Teh Pizza Lady

Ah, I understand a bit better now. I'm no engineer (in fact my BS degree is in Computer Science, not Computer Engineering because I elected NOT to go to the engineering school in my state due to cost O_O ), but I can understand and appreciate the engineer's approach to subjects and methodologies in creating solutions to the problems. While the science is more about the theory, I can appreciate the execution of said theories. Anyway, I agree that many of the conversations had here about new game mechanics are definitely premature and a great source of disagreement as opinions and speculations are too often treated as facts rather than a subjective idea.

@williams_482 I fixed it. Stacks Cool Slower mod now on the Vintage Story ModDB: https://mods.vintagestory.at/scs

Neither one is wrong. You are allowed to enjoy what you enjoy. As the game changes (and it will) so must the tactics and motives for gameplay. There is nothing wrong with setting it aside for a while and returning to it later.

Welcome to the forums! Have you tried out Expanded Foods yet? It is a work-in-progress, but it definitely gives you the ability to use honey in recipes more than the base game. If you are wary of using a WIP mod, you can always just fill a barrel with honey and come back to it in a couple of weeks and it will have fermented into mead which can be distilled into Distilled Mead and again into Aqua Vitae, giving you access to soaked bandages which heal for about the same amount as honey-sulfur poultices without the sulfur requirement!

Welcome to the forums! This would definitely be an interesting change especially for users with lower-end computers.

They're just going to meet Dave in the big storm in the sky.

FWIW I found the code that determines the state of things in the firepits. Gonna make a mod real soon that patches it up so that the temperature declines at about the same rate. The major problem is that it uses the temperature of the firepit itself to determine how far to adjust the temperature of the item being cooked or smelted. If the firepit is at max temperature for the fuel source, the temperature of the items you are cooking/smelting will increase relative to that temperature, tapering off as it reaches the limit. So it starts off heating quickly and then the temperature increase appears to slow down. However, once it reaches the temperature it needs to be at in order to start processing it will continue to heat up at 1/11th of the previous rate. However cooling of an item is not relative to the stack size. I think this is probably a bug, but it makes sense for individual items... I think. I'm going to try to fix it.

good suggestion, but I think it's a bit overly complicated it would be great for a forging mod for enthusiasts. I don't think I would enjoy this as a part of the base game, but I could be wrong.

IMO, if you want anything beyond rawhide clothing and the shirt you were born in, you will need to be a tailor. They aren't necessary, but in a mulitiplayer setting I can see the base mom rolling tailor and everyone coming to them for clothes, resources, etc. while they go out gathering stuff and dumping it for them to sort later.

Throwing bricks? I've heard of uh.. pooping bricks. Throwing is probably best left to the monkeys at the zoo or... you know...

sorry I sniffed all the glue...

Came here to echo this, essentially. I'm halfway tempted to dive into the code and see where they determined how long it takes to heat up a stack and apply the same algorithm in reverse to the cooling down. More mass = more storage of heat... It's just basic thermodynamics. I appreciate what the dev team was going for here, but I think they missed on this one.

You have completely derailed the thread, now. If you want to discuss these things, start your own threads or use DMs instead. Stay on topic!

There is some merit in saying that using AI to draft responses is lazy. AI often tends to give bad responses so much so that ChatGPT has a disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying that it frequently makes mistakes and it is considered the gold standard. Nevertheless, I am trying to keep this thread a neutral ground without breaking any rules. The moderators, for now, have recently reminded me that if I find anyone on the forums to be particularly bothersome and they're not breaking any rules yet, to just block them and move on.

