Hi!
Before diving into the text below, I want to say up front that I love the game. It's probably the best game in the genre, one that I always want to keep playing, especially considering that my creative abilities are catastrophically low. I’m terrible at building anything that looks good. But the crafting, mechanics, and atmosphere – all of it keeps me generating world after world, exploring, and enjoying the experience.
Now, let's get to the point. During my playthroughs in Vintage Story, I increasingly encounter a kind of "progress gap," after which I lose interest in the world and in progressing further. This "progress gap" happens during the Bronze Age. Essentially, it includes everything you need to live comfortably and explore the world. The Iron and Steel Ages don’t really add any new mechanics, other than making production more complex. And while that’s great, there's no content that actually requires, for instance, wearing an iron chainmail. There’s no clear enemy (besides the ONE) that would make forging an iron/steel sword or developing your settlement necessary to match the world's challenges.
After bronze, all that's left is farming boars for meat, tending to the farm, and milking goats. Repeat.
At this point, exploration becomes unnecessary (there’s no reason to explore; everything is found, the storage is full of ores, enemies are defeated). This is where creativity and sandbox thinking come into play. But I think I’m not alone in lacking that creativity. The game needs some kind of challenge beyond this point. It needs activities that engage players, aside from farming and beekeeping. There needs to be a reason to keep spending ores and developing the settlement further.
Below are some suggestions that might resonate with players who aren’t into building and creativity but are more interested in survival.
I’d like to see more enemies. Objectively, drifters and locusts can already be killed with your eyes closed and have become quite weak. I’ve read that new mobs are coming in version 1.20, but it seems like they still won’t be enough to rekindle the excitement of cave exploration.
Cave content. Gears and junk inside, along with translocators, are fun. But only the first five times. After that, it’s unclear why you’d even bother restoring translocators since there’s no need to explore further. Once you’re in the Bronze Age, exploration mostly ends until you need to find new deposits of bismuth, sphalerite, or tin.
The mechanics of bloomery smelting and steelmaking are fantastic. I’m completely thrilled. But it’s unclear why steel and iron are necessary. Right now, they just seem stronger than bronze. I wouldn’t build a multi-level furnace to cast steel just for a shovel that has more durability and digs faster (this example applies to everything else too).
To sum up my feedback, I want to say that the game has an incredible mid-game. I’m happy to spend hours running through swamps, hunting boars and gazelles. I want to spend even more time in the dungeons. But there needs to be a reason to keep doing that
Would be cool to get some discussion here with other forum lads. Take care!
