⚙️Make Temporal Storms Fun!⚙️

[Gabitzu]

So, I have a problem with Temporal Storms, they are not interactive enough. Like, I want players to feel that they accomplished something before the temporal storm began so they have a
sense of being involved, instead of just hoping for the best or sleeping through it. I imagine if you didn't disable temporal storms in the game settings, that you don't want to just pass through it like nothing happened by sleeping, so my first suggestion is to remove the ability to sleep when the temporal storm is imminent.

Second of all, I would like the player to spend some of their energy on:

 

Building. I don't really like that players can just run around outside like headless chickens and not get hurt. So my suggestion here would be to make the player take damage outside so you need to have a roof above your head and at the same time, you have to protect it.
Now, with the previous suggestion, there is a big problem, expectation. Players don't know when to expect a Temporal Storm, and therefore they can't prepare for it, so I would propose a 
small clock in the corner of the screen that shows the time of day, and how many days until the Temporal Storm is coming.

To further enhance this feeling of preparation, a new group of items could come into play:

 

Traps. Not only will traps such as: wooden barricades, spikes, fake grass coverings, etc. help you protect your residence from the pesky drifters, but there could also be implemented traps for animals so it makes it easier for you to catch and hunt them. Traps and baits for animals could be: small wooden cages, meat for bait, or grass and grains.

Third of all, the drifters themselves can be a bit:

 

Boring and Unpredictable. They might spawn in your cellar or even house so a proximity-based spawning rule would be greatly appreciated.
To counter this and not make it too easy, drifters can feel your presence from further away and if you get hurt, drifters, wolves, or other animals can smell your blood and come
to investigate.

But what if you have a:

 

Sky Base or Underground Shelter? Well, then drifters wouldn't be able to get to you, right? Not so fast.

Another implementation would be so they are able to build or destroy blocks to reach you. They could also be smarter forming packs and climbing on each other to make sure they will get to you easier. Now, a lot of people wouldn't want their base completely demolished, so the drifters could only break some weaker blocks, and those blocks could be repaired by the player or better yet, regenerate themselves over time.

Let's say you made Traps, Built yourself a nice base, but Chaos still ensues... Then, as your last resort, you could use Fire. Fire has been known to scare animals such as wolves,
so why not make it that drifters and other animals are scared of fire and you can set them ablaze with your torch to ward them off? That would encourage players to always carry
torches, chop lots of wood, collect sticks and make campfires to scare predators away.

So, this is how I would fix the problem that I have with temporal storms, I took some inspiration from Minecraft mods such as Hostile Worlds: Invasions, Consecration, Trapcraft
and the modpack Rebirth of the Night, so I hope you guys like the idea, and please share your thoughts down below.

Thank you for your time, have a great day!

Edited September 12, 2021 by Gabitzu
Changed t he title to not mock or upset people

[l33tmaan]

Temporal storms were great in the first place?

[Silent Shadow]

Well they were annoying on the harder difficulties, due to the large food cost of sleeping through them.

[Gabitzu]

Oh I am sorry for replying so late, I forgot to specify that by making them "Great again" I meant making them how I used to play Minecraft with the mods specified down below because I liked the feeling of protecting my base and creating a small kingdom that I can protect, my bad.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

I don't think forcing players to interact with the mechanic (no sleeping, building to reach sky bases, breaking to reach vaults) is necessarily the right approach.  Make the mechanic interesting (and rewarding), and players will *want* to interact with it.

[caffeine9999]

Alternative viewpoint:

Currently temporal storms are boring because they don't give any rewards, but have lots of drawbacks. Mechanically they are pretty close to Terraria events (such as Blood Moon or Goblin invasion). I think they are a good example of a game mechanic done right. Why they are fun in Terraria? Because they give some unique rewards and items that are inaccessible otherwise (higher risk - high reward). Temporal storms don't give anything except for food spoilage and high-level drifters (that still don't have good drops). Some of special events will eventually end (like Blood Moon), some won't until the player deals with them (goblin army won't go away until you defeat it).

