My review as a new player!

[jbutt]

After playing MC to death over the last decade I was very excited to try this game, so me and my friends started a server and learned the game together.  I thought I'd write a review based on our general experience and hope it generates some useful feedback and suggestions.

First Impressions:

-Minecraft gives a lot more guidance for new players, telling you to start punching trees and guiding you through making your first tools and shelter.  The initial learning curve for the game is very steep and I can imagine some people just giving up from the lack of guidance or intuitive interface.  I nearly wrote the game off after my first hour thinking the crafting system was far too obtuse.  The game's guide was filled with vague information.  So many items and processes lack any sort of detailed instructions on how to work with them or what they are for.  So many more tooltips are needed, and existing descriptions need more practical details.  The in-game guide is pretty useless really, we constantly had to check the wiki (which is only marginally better) and really had to watch lots of youtube videos to learn nearly every process in the game.  There was always some big "ah ha!" moment when watching a youtube because the guide and wiki always skip over important details.  They'll always say something like "just knap the stones" but never explain what knapping means or most important what combination of keys you must press to start the process.

-The game is gorgeous.  I could max out visibility and graphics settings without any issue and the game always runs so smoothly.  The great visuals and terrain that were always calling me to explore really kept us interested, which kept us from giving up on the game and putting in the effort to learn it despite the not so great new-player experience.

-The constant deaths are demoralizing.  We spawned in what seemed like a pretty forest, but we were constantly being killed by wolves, respawning, and being killed again.  We later learned this was just "bad luck" for spawning in a forest, but if forest spawns are such a death sentence why inflict that on new players as a first impression?  I actually love when the early "hobo phase" of a game is tough, but I was hoping the difficulty would come from finding food and building shelter and generally surviving, not having to deal with constant swarms of wolves that seemed to re-spawn every few min.  The whole "every place on the map with trees is filled with super dangerous wolves" mechanic isn't fun at all.  Scary dangerous dire wolves? Sure, as a rare enemy perhaps in specific dark forest biomes, but not everywhere.  We got a mob that makes wolves still dangerous, but generally more rare and life has become so much better.

-The warp storms or whatever are really cool, reminds me of the blowouts in Stalker.  They last a little too long and after the first few it just becomes a boring chore to have to hide in a closet for a while, interrupting whatever you were doing.  I'd love to see these storms be shorter, but more intense with more effects on the world.  Perhaps have these storms be the only time new monsters re-spawn in caves and such?

-Terrain is really neat in the game, the more realistic climate zones are great.  The lack of rivers or "continents" though does tend to produce fairly samey terrain though, and the default world settings also create biomes that are so huge you really have to walk for a solid real life hour to see truly different terrain.  All these settings are changeable of course, but perhaps the default should be smaller so new players don't just think the game is endlessly temperate forests and lakes.  In weeks of play I've yet to see a desert or a tropical area, I know they are down there but I just don't actually have the time in-game to get down there on the default map size settings.

-Lack of map sharing really killed cooperative exploration.  A communal server map option would be very nice, or an in-game way for players to trade maps and share waypoints would be nice.

-Mob spawning isn't great.  We've always hated how in minecraft mobs just kind of randomly spawn around in the dark, even right inside your base.  What's the point of any sort of fortifications or village wall when monsters randomly spawn in your bedroom?  I constantly get mobs spawning right behind me while clearing out a cave, sometimes even spawning faster than I can kill them.  Maybe some people like this sort of gameplay, but I'd love a system where you never really see monsters spawning in.  If you discover a cave, you should be able to "clear" the cave out and it will stay clear for days, perhaps until the next temporal storm.   Situations where mobs just keep spawning in every direction ~10m away just isn't fun.

-Food should not go bad in my inventory while I'm logged out!  I don't know why anyone this this is a fair or good mechanic, but it would be very nice to be able to turn this off as an option.  Not everyone has the free time to play the game continuously for hours, I quite often have to play in short bursts and it's really awful when you try to log back in to finish exploring that cave or finish that big exploration only to find all your food you packed has rotted away while you were offline.  My character and its inventory should be frozen in amber while I'm offline.

-I love how minerals work in the game, it really encourages exploration because you can't just reliably get every single resource in the game by randomly digging down anywhere on the map.  If anything, I'd run with this. Make deposits even more rare, but bigger.  Make it so deposits can be so huge, players actually are encouraged to set up a little local mine-base since they'll be coming back there for weeks.  Some upgrades to prospecting would be nice though too, there's some real bottleneck resources that can't even be prospected and can force players to run around for hours or even days to find them to progress.  RNG situations like that can really kill the fun. Some players will find a bottleneck resource right away, others will waste hours desperately searching.  Would love to see some other items to aid prospecting, perhaps some sort of more short ranged detector that can tell you there's a deposit within 10m of you.

