed moisture mechanics (it is more important now but no idea what it even means), old farm field designs are bad now, need to make new ones where water and various blocks take more space than the actual farmland and crops, requiring more space and more claims.

I think the idea is that you should water your plants regularly, which is not a bad idea, just has the multiplayer issue again. Personally I think the Minecraft-like "adjacent water providing moisture on farmland" mechanic should be completely removed. When rivers are a thing, they or canals build from them could provide the same but stronger effect. I also think the level of moisture having a direct influence on growth speed or maybe yield in the future is not really such a good idea, since it encourages constant micromanagement to keep your crops fully moist. Ideally it should be not be a linear system but a segmented system of sorts, where there are specific moisture ranges where any value within the range still returns the same boost.

8 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

Also added section about the new wind mechanics, pushing players. Also don't see much reason for this to be in game, except a horror element for "lovecraftian survival", which is fair enough, just I don't like horror games.

I don't think its a bad mechanic, just a bit to impactful currently. Like, the push effect should be reduced by quite a bit, maybe by something like two thirds. Currently walking on a windy day feels like fighting against a huge blizzard or hurricane, which is a bit silly.

[LazyRoll]

9 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

So 1.15.1 is out, the stable release.

The things are either not addressed or addressed just slightly.

Many of the new non-rare trees are still not much farmable.

• Greenspire cypress after "buff" still gives around 0.9999 seed per tree, so my initial 5 seeds after around 10 iterations are still 5 seeds (were 8 at some point).
  So I just wasted all this time and tool durability.
  The tree is not rare and has no purpose except being decorative. Why such harsh limitations are still applied to it?
• Bald cypress - seems a bit worse, stopped my attempts to propagate.
• Larch - around 1.1 seeds per tree. Probably slowly farmable, but feels not enough for trading or decorations.
  I have already payed by travelling north, surviving cold and searching for them, why asking more for this non-rare tree?

Redwood seems fine. Walnut seems fine.

Ebony and purpleheart - I don't even want to touch that again. Acceptable for solo but not for MP, too many people cutting all down. And the mechanics is just not fun imho, I can't do much with them, considering the current logistics limitations.

Crops - an unpleasant russian roulette, I don't enjoy farming any more, always afraid to lose them, always having zero clue if they would survive, zero clues about how temperature behaves etc.

Oh, and with the new undisclosed moisture mechanics (it is more important now but no idea what it even means), old farm field designs are bad now, need to make new ones where water and various blocks take more space than the actual farmland and crops, requiring more space and more claims.

Also added section about the new wind mechanics, pushing players. Also don't see much reason for this to be in game, except a horror element for "lovecraftian survival", which is fair enough, just I don't like horror games.

And btw the claim system is still in the same not user-friendly initial state, basically I can't edit the claims, if changed my build slightly. Can only add new cuboids (5x5x5 min), can't see my other claims at the same time, can't merge them, so my current claim with multiple cuboids is now not very manageable. Or delete claim and claim anew. Again, instead of just a small claim adjustment when adjusted build a bit, have to spend some time on this.

So in summary I found myself spending too much time on all the mundane tasks of dangerous farming, risky tree farming, food preparation etc instead of building things and improving public server infrastructure.

For now I got too frustrated and stopped playing, just don't feel like returning to the game.

Yeah I'm stopping with this game for now too... Although there are a lot of neat stuff in this update, other things left to be ignored, or a raised difficulty of some mechanics are not cool... Can't blame them though, they're the creators, but the whole horror & mega-grind theme is not for me as well... I've lost my patience when I lost my only watering bucket (since It's harder to make clay products for now & the bug of disappearing stuff still exists), on my first wilderness survival world...

[Ender Riens]

12 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

So 1.15.1 is out, the stable release.

The things are either not addressed or addressed just slightly.

Many of the new non-rare trees are still not much farmable.

• Greenspire cypress after "buff" still gives around 0.9999 seed per tree, so my initial 5 seeds after around 10 iterations are still 5 seeds (were 8 at some point).
  So I just wasted all this time and tool durability.
  The tree is not rare and has no purpose except being decorative. Why such harsh limitations are still applied to it?
• Bald cypress - seems a bit worse, stopped my attempts to propagate.
• Larch - around 1.1 seeds per tree. Probably slowly farmable, but feels not enough for trading or decorations.
  I have already payed by travelling north, surviving cold and searching for them, why asking more for this non-rare tree?

Redwood seems fine. Walnut seems fine.

Ebony and purpleheart - I don't even want to touch that again. Acceptable for solo but not for MP, too many people cutting all down. And the mechanics is just not fun imho, I can't do much with them, considering the current logistics limitations.

Crops - an unpleasant russian roulette, I don't enjoy farming any more, always afraid to lose them, always having zero clue if they would survive, zero clues about how temperature behaves etc.

Oh, and with the new undisclosed moisture mechanics (it is more important now but no idea what it even means), old farm field designs are bad now, need to make new ones where water and various blocks take more space than the actual farmland and crops, requiring more space and more claims.

Also added section about the new wind mechanics, pushing players. Also don't see much reason for this to be in game, except a horror element for "lovecraftian survival", which is fair enough, just I don't like horror games.

