e8747e6c4e0ceedb55ae841fe9

I honestly kind of wish the temporal storms functioned like an actual weather storm, and they roamed around areas. It would make it so you could actively chase the storm as well, maybe track it to a particularly unstable region for harder enemies and better loot. Similarly, I think the temporal storms should be something you mostly only experience outside, on the surface, so it should be possible to realistically shelter in place and avoid the thing. Maybe the storm also gets harder the deeper towards the center you are, so most of the time, when you get hit with a temporal storm, it's probably just going to be on the skirts of the storm, unless you're unlucky. A last and most ambitious thought I had for the temporal storms, and temporal stability in general, is I'd like it if you could actually get lost in the rust dimension somehow. For example, I'd love it if you could go to the 'eye of the storm' of sorts, and your gear just flips the hell out, and you could get lost in a tumultuous dimension where everything's decayed, windy, dusty, and there you could maybe find more abandoned structures, rusted away ruins of forgotten ages, and fight greater horrors. Then, after wandering enough, or killing enough, or maybe finding a temporal gear, you could restore yourself back to the overworld.

I'd like to be able to wear a hood, sash, maybe a cape over armor, but I'm guessing any of that stuff is to be covered in the 'decoration' layer. I'd also love it if we could smith some filigree into metal armor. If I had both, I would absolutely recreate the Fallen Knight set from DS3.

I saw in the latest dev post that some members of the team are coming together to help improve the combat. I saw the 'armor wishlist' post and I wanted to express some similarly constructive hopes, asks, thoughts, or weird ideas for the future of Vintage Story's combat. I think everyone can agree that it feels very rudimentary and one dimensional right now, but I also think that it wouldn't require a massive overhaul to leave it in a fun state. In fact, while I'm not concerned that this is a risk, I think that too much of an overhaul, or too complicated of a system would end up making the combat just as uninteresting to most of the player-base as the current system is. Generally, I feel like the direction most people take when solving this problem comes to overhauling the player's capabilities by adding more weapons, attack animations, etc. I think the player could use some extra tools in combat, maybe a different attack animation for each weapon if you were crouched that had different damage, knockback, cooldown, etc. I envisioned something like this for spears, where if you crouched and held still, the seraph could deliver a stronger thrust of the spear than if they were running around, giving the crouched strike improved pushback and maybe even a bit of a stun to help pin down and control specific targets. Besides some small additions or some new items to play with like some traps, I generally think the issue with combat more has to do with the limited interactions between enemies and players. A good example of this is with the shiver. Fighting shivers honestly doesn't feel too different from fighting drifters other than it happens faster. You don't deal with them much differently, it's just swing at them until they're dead, with some occasional chasing if they decide to run away. To me, improving the combat in this example has less to do with in enhancing the general tools available to the player, and more has to do with adding more interesting engagements with the shiver. It'd be interesting if there was some trigger for their stun animation, or for them running away, rather than just health or rng. My thought was to make it so if you hit shiver's in the head while their mouth is open, it would cause them to recoil in pain and curl up in the stun animation, giving more of a timing to fighting them, and larger group combat more of a tempo. It allows for moments where, if I'm amidst a temporal storm, I can stun the shiver, and make a decision on whether or not I need to finish the shiver now, or cut down other enemies since I'm no longer being rushed down. I believe it's consistent opportunities for those momentary decisions that will make combat most interesting. Ultimately, I think that improving combat is going to come down more to providing more contexts through which more diverse outcomes can emerge in combat. Whether that's adding more ways to trigger enemy behaviors like mentioned above, adding new items that can change the flow of combat, or even something more environmental, I can't really say for certain. Anyways, if anyone else has any other thoughts or criticisms as well, I'd love to hear them.