The Lerf

I don't think we're going to see 'improvements' to Temporal Storms as much as we're going to be seeing improvements to all the systems surrounding them. Things like enemy AI, the enemy sandbox, more Jonas tech constructs like the Rift Ward, etc. Unless AI pathing becomes more than 'seek player position', you'll be mobbed. Unless there's more enemy variety beyond 'melee damage focused unit', you'll be mobbed. Unless spawns become something other than instant apparitions, you won't be able to react to something spawning on top of you. Unless enemy strength is tuned, you'll be one-shot. Unless enemy health is tuned, a copper falx will not be able to handle a medium storm. We simply do not have the tools in game for players to engage with storms in a way that's satisfying and in spirit with developer intentions. And the start of storm changing should begin focusing on the new player experience. Tutorialization of the mechanics is fine during the first weak Temporal Storm, but realistically what ways does any player have to prepare for them? Beyond putting on your highest tier armor and weapons, or your broom closet, or your cheese strat? I'd like preparation to come in the form of constructed defenses; things to pull aggro, things to slow enemies, things to blind them, lower their health, etc. Straight up, why are we engaging with the rustbeasts on an even playing field with swords? We have technology, and maybe eventually we'll get simple traps and mid-game forged mechanisms and late-game Jonas constructs to help deal with storms, but the game is still unfinished.

Are you playing modded or vanilla? You don't need to crush quartz in order to make glass blocks in unmodded VS. You can put quartz chunks directly into the bloomery.

Right, but what do you need to pulverize in the early game? The only things that are pulverizable are the ingredients for refractory bricks and dyes. Refractory bricks are a late game item, and dyes are kind of a mid-game customization option.

Per your description, are you imagining a full goethite block that gets collected with a shovel? Would the regeneration of said block just be a spontaneous regeneration of the block in the same spot? I'd like to suggest an alternative for you, something similar to the pine tree resin blocks, or how flint is extracted from full rock blocks. A specialized soil block called "iron rich soil" or something, that when long clicked with empty hands, would provide however many iron/goethite bits (ideally using the same little animation extracting flint does). Full destruction of the block would behave just like destroying pine resin blocks - you wouldn't want to do that. It's a bit easier on the coding side to do, especially if one were to take this up as a mod.

I'd first ask what the point of a manual pulverizer is, from a game design perspective. Is there anything that it solves that the regular hammer or quern can't? I feel like the suggestion here could be reframed as adding a manual hand crank to add off an axle to power a single machine, albeit slowly. Like manually turning the quern.

>Pablo Escobar when he plays VS

This is what I resonate with. Vintage Story has a simplicity surrounding every single mechanic, that makes you feel the authenticity of the actions performing it, even if it's not 1-to-1 with real life. Obviously things are going to be much more complicated in real life compared to how we do it in game, but there is a line to draw on "how simplified should it be?" The 1.22 pre release just moved that line for smithing, and with the game still in development, I hope other systems get that too. I'm not sure if you're suggesting that an alcoholic blackout is too realistic for VS, but hallucinogenic mushrooms were just added, so it's feeling less out of the realm of possibility now. I do think drinking wines out of bowls is weird too, but it works as a solution for "how to transfer this liquid into my mouth without a 10L bucket". I hope goblets get added eventually specifically for alcohols.

Personally I'd like to see the drunk effects get worse. Someone mentioned it before, but drinking alcohols with a bucket makes a seraph consume it in 1L increments at a time. I say increase drunkenness effects, add tripping and falling, and a "blackout" state identical to sleep if you consume the whole bucket. Reinforce responsible consumption using bowls. Increase satiety from alcohols with this change, because otherwise the time/productivity loss is too great. Turning berries into wine for preservation doesn't need to be that inefficient if there's a significant downside to drinking it as alcohol. Even brining vegetables is what, 30% loss of satiety? Alcohols should make the tradeoff of 'preservation' vs 'ability to be productive' instead of 'preservation' vs 'satiety'. This makes them more likely to be invested in during the late game when players are self sufficient. Hell, I'd even go so far as to make Distilled alcohols have more satiety than their raw ingredients altogether considering the time and effort involved to make them, and that you're turning multiple barrels of berries into a single jug...

