My views on how to improve the game

[Jameh]

Hi all, I have been playing Vintage story for about 2.5 years now, and have recently had a play through where I interacted with most of the game’s mechanics, through to steelmaking.

Whilst the game has made leaps and bounds of progress since I’ve started playing, I have some ideas on how to further improve the game, and came up with a list of items, in order of importance, to make the game into something that is, in my opinion, better.

Whilst this is aimed at vanilla, I’m aware that these could be implemented as mods. I do not have sufficient time to do mod development at the moment, so feel free to take these ideas for your own mods at your leisure.

 

Kiln

A simple request, but how to achieve it? I would have a kiln operate somewhere between the coke oven, pit-kiln and the clay oven. I imagine a multi-block structure, with a single-block hollow for you to put your unfired items. A firebox, which you can load fuel into (the same types of fuel that you can use for pit-kilns), and the rest of the structure made of fire bricks (or perhaps refractory bricks, but this seems a little over the top).

This would use more fuel than a pit kiln but would be slightly faster and would have the same benefits as a pit-kiln for using better fuel types. You could also use coal-type fuels, which would give it an advantage over the pit-kiln, and make it feel like you’ve actually progressed from putting stuff in the ground.

The main advantage would be not requiring sticks or dry grass, simplifying the firing process.

Modular Armour System

It’s great that amour repair has been announced, this was one of my main issues with the current system, but I have another idea that could further improve (in my opinion) the armour system.

The basic idea is that armour would be split into layers, which can be swapped out and repaired at an armour station of some kind.

This would allow, for example, mixed metal armours, where you have say, copper chain topped with bronze brigandine, but would also allow you to upgrade your armour once you have the sufficient technology, time and resources to do so, without needing to painfully recreate things such as chains or leather if you have specific resource issues.

Firepit Rebalance

The firepit is very frustrating to use in it’s current form, as the best and most efficient way to use it is to baby it whilst it’s cooking things, which feels unrealistic and is jarring in comparison to a lot of the game’s other systems.

Currently, the best way to use the firepit is to allow a stack of items to reach cooking temperature, take the whole stack out, and feed items in one-at-a-time to let them cook. This is because if you leave the whole stack in there, the temperature resets to 0 each time an item is cooked.

This could be fixed by either making it so that once an item is cooked, the stack stays at the same temperature, or by doing what the crucible does, and have the stack take longer to get up to temperature based on how big it is, and have all of the items cook at once.

Rift Blocking Device (Added in 1.18)

Once you start to hit mid-late game, it starts to get frustrating having rifts spawn in and around your base. A device which may require some difficult to acquire items, that prevents rifts from spawning in a generous radius (say 50 blocks or so), would be great for this.

There are several ways this could be made into more of a mechanic, perhaps with a sender and receiver node, making it so rifts stop spawning in one place, but are much more common in another, or having a minimum spacing between blocking devices, meaning that you can’t make everywhere safe.

Temporal Storms are currently useless

There is currently very little point to temporal storms. I realise that the next update is a lore update and is likely to address this though, so I won’t stick on this point for too long.

That being said, it would be cool if we could utilise the time dilation effects of a temporal storm in some way, maybe to quickly age cheese, compost or alcohol?

Drifter Accuracy

Currently, the rocks that drifters throw seem to hit more often than not, especially in multiplayer. Some adjustments to their accuracy to make them less accurate, as well as less likely to throw rocks would be less frustrating.

Tool Handles

I think it would be cool if higher tier tools weren’t made with a simple branch you pulled off of a tree. Perhaps some kind of wood carving mechanic where we can make tool handles of various types of wood (with rarer, stronger kinds of wood like ebony being better) for use with higher tier tools could affect the tool’s durability. This would be somewhat like the Minecraft mod Tinker’s Construct.

Hoe Usage

Currently, once you’ve tilled a field, you no longer need the hoe. Metal hoes thus feel like a waste of metal, and it doesn’t feel very realistic.

One idea could be that when you pull up plants, you should need to re-till the soil before you can plant more. This would of course need to be it’s own block, as you couldn’t have the soil return to it’s base form as it would lose the nutrient information, so it would be called something like “farmed low-quality soil”.

Another could be that re-tilling the soil redistributes the nutrients, giving you a boost in nutrient levels, making re-tilling worthwhile for fast farming. (Idea from PlasmaticChrome26 on Discord)

Edited March 7, 2023 by Jameh

[l33tmaan]

I hope every single one of your suggestions gets invalidated eventually.
Uh, in the good way.

[Jashyro]

I also hope that they improve and add more abonded/destroyed buidlings around the World.
As they feel pretty empty in my view.

[Davis]

All great ideas, my only addition to this would be for the Hoe point:

Quote

 

Hoe Usage

Currently, once you’ve tilled a field, you no longer need the hoe. Metal hoes thus feel like a waste of metal, and it doesn’t feel very realistic. When you pull up plants, you should need to re-till the soil before you can plant more. This would of course need to be it’s own block, as you couldn’t have the soil return to it’s base form as it would lose the nutrient information, so it would be called something like “farmed low-quality soil”.

