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player burnout


Modern Anubis

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I've done a few playthroughs with different groups of people and people seem to start burning out and getting tired around the same point. the late bronze age and whole iron age seems to be a gap of new stuff to do and those are the ages said groups of players usually start falling apart. beyond that my friends on average loved the game but without new challenges to tackle or new stuff to do they started to lose interest. some lasted longer cause they took up building but even they eventually stopped playing. hopefully new content can be added to the late bronze, iron, and even steel age. OH also the steel making process seems to be intimidating to new players, it seemed alright for me whose played a few times but for players that it was there first run through they seemed to almost avoid the idea of setting up the steel process, my best guess is they feel like they shouldn't bother if they cant get the best bricks but I don't know for certain.

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I have to agree with this. Temporal storms are lame, steel making is meh, once you start surviving the fun evaporates. I stopped playing for a bit because of new kenshi mods, and forgot this game existed or even had this game. 

 

I don't know what would make it better. Would it be more doodads? would it be more monsters? would it be better ruins? better combat? Something is missing, but i can't put my finger on it. 

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yeah... the steelmaking process is just not worth it, the durability & speed upgrade you get over iron is just too little considering how much fuel and preparation goes into making a refractory... and then you need to replace any damaged blocks

only use I see with steel is armor; with how frequently you'll be using pickaxes/shovels/etc. you'll burn through way too much steel

meanwhile with iron tools you just make the blooms, forge em into shape, and you're good to go

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Welp...  Just waiting for the next tier of tools that require steel (steampower anyone?)

Although it would be nice if there was an intermediary step for steel that wasn't so onerous, like extend the burn time of charcoal, bricks don't break.  Once steel becomes the next gatekeeper return to the current parameters.

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Well back in the day they used to "steel" iron tools/weapons by welding an edge of steel onto the tool. Perhaps Vintage Story could emulate this? Maybe have a process to make steel strips from an ingot and then weld them on with a flux? This way most of the tools and weapons could be made of iron but steel would be more worth making since you can stretch it further. The resultant tools could have the speed/damage/tier of steel but the durability of Iron, but if you still want steel armor you would have to make it entirely of steel. If you want this process to be harder, steel and iron weld at different temperatures IRL so you would have to heat each up with narrow ranges before joining them. Failure to meet the temperature requirements may waste the steel and flux. Also, borax could serve as a flux which would increase its worth beyond anvils.

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16 hours ago, AngryRob said:

I have been playing sunless skies a lately, and maybe after steel comes the steam age? but then again, what happens next? is this just a passive sandbox game, or will there be stuff to do? I wish we had more dungeons. 

Roadmap says that steam is end game tech and procedurally generated dungeons are in the plan.  Just don't know when that'll happen.  Lost of work for 1.5 coders to do.

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On 8/12/2021 at 10:33 PM, l33tmaan said:

And what do you do in the dungeons?

You know, funny you should mention it, but i am more of a tourist. I just like visiting the places. if there was no one there, no enemies, it would still be a fun thing to do. Do they really have to be dungeons? ruins are also fun. Savage lands had good atmosphere with the sad, broken houses on the frozen islands. So more ruins, in various states of decay, in a more intelligent spawn pattern would be neat. There are some fun screenshots of traders, ruins, and translocators spawing in the same place. That is fun to see. Part of the charm of minecraft was when the random gen went crazy and did weird things. Those were fun to see. Like ravines that revealed ruins. 
 

On 8/13/2021 at 12:56 PM, Maelstrom said:

Roadmap says that steam is end game tech and procedurally generated dungeons are in the plan.  Just don't know when that'll happen.  Lost of work for 1.5 coders to do.

Yeah, it's a lot of work for such a few amount of people, at the same time, successful early access games follow a pattern: community feedback. it's a mixed bag because you have to filter out who is the vocal minority, who has good input, who has bad input, etc etc. 

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People start burning out after bronze because around that time you kind of run out of problems to solve. Usually you'll have acquired most of what the game offers to you at that point, especially if you're playing with other people. The steelmaking process is kind of the last big task in this regard, but as mentioned here it's daunting for new players and the benefits are negligible/arguable. It's also not very alluring when it doesn't grant you anything you couldn't already get without steel. I almost wish there would be future-planned tech that is gated by steel, if only to provide some encouragement to dive into steelmaking.