I wish that the bronze age lasted a fair bit longer. It feels like a half-step to Iron, despite having 3 different bronze alloys in the game. Though I don't actually have any ideas on how to fix that... unless you make the saw unable to be forged out of copper, moving the 'planks upgrade' part of the game locked behind bronze, which would delay players not rushing progression... but game design/balance is hard. I feel like this also plays into OP's nitpick about lower tier armors straight up being pointless investments, because you're at the copper/bronze age for such a comparatively short amount of time, and you're encountering enemies that invalidate those armor tiers pretty often (bears, temporal storms, and caving). I don't see the amount of metal needed to be bad, per se... but maybe lower tier armors, if they aren't going to be nearly as good, don't need an equivalent amount of ingots to making iron/steel armors. Making lamellar armor more accessible with less ingots needed might make it more worthwhile. The opportunity cost is way to great with current amounts, as lamellar chest armor takes 19 whole ingots at a point in the game where you're still blowing through tools every other outing, have a potentially limited amount of alloy material, and need to invest in a bronze anvil. The biggest bottleneck to progression at that stage is finding iron, not combat endurance... so perhaps making iron more easily found via caving? Encouraging locust hives to spawn near iron? Is this a fun change though? I'm not sure. We've also got what, 40+ varieties of mushrooms now, and after the agricultural revolution they kind of fall off. Less satiation than other vegetables, yet harder to find is a confusing combo, especially in the early game when foraging really matters. I also kind of wish that there were more variants of ruins and they were more lucrative for decor-type finds. Super rarely I'll find a decorative object in a ruin that I didn't even know was in the game, like a damaged locust or something neat that doesn't need glue to grab. I want more of that, more "Oh neat, nice find!" moments in ruins that aren't about like, cabbage seeds or a blackguard cuirass.

I think he means that you can eat nothing but red meat pie and hefty turnip stew, and more or less max out your satiation stats for meat, vegetable and grain. There's no benefit for consuming a poultry soup or a pumpkin porridge instead, all you're doing is losing out on the maximum possible hunger pause bonus. This idea seeks to give a reason for consuming multiple different meal types within each food category, beyond just role-playing. I'm all for it. Once you achieve pies, porridge becomes an obsolete meal, and this idea could expand to include wines and brandy which also see limited use in game. Although I'm not sure if revising the naming convention of satiation is necessary. Meat, vegetable, gain, fruit, and dairy are easy enough to understand, and while very simplistic I think it gets the point across of diet variance. "Micronutrients" as an extra bar interests me, but I'm not too keen on the name.

I forget who it was or where in the thread, but someone mentioned that the mobs are treated more like environmental hazards than a farmable enemy. I actually wish that this was more true than how it is right now. The rules for enemy spawns do not feel consistent at all during the course of the game. Rifts spawn enemies, which is simple enough. And rifts can't appear inside rooms, that's great! Except that enemies can spawn in dark rooms without a rift present...which is a bit questionable with the established rift rule, but okay. Rifts bad, rooms good, keep them lighted. Except if you're underground, where there are no rifts, but more enemies than you've ever seen on the surface. And then there's Temporal Storms, where the rules no longer matter. They can spawn anywhere with no warning, even right on top of you if you're unlucky. So even if there was a hypothetical way to defend against mobs normally, it's thrown out in the unruled chaos of a Temporal Storm. So do rifts even matter? Outside of Temporal Storms and above ground, enemy spawns should only happen from rifts, and have their spawn radius tightened up immensely so that spawns appear from within the rift. Maybe a little entrance animation too, i dunno have fun with it. Maybe instead of randomly appearing and disappearing, groups of rifts carve a long path through the world, making long chains of rifts that spawn enemies, asking the player to fight through them or find a way around. Enemies would have to stay closer to their spawn point for this to work with it's intended effect of being an environmental hazard. Aggro range for enemies in general feels way too big, in my opinion. Storms are when you can start having fun with the established rules, instead of getting rid of them. I really dislike the 'spawn from nothing' that currently happens during storms. Unfortunately, rifts wouldn't happen during storms, so unless we go the route of having them walk in from far away, we'd need another way for mobs to appear. I really like the idea of increasing aggro range to infinite during storms, so you can get that feeling of a really aggressive enemy presence hunting you down, but there are other options. A spawner mob, or other supernatural effect, rising out of the ground... I'm down for anything other than blinking into existence. Perhaps more environmental constructs to combat the environmental threats? expounding on the Rift Ward, a construct that lowers their health, or other effects like blinding or pulling aggro. It almost feels like the Rift Ward is part of an unfinished system, and maybe when there's an enemy/storm overhaul we'll get other constructs to build to defend against mobs, making it feel more like a tower defense than a kite fest. Who knows. These are all just ideas. ------ Yep! You're so right man, Sorry to have disagreed with you!

