Rudometkin

I love to hear it!!

A crucial step of critical thought.

Great question, traugdor! If a suggestion contradicts what the lore has already established, then that is a suitable answer as feedback. To make it constructive, an ideal response would be to carefully offer a solution that does not contradict what the lore has established (without allowing the unknowing suggester to easily deduct what the spoiler is), while still aiming to satisfy at least some part of the original desired outcome of the suggestion. If this is not doable by any reasonable means, then perhaps the best thing you can do is not spoil the lore and encourage the suggester to revisit the idea once they have completed the story. A totally reasonable answer would be: - "Unfortunately, this suggestion contradicts something the lore has already established, so it is not suitable for the game." The suggester should respect the lore, and the critic has the responsibility to be accurate about it. If another critic disagrees that the suggestion is incompatible with the lore, then that conversation is encouraged to happen elsewhere in private, lest any unwanted spoilers get revealed. ---------- You are totally right in that the duty to fix a suggestion is not on the critic. However, high quality feedback as I have proposed it aims to go above and beyond to help each other.

Understanding Suggestions: Every suggestion contains a desired outcome. The suggester wants something added to Vintage Story. Whether it be a more difficult, complex, immersive experience, or a more casual, simple, forgiving experience, or even if it is simply about wanting to add the ability to roast flax marshmallows around a campfire, the suggester wants to make some adjustment to the game in the name of improvement. ---------------------------------------- High Quality Feedback: High quality feedback considers the desired outcome of the suggestion, and collaborates to help find a way to get there without compromising positive traits of the game. It filters through the practicality of the suggestion, and voices potential roadblocks and offers new paths to reach the desired outcome. With encouraging and supportive language, it is willing to say, "this is why your suggestion is not the best idea for Vintage Story, but maybe here is how it could be". ---------------------------------------- Resolving Fundamental Disagreements: Sometimes, there is a disagreement whether something is an 'improvement', or 'appropriate' for the game. This is considered a fundamental disagreement, and it is fair play. This is where healthy and informative discussions can take place to find common ground. For example, critics and supporters of the suggestion can articulate and justify their viewpoint by way of politely appealing to the game description, existing game mechanics, popular opinion, and many other valuable sources, in an effort to find common ground. Healthy arguments can further develop the relevant discussion from there. ---------------------------------------- Addressing Underdeveloped Suggestions: When a suggestion is not thoroughly articulated, quality feedback asks relevant questions to reveal and encourage the development of crucial points in the suggestion. It does not ridicule the suggester for not fleshing out the suggestion, it simply encourages or helps them to flesh it out. ---------------------------------------- Carefully Handling Lore: When a suggestion contradicts what the lore has already established, great effort should be taken to avoid revealing spoilers. This implies the suggester has not yet finished the story, and is unaware of the contradiction. In this case, a suitable answer would be as follows: To make it constructive, a solution that does not contradict what the lore has established may be offered (without allowing the unknowing suggester to easily deduct what the spoiler is), while still aiming to satisfy at least some part of the original desired outcome of the suggestion. If this is not doable by any reasonable means, then it is better to be short and play the trump card than to risk spoiling lore. The suggester should respect the lore, and the critic has the responsibility to be accurate about when an idea contradicts the lore. If another critic disagrees that the suggestion is incompatible with the lore, then that conversation is encouraged to happen elsewhere in private, lest any unwanted spoilers get revealed. It is important to note that even if the suggester pushes for details about what exactly contradicts the lore, there are still countless other viewers reading who do not deserve to have the lore spoiled for them. It is better to remember the trump card than to play the explanation. ---------------------------------------- Example of High Quality Feedback: Here is a very neat, dynamic example of borderline high quality feedback stretched to its extreme limits, to simulate a realistic application of this lesson: Studying the High Quality Feedback Example: Note how in our high quality feedback example, even though the critic had a fundamental disagreement with the suggester that made them borderline dismissive, they were still able to provide high quality feedback by addressing the suggester's points, attempting to find common ground via reinforcing the game description and showing a point of agreement, and trying to reach at least a part of the desired outcome. Now remember, while it may look like poor feedback on the surface, the critic strongly believed this was totally an unfitting suggestion, and they still checked those boxes to collaborate. Do you think you would perhaps reply just as well, if you saw someone suggest that bears should be able to fly? If so, then amazing! Also, note how the suggester showed the critic to be wrong. The flax marshmallow indeed is an appropriate suggestion on the basis that it enriches the atmosphere of Vintage Story similar to how other existing features in the game already do. The critic being wrong did not necessarily render their feedback as being 'low quality', since it would not necessarily be fair to evaluate the quality of feedback on soundness, but instead should be evaluated by its reasoning, thoroughness, and collaboration. ---------------------------------------- Example of Low Quality Feedback: Studying the Low Quality Feedback Example: Notice how this example of low quality feedback is missing the healthy, collaborative, thoughtful traits of high quality feedback. It dismisses the suggester's idea without providing an adequate explanation of why (if it is ridiculous, what makes it ridiculous?), and does not try to explain why it offers no solutions to making any of the suggested tenets fit the game. It is simply an answer with ridiculing verbiage that is being pushed forth with no basis. This establishes disagreement, yet offers no points for common ground. This all works together to create discord, which is the opposite of this community's vision. ---------------------------------------- Summary: High quality feedback considers the desired outcome of the suggestion, and collaborates to help find a way to get there without compromising positive traits of the game. It promotes going above-and-beyond to help each other, which leads to a stronger community and better suggestions; and better suggestions are more inclined to be added to Vintage Story. ---------------------------------------- With this being anchored into the forums, we are able to refer to it at any time out in the 'suggestion forum' battlefield to encourage high quality feedback. I hope everyone who critiques suggestions gets a chance to reflect on this. I think we all inherently agree with at least a majority of this article, but it is not always organized so coherently in our minds, so the principles often get confused in the battlefield. Perhaps this confusion is what often leads to false accusations and misunderstandings. When I study and communicate, my personal philosophy is to 'read' and 'write' 'one word at a time'. I have found that this technical precision is a crucial part of collaboration. I was inspired to write this after I saw @Enjen encouraging us to discuss how we could make ideas work, instead of just discussing why they don't work. I spent around four hours writing the skeleton of it using my cellphone notepad, my dictionary, and my thesaurus out of love for the betterment of this community, and I myself learned more just by articulating it all in this lesson format. Now, we are all beginning to work together to help build this post up to cover even more areas than I initially considered. With what I am going to risk doing next, I only do it out of confidence that Anego Studios is approachable, and that given the nature of this carefully crafted love letter to the VS forums, that this post is deserving of making at least just one ping to the man who brought Vintage Story to life, with a cool little idea of my own: Hey, @Tyron What better way for a team of Vintarians to celebrate victory together, than to make some roasted flax marshmallows out of those pesky drifters? I am beginning to sense a new nightly Vintage Story ritual coming in the next update