-Clothing!  There's a whole character page with so many slots, but so few options to fill them with.  What a perfect system for all sorts of useful and cosmetic clothing options to further customize our characters, just need the content to fill them with.  Let us craft all sorts of stuff, and right from the start.

-The water physics are... bad.  They somehow manage to be even worse than minecraft's horrible water.  I'd love to see something closer to Dwarf Fortress's water system with actual flows and movement of water rather than the whole silly minecraft "source block" system where a single block of water and produce unlimited liquid.  I understand on a huge open world this could be quite the performance challenge, but a better system would be so worth it.  

-After you get out of the hobo-phase and have a nice little village with a food supply going, the game starts to really lose steam and direction.  We all have iron tools, we're working on getting to steel, but there's no sense of a big goal to achieve or challenge to overcome.  The game could really provide a bit more of a sense of progression in terms of challenges in the world.  Difficult dungeons you really need good gear to overcome, rare sites that are hard to stumble upon but easier to find with later-game tools, perhaps even entire areas of the map that are soft-locked until players can craft special protective items or tools.  Perhaps some regions of the map have special sort of temporal instability and are too dangerous to really enter, until you've crafted a special item that reduces temporal effects, stuff like that.

-I'd love a goal of being able to attract NPC survivors and merchants to our village, something like the minecraft villager system but better would be so nice to create a sense of life and activity.  I just love taking care of villagers, building them pretty houses, watching them grow.

The game is off to such a great start and even has a great modding community already.  Our server already has about a dozen mods, which is nice, but also a bit of a red-flag.  The vanilla game shouldn't need 8 little interface tweak and quality of life mods, if tons of people are using a quality of life mod then perhaps that should be part of the vanilla game?  If tons of people are resorting to mods to re-balance enemies or spawn rates, perhaps the default system needs another pass?

[Hal13]

Such a review doesn't fit into suggestion, the amount of things you review negatively, partially not even true, and want to have changed goes way over some suggestion to improve a part of the game, you basically want the whole game overhauled. As such this topic isn't a suggestion but a review and would fit into discussion way better. You could have made separate topics for each of your suggestions, but if you'd used the search function most valid points were suggested already, some even are worked on, either by modders (whose mods might become part of the main game or not) or the devs (things you'd see on the roadmap for the game).
 

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

The in-game guide is pretty useless really, we constantly had to check the wiki (which is only marginally better) and really had to watch lots of youtube videos to learn nearly every process in the game.[...] There was always some big "ah ha!" moment when watching a youtube because the guide and wiki always skip over important details.  They'll always say something like "just knap the stones" but never explain what knapping means or most important what combination of keys you must press to start the process.

Really? Vague information and no clear instructions in the guide? How much clearer do you need the instructions, than the "When you have 2 of them, shift-right-click to place one on the ground to begin knapping", even with a link to the article on knapping?

The wiki is similarly on point, but at the same time actually gives hints on optimizing the process and doing it together. As You said You'd have played Mc for a decade, I have to assume including modded and that you know how to use tools like a wiki. In all honesty and without being defensive about it, THIS accusation is ridiculous, especially if compared with Minecraft you get way more useful information in VS, though you have to press a button and for more than the basics search for it.

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

The constant deaths are demoralizing.  We spawned in what seemed like a pretty forest, but we were constantly being killed by wolves, respawning, and being killed again.  We later learned this was just "bad luck" for spawning in a forest, but if forest spawns are such a death sentence why inflict that on new players as a first impression?  I actually love when the early "hobo phase" of a game is tough, but I was hoping the difficulty would come from finding food and building shelter and generally surviving, not having to deal with constant swarms of wolves that seemed to re-spawn every few min.  The whole "every place on the map with trees is filled with super dangerous wolves" mechanic isn't fun at all.  Scary dangerous dire wolves? Sure, as a rare enemy perhaps in specific dark forest biomes, but not everywhere.  We got a mob that makes wolves still dangerous, but generally more rare and life has become so much better.

You are playing a survival game inspired by a horror genre, you spawned in a forest and you didn't run towards somewhere where you are actually able to see your surroundings?