Another fun aspect is that a player can invoke some events by using unique items and performing some actions on them.

Quote

small clock in the corner of the screen that shows the time of day, and how many days until the Temporal Storm is coming

Please don't. We already have time of day, temperature, xyz-coordinates, a map and temporal storm countdown messages "for free", without any efforts from a player. IMO this list should become shorter, not longer

[Silent Shadow]

As they are now, temporal storms have potential to be a free money event. The drifters spawned have a decent chance of dropping rusty and temporal gears and they can still be trapped in fence lined pits and then ground down with flint spears or better weapons later.

Just now, Omega Haxors said:

Maybe not the best thing to be referencing a terrorist movement with your title. Just saying

Don't you think that's a bit far? It's more like a meme than a terrorist movement.

[Gabitzu]

1 hour ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

I don't think forcing players to interact with the mechanic (no sleeping, building to reach sky bases, breaking to reach vaults) is necessarily the right approach.  Make the mechanic interesting (and rewarding), and players will *want* to interact with it.

 The thing is, if players don't want to play with temporal storms, they can just disable them when creating a world or with commands. If I have it turned on, I want to engage with it, but I can understand that some people don't want that so they can just disable it.

 I also like the idea of rewarding the player and like caffeine9999 said, a good example is from the splendid game Terraria with the Blood Moon and Goblin Invasions and the invocation of certain events. Maybe drifters, instead of dropping the BORING flax, they could drop their heads for you to keep as a trophy, or drop their fangs for you to craft infected knives, maybe bone blocks for you to build with, and other cool stuff. A rewarding event could also be the "Golden Moon" which could be triggered by using a magical totem (Maybe crafted by the new drops from drifters) with which you could summon a "Golden Moon" where monsters don't spawn, crops grow faster, food spoils slower, etc.

33 minutes ago, caffeine9999 said:

Alternative viewpoint:

Currently temporal storms are boring because they don't give any rewards, but have lots of drawbacks. Mechanically they are pretty close to Terraria events (such as Blood Moon or Goblin invasion). I think they are a good example of a game mechanic done right. Why they are fun in Terraria? Because they give some unique rewards and items that are inaccessible otherwise (higher risk - high reward). Temporal storms don't give anything except for food spoilage and high-level drifters (that still don't have good drops). Some of special events will eventually end (like Blood Moon), some won't until the player deals with them (goblin army won't go away until you defeat it).

Another fun aspect is that a player can invoke some events by using unique items and performing some actions on them.

Please don't. We already have time of day, temperature, xyz-coordinates, a map and temporal storm countdown messages "for free", without any efforts from a player. IMO this list should become shorter, not longer

 Also, I agree with caffeine9999 that there are too many coordinates, maps, and bla bla bla so that's why I usually disable them, but I think having the time of day, coordinates, temperature, etc. displayed in a more interesting and immersive way instead of just looking at them in the inventory would be pretty cool. Maybe craftable maps like in the Antique Atlas mod? Or I found this Vintage Story Clock Mod made by Rhonen which is exactly what I have been looking for.

 Anyways I love this game and I know the developers work hard on it and I surely hope they will try to make the Temporal Storms more fun! I appreciate your responses and I hope you are having a wonderful day! 

[Omega Haxors]

16 minutes ago, Silent Shadow said:

Don't you think that's a bit far? It's more like a meme than a terrorist movement.

A 'meme' that took over a government building, but that's the last I'm going to speak on this to avoid derailing the thread more than the atrocious (and potentially malicious) choice of title already has.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Gabitzu]

11 minutes ago, Omega Haxors said:

A 'meme' that took over a government building, but that's the last I'm going to speak on this to avoid derailing the thread more than the atrocious (and potentially malicious) choice of title already has.

