LadyWYT

I disagree, as that essentially renders the hunger penalty ineffective. The main balance point of Blackguard is that the class has the weakest early game in exchange for the strongest late game. The extra 30% hunger isn't really that bad, provided the player knows what they're doing when it comes to food supply, and just means that Blackguards will tend to prefer heavier meals like meat pie/meat stew, or otherwise be inclined to carry more food around in general. The good news is that there is a mod that allows you to do this! https://mods.vintagestory.at/expandedstomach Very nice utility, but it doesn't come without some potential drawbacks. The config has some preset difficulties for players who want to just jump right into playing, but the config also allows the player to adjust most things about the mod if they wish.

I'm going off what I see float through the forums. There are already tools in place to handle certain issues like food spoilage, yes, and I'm sure large servers take advantage of such. But it also doesn't seem to be an uncommon complaint that food stores spoil or harvests were missed because the player skipped a few days between play sessions for whatever reason. While that is just part of playing the game, and part of the drawback of playing on a large server, it does seem like one area where there could be a few extra server-specific tools to make multiplayer a little more manageable for players who can't necessarily log in every day to take care of their stuff. Plus if players don't feel as pressured to need to log in every day to make sure their stuff is in order/avoid losing progress, it might help take some pressure off the server queue. That's all.

Thanks for the writeup! It makes a lot more sense, and is the kind of change I wouldn't mind seeing in the game. Though it does seem like the kind of change that would go hand-in-hand with a proper rework of the temperature system, so I'm not sure we'll see a change like this in the near future. But I do like it.

Depends. I've been encountering more bears in 1.22, seemingly, and while some of them have seemed more aggressive, others have seemed less so. Yesterday I got swatted by a brown bear once and thought I was about to be "helped" back home, but for whatever reason the bear didn't give chase. I guess he was just angry at being woken up from a nap? There was also a black bear that started to chase me and then gave up after about 20 blocks. A few other bears, both black and brown, I've practically walked right by without them so much as giving me a funny look. Wolves I wouldn't mind seeing be a little more skittish when alone, and howling to summon packmates before attacking the player, if they're actually intent on hunting the player. If they're cornered or have pups, they should obviously be a little more aggressive anyway, but I do think the pack tactics would make them a little more interesting and dangerous as a predator. I think they're fine for what the game is right now, but I've been thinking a lot on how the status effect system could potentially change the game. One possibility that I think I would like to see, is removing the direct damage from certain things and replacing it with status effects instead. For example, poisonous mushrooms might no longer be listed as poisonous or directly damage the player when eaten, but may cause some unpleasant effects(including death) sometime later if the player eats them. A wolf bite might not immediately damage a player's health, but may inflict a bleed that will hurt the player over time if not tended, or become infected if not cleaned properly. In those cases the penalties are technically heavier than just "you die, try again!", but I do think they lead to more interesting outcomes since the player has more opportunity to not only survive a dangerous situation, but ways to handle the consequences that result from said situation without having to resort to a death run.

Having at least one official server per region would be great and take at least some of the pressure off the original TOPS. However, it's still a recurring expense, and money that goes into maintaining that infrastructure is money that's not getting used elsewhere in development. Not that that's bad or good, there's just tradeoffs. I think it's probably better to wait on opening new TOPS though, and instead add more tools to the game that make curating a large multiplayer experience much smoother. As I understand it, Vintage Story is balanced primarily around singleplayer, or a small-scale multiplayer setting with a few friends. Large servers tend to run into problems with food spoilage and spawn getting picked clean of resources and other issues due to the sheer number of players and time passing because there's always someone online. While this is true, the problem about working with third-party is that you lose some control over quality and service. Building your own infrastructure and staffing it is definitely more expensive, but then you don't have to worry about a third-party cutting corners, or raising prices, or deciding they don't want to do business anymore for some reason, etc. Not that third-parties will always cause problems, but Anego Studios is likely to be blamed for whatever problems there are, even if it's not something they're at fault for. Volunteers can be great, but relying too heavily on volunteer work can reflect poorly on a company in the long-term. You'd also still need to keep an eye on the volunteer moderators and make sure they're actually doing the job properly, and not abusing the position. Overall, I think splitting TOPS into regional servers at some point in the future is probably the best idea for handling things, preferably with Anego staff and infrastructure to maintain quality. The only drawback I really see though is that while it might alleviate some of the wait times, it's probably not going to fix them entirely since, well, a lot of players tend to gravitate towards the most popular servers, even if there are better options available. Likewise, if players are insistent on playing a specific server because that's where the devs/popular personalities happen to play too, opening new servers isn't going to fix that kind of problem.

Yeah, quenching for power should increase workspeed on tools like picks and axes, not just damage. I seem to recall seeing a bug report recently pointing out that the feature wasn't working quite right.

