Vratislav

As I have played without map turned on, I may provide only handwritten map of the worldgen, but the principle of the landforms is pretty clear I think: https://www.tumblr.com/vrataf/827460051272859648/playing-vintage-story-with-map-off-and-nicely

This is really great guide! It deserves to be put to the VS Wiki (where I have no access to edit, so I am just throwing the idea to the air... )

Actually, do you anybody have some knowledge on Vintage Story anarchy servers? How does look such unrestricted gameplay? Are there things like hacked clients rare, common or necessary for survival? Is there a strong community of players on anarchy servers already? This may show some other boundary for the topic...

I have combined Rivers, Watersheds and Conquest Landform Overhaul some time ago, with quite satisfying result - wide valley with streams mostly inside of the valley, and plains above rock ridge, mostly without watersheds. In dry climate, it may work for the purpose, as Watersheds have setting to generate more trees along, that may cover the fact that Rivers do not. I made some changes in mods settings: - world height was 384. Conquest Landform Overhaul was used mostly because Terra Pretty was incompatibile with Rivers that time (and probably still is), CLO worked just fine for my not much increased world height. In Rivers: - Increased minimum for angle for rivers (from 10 to 15 deg.) and variation from 35 to 45 deg. - Increased height riverDepth to 0.025, "topFactor" to 5 and HeighBoost from 8 to 12 . This made sides of the riverbed gentler. Also narrow rivers close to their springs, that mostly look like ravines, are slightly more natural. - Increased maxValleyWidth from 75 to 150. - Increrased Octaves to 3 and Gain to 0.4 to have rivers more curvy and their riversides more scattered. The default is rather bland here. In Watersheds rivers compatibility setup: - Increased "RiverDrainFadeOffset": 40.0 to match "RiverDrainFadeRadius", otherwise watersheds were broken just at the mouth to the river. - increased "MinRiverWidthForStreamDrain" from 10 to 15.0 to keep narrow rivers from being fed by watersheds (it probably does not much good) In Watersheds itself: - Disabled uplift of inner parts of continents (to prevent unnatural canyons of classical rivers) - Decreased a bit chances on meandered or braided streams. - Most probably kept lenght parameters in default as watersheds shall mostly complement rivers. Used "MaxStreamLength" was 11.

As non-native speaker, I am not sure what are proper rules of using quotes. In my native language, we can clearly use quotes in sentences like: I like people who greet others "Aloha" , so there was no intention to make term malware "so called". So it was a grammar error in the worst case. And it also illustrates, how easily can be anybody misnintepreted, thanks.

And that is the reason the discussion is not about reality anymore. If I stretch it to the other side: 1. Even if zero players except griefers were affected, WE have decided that Annego is on the same level of evil as Microsoft. 2. So you mean it that every company who hires somebody is responsible for every his bullshit from the moment he was born, because these people sold their sins to the company now. 3. If the refund is not enough, what the heck will you satisfy? Tyron guillotining Matinez in the square, giving you his head on a golden plate? 4. There is no right to try to reduce griefing opportunitites, as good guys are also shepherd dogs who are guarding the server 24/7 to minimize damage caused to players by its inevitable reverting. Disclaimer: I do not stand with these statements, they are intentionally stretched. Just have enough of this drama to be one-sided . But on serious note: I am sure there is big group of people who are not as much concerned, please respect it. People, who are screaming "malware" to press the studio to execute Matinez, are already damaging the game for other players. And this is situation, where righteous defenders of morality are becoming villains too. Ask yourself: Were you disappointed so much, that you want to say goodbye and burn all bridges? Or do you also want to have Vintage Story destroyed for those who do not feel this way?

It is a valid point that if there were no cheaters, there would be none of this drama.

Originally, I had a title "Victims" and users of the hacked clients were labeled "No mercy." Then I considered it too subjective and changed it this way, without actually redrawing the first group. I should, yes.