I did hear Tyron talk about wanting to get clouds right. Great to hear!

This also resonates with me! I am fine with supporting ideas on different levels, having more intense support and putting more urgency in the ones that pack heavy value into the core game, and saving ideas that are more bells and whistles as secondary. In my opinion, this thread's idea hints at a mixture of fundamental and quality of life mechanics.

This is an excellent reason to be in favor of mods. That benefit resonates with me. We are beginning to establish common ground - maybe the start to a strong friendship?

This is a good question! It lead me to think about it deeply. I am far more comfortable and satisfied with ideas being placed in official Anego Studios mods than in user-supplied mods, on the basis that Anego Studios would presumably keep them up to date and compatible with the latest and greatest stable versions of Vintage Story. I have confidence that Anego Studios would be reliable in that regard. I do not have the same confidence for user-supplied mods. I see it often - mods you like that are not up-to-date and stopped getting updated years ago. With that said, I am not simply against mods. I can appreciate and use them. However, at the end of the day, I prefer more challenge-based, immersive, and complex systems continue to be added to the base game. This I feel is the most reliable method to keep Vintage Story growing in the right direction. Vintage Story is a challenge-based, immersive game with complex systems. Yes, growing and providing dynamic world settings to a game comes with a necessary evil, such as impacting computer performance, but Tyron is demonstrably still doing it anyway. He apparently thinks adding the natural disaster of 'spreading fires' as a world option is worth the potential necessary evil of causing some players to take a "performance hit" who may not want it to begin with.