I wouldn't mind having some different materials to make handles from, but if the tool/weapon has been used enough to break, so should the handle. I like the idea but not the implementation, as it feels too much like Minecraft. A better option, I think, is having colorful cloaks, sashes, or animal pelts as cosmetics that can be worn over armor, or otherwise creating some sort of painting system the player can use to paint patterns on shields, similar to chiseling. I think options like those are both much more realistic, as well as offer much more options in general. I was thinking about this the other day, in that a Morrowind-style system would be interesting. By that I mean splitting armor into a few more pieces, and then letting players mix and match those pieces as desired to get the look/practical benefits they want. Don't have a lot of metal? Might want to invest in gambeson for legs/torso and use some plate for a helmet/boots. If you're wanting to focus primarily on ranged, maybe you invest in a plate cuirass but leave off the pauldrons to make firing bows/spears easier. I think it might be a bit much though. According to a recent interview, there's potentially some armor changes coming, but no information about what that could really be.

Luckily there's already at least two mods that let players do this. https://mods.vintagestory.at/tradernotes https://mods.vintagestory.at/remotetradercheckmod As for base game, it would be a nice QoL feature to have, but I'm not sure how it could be implemented while still feeling realistic. Fancy tech could work but the traders don't exactly seem to really have fancy tech. My general strategy for traders that are farther away is to only buy from those and not sell, or otherwise pack along items that I know they often buy, that I'm willing to sell. Sometimes I make sales and sometimes I don't. Profits I don't worry too much about, since I tend to get a lot of my gears from ruins or temporal storms. Treasure hunters are usually the ones I sell to the most, since they often buy things that are relatively easy to make, like backpacks and boots, that sell for a rather good price(a handful of gears each).

Quenching and tempering mechanics are still a little buggy at the moment. I seem to recall both of these issues being reporting on the bug tracker already, but it doesn't hurt to double-check and make a report if you don't see it reported.

Welcome to the forums! I believe they also have a bit more reach than black bears now, making them harder to escape or engage in combat.

Which version are you playing? If it's 1.22, it could very well be a bug, since that version is still unstable.

I want to add sleighs and ice skates to the list. I don't really know what purpose the skates would serve aside from just having fun in winter, but there could be some hilarious hijinks during a temporal storm if the player decides to armor up and skate around on the local lake while fighting.

Yes, but not with cabinets. My friend and I had fun crashing each other with bellows on one of the pre versions. Which version are you playing? If it's the most recent--1.22.0-rc4--I'd recommend submitting a bug report, if one doesn't already exist. If you are playing with mods though, make sure that you can reproduce the bug in vanilla, since the first question you'll get asked is "Does it happen without mods".

Finally got around to watching this and I think this is my most favorite interview with the devs yet. Which isn't saying much because I've only seen two, but anyway...would definitely like to see more in the future. I have a sneaking suspicion that a new monster was already teased in the 1.22 content shots, so that might be part of the potential combat-related changes. Otherwise I find the bits about the status effect system and temporal storms fascinating--the temporal storms especially so. Typically I'm finicky about changes like that, but so far what the devs have implemented in the game has been quite fun, so I'm definitely curious to see what Tyron and Saraty cook up in the future for storm changes, especially if there might potentially be a few distinct benefits to them.

I've not tried it, but I'm guessing it probably works similar to being drunk in a temporal storm. That is, players under the effects of magic mushrooms during a temporal storm are likely to experience the worst side effects of both rather than anything helpful.

I mostly disagree here. Maybe parts of the status effect system could be toggled on and off, like diseases, but the status effect system itself is likely to be too integral to the game to be something toggled off entirely. Overall, I expect the status effect system to be something without a toggle, and rather an option to determine how intense the negative effects can be, with mods to further tailor exactly how the system behaves. While immersive cues and messages are nice, I think it generally works better to have more obvious feedback, similar to how the player has the hunger bar and health bar to tell them how much energy they have to work with. Those meters do still come with some additional cues to alert players to problems, but the player isn't having to rely exclusively on sound cues and visuals to determine exactly what state they're in. I will also note that my friend and I developed a mod to overhaul the game's hunger system, and while we initially went with immersive messages to keep the player informed on their status, we eventually opted to add a visual meter as the default tracking and keep the immersive messages as an optional setting. It's just much easier to tell what's going on when actually playing the game. As for diseases...there was a disease mod for VS a couple of versions ago, that I tried, and...it wasn't very fun. The common cold was overtuned, to the point the player would essentially take days to recover from a cold only to immediately catch another the next day, even if doing everything possible to prevent said colds. The other diseases weren't likely to be encountered at all unless the player deliberately sabotaged themselves by playing in the worst ways possible(leaping off cliffs, eating obviously rotten food, etc). Personally, I'd prefer something more similar to Skyrim, or rather how I modded Skyrim. In the vanilla game, the player can contract diseases occasionally by stepping on traps or getting attacked by certain creatures, and the general result is a flat debuff that persists until the player drinks a potion/prays at a shrine to cure themselves. I used mods to tweak the system so that the first stages of a disease aren't really noticeable, and when the symptoms are noticed the player needs to do some guesswork as to which disease it is, unless the disease had progressed enough for the character to figure it out themselves. While praying at shrines can still instantly cure the disease, the player otherwise needs to treat the disease with medicine or a "cure disease" potion to increase their resistance, then spend some time resting in a clean area to recover. I think a similar system could work for Vintage Story, at least with the medicine, rest requirement, and disease stages, but overall diseases should be conditions that are relatively rare and mild when they occur if the player is playing decently well. Nah, I'd rather see Herbalist. It seems the kind of class that would have broader utility than Plague Doctor(which seems a little too niche).

