Erik

I think a system with fixed classes is actually better than a trait based system, as it allows to more carefully design interesting characters for the player to play with their own unique challenges and advantages. A trait system would require balancing the traits against each other and other perk combinations , which is not impossible to do but not easy either. It would probably lead to a situation where some traits would just never be picked and the traits would be picked in such a way that players play optimal build, that cover their weaknesses with their strengths. Having specific weaknesses tied to specific advantages like in the system right now just forces more nuanced and interesting experiences and not has players go down the route of optimizing character classes for the most powerful or useful combination. Sure, it provides less freedom and such combinations could still technically be possible in a trait system, but most players might never enjoy those fun and unique combination if you don't force them to and the community can be more focused around them and their unique gameplay. Anyhow, modding the classes right now to create new ones using the same traits is really easy, so there is technically still that freedom to mix and match. As for a player character progression system, I think it would probably be something in the line of Skyrim/Valheim/Stardew Valley/etc. where skills just passively advance by using them, making your character better at doing those things. Not a bad system, if done so to lower the grind rather than cause it. If certain skill levels where to be required for certain things though, like forging the best sword or crafting certain things, players would grind just to get these skills, which I strongly oppose, the game doesn't need more unneccessary grinding. I could also imagine more unique takes on character progression, that reward exploration or overcoming certain challenges and give more unique bonuses.

The idea of a "round" world isn't as complicated as it may seem at first. It would be a lot of work though. This thread has some info on how to archive it, especially in the video in last post: A torus (i.e. donut) would be chosen for the shape of the world. The world would need to be big enough so the same chunk (or even region) can only be loaded once at max viewing distance, as there may be strange bugs when it is loaded multiple times. World generation would need some tweaks, so the world generation does connect at the former borders, which for terrain shape just requires some tweaks to the noise to make tileable. However, making the other worldgen stuff tileable, like especially the landform mapping could prove to be rather difficult, the code as it is right now is already kinda daunting. Though, to be honest, I don't see it happening ever. It is the kind of feature that needs to be build in from the start or very early, because with every new thing added to world generation it becomes more difficult to add and as the feature is not in right now and not even in the roadmap, I'm certain it isn't coming. It would just take months to develop something with minimal gameplay impact, there are more important features that deserve that time. As for modders taking this idea, I highly doubt it. Modifying the chunk loading could would be required and that is part of the engine, so not easily accessible by modders. The maintenance for such a mod would also be kinda high, as updates are much more likely to break it.

Well, you can just carry the tool heads and craft the tools on the fly, since tool heads can't be damaged they would be able to be remelted for full metal return, so I see no problem there. I also don't see a problem with undamaged tools being able to be resmelted. Currently really everything needs some amount of full ingots. I also don't see how blocking a single mold would be such a big problem, you can still not melt the metal stuff and keep it in a chest if you really cared about it. Overall, I'm not against the concept of some generalist form of a small unit of metal, what would essentially be a nugget in Minecraft, call it metal shavings or metal scrap. However, I don't really see the need for it. Most items that should be resmeltable would in fact logically resmelt into full metal ingots, like tool heads (with plates, chain, etc. already being able to resmelt). Only exception would be arrow heads, which would require multiple (9) to resmelt. The ability to remelt damaged tools is however something that is up to debate from a gameplay perspective, but here some scrap metal mechanic is required. I think adding metal scrap/shavings from splitting voxels on an anvil is a bad idea, as it adds nothing really of value imo. Sure, some tools would require less metal when made with the anvil, but balancing metal cost around metal used in the recipe is not always a good idea and the shavings also add a lot of micromanagement, as you would obviously not be able to resmelt your toolhead for a full ingots worth with it, but have to also add the correct count of shavings and you would therefore not be able to regain the full material when the toolhead was made with a mold, which is very annoying. A better way to make the anvil more desirable would be to just give tool heads crafted with the anvil a slight durability boost.

You can't do anything with just one metal shaving, can you? You can however save up, till you have enough metal to fully fill a mold. That is why I prefer a metal scrap system here more. However, getting back 50% of the metal is still much better than getting back nothing, also why would someone have unused tools anyway?

Armor damage and therefore repair would be frequent, when having the system I proposed, where armor damage also means lower protection. For such a system resolving around "destroying" armor, the armor wouldn't last for a few hundred hits, but probably 20 or so hits when against a monster that would after the old system be in the same tier. And even when this wasn't the case, armor damage meaning lower protection means, people would be encouraged to always have their armor at full durability. As for a repair system that allows quick repairs without huge resource investments: Just whack your armor with your trusty hammer, converting durability of the hammer to armor durability. There just has to be some limitation, so this can't be done in combat, like having to place the armor somewhere to repair it or something.