 Hey man I am sorry for making you upset, but I don't live in America and wasn't aware of this, I just researched this right now. I know that it might be considered a "meme" but meme or not I didn't know the backstory, so now I am going to have the title changed because even if I am a guy that likes having fun and making jokes, the point of this post was to help the developers and have discussions with other people, not to make fun of sensible subjects.

 I am deeply sorry for this, as I said I am going to change the title right away and I hope I didn't cause any more sadness, because that is against my morals and what I want to do. I hope your day will get better after the title change. 

[Omega Haxors]

16 minutes ago, Gabitzu said:

 Hey man I am sorry for making you upset, but I don't live in America and wasn't aware of this, I just researched this right now. I know that it might be considered a "meme" but meme or not I didn't know the backstory, so now I am going to have the title changed because even if I am a guy that likes having fun and making jokes, the point of this post was to help the developers and have discussions with other people, not to make fun of sensible subjects.

 I am deeply sorry for this, as I said I am going to change the title right away and I hope I didn't cause any more sadness, because that is against my morals and what I want to do. I hope your day will get better after the title change. 

Hey that's awesome, thanks a ton.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

5 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

Maybe not the best thing to be referencing a terrorist movement with your title. Just saying.

 

4 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

A 'meme' that took over a government building, but that's the last I'm going to speak on this to avoid derailing the thread more than the atrocious (and potentially malicious) choice of title already has.

It depresses me that people who think like this actually exist.

[Silent Shadow]

Just let it die man. While I agree, I would rather political stuff be kept out of here.

[Irulana]

I think Temporal Storms should give more temporal gears as reward, currently especially in end game they get boring, so we usually sleep through them. But higher chance of getting temporal gear will make this mini game worth to play. Our last heavy temporal storm (2players fight) gave as only one temporal gear ><

[Thalius]

5 hours ago, Irulana said:

I think Temporal Storms should give more temporal gears as reward, currently especially in end game they get boring, so we usually sleep through them. But higher chance of getting temporal gear will make this mini game worth to play. Our last heavy temporal storm (2players fight) gave as only one temporal gear ><

This will only work if something is done to make it harder to farm drifters. We need better seeking ai and more dynamic combat ai from drifters.

We had to disable storms on our server because players figured out how to farm them with traps they would fall into, and they could harvest large amounts of resources at almost no risk. Bumping up the drop rate on gears would only make the problem worse.

Our solution was to bump the default drop rates up a bit, make drifters more dangerous over-all, and disable storms to prevent farming them.

I love the idea of temporal storms, but the concept needs more work and greater depth. Being that the game is in early stages and we have not gotten a good combat update yet, I'm sure they have plans for storms that we don't know about.  There have also been a lot of great suggestions and ideas shared on the topic in this and in other forum threads on the subject.

I'm personally very much looking forward to seeing what they come up with, and re-enabling storms in the Wilderlands server.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Thalius

[Silent Shadow]

Right now, I would say temporal storms only have an impact on the early phase of hard difficulty games. On Wilderness Survival mode, where creatures have 50% extra damage and the player has a 125% default hunger rate, temporal storms become much harder to ignore. If you want to skip it, you have to spend lot of food that may not be easy to gather in the early game. If you want to keep exploring, you have to be careful where you go and you may not be able to harvest all the resources you find. You can kill the high level drifters for the flax fibers and gears but at the risk of being killed and losing your stuff. Later in the game when those resources are easier to get by other methods, temporal storms become more of a tax on the player's time.

 

[YangKoete]

I did give a few posts for my ideas for Temporal Storms. In a nutshell; 

Rust mechanic. Basically, temporal storms damaging metal weapons, armour and blocks. Instead of over time, perhaps an enemy that spawns in them can do so with each hit it lands. 

Temporal storm enemies that drop unique things, or at least rare items that aren't as rare here. I thought of a sort of spectre/wraith enemy garbed in hide that you could build stitched-together armour that's fairly decent and prevents your weapons and tools from decaying as much if you're hit by their attacks. It'd stop people from just making pillars, as these foes would be able to hit you if you're atop them still. 