Keep in mind that every new system and piece of content they add (even non-endgame stuff) is something to do regardless of progression status. As much as we'd love endgame content right now, a large part of the struggle is that the path to endgame as of current is pretty barebones when you compare it to the roadmap of all intended features. There would be a lot more to do on the way to steel in this regard. In this sense, I also feel like they could make a much larger, longer, and more interesting deal out of the stone age and how you progress into the copper age, also extending the progression spectrum.

But other than fancy clothes and steel armor, we don't have much right now. We'll have to see what they end up adding, as right now it's pretty gray and unspecific. 

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I think more content and options would solve this somewhat (even if i believe this game is going to require that you can stand some grind). If you still had more animals to encounter, more plants to find in the forest, and more low tier stuff to craft, you could start with some small advances towards getting iron and later steel but still have a lot of things to do and discover while you wait for getting there. But dungeons might be one part of it.

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an end of game would solve this, as it would give new purpose to makeing steel. I think it would be better if it was a collection of multiple fights of different creachers to finally get to the end. and mabey the last one you would be killing as many smaller monstors as you can to weakenn the big one.

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2 hours ago, Game Nerd said:

seems the game lacks purpost

another way would be to make better PvP/PvE or make better ruins with monstors, or a better story

If you want primarily a PvE-game or PvP-game there are plenty out there - Vintage story is never going to compete in that regard. Dungeon crawling game there are also plenty that can do it better. I don't mind improving combat or dungeons - but i don't see the point in making that the main focus.

And i think in order to keep the game entertaining through the grind i think more crafting and more additions to the nature is needed.

Edited by Fredrik Blomquist
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2 minutes ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

If you want primarily a PvE-game or PvP-game there are plenty out there - Vintage story is never going to compete in that regard. Dungeon crawling game there are also plenty that can do it better. I don't mind improving combat or dungeons - but i don't see the point in making that the main focus.

What do you think the main focus should be? I think the game lacks goals, another Idea is better/more/harder ruins

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Minecraft did pretty ok without a "purpose". They added the enderdragon later - and sure - i do think Vintage story need some kind of "end". But like in minecraft, it shouldn't be the main thing, you should be able to enjoy the game without "ending it", and you should be able to keep playing even after the end. The point of the game is to survive and craft.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

Minecraft did pretty ok without a "purpose". They added the enderdragon later - and sure - i do think Vintage story need some kind of "end". But like in minecraft, it shouldn't be the main thing, you should be able to enjoy the game without "ending it", and you should be able to keep playing even after the end. The point of the game is to survive and craft.

 

 

I think the point of the game should be survive, craft, discover/explore to give a reason to keep playing.

Edited by Game Nerd
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I think that if I actually defeated the end dragon I would stop playing, as it's lost the reason, to explor would be better, and it would be great if location had it's own progression system, ie:

found a book that direct me to go somewhere

go somewhere and find out more

defeat some mini boss and get some loot.

 

I don't want it to be:

found a npc that tells me to go somewear

do that

 

reason being is it would be to far away from a sandbox game, doing something instructed.

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On 8/15/2021 at 2:31 PM, Game Nerd said:

What do you think the main focus should be? I think the game lacks goals, another Idea is better/more/harder ruins

Well, lets ask ourselves a question here: what is the main loop? is it exploring? crafting? or combat? 

I like the survival aspects, and come to the game when i want a hardcore survival challenge. It has that. Combat is rudimentary at the moment. Exploring is pretty nice but also limited. 

Crafting, crafting is on point and if you play this game you can't go back to minecraft. A lot of the must have mods in minecraft are core game functions here. I think more machinery would go a long way, and having a tech level correspond with the severity of temporal storms. So if you build an awesome crazy steamworks, you will have a crazy fight every temporal storm. but also have temporal storms generate special resources for you, and better loot on drifters, to make such events worth while and fun to be in. 

At the same time, the game demands exploring. you need to explore to find animals, you need to explore to find metals, so also have mysteries and things to find while exploring. instead of fetch quests, traders who you have a good relationship with will tell you stories, and explain lore books that you found. These stories unlock rituals which during certain events can summon special monsters or give the location of a special ruin. Similar to throwing an eye of ender in the sky to get the direction of a fort, only this time you fill an aqueduct with molten copper to summon a giant metal hand that points to where Atlantis sank. 

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On 8/17/2021 at 8:02 PM, AngryRob said:

Well, lets ask ourselves a question here: what is the main loop? is it exploring? crafting? or combat?

I would say that the game focuses on extraction and building. Take from the environment as you can and use what you get to further your capabilities so you can take more from the environment and thus build more, and on and on. Combat right now is just an obstacle to overcome or a hazard to be wary of.