I want to be careful here since this thread is meant to be neutral ground. This example doesn't really demonstrate sophistry, but rather false equivalence. Surgery involves prior consent and medical purpose. Assault by nature does not and is a crime because of it. If a surgeon were to cut someone without their consent it would be a crime. So the question is not who is being disruptive, it becomes a question of whether or not the logic can stand on its own, which it clearly does not. The reply of "That is absurd" is the common sense response. It really needn't be said, but, such is the way things go sometimes. Now if the poster doubled down on their stance, then they could theoretically be labeled as disruptive, but that's a very wild swing at a wide curve ball. Any chance of getting a hit is second to none. This example isn't really sophistry either but a false shift of the burden of proof. Saying, "I panned sand for 10 hours straight and it was fun!" is a statement of personal experience. You never know what you're going to actually get when panning and the surprise of getting a lorebook or a gold nugget can be all a person needs to keep going. If someone then claims "no, it wasn't. panning isn't fun" the burden of proof doesn't lie with the person who had the experience, because experience is subjective. Any claim that contradicts someone's lived reality bears the burden of proof because it is making the first objective claim. That said, disagreement alone is not necessarily disruptive, but when someone continuously disagrees with folks on the forums when they're trying to discuss game mechanics or talk about their experiences or knowledge in real world activities that are emulated in the game, then that person is denying reality and refusing to engage in good faith discussion. That is the type of disruptive behavior we are talking about here in this thread and that is the kind that making people want to shy away from the forums and put others on the block list. I hope that clears it up for you and helps you understand why this thread exists.

Achievement get: This isn't golf, but... Mulligan?

10/10 went straight from wolf bait to bear snack.

WHICH BLOCK GAME AM I PLAYING AGAIN???? Taking a short break from VS while the rc sorts itself out and I can test my mod development. Opened a different block game. Right clicked on a chest to open it. Pressed E to open my inventory. The chest closed. >_> letsTryThatAgain.jpg Right click on chest to open it. Press E to open my inventory! ARRG I did it again! TT_TT I miss VS. I need 1.22 to be stable TT_TT

The only issue is that on this forum you have to block them from your profile, but other than that it's a pretty painless process.

Yeah that can be rough, especially when someone's behavior on the forums is consistently draining, even when they're not technically breaking the rules. It's not always that moderation isn't happening at all. Sometimes it's just that the person's actions were toeing the line instead of crossing it. The forum rules are designed to allow disagreements within discussions, even heated ones as long as they don't break the rules. I can't enforce anything myself. I'm not making this thread on behalf of Anego. But one thing that the moderators remind me of from time to time is that if you find a particular user rather troublesome, then just add them to your block list. They reminded me of it quite recently, actually. So while it won't fix the bigger issue, it can give you some breathing room so you can still enjoy the community without the constant noise of people shouting you or others down. I hope you start feeling more like you belong here, soon.

This was 100% *not* about you or anyone in particular, but I'm glad it gave you pause to think. We all need to do that sometimes, put ourselves in the other person's shoes and ask, "How will this action affect others? In what ways can I be viewed when I say this? If someone said this to me, what would I think of them?" It's a hard position to take sometimes. FWIW, I have never thought your critiques/comments on the state of the game were without merit or overboard.