Exactly, no one crafts early metal armor right now. Making early metal armor even more useless, by having its frequent repair also be a resource sink is therefore a bad idea. But having early metal armors last without huge resource investments and them having relatively good stats may actually still not be enough to have people use them, as people can shoot through the metal ages very quickly, like you describe, but it would at least give some more incentive.

It doesn't, that is not the point of the system. I mean, with your system of metal shavings from voxels, the metal cost used for casting could still be adjusted to match the cost of smithing. Likewise, I could adjust the metal cost required for casting to be higher, to make smithing better without touching itemstats. It isn't something that is uniquely tied to the shaving system. Personally I think giving forged items a stat boost like more durability would be a better thing than a lower material cost, since such a system is bound to be introduced anyway, when quenching and tempering are introduced. Metal value stored in a crucible is very usable. And while there are no partial iron/steel, since it can't be molten in a crucible with any of the currently available fuels. But you could still put them in a bloomery, if they added up to at least a ingot. Broken toolheads, two of which resmelt into an ingot, could theoretically be implemented. But for this I think an metal shavings (though I like the name metal scrap more) system would be better thing, to represent some generic metal parts. Though I still thing it's a bad idea to integrate them as shavings for smithing, they would be best to just be for breaking metal stuff down for remelting.

I don't even see why such a metal shavings system is even needed, we can already have "partial ingots" via metal value in crucibles or in a bloomery. Having voxels represent actual metal value doesn't seem so fun to me, as it introduces a bit of micromanagement, when I feel like a plate or chain being worth (and able to be remelted into) two ingots is simple and effective. The only thing that's missing is smelting recipes for iron/steel that produce iron bloom and for the tool heads. There is only one slight limitation that should be removed: When I want to remelt my arrow heads, I can't just use one arrowhead and a few nuggets that add up to a full ingot, it must be enough arrowheads to make one ingot. Not the end of the world, but something that can probably be solved.

Refitting tier to just durability damage is an option, but I don't think it is the best one. Taking the quotient of the tiers would mean that differences of lower tiers are making more durability damage than differences of higher tier. Tier 5 to tier 4 is just a durability damage multiplier of 1.2, while tier 2 to tier 1 is a multiplier of 2. That would mean that higher tier armor would last significantly longer in general, especially when the better materials also have higher durability, as the system still lacks some form of anti-armor. I don't think tying the armor balance to the crafting recipe is a good idea at all, from a design perspective (as the system loses a lot of flexibility, it is generally a really bad idea to tie a specific balance to a system) and from a gameplay perspective. It would shift balance too much in favor of full plate armor. There is also the problem of balancing the different armor pieces durability with this system, as doing so would be completely dependent on the crafting recipes. There can be reason for the different pieces to have not the same durability, but maybe scaling with hit chance, so less frequently hit pieces like the head would also have appropriately less durability. Having differing durability damage on weapons also seems like a bad idea, since I see no gameplay reason to do so other than being a bit more consistent when having tiers. I have thought about adding some buffer before the downward spiral, but there is already a kind of buffer: The maximum damage reduction. When the maximum damage reduction is really high, it may take very long, before the weapon actually does more damage. A higher damage weapon would however be allowed to bypass this buffer sooner, which I think is good as it helps to further distinguish weapon types, in case material has little to no impact on the damage of a weapon. As the maximum damage reduction is also a stat on the armor, it is far more flexible than a static buffer. Having repairing be a resource sink is a bad idea, when the armors are balanced to break rather quickly in combat, as is the case with my system, where armor durability is actually a dynamic stat in combat. Crafting the armor is already quite the huge resource sink, I think punishing the player for crafting a lower durability armor which quickly broke against a high armor damage mob more than having a big disadvantage in combat with having to use a lot of material to repair it is just unfair. It also devalues armors made out of early game metals, as they would be a very quick way to lose a lot of resources, so people are just better of waiting to craft armor until they have steel, like is the case now.

It's certainly an idea that has been discussed a lot of times already: For me, my general opinion on this hasn't really changed, constantly having to sharpen weapons seems like a huge tedium. Furthermore, the whole idea of a weapon becoming dull is kinda hurting combat, as fights will drag on over time, rather than getting more deadly the longer they go (which is something that could be archived with armor effectiveness scaling with durability, which while potentially having the same tedium problem, would actually be an improvement to combat gameplay). I'm all for a repair system, but the one proposed seems to be a bit too much effort required imo, especially since the smithing system is already used so extensively, some people are getting annoyed by it. A system with a grindstone where the player exchanges max durability for more durability would be a better fit imo, as it would be a lot more convenient, while making tools not last forever, just significantly longer.