You can choose not to agree, and interpret the game however you want, but the developer intent and literal programming remains the same. Don't put words in my mouth. I don't think that storms are well designed, but there's nothing wrong with making them a global event. You just don't like it. It being a fact about the world is the literal programming of the game, Temporal Storms happen and you can't avoid it. And until the developer recants on that, it's part of the game. The solution to the problem, as a player, should be to deal with in in whatever way. You want a way to avoid it, there isn't one. Plan for it then. Or get a mod. There's no logical fallacy, it's the developer's vision for the game to have storms. I'd like them to be better and more fun, but you want them functionally off by default so you don't have to be inconvenienced. The dev has provided you with a solution, turn them off or sleep through them. But you're complaining because your 'ideal' solution of never wanting to consider them isn't the default option. It's derailing threads about constructive solutions and a discussion dead-end. Yes, but what I'm suggesting is that the two don't have to be different and separate systems, when having zero stability is a functional equivalency to being in a storm. Merge the two systems, so that when a Temporal Storm hits, global area stability drops, your personal stability drops to zero and the storm proceeds as usual.

Uh, yeah. That's the nature of the game. It's a fact about the world. When I go to explore a new area but I forgot to keep food in my inventory, I have to walk all the way back to my cellar. When I want to build, but don't have a reserve of clay, I have to dig some. If I don't track the time between storms, I get interrupted. It sounds like you're not accounting for Temporal Storms in the slightest, and getting upset because that's not what you want to do. That's not the game's fault, and it isn't a design flaw. You're not looking at it objectively, because if you were, you'd realize that it's a consistent, repeatable, predictable event. You're looking at it the most subjectively, because you are being inconvenienced by it. You're asking for it's removal, and asserting it's an improvement because it's different. If the devs wanted you to never be inconvenienced or interrupted or uncomfortable, they'd have made a different game. And some people enjoy that. You are not in control of this world, and it will continue without you. You are simply surviving in it.

I've discussed a fair bit in other threads on ways to improve Temporal Storms, but I don't think I've yet talked about any ideas concerning mitigation or straight avoidance of storms. Personally, I like that they are unavoidable, predictable, and challenging. Though, I recognize why other don't like them for those same reasons. But has anyone brought up before the idea of merging of your personal temporal stability (i.e. the spinning gear on you UI) and the world stability (Temporal Storms, area instability)? At the moment, the game treats them as separate things, where your personal temporal stability is only affected by areas of instability, and storms have no effect on your personal stability. So, the game treats Temporal Storms fundamentally differently from reaching zero stability. But, these things could be merged together, unifying the mechanics and even provide an immersive warning layer to storms. In this hypothetical, storms would mechanically change to a decrease of area stability globally, keeping their unavoidable nature, but linking it to your personal stability. Now when you would see the stability gear spin down, you would have to ask yourself, "Am I in a bad area, or is this a storm?" Because it's a global decrease, Temporal Storms still happen on a schedule, but now it decreases your stability down until Rust effects start to happen. What does a change such as this do for the player? Well, now that Temporal Storms are 'entered' based on your personal stability, it means they can be mitigated by the 'slicing your arm and inserting a Temporal Gear' mechanic. Hypothetically, you could turn a heavy storm to a light storm, or avoid a storm altogether if you had enough Temporal Gears to sacrifice. I think spawn rates for Temporal Gears should be increased during storms, so if a player doesn't have enough (such as if they are very early game, or are storm avoidant), they could gain Temporal Gears with minor work. (Personally, the first time I played VS it took me so long to get a Temporal Gear to set my spawn point in my base, it was frustrating). I'd like to see more uses for Temporal Gears too, so it becomes a choice between avoiding a storm or whatever other use a TG could have. ---- We're in early access though, so I think we need refocus on the development of implemented features, and not their removal. In regards to the discussion of allowing the player to 'choose when and where danger happens', I hope that never happens. The simple answer is that VS isn't that kind of game. Vintage Story is an "uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox game" and clearly the devs have a vision where the danger 'comes to you'. This isn't about player choice, and 'being accommodating to other play styles'. This is a fundamental part of the game. And part of it is that the world is dangerous, there will be struggle. Turning the world to Peaceful Mode with PvE zones is not a solution. A solution is already provided by the dev for those who do not want enemies. Use it, or a mod. Suggesting that a fundamental aspect of the game changes so that you can be inconvenienced less is not constructive. This is a game where you are inconvenienced by hunger, weather, wildlife, geography, time, and everything else. I would suggest you start seeing Temporal Storms as the same thing, and you may understand the dev's vision better.

