TertiaVigilia

Hi, After spending 27h playing the (great!) game I have only one suggestion/criticism: Death should not be an option. In a survival game you should strive to avoid dying. In the current game it is too easy to die (wolves, falling into ravines, starvation, drifters) and not punished enough (respawn, all loot still at death point, half saturated, full HP) Therefore I have a few suggestions which would heighten the survival experience: Remove ravines from forest/grassland biomes. These are not realistic and just provide another easy way to die in the game. In e.g. mountain or desert biomes it makes sense to have them. Remove temporal stability. The storms and drifters were a simple annoyance, nothing more. Just a few minutes of sitting inside while the screen tilted and moved. Instead I'd suggest adding e.g. a wandering wolf pack (like 10-20 animals spawning and wandering around the base or something like that). More realistic, more terrifying and less annoying. Wolves only attack in packs. Therefore you can encounter a single animal without worries, but need to RUN fast when seeing a lot of them. If you die with >10% HP, you are respawned at the position of death 8 hours later, without saturation and 10% HP (so it is like you almost died). Wolves/Animals are gone from that position. This way death is no alternative to finding food (I just /kill and get half saturation). If you die with 10% HP, the game ends. Yes, it ends. Sleep is the only way to increase HPs. Therefore the first time you die is like a free pass. You "almost died". However the second time is game over. There is a lot of content in the game, alcohol/cheese/jam making etc. But what I'm missing is a good body health system. e.g. getting injured or sick, frostbite, heatstroke, etc. Then you need specific medicine/herbs or bandages, bedrest to cure. Let me know what you think. I personally really love this game, it is very well made and provides a good challenge. Still, I found that I played it wrong, e.g. exploring without care of encountering wolves, choosing to kill myself instead of fighting hunger. There must be a real punishment for starving, a real threat from dying, in order to make it truly immersive.

The regular gameplay would be about survival, having shelter, enough food, clothes, warmth, etc. This would be regularly challenged by failing crops due to pests, hail or storms in summer (against some you might be able to protect yourself). Then there would be harsh winters requiring more firewood (or something better than a open campfire, a hearth or oven inside a wooden or stone house) to keep you from freezing. During winter packs of predators roam the forests, so it's dangerous just to gather one piece of wood (try keeping control of a wolf pack and protect your own lifestock is sure a challenge). Then there are always better tools, better materials (some of them requiring scarce or remotely found resources, requiring special equipment to mine/gather). I remembered my first hours in Subnautica for example. I almost didn't buy the game due to the underwater theme, but then I spent almost two days living of emergency rations and figuring out how to purify water. Yes, water. I almost died of thirst in a survival game, who else has achieved that? Most don't even have an indicator for that. The rest of the game basically didn't have an agenda, you just wanted to have a better base, better vehicles, better tools, more comfort. Some of this required you to travel to deep and life-hostile environments. I'm not so sure about this one. Simulating a temporal storm or a hailstorm/blizzard, what's the difference? Having a complex wolf pack behavior vs. imagines monster behavior? It doesn't have to be 100% realistic for sure, there are interpretations, simplifications, hell it's a game after all. A lot of the content (e.g. advanced machinery and tools) can be added later, as the players will struggle long enough just to survive in the first place, having an electric stove is second to third level priority.

Thank you all for the replies! I guess if I am able to turn off the temporal storms / monsters I'm satisfied with the survival experience. Some remarks: What about cave-in's? They already include a physics engine, so it could affect that long tunnels/mines without support tend to become unstable, and trap the player while depleting oxygen. Also think about the light source, an underground fire/smoke could get out of control, destroying support structures and the smoke killing the player. True, but today most machinery is also not used to hunt, but to reduce manual labor effort (like the windmill in the game). There could be machinery generating electricity at some point, the possibilities are endless... I agree with all of you, that if you like the fantasy concept, you will want drifters, temporal storms and all kind of artificial events to spice up the experience. But there are soo many games out there which already do that, and first of all is Minecraft. For Vintage Story to have a beloved place in the community I'd deem it almost necessary that it sets itself apart and doesn't say "Here's Minecraft, with different monsters, a bit more tools and a bit tougher survival", but instead "Here's Vintage Story, a real-life survival struggle". There can be a patch to add monsters for fantasy lovers. Just my two cents

When I first read about this game I was truly impressed. It looked like everything I always hoped Minecraft would be - and more. Now after reading further into the monster and temporal storm dynamics I doubt that it will be perceived differently after all. Does it really need fantasy monsters and artificial conditions to emulate a tough survival experience? Aren't natural disasters, harsh winters and other weather conditions, packs of wild predators and eerie pitch dark nights enough? I only want to mention a few games which play very successfully with these themes (The Long Dark, Subnautica when only considering the water/darkness theme) Let me know your thoughts.