Not even every forest is infested with wolves (and other biomes filled with trees are even less their habitat) and you can prevent new ones from spawning by herding enough of them together in a lit hole, they aren't even super dangerous for day1 if you know not to fight them, they are slower than player characters and are slowed down even more when in water. I dislike their behaviour but they are not the danger some point out they'd be.

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

The warp storms or whatever are really cool, reminds me of the blowouts in Stalker.  They last a little too long and after the first few it just becomes a boring chore to have to hide in a closet for a while, interrupting whatever you were doing.  I'd love to see these storms be shorter, but more intense with more effects on the world.  Perhaps have these storms be the only time new monsters re-spawn in caves and such?

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

Mob spawning isn't great.  We've always hated how in minecraft mobs just kind of randomly spawn around in the dark, even right inside your base.  What's the point of any sort of fortifications or village wall when monsters randomly spawn in your bedroom?  I constantly get mobs spawning right behind me while clearing out a cave, sometimes even spawning faster than I can kill them.  Maybe some people like this sort of gameplay, but I'd love a system where you never really see monsters spawning in.  If you discover a cave, you should be able to "clear" the cave out and it will stay clear for days, perhaps until the next temporal storm.   Situations where mobs just keep spawning in every direction ~10m away just isn't fun.

I repeat You are playing a survival game inspired by a horror genre.

Temporal Storms are toggleable events, which are dependent on the temporal stability mechanic, without which they sadly don't happen even if toggled on. Caves are not generated with mobs inside, those only spawn in the vicinity of a player character, hence if any of those toggles are turned off your suggestion would mean: no monster spawning at all, which is a totally other toggle.
Monsters spawn in unstable areas, which is everything underground (as a rule of thumb the more blocks are generated above a cave the more temporally unstable it is) and at night if one doesn't prevent them from spawning, full block surfaces are spawnable, anything not a full block or covered in water is not (though some blocks like farmland appear to not be a full block but actually are). To prevent mobs from (de-)spawning at night light up your area (same as in Minecraft until just recently), for mood lighting use chiseled blocks (anywhere from as small as 1/8 x1/8 x1/8 of a block up to only that much missing) as carpets or similar , if you add enough chiseled blocks you can make your interiors spawnproof without any lighting, even in temporal storms (won't prevent mobs from despawning though). You have more options for spawnproofing compared to Minecraft, use them!

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

but perhaps the default should be smaller so new players don't just think the game is endlessly temperate forests and lakes.  In weeks of play I've yet to see a desert or a tropical area, I know they are down there but I just don't actually have the time in-game to get down there on the default map size settings.

You aren't really supposed to walk all that way, there are translocators for far travel, sometimes there are dozens in relatively close proximity, but even when walking the default distance from pole to equator is 50k blocks (correction it depends on the selected playstyle with it being 100k in standard and wilderness survival, the 50k are the default for the exploration playstyle I prefer, You can create other playstyles with other defaults, though you'd need some modding knowledge), with spawn (if set to temperate climate) somewhere around the middle, with the default movement speed you can cover 1,800 blocks per ingame day (20 minutes) hence you should be able to cover the whole distance from pole to equator in less than 30 days by foot (if the terrain is somewhat in your favour and there are no too steep cliffs) a bit over 9.25 hours of walking (not even accounting for running), add translocators able to teleport you over thousands of blocks after getting repaired and that number drops significantly. From my experience the defaults are kinda made to make people customize their worlds to their needs and not to present settings on how it is meant to be played by all. Making the default map sizes even smaller would likely result in more people complaining about the worlds being significantly smaller than in Minecraft.

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

-Lack of map sharing really killed cooperative exploration.  A communal server map option would be very nice, or an in-game way for players to trade maps and share waypoints would be nice.

One of the valid points. Mapmaking and sharing waypoints was suggested already though. Adding your view on the topic to the topics instead of letting it drown in here, is more likely to result in making your thoughts heard.

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

Food should not go bad in my inventory while I'm logged out!  I don't know why anyone this this is a fair or good mechanic, but it would be very nice to be able to turn this off as an option.  Not everyone has the free time to play the game continuously for hours, I quite often have to play in short bursts and it's really awful when you try to log back in to finish exploring that cave or finish that big exploration only to find all your food you packed has rotted away while you were offline.  My character and its inventory should be frozen in amber while I'm offline.

Another of your valid points, though it seems foods do just have values for spoilrate and when it was made, resulting in this behaviour, there are topics on it already and suggestions for multiplayer servers on how to set up the game to mitigate it becoming a big issue (for example here).