Ah, that's kind of unfortunate. I understand why, of course. I just feel some of these things, (incentivizing cheesing with ugly workarounds, inadvertently creating undesired incentives like running away from home for the duration of the storm), are situations we already face with the current implementation. Some situations, I argue, are maybe worse (Death loops and community opposition). One thing that I do want to say though (bringing it back to Minecraft), is that if it wasn't already in the game, the Creeper would never be added with the modern mindset of Mojang/Microsoft. Because it's a similar idea of a mob that can damage player placed blocks and kind of has to be considered and engaged with. And I don't think there's nearly any pushback against the Creeper in the Minecraft community calling for it's removal. I get the sentiment behind 'don't mess with the player's creation', but I think that forgetting 'the player can and should creatively use countermeasures' understates the influence that the Creeper had on Minecraft's development and community. And personally, I think it's a stance that's way too risk-averse for VS, that markets itself as a uncompromising, hardcore survival game before as a homesteading one. I would argue that there aren't that many instances of consequences in VS. From what I can think of, is losing your satiation/total health points on death, or losing your dropped inventory to the despawn timer, or not having a spare hammer and getting sent back to the copper age, or losing your domesticated animals to predators/lighting. And this form of loss is what I want to focus in on, because it's so similar to having a creeper blow up your walls. It demands the player prepare with fences or a lightning rod, or potentially suffer losses. Should predator attacks be removed from the game? Or why is that acceptable, but a monster doing the same isn't? On a greater level, I think the question becomes "Why, if something bad happens, is it bad?" (These aren't accusatory/hostile questions, but meant to inspire discussion, as on reread it sounds a bit harsh) One of the things I worry about with creating more incentive via loot, is the emotion around storms becoming one of excitement of what you could find rather than one of worry about what you might lose. We already have valuable and unique loot spawn in storms, but how much more does there need to be until it's deemed acceptable, and players who hide will start to participate? Can you suggest a different incentive that could be implemented that positively reinforces participation over hiding? To me, hiding needs to be disincentivized because it's a neutral outcome. But participating in storms as they are currently usually results in a negative outcome. Disincentivizing hiding would go hand-in-hand with incentivizing participating, and changing the way storms work; I am absolutely not suggesting one or the other because that's not how changing behaviors works. Listen, I'm gonna play a card here that's kind of hypothetical, should a player who ignored the coming winter not suffer any consequences? We could be having a discussion about how there's not enough animals spawning during winter, and players would like to be able to hunt to survive it easier. I haven't actually, I'm not much into mods because of how often they seem to trivialize certain aspects of the game, or become overly centralizing. I may look into it though, just to see how it feels. It might inspire more ideas about how Storms work. I like your ideas about storms, but I don't think it would change anything fundamental about them. I agree that the simplicity of mob behavior causes some strategies to work too well, aka farms and such, but I think it directly goes back to some things you bring up here. I've spoken about it in another thread, but the majority of mobs in this game follow the same code of "pathfind to player and melee attack", making swarming the player with high numbers of mobs the easiest way to overwhelm them. If different mob AI behaviors could be programmed in, maybe enemies could be made tougher without increasing their numbers to a ridiculous degree, meaning you could have periods of panic and periods of calm during storms instead of just one overly long kiting fight. I think that the monster spawning rules changing during storms is a game design mistake, and would instead like to see areas where many rifts open and enemies spawn specifically near them, rather than just about anywhere. Ultimately, I don't think hiding can be discouraged without punishing the player, and I don't think that loot for storms should reach the point where the hiders come out, because the real problem is with participating usually being a negative outcome for the player. Until that changes, players will continue to enter the feedback loop of Temporal Storms removing their food buffs just to die, and then hide/skip them.