I tried to clear for myself, what was the real extent of harm on gameplay and what are possible positions of people who lost their trust or are just commenting the situation. It it is incorrect in some aspects, let me know. I did not put the numbers into the plot, but I assume that ConfigLib with the payload was installed by up to 100 000 players, and the players who used mods triggering false positives were hundreds or thousands in maximum.

I value Vintage Story as before, what is important for me is the gameplay experience. I am waiting for future chapters, and particularly for worldgen changes that will include rivers - I have found some very satisfying combination of worldgen mods recently, but it should be a base game for sure. . . . And.... ...It would be nice if those who want blood running respected safe space for them who do not need to see their opinions shout loud in every corner. Do not make end of the world from this, it is happening elsewhere.

Well, this makes virtually impossible to compensate everyone who downloaded ConfigLib (including, e.g. me on using it on singleplayer). Caves and Caverns and VSRadio have about 5000 downloads together, so damage on gameplay experience would be much more narrow and then addressable. However, I am afraid, that the compensation cannot reach to people who lost their trust, although they did not experienced broken game.

The same, I have no clear idea, how a possible compensation should look like. A full or partial refund? Free additional game key? There are not many other feasible possibilities. About the identification of players affected, I am surely not expert. I may only assume that there is probably not straightforward way. There may be server owners, who can prove running that unfortunate combination of mods had they public lists of mods used on their servers, or by providing logs, or I don't know. They may provide lists of players affected. I'd be quite generous in this case if it is feasible financially. Also, I can imagine that some a..holes, particularly from the "dark side" using rogue clients would be happy to fake proofs for such compensation and then laugh it out how they overplayed Maltiez and the studio. Still, if there are "false positives," they should be on the side of the compensation, though.

I honestly believe this is not final statement on the situation. There was explanation and apology that I personally consider mostly acceptable. Still, the clarification was not responding to the the case of false positives, whose victims should deserve specific apology or some kind of compensation (if possible). The most important: there are promises that shall be fulfilled ("We will write clearer rules/disclosure standards for mods maintained by Anego team members"). For me, this is rational approach if these rules will be made public after they are defined. Although I see it will be not good enough for many. I am not very sure if there even exist a response that would satisfy people, who want see the blood. I understand that various VS players have various values and differ in judging particular actions. There are people who value quality of the game more, there are people who value honor and purity of all contributors, there are people who have strong belief in particular principles that were clearly breached. Just for this reason, not everybody may be even theoretically fully satisfied with any outcome of this crisis. Finally, whoever is confident that some criminal activity happened in this case, he has full right (in fact, he is even obliged) to make appropriate announcement to the law enforcing authorities. However I am not really sure, if such approach will lead to better outcome for the quality of the game.

As I have written in next thread, I am waiting for solid official response oriented particularly on the future approach to mods and code review. Until then, just some comment on forums moderation and approach to community. I have some experience with such situations from the other side, from a NGO with team about 20 people, that is, I assume similar size as the studio. Guilty or not, to react to such public backlash properly is not easy if you are not trained for it and if you have not prepared procedures for this beforehands. Even experienced moderators and Tyron himeslf may make mistakes if there is not clear guidance. That's why I am not angry much, as what I see from the studio's people reactions, there is no bad intent, they are just desperately trying to keep situation under control, when missing proper tools or guidance. This is also not against community, do not take it like way to fool you people. Good damage control approach must be set up with the fanbase and its trust in mind, otherwise it is not good. Rules of communication in crisis are in fact, quite simple: There must be clear, what exactly to communicate. The main message must be "we are making steps that we announce as soon as they will be prepared or implemented." . All channels must communicate the same message or be silent until the message is specified. There must be somebody, who is in charge on communication, who coordinates all communication, formulates answers for the most serious concerns, and prepares factual reactions to mininfomration - and who is ready to do it full time in such situation, so the role cannot be joined, e.g. with team leader, who has own problems. If you have no such structure prepared before the crisis hits... God help you. And this is the reason I cannot be angry much for clumsy way of handling the forums now. Just pity that the collateral damage is getting larger.

They should say asap that they are preparing some steps they will announce in detail. That gives them few days of breathing time to prepare it the way it is not rushed to be wrong.