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

I love how minerals work in the game, it really encourages exploration because you can't just reliably get every single resource in the game by randomly digging down anywhere on the map.  If anything, I'd run with this. Make deposits even more rare, but bigger.  Make it so deposits can be so huge, players actually are encouraged to set up a little local mine-base since they'll be coming back there for weeks.  Some upgrades to prospecting would be nice though too, there's some real bottleneck resources that can't even be prospected and can force players to run around for hours or even days to find them to progress.  RNG situations like that can really kill the fun. Some players will find a bottleneck resource right away, others will waste hours desperately searching.  Would love to see some other items to aid prospecting, perhaps some sort of more short ranged detector that can tell you there's a deposit within 10m of you.

I like the idea of actually making mines (though with iron deposits you usually have deposits large enough for such a thing), the RNG thing you mentioned, do you mean sources of lime and halite? If so you can buy lime and salt from different traders, if you are unable to find any and you usually don't need huge amounts of both. Did you try both prospecting modes?

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

Clothing!  There's a whole character page with so many slots, but so few options to fill them with.  What a perfect system for all sorts of useful and cosmetic clothing options to further customize our characters, just need the content to fill them with.  Let us craft all sorts of stuff, and right from the start.

If you toggled off the class restricted items option, you can do that, if not you are more limited if not playing a tailor.

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

The water physics are... bad.  They somehow manage to be even worse than minecraft's horrible water.  I'd love to see something closer to Dwarf Fortress's water system with actual flows and movement of water rather than the whole silly minecraft "source block" system where a single block of water and produce unlimited liquid.  I understand on a huge open world this could be quite the performance challenge, but a better system would be so worth it.  

It has been said many times that this is something they are working on, but all dynamic fluid physics will hog system resources, possibly resulting in many being unable to play the game. It's easier for games like Terraria or Dwarf Fortress, which only have slightly more than 2 dimensions (in Terraria there are only main layer and background layer for example, still on low end computers rain fall can cause lag).

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

After you get out of the hobo-phase and have a nice little village with a food supply going, the game starts to really lose steam and direction.  We all have iron tools, we're working on getting to steel, but there's no sense of a big goal to achieve or challenge to overcome.  The game could really provide a bit more of a sense of progression in terms of challenges in the world.  Difficult dungeons you really need good gear to overcome, rare sites that are hard to stumble upon but easier to find with later-game tools, perhaps even entire areas of the map that are soft-locked until players can craft special protective items or tools.  Perhaps some regions of the map have special sort of temporal instability and are too dangerous to really enter, until you've crafted a special item that reduces temporal effects, stuff like that.

Okay first: VS is a sandbox game, which ultimately means make your own goals. Second it is still basically in early access, dungeons, additional lore, technology up to industrial era tech etc are on the roadmap, there are already regions so temporally unstable that a few minutes in them can deplete your stability completely, resulting in the effects of a temporal storm and constant damage if close to walls. There are suggestions and discussions on how to implement oceans, which basically require boats or even ships to cross...

If you need external sources for goals, start collections, build a monumental museum for your world, start making awesome statues via chiseling mechanic... You said you've played Minecraft for over a decade, how did you keep playing it if you aren't able to motivate yourself over just "finishing" the game?

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

I'd love a goal of being able to attract NPC survivors and merchants to our village, something like the minecraft villager system but better would be so nice to create a sense of life and activity.  I just love taking care of villagers, building them pretty houses, watching them grow.

it's on the roadmap and there are topics discussing the best way to implement such villages, you might want to start discussing those suggestions.

 

4 hours ago, jbutt said:

The game is off to such a great start and even has a great modding community already.  Our server already has about a dozen mods, which is nice, but also a bit of a red-flag.  The vanilla game shouldn't need 8 little interface tweak and quality of life mods, if tons of people are using a quality of life mod then perhaps that should be part of the vanilla game?  If tons of people are resorting to mods to re-balance enemies or spawn rates, perhaps the default system needs another pass?

The game is meant to be modded and customized, the devs even go as far as to implement stuff that won't ever see a use in vanilla just to give modders something already in the game to use instead of having to implement it themselves (how many mods did introduce several different metals, like copper, in minecraft and needed library mods if used with others). "if tons of people are using a [...] mod..." which one? There are many mods that address similar things in different ways, some making it easier some making it harder, there are thousands of players, but no mod has more than a few hundred followers, how could you decide which mod to make vanilla when none of them is used by the majority of all players? Think about it that way: If you were the dev and would remake the game according to a mod, you'd endorse that the game is meant to be played that way, even if there is quite some backing by that mod's supporters, you might annoy the other players who chose not to use that mod (for example because it's incompatible with something they like), but if you do not do it, people can just use that mod, after all there is nothing wrong with modding the game (it's even encouraged) and as it's not vanilla you'd not have to fix its bugs but can use your very limited resources on getting the game closer to a finished state. I may remind you that there is only 1 full time programmer on the team.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Hal13

[Paruza]

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The in-game guide is pretty useless really

I thought it was great actually. You can hover over items and hit H, the guides are pretty complete, the survival handbook section covers all the basics including survival armor.