I myself am guilty of opposing the criticizing comments of the new features, mainly because the features are still in their infancy. Take the forging and berries for example, the only data we had for them came from the pre.# updates which is when things are still being built. The rc.# updates are when things are tuned and adjusted. The criticism isn't unwanted or even unwelcome. It's just not the right time for it. Let the construction workers get a chance to get the support beams on the house before we add a 2nd floor, in a manner of speaking, even though it's a poor analogy. But as a developer myself, I know all too well the importance of keeping something as it is and finishing it before adding something extra to it lest I fall into the never-ending pit of "scope creep" where a project is never finished because I keep tweaking it instead of just fleshing out all the features and then giving it balance passes. I understand this is a long-winded reply to your two sentences that I quoted, but I thought that in the spirit of the thread, that a little honesty about my own actions might go a long way towards continuing to foster good relationships with people on the forums. These are hard words to read because I know that I haven't always been the best at maintaining a good online presence and need this reminder from time to time. Thanks for saying what I'm sure a lot of people are thinking and even more need to read. It's a knee-jerk reaction. Usually when people act with hostility towards an innocent comment, it's because they are not reacting to the comment, but something else. I think a lot of the arguments we see come from people not communicating with the intent to be understanding but with the intent to be understood. Pushback is perceived as personal because they're not getting what they want, which isn't to discuss their opinions, critiques, or suggestions, but to just say something and have it be heard and considered by someone. In my opinion, that is something that is better done with a close group of friends and not on a public forum. This is more in response to the last bit than it is to the first, but the first impression a person makes is almost always the lasting impression. Even if the person has been an established member of a community for years, if they make a bad impression on a newcomer, that newcomer won't share the same opinion of the person that everyone else has of them. The bigger the community, the more likely that the newcomer will then feel isolated and start lashing out at that person and making a general nuisance of themselves. I cannot recall the number of times I've had to ban a new member of a discord server or forum for being downright toxic to another member all because a misunderstanding that happened behind the scenes and it carried over into every interaction from then on with the newcomer constantly picking fights until we had to say "enough is enough" and put a stop to it. I've even had to sit them both down in the same room and just be like, "Please help me understand the issue that you two have and help me understand why new person A is coming here and picking fights with long-standing person B and I'm having to mute like 15 other people for joining in the fight who didn't even know what was going on!" Talk about a hostile community, LOL. I always tell my kids, "You can't say you don't like something if you haven't tried it yet." And they give it a hesitant try. Sometimes it's the best thing ever, sometimes it's the worst. Other times we try it again and it's better the second time. It all comes down to fear of the unknown. Something was a certain way. Now it's different. Change is scary. As you get older, you understand that change is inevitable, but for folks who are not quite there yet, change can be the biggest upset of their lives.

It's good to collaborate with other mod authors there, but other channels can be a bit unhinged. It's a whole different vibe. In my experience with large, open-chat Discord servers what happens is you get a few people all in a clique and they are warm and friendly to each other but very stand-offish to others not in their little group. This is not isolated just to the VS Discord either, but in pretty much every other Discord I've joined that had a significant number of users for these little sub groups to form. I suppose I could have also added that option... I think another issue that I've seen but didn't talk about is that more visible users trying the game for the first time might not want to try it on standard because they always play Skyrim on Legendary, Minecraft on Hardcore, so they *must* play Vintage Story on Wilderness Survival mode and can't understand why people are telling them to just lower the game difficulty. Skyrim isn't hard enough for a lot of players old and new alike. Minecraft's Hardcore is pretty much the default. Vintage Story's Wilderness Survival is brutal so they think the game needs to be rebalanced, not realizing that the standard difficulty is already sufficiently challenging enough for the average player. Literally just break the branchy leaf blocks before chopping the tree. You'll get like 8-10 sticks per tree for free. A lot of players don't know this so they immediately go to trying to think of how other games implement sticks which is breaking down board into sticks. Both of course require effort, but the wood > planks > sticks path in VS would require the use of a saw which doesn't come until well after you need the sticks in the first place. I think this is a really thoughtful take and I appreciate you taking the time to write this. It also generally lines up with my own observations as well. One thing you mentioned that I wanted to highlight was the visibility problem. Calm, reasonable users often say their piece and move on and go ignored, while the handful of people who want to drag out the argument and go on and on and on will just keep posting over and over, feeding each other in an endless feedback loop until someone steps in to break it up. This can make it look like the whole forum is more hostile than it actually is, when it's just 2-3 users who really just need to block each other and move on. I also appreciate you pointing out how difficult moderation can be. I, myself, have extensive experience being both a subreddit moderator as well as a Discord moderator, and now currently a forum moderator, all for completely different platforms not related to Vintage Story. When you become part of the community you control, maintaining balance without making it seem like you're power-tripping is a very thin line to walk. You have to let criticism roll off your shoulders, but when it turns into hostility, it tends to poison the well for everyone else even if it wasn't directed at them. You suspect the moderation happens behind the scenes. I know it does. I've spoken to the moderators in private and they've mentioned internal chats about things. They're probably watching this thread right now. In many ways this is the best outcome, handling things behind the scenes via user messages and private chats because it keeps things running without turning every intervention into a public spectacle. At the end of the day, communities reflect the tone set by the majority of the contributors. When the core users stay calm, reasonable, and constructive, it goes a LONG way towards preventing things from spiraling, but when those calm, reasonable, and constructive contributors don't feel welcome anymore or have to take a break because the toxicity of other users is starting to get to them, then its the beginning of the decline until something happens to shift it back to where it needs to be. Toxic positivity isn't the answer, but neither is toxic negativity. You can be negative without filling the space with negativity and I think a lot of people just don't take pushback very well. Some of them use the internet. Some of those end up on video game forums. It's just inevitable. But by modeling the attitudes and conversation space we want to have, they can start to mimic the people they're around and self-adjust.