Of course I do. My computer turns on when I press the right button. Since we are on the subject of simple understanding. Let's see...Here it is! You said: This is what I was referring to. You made a point that if a suggestion implements a toggle option be put in the game (such as natural disasters coded with 'if' functions), then there would be extra code that might "suck up" memory on everyone's machines for mechanics that some might not even want or have enabled. So on that basis, you seemed to kind of suggest that adding any toggle options could pose this threat. That's what made me think of what you might think regarding this suggestion. What whole time? I've been 'on about' about several different points in several different threads for the past few days. I have an objection to the dismissal of challenge-based ideas and reducing them to be only fit for mods in the name of ease for the sake of new players. What do you mean by "fired up"? I certainly am not "hot-headed" and angry, if that is what you are insinuating.

This morning I ran through this thread and happened to see this picture again. I thought it was so funny, I will save it to my computer. I spit out my nonexistent tea all over the computer screen when I saw this guy's face already chillin there in my preferred 'save to' folder. I already saved it when you first posted it, and forgot about it!

Thorfinn raises a good point that I didn't even think about regarding multiplayer compatibility. It seems everyone on a server might need to share the same settings for the sake of overall world consistency and avoiding confusion. This would be a hit on the progression system for many players who join the server late, almost nullifying the point of the idea to begin with for multiplayer servers. But it still works well enough in my opinion for singleplayer to justify being added.

I believe in Magpie's proposed system, there is a total rework on the way durability works. That is, the 'condition' of the tool runs down the more you use the tool, and it becomes less effective the lower the condition is. Using the tool does not necessarily burn down it's life. The true durability is now HP. HP only burns down when you sharpen it to raise the condition back up. Now I didn't notice Magpie mention what happens when condition runs down to the lowest level and you still use the tool. There are two solid mechanics that could work: 1. The tool reaches the condition 'useless' and sinply becomes useless, until it is repaired. 2. The tool starts losing HP every time you use it, since you are still continuing to use it in its most vulnerable state. Why are you still using it? Go repair it already!

This sounds like a great system! Yes, but only if the whetstone is crafted with a temporal gear. I don't want the game to be too easy. (That was a joke!! It's a play on me always talking about making the game harder! It was just a joke!! )

Here's my review: Support : I really like this idea, even though I personally am not inclined to cater to newer players. My first world is in pure Survival Wilderness with a 20 live cap, and 40+ hours later I still have about 12 lives left. Yes, I am so far behind, I think I have almost finally made my very own first copper pickaxe. I started out basically blind, but received tips from my own little Vintage Story community along the way, and I have been sticking to the handbook since the beginning of my first day. Despite being new and thrown into an especially challenging world, I have enjoyed every moment of my Vintage Story experience. With that said, I understand other people do not like the hardcore challenge of being punched in the face through the computer screen by Vintage Story every 5 minutes, so I am happy to support an idea that gives them the opportunity to ease in without compromising my playstyle. Positives: One positive tenet is obviously the general consideration for dynamic gameplay suited to the player's whim. To me, this alone outweighs all of the (potential) negatives down below. ---------- Another positive tenet is the expanded gradual progression system of the various suggested nuanced mechanics that offers a virtual lollipop to new players. While I would likely not personally utilize this 'gradual progression system' in my worlds, I think it is great in the name of allowing players to ease into the massive storm of nightmare-fueled lightning bolts o' doom that will soon reign over their worlds. ---------- I particularly like that this adds features such as tools being capable of rusting, crops happening to die at random, and enemies being able to break blocks to infiltrate your base. This could be implemented in a way that encourages players to properly take care of their tools, master more nuances of farming, and upgrade their bases with more hardy material. Features like these are how I personally would utilize the suggestion in my worlds. They would serve to enrichen the vast colors of Vintage Story's already-unique profession palette. This could lead into new items, methods, and systems meant for restoring tools, mastering the art of agriculture, and strengthening the defense of massive treasure-loaded castles - which gives more life to multiplayer servers by giving players more things to specialize in, which then leads into enrichening the bartering system Vintage Story already offers. ---------- I also like the randomization feature which takes customization to a whole new level. As suggested, it enrichens the soon-to-be poor, weary, battle-scarred player's experience by helping ensure they have a healthy dose of fear of the unknown. Potential Negative: This idea sounds like it could be a nightmare to code, but the difficulty of coding modifiers like these depends on how organized the code structure is. I imagine Vintage Story has solid code structure. I don't bring this up as a reason to turn the idea down, I just want to establish it here that it is a key factor in implementing it. It could be seen as a negative. I am interested to see what some of the others would say about this, especially @Thorfinn and @LadyWYT, since I think I might have noticed them turning down other ideas in the past at least partially on the basis that they would be difficult for the developers to code, and that having more added features that are not being used in a particular world could slow down performance for all players, (perhaps by some sort of source-code bleed?). Negative: A world that utilizes the progression feature can be said to be logically inconsistent. Since, food can suddenly start to rot faster over time with no apparent reason other than the world is tailored for the player's benefit. This is a tiny hit to immersion and Vintage Story's logical consistency. However, it poses no considerable threat to the overall idea. Conclusion: Overall a very well thought-out idea that certainly would be great if added to the game. Comes with some logical consistency issues that I would be curious to see if can be solved.