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The constant deaths are demoralizing.  We spawned in what seemed like a pretty forest...

Wolves are literally the only threat on the surface, and only exist in forests. They run after getting hit by two spears, killed in 3, copper spears kill in 2. They are only a significant threat if you have no armor, and initial armor literally takes just firewood. *However* I don't think the worldgen should allow a forest or water start by default. It should force a plains at the origin for the wolves reason, and other issues like spawning on top of mountains or in a lake.

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The lack of rivers or "continents" though does tend to produce fairly samey terrain though

I agree, I think this is on his list already.

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In weeks of play I've yet to see a desert or a tropical area, I know they are down there but I just don't actually have the time in-game to get down there on the default map size settings.

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(Hal13) You aren't really supposed to walk all that way, there are translocators for far travel

I would love to agree with you Hal13, but you're unfortunately wrong. Translocators only go around 5k, in a random direction, you need about 30k on default settings to get to the tropics. Connecting the dots for that distance would be a large server community level project. On the other hand you can travel about 5k per in game day, so on single player translocators are definitely quite pointless. I made the trip and back to get building materials and seeds, wasn't too bad.

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A communal server map option would be very nice

I agree. Personally I think the map, and navigation should have expanded in game mechanics.

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I constantly get mobs spawning right behind me while clearing out a cave, sometimes even spawning faster than I can kill them.

Keep in mind that temporal stability scales spawn rates. So go caving when it's calm.

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Food should not go bad in my inventory while I'm logged out!

I actually disagree. Firstly, it doesn't by default. The default server settings are that if there is nobody on the server, then time is frozen. If you are on a busy server, or people have disconnected schedules, then sure it will. However there's in-game mechanics to fix this. Many foods can last years, if you will be traveling and logging off periodically while others are playing then you can bring sealed foods. If you are at home then it's no issue since grain and other things can last a very long time. Regardless this is a double edged sword because if it were "fixed" in the way you suggest, then it also creates effectively an exploit to create a logged off stockpile of food frozen in time.

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The water physics are... bad.  They somehow manage to be even worse than minecraft's horrible water.

I thought they were effectively identical to minecraft? Regardless, yes I agree, the minecraft system sucks, I think it's on his list already.

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After you get out of the hobo-phase and have a nice little village with a food supply going, the game starts to really lose steam and direction.  We all have iron tools, we're working on getting to steel, but there's no sense of a big goal to achieve or challenge to overcome.

I think this is the biggest thing the game lacks. There is effectively no adventure content beyond caving. Eventually there needs to be some bosses and mob variety. The enemies in this game are sort of depressing, visually glitchy things that have differing quantities of metal sticking in them. I like gears and mechanics, but I think it's safe to say that inevitably the vast majority of players will have no idea what lovecraft is or how the poor enemy design relates to it. I've played the game for a couple hundred hours or so, and yet I couldn't right now name the various mobs off the top of my head. They are nondescript, providing no real lasting memory of which is which. That's a real problem from a gameplay perspective regardless of if you are a fan of lovecraft or not.

I adore the attention to detail in the game otherwise however.

 

[daretmavi]

On 7/5/2022 at 6:01 AM, Paruza said:

I actually disagree. Firstly, it doesn't by default. The default server settings are that if there is nobody on the server, then time is frozen. If you are on a busy server, or people have disconnected schedules, then sure it will. However there's in-game mechanics to fix this. Many foods can last years, if you will be traveling and logging off periodically while others are playing then you can bring sealed foods. If you are at home then it's no issue since grain and other things can last a very long time. Regardless this is a double edged sword because if it were "fixed" in the way you suggest, then it also creates effectively an exploit to create a logged off stockpile of food frozen in time.

This is a problem if you are causal player and play once a week and the server is populated, do time almost newer freezes.

Even on TOPTS "every" time I log in, I have to create new food. But I have got a lot of rot to  compost and create high fertility soil

I would like to see food spoilage paused on claimed areas and player inventory, when offline.