The main problem with the game is that it stops giving you reasons to build up your capabilities. Once you get a farm going and build a cellar with some pots, you have solved the problem of winter. Once you get bronze weapons and armor you have mostly solved the problem of enemies underground. Iron makes you further protected, but you don't really need it and steel is even worse with its meager return on investment. Since you no longer need to build up anything, why bother exploring for more resources? Once you get rid of the problems of winter and enemies, you have basically won the game and doing anything else is going to be intrinsically driven.

I think the game's options at this point are to either make everything harder, or to add new challenges to overcome.

They could make the player's time more valuable by placing more demands upon it so that a big part of the game would be switching to more investment heavy, but low upkeep, processes and materials. For example a copper tool could lose work speed quickly and thus need to be sharpened often to restore its speed (durability is not affected) but an iron or steel tool would need infrequent sharpening. There could also be better ovens/furnaces for better fuel efficiency, establishing mines via "temporal stabilizers" or something so fewer drifters will interfere while mining, introducing glass blowing with molds to facilitate mass production of containers for food and the like, more machines that can produce power or do work on items (slitting mill? Lathe?), building a fish pond for easy protein (no hides though), establishing a sawmill for faster/more plank production, etc. This way players gain more time to do whatever when they upgrade their stuff and they can feel the momentum building every time they do.

Item upkeep could be another reason to progress. If items break down overtime the player would want to shift to making items that could be made in batches or have more durability, similar to how tools work now. One reason glassware became much cheaper than pottery is because it could be mass produced with molds and pottery cannot, so if pots "wore out" or had a chance to break when handling (perhaps worse in the dark?) it would be good to invest in capital heavy glassware for quick and easy replacements. If buildings also wore out or were damaged by storms, there would be an incentive to make it out of more durable materials like stone blocks or setup a system where weaker materials could be made quickly and easily to replace the damaged parts (this would need a change in the way rooms work so that players would not just live in a carved out cave.)

I can see how a lot of people would not care for these options and would probably just see it as pointless grinding though. As for new challenges I have heard a few suggestions like setting up new dungeons or areas to explore but I feel that would not add much to the game as it would just be a place you go once to see or for bragging rights or you go there to raid for plunder and then never return. People also clamor for better combat but this game has been focusing on crafting for the most part and seeing them switch focus to combat would just make the game be like many of the other survival games on steam like Rust, ARC, or Conan. I think the challenge the game should build up to is rebuilding civilization from the current ruins it is in. Gather surviving people you find in camps or ruins, build a small village, set them up in their assigned tasks like farming, crafting, or guarding. You could setup production chains to outfit them and feed them. Fallout 4 had an interesting, if severely underdeveloped, idea of building settlements to support you in the wasteland, but this game is setup to execute it far better. Since the game is about building and surviving I think that a complete functioning settlement would be the ideal end of the game. I can see how this might be harder to code, but it would truly set Vintage Story apart from other survival crafting games.

Edited by Silent Shadow
grammer, spelling
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2 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

I would say that the game focuses on extraction and building. Take from the environment as you can and use what you get to further your capabilities so you can take more from the environment and thus build more, and on and on. Combat right now is just an obstacle to overcome or a hazard to be wary of.

The main problem with the game is that it stops giving you reasons to build up your capabilities. Once you get a farm going and build a cellar with some pots, you have solved the problem of winter. Once you get bronze weapons and armor you have mostly solved the problem of enemies underground. Iron makes you further protected, but you don't really need it and steel is even worse with its meager return on investment. Since you no longer need to build up anything, why bother exploring for more resources? Once you get rid of the problems of winter and enemies, you have basically won the game and doing anything else is going to be intrinsically driven.

I think the game's options at this point are to either make everything harder, or to add new challenges to overcome.

They could make the player's time more valuable by placing more demands upon it so that a big part of the game would be switching to more investment heavy, but low upkeep, processes and materials. For example a copper tool could lose work speed quickly and thus need to be sharpened often to restore its speed (durability is not affected) but an iron or steel tool would need infrequent sharpening. There could also be better ovens/furnaces for better fuel efficiency, establishing mines via "temporal stabilizers" or something so fewer drifters will interfere while mining, introducing glass blowing with molds to facilitate mass production of containers for food and the like, more machines that can produce power or do work on items (slitting mill? Lathe?), building a fish pond for easy protein (no hides though), establishing a sawmill for faster/more plank production, etc. This way players gain more time to do whatever when they upgrade their stuff and they can feel the momentum building every time they do.