Yeah, and I read them all. (This is a joke! It's a joke to keep the situation lighthearted! It's just a play on my apparent arrogance! ) I agree, and it's a fascinating subject. Thank you, and my feedback contained a fair question and point, and that is, "What makes my question read that way? Let's make sure we're not reading into messages here." Totally appreciate it. Best of luck to you, and I hope to continue seeing you around.

I understand it comes across as arrogant to people. But the very post that seems to have been deleted in this thread was me going in detail about what arrogance is said to be, and justifying how just because someone appears arrogant, does not mean they are arrogant nor incorrect. Arrogance is showing inflated sense of value, to quote it very loosely for time purposes. Perhaps I do have the value I act like I do. That wouldn't be arrogance. That would be me acting appropriately concerning the position I am coming from. In the discussion you are referring to, I revealed the other member's self-refuting argument. I did the work. If you perhaps disagree that I was correct there, then how about you show with logic and reason that I was incorrect? Maybe then, you could prove I was arrogant, and put the controversy to rest - reveal a difference between my attitude about my adequacy and my actual adequacy (and I'm not trying to put you on the spot to do that, I'm just suggesting you could, and since you haven't, it serves to support my case that I am not being arrogant). I did not say "I am superior" in general, so how is that how it reads? We should logically deduct from each others messages, not 'read' into them. I did not say that because I do not believe I am "superior" in general. Let's be fair. You also left out the part where I said this right after: Does it still look so much like I'm being arrogant? (Me talking about being open to being wrong, and changing, sounds arrogant?) If so, feel free to prove it by revealing a difference between my attitude about my adequacy and my actual adequacy on the subject!) And what I determine is worth my time is up to me, isn't it? I am standing for what I believe is healthy, true and fair. I understand I'm being attacked from many angles, but frankly in general none of my fellow friendly critics in the community have refuted me yet regarding what I say about my character, though many may think they have, my justification via reasoning is on the boards (well, except for the one(s) that got silently deleted). The only things I'm fearing here is that the community is not being fair, and that I unfortunately may get banned soon for being genuine and reinforcing my demonstrable coherent reasonable and relevant point of view regarding vintage story and this community.