Exploit is possible, theoretically, but it is not needed, especially on multi-player servers, where crops are grown on the next login and breeding animals is quick as well. This is more an Exploit then stocking food in character inventory.

 

[daretmavi]

On 7/4/2022 at 11:41 PM, Hal13 said:

Caves are not generated with mobs inside, those only spawn in the vicinity of a player character, hence if any of those toggles are turned off your suggestion would mean: no monster spawning at all, which is a totally other toggle.

I don't like this MC-like spawning as well.

I would be better if caves could be generated with mobs inside. When they are killed they should respawn after some time period (1 game week/month), so the cave is safe for limited time.

On the surface, there could be some spawn areas, where monster spawns and head towards players.

Areas could be dynamically choosen, e.g. if there is no player block in the proximity of 20 block, then spawn here.

It would be more immersive, than monsters appearing from air "everywhere".

[Hal13]

7 hours ago, daretmavi said:

I would be better if caves could be generated with mobs inside. When they are killed they should respawn after some time period (1 game week/month), so the cave is safe for limited time.

[...]

It would be more immersive, than monsters appearing from air "everywhere".

If that'd be better or more immersive depends massively on the canonical explanation for what those monsters and temporal stability, rifts and storms are and what exactly causes their appearance. If the player does cause their existence (which is implied by the possible setting of x days after the first seraph enters the world until monsters start spawning) or if they're basically hallucinations than it's nonsensical if they'd be generated at world generation. If they'd be actually there it would be nonsensical that there is no interaction between wildlife and/or traders with those monsters.

 

On 7/15/2022 at 9:55 PM, daretmavi said:

Exploit is possible, theoretically, but it is not needed, especially on multi-player servers, where crops are grown on the next login and breeding animals is quick as well. This is more an Exploit then stocking food in character inventory.

Depending on the server settings those crops can die while your offline too, You could log in and your fields only have dead plants on them. And animals can be killed by other players coming through, if I'm not mistaken even in claimed areas, and the area needs to be loaded from time to time else those animals won't eat and without eating no breeding. Where exactly is the exploit here? You run the risk of losing it all, other than with the up to 58 inventory slots worth of foodstuff you could prevent from spoiling if what you suggested first (only a players inventory is frozen in time) would be implemented and with your second suggestion and shared claimed areas players could just use the claim of the player least often online to basically prevent all their foods from spoiling. An ice cellar though might be worth implementing, with foods that are frozen solid not spoiling (simplified).

[daretmavi]

On 7/20/2022 at 4:57 PM, Hal13 said:

If that'd be better or more immersive depends massively on the canonical explanation for what those monsters and temporal stability, rifts and storms are and what exactly causes their appearance.

You are right, maybe someday lore will explain this spawn behavior, but right now is a bit annoying, not game breaking, but annoying.

What I imagine is that when I find a cave, I can clean it up step by step. One day I clean up one part, seal other entrances, next day I can move further, without having to clean up the same part again.

Right now I need a lot of light and/or place a lot of stones to prevent/limit spawning.

I can live with that, but it could be better.

[daretmavi]

On 7/20/2022 at 4:57 PM, Hal13 said:

Where exactly is the exploit here? You run the risk of losing it all, other than with the up to 58 inventory slots worth of foodstuff you could prevent from spoiling if what you suggested first

Hmmm, how to say it.

As you wrote, it depends on server settings, the community you play with and probably even climate where you live.

E.g. I returned to TOPTS after few weeks. All my food was spoiled (even sealed). Some of my planted crops where dead, but most of them was ok. I took them, planted new one. Next real day it was mature and I got enough food. I killed some sheeps to get meat, cooked something and I got enough food very quickly. I don't even have to breed animals anymore, I got enough. If I want more, it is very quick on MP.

So why should I stack foodstuff in someone's inventory to prevent spoiling?  There is no real need to do it.

As far as you get on active server seeds and animals and you are in good climate, you don't have to care about food anymore. Someone can kill all my animals, yes ... but I would not play on server with greefing community.

The only problem with food and food spoilage is, when you are on trip and want to discover. I don't want to care about food every time I log in - no time left for adventure.

[Hal13]

On 7/22/2022 at 10:37 PM, daretmavi said:

E.g. I returned to TOPTS after few weeks. All my food was spoiled (even sealed).

Of course! A few weeks is, even on a less active server, several years ingame, on an active 24/7 server that's decades (over 9 years per 14 days) with default time settings. Even with minimum spoilrate that's long enough for everything to rot.