Item upkeep could be another reason to progress. If items break down overtime the player would want to shift to making items that could be made in batches or have more durability, similar to how tools work now. One reason glassware became much cheaper than pottery is because it could be mass produced with molds and pottery cannot, so if pots "wore out" or had a chance to break when handling (perhaps worse in the dark?) it would be good to invest in capital heavy glassware for quick and easy replacements. If buildings also wore out or were damaged by storms, there would be an incentive to make it out of more durable materials like stone blocks or setup a system where weaker materials could be made quickly and easily to replace the damaged parts (this would need a change in the way rooms work so that players would not just live in a carved out cave.)

I can see how a lot of people would not care for these options and would probably just see it as pointless grinding though. As for new challenges I have heard a few suggestions like setting up new dungeons or areas to explore but I feel that would not add much to the game as it would just be a place you go once to see or for bragging rights or you go there to raid for plunder and then never return. People also clamor for better combat but this game has been focusing on crafting for the most part and seeing them switch focus to combat would just make the game be like many of the other survival games on steam like Rust, ARC, or Conan. I think the challenge the game should build up to is rebuilding civilization from the current ruins it is in. Gather surviving people you find in camps or ruins, build a small village, set them up in their assigned tasks like farming, crafting, or guarding. You could setup production chains to outfit them and feed them. Fallout 4 had an interesting, if severely underdeveloped, idea of building settlements to support you in the wasteland, but this game is setup to execute it far better. Since the game is about building and surviving I think that a complete functioning settlement would be the ideal end of the game. I can see how this might be harder to code, but it would truly set Vintage Story apart from other survival crafting games.

That's a good Idea,

I haven't played Rust, ARC, or Conan, but even with better PvE, the game would be different enough, as the survival is mutch better

It would be neat if you could then lead the settlement to war agents a boss, just be sure to make the boss

take longer then 15 minuets,

no be to easy,

not make us fall asleep grinding,

if you fail not to have to start over again,

and in more then one fight

Ideas to solve those are to:

create multiple enemies, and killing enough of them would weaken the big one.

I hope that bringing civilization back isn't impossible to code!

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While reading suggestions i though to myself about what i am missing in game...

I am thinking nice feature would be some AI charcters, like traders atm, who would do some tasks for you (like leather making, steel making etc.). Maybe those could be the same traders, but made for certain tasks and somehow spawn-able at your area after some certain requirements met. Also enemies - but not random - the ones player is willing to find and fight in certain areas - like dungeons (similar as it is now with bells and locusts). Thus making stronger armor and weapons would be more required to make.

Some villagers could spawn as soon as you make special building for them (like terraria). That way you would bring some life into your area. and give more purpose to grind after you have reached iron age. Those buildings could be quite expensive to make, but that would be challenge for some, who is looking for that after some time.

For example - leather making - which after the AI character spawn, could be simply delegated to him, thus only supplying him with resources, light and maybe some food.
Because, once you are done with that process few times it is hard to use my playtime to do that again. Also on multiplayer servers that way leather production could be increased (as barrel holds only 50 litres of water) or simply made as a shop..so lazy ones could simply go and buy leather.

The same with steel and other time consuming tasks. Because from my experience - time consuming tasks are the one which scared me away from multiplayer server. Especially on miultiplayer servers, where food is already is time consuming task all the time. Those tasks ar fun for some time, but once you have to do more that 10-15 tasks at a time, it becomes hard to do that all by yourself (talking more about singleplayer mode or multiplayer server where everyone is playing by themselves). After some time playing at multiplayer server i was willing to only look for recources, ruins or adventures or do only some certain tasks But then again  i didn't want to be a burden for someone as i come and use their food or resources all the time without helping them to make that all. As i had only 1 hour a day to play sometimes - i was willing to enter game and simply do what i like. But half of that time i had to do farming, husbandry, food making etc. So i didn't have time for exploring anymore as i was planning. Sometimes you just want to explore caves without anithing other to do. But this game always has something for you to do thus not giving you such possibility sometimes.

But i want to mention. I love this game! I am happy with how it's made atm. And such cool and amazing Devs is why i let myself dream about such features some tima after time, although i understand it would be hard to include in game. :)

So yea, I would say - possibility to grind a little more to make some AI villager huts would be nice, thus letting player to concentrate on things he wants and keeping other stuff less or more automated. ;)

But that's a lot of coding.. :/

 

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