If you choose 'Other' to any of the questions above, please explain your thoughts in a comment. I'm genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives. That said, I wanted to start a hopefully constructive and respectful conversation about something I have been noticing over time in the VS forums and the Discord server. This is not meant to call out any specific people or arguments. I am mostly interested in hearing whether others have noticed similar trends, and if so, what we as a community might be able to do to improve things. When I first started participating in the VS community, the atmosphere felt much more relaxed and collaborative. People would share ideas, suggestions, or critiques, and even when others disagreed, the responses usually stayed constructive. It felt like a group of people who were all interested in the same game and enjoyed discussing how it could grow. Lately, however, the tone of many discussions seems to have shifted. Conversations that used to feel like friendly exchanges of ideas sometimes feel more defensive or confrontational. It can seem as though people approach suggestions as something that must be "won" or "defeated" rather than discussed. One example I experienced recently was on the Discord server. Someone proposed reworking an upcoming gameplay mechanic that has not yet been fully implemented. My response was that the suggested changes might be premature, since the current system still appears to be in the process of being balanced through release candidates. In other words, it might make sense to see how the system settles before proposing large redesigns. What surprised me was not the disagreement itself, but how quickly discussions like that can become dismissive or personal. In the past, it felt more common for people to respond with something along the lines of: "This could work, but it might be better suited as a mod rather than part of the base game." That kind of response left room for further clarification or discussion. Someone might elaborate on their idea, adjust their position, or simply accept that it might not fit the core design. Either way, the conversation remained productive. Recently, though, disagreements sometimes escalate much faster, and discussion can shift from the idea itself to criticism of the person presenting it. That makes it harder for people to share ideas openly, which is unfortunate because experimentation and discussion are part of what make a community like this valuable. Another thing I have noticed is how quickly Tyron's news threads can turn negative. When new mechanics are announced, strong reactions often appear within hours of the announcement. While it is natural for people to have opinions, those reactions sometimes arrive before players have had much time to understand the reasoning behind the design changes or how the systems are intended to function. This has to be discouraging to the devs to read. What happened to "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Is this just a generational difference and younger generations are just more outspoken about things they don't like? For example, some of the recent discussions around spears and berries illustrate this pattern. These systems were arguably quite easy before, and the game has always positioned itself as a challenging wilderness survival experience. The design philosophy has often emphasized effort leading to reward, rather than convenience leading to rapid progression. That tension between challenge and convenience seems to be where many disagreements come from. Some players prefer systems that are more forgiving or streamlined, while others appreciate the harsher survival mechanics that make success feel earned. Both perspectives are understandable, but when discussions turn hostile it becomes difficult to actually explore those differences. Personally, I do not think the problem is that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy for a community and often leads to better ideas. The issue seems to be the tone in which those disagreements sometimes happen. Bearing in mind, of course, that tone is lost in text conversations, but sometimes the word choices are quite evident that people are getting upset when disagreeing with each other. So I am curious whether others have noticed something similar. Has the overall tone of discussions changed, or am I simply seeing isolated cases? If there has been a shift, what do you think might be contributing to it? More importantly, what can we do as a community to keep discussions productive and welcoming, even when we strongly disagree about the direction of the game?

yeah my picture is actually supposed to be a stylized image of my VS character I always play. I generated it using an AI model because I am also an AI enthusiast. Despite the growing presence of AI in coding, I actually don't like using it for that LOL