 

For us who play multiplayer and hope to one day be apart of massive servers, this would become a time consuming task for fields / farms that are over 100 blocks x 100 blocks. I still think this is a good idea, but we would need the introduction of a field plow of some kind. Similar to the scythe, it would plough in a 3 block radius (or something along that line). This way it doesn't take 1-2 hrs to replough your massive fields! 

Edited May 27, 2022 by Davis

[Jameh]

Just now, Davis said:

All great ideas, my only addition to this would be for the Hoe point:

For us who play multiplayer and hope to one day be apart of massive servers, this would become a time consuming task for fields / farms that are over 100 blocks x 100 blocks. I still think this is a good idea, but we would need the introduction of a field plow of some kind. Similar to the scythe, it would block in a 3 block radius (or something along that line). This way it doesn't take 1-2 hrs to replough your field. 

Yeah, I totally agree. I love how making a simple change like this can pave the way for other items and mechanics in the game that are more efficient/effective, making it feel really rewarding for progressing to more modern technologies/tech levels. Thanks for the input!

[Donovan Camp]

On 5/27/2022 at 11:20 AM, Davis said:

All great ideas, my only addition to this would be for the Hoe point:

For us who play multiplayer and hope to one day be apart of massive servers, this would become a time consuming task for fields / farms that are over 100 blocks x 100 blocks. I still think this is a good idea, but we would need the introduction of a field plow of some kind. Similar to the scythe, it would plough in a 3 block radius (or something along that line). This way it doesn't take 1-2 hrs to replough your massive fields! 

This here is a good way to include working animals into the game. To use the plow you could need either a tamed bull/horse to pull it. integration of mechanics is exceptionally important imo, the more each mechanic in the game has to interact the better the experience will be.

 

[RobinHood]

I also have an idea, monsters shouldn't disappear so easily, e.g. - after a temporal storm, I just run 100 blocks or swim. I'm coming back, monsters are gone.

It would be a lot worse but also more challenging if the monsters were still there.

We also need drifters in the water, it's too easy for me when it's night time, then sometimes in the early stages of the game I'll sit in a bigger lake and wait until the next sunrise.

We need also a mechanic to relocate translocators better / faster.

more automation would also be good, garden robots, road construction robots, digging robots, mining robots etc.

[Stroam]

Kiln

It is something that gets brought up and kicked around from time to time. Probably, eventually

Modular Armour System

Ha! I wish. 

Firepit Rebalance

A cooking refactor would be cool but not likely any time soon as that was the focus not too long ago.

Rift Blocking Device

When it comes to lore related stuff, it is added slowly and cautiously. You'll probably see this as a mod at some point.

Temporal Storms are currently useless

This is fair and something that is thought about a lot.

Drifter Accuracy

It is a new feature. Will probably be rebalanced at some point.

Tool Handles

Tinkers construct was one of my favorite mods for minecraft. I don't think this will be a thing as there's an effort to implement calculation vs player gain rough calculation done and something like this wouldn't pass unless part of a larger overhaul.

Hoe Usage

You aren't wrong but similar to the previous answer, it's low impact and we have to be very intentional with our expensive developer time. You can look at the titles among the VS team to see how precious that resource really is.

[Jameh]

On 6/11/2022 at 4:20 PM, Stroam said:

Kiln

It is something that gets brought up and kicked around from time to time. Probably, eventually

Modular Armour System

Ha! I wish. 

Firepit Rebalance

A cooking refactor would be cool but not likely any time soon as that was the focus not too long ago.

Rift Blocking Device

When it comes to lore related stuff, it is added slowly and cautiously. You'll probably see this as a mod at some point.

Temporal Storms are currently useless

This is fair and something that is thought about a lot.

Drifter Accuracy

It is a new feature. Will probably be rebalanced at some point.

Tool Handles

Tinkers construct was one of my favorite mods for minecraft. I don't think this will be a thing as there's an effort to implement calculation vs player gain rough calculation done and something like this wouldn't pass unless part of a larger overhaul.

Hoe Usage

You aren't wrong but similar to the previous answer, it's low impact and we have to be very intentional with our expensive developer time. You can look at the titles among the VS team to see how precious that resource really is.

I see, thank you for taking the time to respond! I really appreciate the work you all do! 

[YangKoete]

On 5/29/2022 at 3:58 AM, RobinHood said:

I also have an idea, monsters shouldn't disappear so easily, e.g. - after a temporal storm, I just run 100 blocks or swim. I'm coming back, monsters are gone.

It would be a lot worse but also more challenging if the monsters were still there.

We also need drifters in the water, it's too easy for me when it's night time, then sometimes in the early stages of the game I'll sit in a bigger lake and wait until the next sunrise.

We need also a mechanic to relocate translocators better / faster.

more automation would also be good, garden robots, road construction robots, digging robots, mining robots etc.

Or maybe a foe for water/amphibious foe. 

[Jameh]

Coming back to this now, it's fun to see that one suggestion has been implemented in 1.18! Looking forward to seeing what other fun stuff this release brings