Unfortunately, one of my large messages appears to have been silently deleted from this thread somehow. I have been silenced, somehow. It appears to me that I am being shadow banned (secretly silenced) by staff, as they have already warned me on the false pretenses that I am "content trolling". It is not certain that it was staff who deleted my message. It might just not be loading for me, or maybe somehow I deleted it myself (I am very careful to not delete messages). I have screenshots of the entire message. For anyone who wants it, reach out to me via DM. It was about me thoroughly, kindly, and coherently providing my justification on why I don't believe I have an arrogant attitude, as traugdor implied earlier in this thread. Funnily enough, the post right after it still happens to be up, where I started off by showing willingness to consider that "maybe I have been showing arrogance". It seems as though a narrative is being artificially created about me from behind the curtains of the forum staff. That wouldn't be fair. And if my post got deleted for "engaging with someone's behavior" (which is what I was given a warning for, deemed guilty of doing by Rorax), then why didn't @traugdor get silenced by having their message get deleted for engaging with my apparent behavior? (She? He?) Is clearly up there engaging with my apparent "behavior". And I don't want them to get silenced. I think they have a right to speak that opinion of theirs, and I will fight for them to not be silenced for something like that. I didn't flag them. Does staff only moderate flagged posts? I understand staff is very busy, but what's going on here? Many of you may not like me, but letting me get treated rather unfairly like this may backfire on you one day, because one day it could be "you" who gets wrongfully accused of "content trolling" by staff. And if you see me as getting what I deserve, then so be it, doesn't hurt my feelings. But this here is something the community should be very careful about. Even this post may be deleted for "controversy and drama". But it's really just me adequately and reasonably representing my experience as a fair member of this community.

When the context is "community standards", healthy principles are "truth" and "meaning". You are putting into question whether truth and meaningful communication is essential to a healthy community. This is a fatal flaw in your argument, as these are fundamental principles of civilized humanity. In fact, in your objection to me, you are trying to refute me, a part of the community, by enforcing the principles of "truth" and "meaning" that you think coincide with your viewpoint. You are especially trying to enforce them on me by telling me, "you should examine your approach to conversation" on the basis that your point is true and meaningful. Therefore, by your own standards, you are on the path to a "short, puritanical path to evil". It took me about 30 seconds to see that fatal flaw in your argument. I encourage you to think deeply about it. I have already spent years reflecting and refining my own worldview, being my own harshest critic on the fundamental principles I adhere to. And it's not merely about me trying to be the "right" one in a forum. I was led to this viewpoint by years of experience, consideration, being open to being wrong, open to changing, refining my thoughts, and by being my own harshest critic. It's about fighting for what is true, healthy, accurate and fair. And if that makes me appear like an arrogant narcissist like others have claimed, then that is the cost I am willing to pay. You seem to have a rather intellectual grasp with vocabulary. I expect you to appreciate this post in the name of coherence, truth and meaning, and maybe we can be friends.

"I have noticed in my experience, lately we as a community in general favor shallow discussion and discourage deep discussion." No you do not have the insight to know whether that is my experience. Whether it is the objective community attitude is not my claim. That is why I prefaced my claim with "in my experience". You are replying "false" to my claim, which is concerning what my experience is. It is true that I have noticed in my experience, lately we as a community in general favor shallow discussion and discourage deep discussion.

Nice to see I'm not the only one. I still haven't upgraded either. Waiting to run out of my 20 lives in my first world.

100%!! Thank you for protecting the vision of Vintage Story. It seems alarmingly too common that we have a lot of people wanting the uncompromising game to 'artificially' make compromises here.

This doesn't account for much, but I was just watching one of my older videos of when I was just learning Vintage Story about 4 hours into my first world, and I just realized I casually referred to my 'club' as a 'bat' without realizing it at one point. As I was preparing to go outside and collect some dirt/clay, I got super nervous about the morning red sky, thinking I was therefore in my first temporal storm. So as I was gearing up to go outside, I was looking over my inventory: "We got uh, we got a flint shovel...all kinds of uh, we got a bat". Then I later went on to throw a bunch of stones at a mushroom thinking it was a raccoon.

It's alright, sometimes computers are super confusing. Thanks for the update, I'm happy to hear it went well.

Maybe your friend's copy fell into a rift portal. Was he near a rift the last time he logged out?

Thanks! I appreciate your insight. And while I am not in total agreement with everything you said, I really agree with this: "You can disagree on something and respect the other person's opinions without compromising your own integrity or beliefs." And it can be left at that without a debate. Of course it doesn't have to always turn into an indepth discussion based on differences. Also, I have no desire to leave on my own accord, (though I would consider leaving for the sake of everyone else, if I learned the only value I was providing was hurting feelings, etc.).