And btw the claim system is still in the same not user-friendly initial state, basically I can't edit the claims, if changed my build slightly. Can only add new cuboids (5x5x5 min), can't see my other claims at the same time, can't merge them, so my current claim with multiple cuboids is now not very manageable. Or delete claim and claim anew. Again, instead of just a small claim adjustment when adjusted build a bit, have to spend some time on this.

So in summary I found myself spending too much time on all the mundane tasks of dangerous farming, risky tree farming, food preparation etc instead of building things and improving public server infrastructure.

For now I got too frustrated and stopped playing, just don't feel like returning to the game.

I can agree with the trees being rare but I have to disagree as well with seed drop rate being neutered. If you want to make a tree/plant species harder to propagate, artificial rarity is not the way to go about it. It is much better to create engagement around difficulty, i.e. making the trees literally harder to propagate than just crouch-clicking (e.g. special conditions, specific temperature, needs good soil, watering, required fertilization, interaction (pruning with shears?)). Having some rarity is okay, but making them unrenewable is not, imo.

Crop farming issues I also agree with. The temperature damage mechanic should not exist without a clear way to avoid it. This is how most game mechanics work--you put in a mechanic, players need some way to circumvent that. Players currently have seasons/dates and time of day to predict heat patterns, which is semi-reliable and could be satisfactory for player experience, except for the fact that there isn't much clarity. Iterating off of previous comment ideas, this could be solved by giving certain seasons/months set temperature ranges so players know what times they can grow crops instead of having to just guess--a loose guidance. With the randomness of temperature, a "growable for X days" tooltip solution is difficult to implement and hard to make accurate.

The watering mechanic is obviously for realism but I agree with the notion that it does nothing except force more water space (or manual watering) on farms. Not an amazing mechanic, does not promote many interesting player dynamics. Would be much greater validated if they had an irrigation system in place, which would create new dynamics and engagement behind watering beyond manual labor. There are also other solutions that promote engagement.

Wind mechanics are out-of-place, in my opinion. Somewhat pointless, unrealistic, and unnecessary. Maybe neat if they pushed lighter items on the ground, but nothing more than that. Pushing the player makes no sense and is nothing but annoying, and the system itself creates no player dynamics (no unique interactions/items/solutions players can use to circumvent the problem of wind [does armor weigh you down? I haven't tested it])

I feel many of these new mechanics' problems are they either A) Introduce obstacles that do not promote player engagement with game systems, or B) (as mentioned in other comments) stride towards realism in a way that is unnecessary or absent of engagement.

Edited July 18, 2021 by Ender Riens

[Waddles]

I think the people who complain about the weather pushing people, do not live in very windy areas like Fargo.. as a hefty person, I can sometimes be pushed around rather easily, we worry sometimes about my husband's mother who is a stick on very windy days. I personally enjoy the weather pushing my character, I was actually rather impressed by it and thought it was  neat mechanic, however, I do think the direction needs to change too. Yes, I know someone says wind always comes from the west, but there are other factors that change its direction and so it is not unreasonable for the wind to shift. I was building my house during a windy day, and I had to get creative on how to go about it until the wind calmed down, maybe the wind can have various strengths behind it. On a more rare occasion have it able to push you and other times just blows the grass around. Another person is stopping the game because its very grindy, this is 100% the reason I picked up this game. I am tired of hand holding sandbox games where really its slam bam thank you ma'am and you are done with what you are doing. I love the grind. I am new to this game, 10 hours into it and I am finally figuring things out. If I wanted to play another minecraft, I would jump on that. My only complaint right now, is the lack of carry space. I like how small it is at start, and yeah getting baskets add to it, but I am finding it very hard to upgrade very early. I like the idea of a weight based system. As for crops, I don't know if there is one, but a greenhouse would be great for those. There could be different sizes, like you could build a full building or a small lid one. I have not tried multi player, but by playing single, I can agree that things like crops would be an issue and demand more play time. I suppose it encourages more people to team up and base with each other so there are more people to keep an eye on things versus playing alone in a multi player world. I think the best way to handle it are NPCs you can find/hire that can help manage some things for you. I am about to go on my first big explore, while carrying a bit of meat, find berries on the way and hunt when I can. Hunker down in dirt hut with a grass mat, mark it on my map and continue next day. Should be fun!

[RobinHood]

 

You can turn on/off Windeffects Crop-Dying via commands, would be fine to see this via User Interface in a next update , Crop Dying seems to be interesting in a single game, not good in a multiplayer game. Wind effects for me to strong. I play now without wind effects. If it is possible maybe one day see  not only On/Off for Windeffects, maybe also WindEffect-On-100%/ Wind-Moderate-On-50% / Windeffect-Off would be very nice.

• Tweak: Can now disable wind affected player and creature movement via /worldconfigcreate bool windAffectedEntityMovement false
• Tweak: Can now disable crop death via /worldconfigcreate bool allowCropDeath false

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by RobinHood

[Brady_The]

I personally think the wind mechanic is interesting, albeit a bit over the top at the moment - with a lot of future potential. Here a couple of random thoughts.

• Different wind strengths, from gentle breeze to hurricane
• Adapt the impact of wind strength based on position (being in the deepest forest/valley/mountain shadow should not affect you as much as when you are standing on top of a mountain)
• Strong storms = potential to root up trees, cause damage to crop, tear sails, destroy gears/rotors/axles (counter measures: "build on rock not sand", build in valleys, plant trees (with strong roots), engage brakes, etc), etc
• Weather vanes, wind socks as new objects