Servers are made to be able to host a set number of players, you are taking a slot that could be filled with a more active player. A mechanic that enforces either to pool resources with other players (stockpiling food together so that there is always some fresh food in storage) or to make sure one goes online regularly is in favour of multiplayer servers. Without some force people will come online, play for a bit and hog server resources afterwards partially without ever coming back, a big problem of smaller MC servers.

The exact balancing is partially off but that's more an issue of server settings (or too far disconnected activity schedules) and it is possible that the server does not intend for players to take weeks off, without preparations for the food situation after coming back. And that doesn't mean more animals! Animals (or rather their pathfinding) are one of the main causes for lag.

For exploring you could make camps, with an apiary and crops (seems the server settings are quite lenient with letting crops on the fields for years), on your way instead of taking who knows how much sealed food with you. Of course you could use animal fat and honey as exploration food sources as those do not rot.

On 7/22/2022 at 10:37 PM, daretmavi said:

So why should I stack foodstuff in someone's inventory to prevent spoiling?  There is no real need to do it.

Then why are you suggesting a way to do it? Even more than that, you suggested unlimited slots to fill with food stuff which would be prevented from rotting.

On 7/22/2022 at 10:37 PM, daretmavi said:

Someone can kill all my animals, yes ... but I would not play on server with greefing community.

The way you described not having to breed your animals before slaughtering several of them, that wouldn't be griefing it would be lagbusting. Many servers have rules about the allowed number of animals to keep and if you are inactive for weeks at a time, there is no reason for anyone to let them live for you to butcher them later.

On 7/22/2022 at 10:37 PM, daretmavi said:

The only problem with food and food spoilage is, when you are on trip and want to discover. I don't want to care about food every time I log in - no time left for adventure.

Then you might want to consider playing an adventure game not a survival game. A survival game is all about not dying from hunger and other problems.

 

On 7/22/2022 at 10:13 PM, daretmavi said:

You are right, maybe someday lore will explain this spawn behavior, but right now is a bit annoying, not game breaking, but annoying.

It already does: temporal stability, which seems to break down around Seraphs. It is canon that monsters do not exist in the world before the first Seraph arrives in it and it is canon that the temporal stability of areas only affect Seraphs and their surroundings. Lore is to be found not only in things that are clearly written but in nature's laws of the world you have to survive in too. The only thing not explained is: why. Which might never be explained to ease people into making their own explanations for it.

There are mods changing difficulty of combating drifters, spawning behaviour of drifters and their loot, but if the server you're playing on doesn't use them then obviously that server's community doesn't want them, else something like this, this, this, this or this ... would be installed.

 

On 7/5/2022 at 6:01 AM, Paruza said:

Eventually there needs to be some bosses and mob variety.

I have to partially disagree, mob variety yes, but bosses aren't necessary for a game without any story plot. If we'd get some story to play through, okay, but I very much prefer a game where story is what I make of it, which is a sandbox game which VS is advertised to be. I wouldn't mind ways to trigger boss fights for those who want them, but imo fights in nearly every game are an annoying obstacle to either the story or relaxed gameplay. In a survival game fights should happen when you made a mistake, came between cubs and their mother for example or hunted the predators' prey to the brink of extinction, keeping the predators hungry, ...

[daretmavi]

13 hours ago, Hal13 said:

The exact balancing is partially off but that's more an issue of server settings (or too far disconnected activity schedules) and it is possible that the server does not intend for players to take weeks off, without preparations for the food situation after coming back.

I can understand that, but som people have real life. Wifi, Kids, Work, Vacation and all of it takes his time. VS is for me a way to relax, but it is not the most important thig.

As I see it, this game is not really for small kids. With all the complexity, alkohol,... I would see it 18+.

It could be at least a switch in server setting.

13 hours ago, Hal13 said:

Of course you could use animal fat and honey as exploration food sources as those do not rot.

Thanx for advice.

 

13 hours ago, Hal13 said:

Then why are you suggesting a way to do it? Even more than that, you suggested unlimited slots to fill with food stuff which would be prevented from rotting.

Sorry, but your Answer is out of context.

I said, there is no need to use this exploit, because you can get enough food by the regular way very quickly.

13 hours ago, Hal13 said:

The way you described not having to breed your animals before slaughtering several of them, that wouldn't be griefing it would be lagbusting. Many servers have rules about the allowed number of animals to keep and if you are inactive for weeks at a time, there is no reason for anyone to let them live for you to butcher them later.

This is out of context as well, but it propably was not clear what I refer to:

On 7/20/2022 at 4:57 PM, Hal13 said:

You run the risk of losing it all,

And I don't breed them because I don't need more and want to hold the numbers low. I'm aware about the lag risk.