[Silent Shadow]

The pillar strategy would quickly be dropped if there were enemies with ranged attacks.

[junawood]

8 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

The pillar strategy would quickly be dropped if there were enemies with ranged attacks.

1. That would be a bad thing for those who actually like the pillar strategy.

2. That would be a bad thing for those who dislike ranged attacks.

3. Then even more people would just skip the storms.

4. Modifying the pillars a bit would help against ranged attacks, it would just make it a bit more complicated.

[l33tmaan]

There is no pillar "strategy". It is not even a tactic. It's just abusing AI and the poor state of enemies in this game. If just having mobs with ranged attacks invalidates such a simple "strategy", then it should have never existed to begin with. 

Edited September 18, 2021 by l33tmaan

[junawood]

What do you think castles and towers are? Just a bit more complex and comfortable pillars. If that's "abusing" anything in your opinion...

[l33tmaan]

Given that drifters can spawn in them, I disagree.

[Thalius]

Personally not sure how I feel about drifters themselves getting ranged attacks.  I do want to see some form of entity that is specific to the Rust world, meaning it only shows up in storms or when you are crossing over to the Rust world due to temporal instability.  Give this entity the ability to do ranged attacks of some kind, so that it sort of keeps you moving and unable to just stand in a "safe" spot like on a pillar or behind a wall and a kill hole or similar thing.  Maybe some form of temporal wraith-like creature that can phase out of form and re-appear near you if you stand still for too long, and phase through walls and such.

I've managed to modify drifters to render nerd poles pointless, unless you depend purely on range attacks. With enough arrows and spears you can kill anything from any number of safe vantage points.

To do that though, you need to be able to see them coming- Not so easy to do when exploring a cave or running around in the woods at night.  With regard to storms however, we get a notice they are coming. One just needs to build an appropriate safe place to hunt from and be there when the storm lands, and you can kill drifters safely and harvest the rewards with little risk.  Until we have some forms of creatures that have ranged attacks and/or can physically get to where you are, farming baddies from a safe spot will always be an abusable feature of the game, and during storms especially.

Just my opinion.

~TH~

 

[junawood]

33 minutes ago, l33tmaan said:

Given that drifters can spawn in them, I disagree.

And that is why a castle/tower like IRL (where it can even be completely dark) isn't enough in the game and a good way to deal with that is an almost safe pillar or a couple of strategically placed ones farther away from your base with some trenches around them to trap some drifters.

But castles, towers and pillars follow the same principle: get some distance between you and the enemies and get to a higher position than the enemies so it's way easier for you to kill them than the other way around.

 

If you want to run around chasing and being chased by drifters... great. Nothing stops you. The question is why some people want others not to be able to deal with temporal storms in different ways.

[Ari]

Yeah some of this feels a bit like "how do we force everyone to play in one specific way?" which is... why? If someone likes cheesing the drifters with murder holes, why prevent them? If someone doesn't find that playstyle fulfilling, then why wouldn't they just play the way they want?

I feel a bit like too many people are asking "how do we force EVERYONE to have to FIGHT all the enemies in the storms?" and not enough asking "why do some people not like the storms?" If someone just doesn't like combat, cheesing it seems reasonable. I think for me, they're just an annoyance that provides absolutely no benefit, so why WOULD I play them legit? If the game were altered to make it impossible to cheese the storms, I would simply disable them in every single world I generate, because there's no benefit to them.

Vintage Story is a sandbox. It's not specifically a fighting game. Fighting is one part of it, but there are many other aspects that have nothing to do with combat, and some of us play primarily for those. I like the wilderness survival bit. I like exploring, crafting, and building. I love cooking interesting meals and baking pies. I don't care about the scary monsters bit. I think it's great that there are interesting monsters for the folks who like fighting. Anyone who wants to fight them is already free to do so. But folks who are avoiding them are doing so for a reason. If you want to encourage everyone to fight the monsters, then there needs to be a suitable reward for doing so.