PvP is less of a concern in this case, I think, than making hunting too easy/lucrative to the point that animal husbandry becomes more unattractive than it already is. Many players already skip it since it's easy enough to go out and slaughter the local wildlife for one's supply of meat, fat, and hides. Dairy nutrition can be safely skipped, and livestock needs to be generation 3 before the animals can be killed via butcher knife, and it takes a while for most livestock to reach that level. With the addition of a status effect system, I would expect hunting to be made a little easier due to bleeds/cripple effects, but not to the extent that the player is killing large animals like deer, bears, and wolves in a single shot.

Tadaa! https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/42820

I mean a second server crossed my mind when writing my post, but I ended up discarding the idea since another server likely means more staff needed to moderate and sets the precedent of opening even more "TOPS" when the second one fills up too. It's probably easier to keep things consolidated to one official public server that the devs and whatnot play on and moderate, and let players host their own servers otherwise.

Long queues can be frustrating, but this is also why I don't necessarily think they're a bad thing, depending on context. When a new game, or new content for a game, releases, it's not unusual to have a bigger influx of players as more new players decide to try the game and old players return to see the new content. Couple that with the fact that official game servers are usually quite popular(especially if the devs themselves play on said server), and the servers can easily get overloaded, even with the best planning. It's not much different than a concert for a popular singer, major sporting events, or other popular things. There is a limit on how many people you can safely fit into a space, and when the tickets sell out then someone's going to have to wait until another time to participate, unless there's some kind of overflow seating(which isn't possible when it comes to multiplayer servers). In the context of a videogame server, yes, it's aggravating to have to wait in the queue, but I wouldn't call it the worst problem for the game to have since it indicates that many people still want to play. If most servers were having queues though, especially outside of the launch/patch drop window, then I would say that it's more of a problem since that's a better indication that the existing infrastructure can't keep up with the normal load of players. For what it's worth, 1.20 had similar issues with player load--enough to the point the website and other infrastructure was having some issues keeping up with all the players at launch. If I'm not mistaken, that's also why some content meant for 1.20 got delayed as well; the devs needed to shift their focus to infrastructure for a while since the player count was much higher than expected. High capacity game servers that can support a couple hundred players at a time are still on the roadmap as well, though when the infrastructure to support such will arrive, I don't know. Infrastructure is expensive, and I'm guessing that it's not as simple as writing some code to make the game accommodate that many players at once. That being said, if the game keeps growing quickly, it's probably not a bad idea to invest in that feature at some point in the near future.

Cloth weaving is also one of the things listed on the roadmap: https://www.vintagestory.at/roadmap.html/

Not to mention carrying raw grain/flour. It keeps for quite a while, even outside of a storage vessel, so it's easy enough to cook into fresh food. Having some dried food options would be nice as well, though food supply has historically been a primary challenge of travel, especially on the high seas.

Honestly I haven't really had issues with grain. There was a bit of weird behavior in one of the pre versions, but that seems to be cleared up by now. I think the key is just making those farms earlier rather than later, or perhaps putting them in greenhouses when possible. Edit: worst case scenario, the player should be able to glean enough fibers from wild flax an other sources that they can build a basic windmill.

Welcome to the forums! From the rc1 news post: Basically, if the world was created in a 1.22-rc version, it's probably fine to keep playing until stable. If a world was created in a 1.22-pre version, it's likely to have issues upgrading and not recommended for continued play. Worlds created in prior stable versions shouldn't be upgraded to 1.22 until the stable version releases, though more adventurous players can still give it a try provided they make a backup of the world first.

By balance shift I meant that the game balance seems to be shifting towards the player needing to rely a little more on hunting and foraging the first year while they get themselves established, as they can really only count on one harvest that year, assuming they didn't plant too late. In subsequent years, the player will be able to plant seeds earlier in the year and thus have much more potential for two harvests, possibly even three if they've got really rich farmland. Fertilizer I still don't expect to actually need to use outside of a little bonemeal for berry bushes. It's probably rather useful for lower fertility farmland or late plantings, but not something that I would say is absolutely necessary for farming.