I have ca. 10 sheeps and 20 pigs and some chicken. I hope this is not too much, but anyway,  I'm going to reduce the numbers.

14 hours ago, Hal13 said:

Then you might want to consider playing an adventure game not a survival game. A survival game is all about not dying from hunger and other problems.

I like more survival with lot of exploring. On signleplayer I use my own setting a little bit harder than standard, but not that hard as wilderness survival.

Food spoilage is fine in single player, but is a bit annoying on multi-player. This is why I look for some sort of compromise.

In opinion, that we prevent the exploit you described (with low consequences) and let better let the annoying behavior of foodspoling when offline. But I get it, you see it the other way.

[Hal13]

6 hours ago, daretmavi said:

I said, there is no need to use this exploit, because you can get enough food by the regular way very quickly.

That too depends on server settings, I know of several servers where you'll get 1-2 harvests per ingame year because growth is set to a realistic level.

6 hours ago, daretmavi said:

It could be at least a switch in server setting.

It is you can set the spoilrate to 0 if you want, sure natively it's only a slider for the general spoilrate, but xskills does have a skill that changes the spoilrate for the inventory, therefore it should be possible to implement something like that to only reduce the spoilrate in the inventory to 0.

6 hours ago, daretmavi said:

I can understand that, but som people have real life. Wifi, Kids, Work, Vacation and all of it takes his time. VS is for me a way to relax, but it is not the most important thig.

Then you may want to look for a server that better suits your needs. The game can be set from ingame days per minute to a few ingame days per reallife day (I do not recommend going too overboard though, theoretically you can set it to an endless day, but 12-real-life-hour-long ingame days do break the game balance significantly already, though 4 hour ingame days should be fine), the spoilrate can be set from 0 to ridiculously fast. Drifter spawns can be modded, a freezer type container can be taken from several mods (like ZEEkea or Preservation Mod- Long-term food storage) to include on the server... At last the player base could be centered around regular activity schedules. I haven't seen any game as (easily) customizable as VS yet (and I've game tested hundreds, it's what I do, testing games and writing reports for 1-24 hours a workday). The options are there, if the server doesn't implement them it's not a game problem but a server problem.

6 hours ago, daretmavi said:

Food spoilage is fine in single player, but is a bit annoying on multi-player. This is why I look for some sort of compromise.

You are looking for a compromise that, in theory, already exists, there are mods like xskills with options for changed spoilrates for items in one's inventory, there are mods adding long term storage containers, there are server settings that can be set, ...
And there might be someone willing to make a modded food bag (if there isn't already, worst case one could use a longterm storage solution and carry capacity for the same effect) with idk 1-3 slots with a multiplier of (near) zero to spoilrate (if not zero could be set to zero by changing a number in the mod files). something like that might be implemented easier than potentially rewriting the whole spoilage system (it seems dependent on timestamps like other game mechanics else unloading the area would suffice to stop it). Maybe @Xanducan help you out with that? Haven't found another modder tackling spoiling of stuff in one's inventory with one of their mods just now.

6 hours ago, daretmavi said:

I have ca. 10 sheeps and 20 pigs and some chicken. I hope this is not too much, but anyway,  I'm going to reduce the numbers.

That's a whole lot (I usually keep 1 parent pair of the newest generation, though it does happen that I have a few pregnant females for some time), the limits I've seen on servers, when actually written in the rules, are a steady population of somewhere between 5 and 10 per animal type per player, though on a small server those numbers may still be fine, it really depends on how many players play on the server, and how much wilderness is lit up (preventing wildlife from dying, aka being culled, via darkness).

 

 

That spoiling still happens when offline has lore implications (and as such shouldn't be fully removed in vanilla, if it's intended to happen), the items are part of and bound to the world they are from and behave as if still present in it, even if taken into the limbo of the player character not being in that world. There are several ways to tweak the game into what you ask from it, as that addressing it as a suggestion for changing the vanilla game does not help, the vanilla game can already be tweaked that way but the server's player population need to want those changes (with many seemingly rather going in the opposite direction).

Btw there are other not spoiling food sources I forgot: walnut seeds and "Vintage Beef", the latter normally rare ruin loot but there are mods which add a way to make it yourself, for example by aging red meat with honey in a barrel.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Hal13

[daretmavi]

@Hal13Thanx for conversation.

We will see how the game evolves. Maybe something will be implementen, maybe not. It is not a must, it's nice to have.