Well, your right. But it could easily be fixed by adding an armor bar on the hud like in Minecraft. The bar would need to be split into three sections, representing the different armor pieces, but generally it would be something easy to implement and for the players to understand that practically fixes the issue. This is also a valid concern. After all, I think having tools and weapons effectiveness scale with durability is a terrible idea. But I think armor getting this doesn't have to cause other things to get this treatment too, I mean clothing already kinda has this very feature right now and it doesn't cause people to demand it for tools and weapons. The armor repairing shouldn't act as a resource sink, crafting the armor is already quite the resource sink anyway. Repairing needs to be there so armor durability can be a short term resource, something that can be significantly damaged in combat without it causing the player to loose a whole lot of resources trying to repair it. The reason for the durability is not to provide a resource sink, but to have armor be a temporary defense in a combat scenario and not a permanent as well as not have armor defense be a binary on/off.

I feel like the current armor system needs some work, currently it is very convoluted: We have different damage types, flat damage protection, percentage protection and damage/defense tiers, high damage tier resistance. What do damage types do? Currently nothing other than effect how much durability clothing loses when hit. What does tier do? A lot of things, effecting durability loss, being an important factor in the damage equation, etc. Is flat damage protection subtracted before or after percentage protection? Before percentage protection. So flat damage protection doesn't really have much impact, based on the tiny amount on armor? Yes. Is there something akin to armor penetration? Well yes, tier, but is is not utilized as such, as there is strictly tied to material. How much damage will I roughly do with my tier 4, 4 attack damage iron sword against tier 2 black bronze chain mail with 1.25 flat, 83% percentage reduction? Em, I have no idea, can't even come up with a rough estimate because the tier calculation is so mythical it is contained in a for-loop. As one can see, the system raises a lot of questions to the user while not offering any depth in return. So, instead of trying to insert new complexity, we will try to streamline while offering more depth/variation in armor choice. First, let's cut damage types, sorta. While some basic damage types are required, like physical, flame, poison, suffocation, starvation, armor should only protect against physical damage, with there being no such thing as cutting, piercing or blunt damage anymore. The main reason for different physical damage types would be to basically have different weaknesses and strengths for different armors and while sounding like a good idea, it generally only archives players carrying multiple weapons to cover every weakness, wearing the armor that is the all-round best instead of diversifying. That is not to say that some anti-armor system isn't required. Next, let us also cut tier. Tier just has too much influence on too many different things, making its impact hard to describe in words other than "bigger number better". This means the damage calculation is drastically simpler and easier to understand, as the obfuscation introduced by tier difference is removed entirely. With tier removed from the damage calculation, it can also get some tweaks to make it simpler to calculate and offer more depth. Percentage reduction gets renamed to damage reduction but stays the same as a stat, as it is simple to understand and effective. Flat damage reduction gets completely reworked into a new thing called maximum damage reduction. Instead of the percentage reduction scaling into infinity, it is only allowed to reduce damage up to this maximum. The new damage calculation therefore is as follows: damage_taken = damage_received - Min(damage_received * damage_reduction, maximum_damage_reduction). This allows differentiating armors more than the flat damage reduction, as low percentage damage reduction high maximum reduction armors will be generally better against strong, high damage, attacks like the swing of an axe than high percentage damage reduction low maximum reduction armors, which will generally be better against weak, low damage, attacks like strikes from daggers. It also doesn't suffer from the issue of high flat damage reduction completely reducing an attack. Now let us deal with durability loss, which previously relied on tier difference and the damage of an attack. With tier gone, we will need a new thing to implement its effects, albeit in a much cleaner way: durability damage. Durability damage is a new stat for weapons that determines how much loss of durability they will cause to armor. Better materials will have higher durability on armor and higher durability damage on weapons, emulating the tier system in a way, while being much more focused and less confusing. This also means that the attack damage of an attack will no longer have impact on the durability loss, allowing things like a war hammer that does a lot of durability damage, while still having generally low damage. The last significant tweak to bring the whole system together and add anti-armor of sort is scaling the maximum with durability. Lower durability of your armor means it will be potentially less defensive, as the maximum amount of damage it can defend gets lower. Armor repairing and armor not being completely broken when durability reaches zero is obviously required to make this not unfair, but as far as I know that is already planned and needed anyway. Breaking, or at least damaging, armor becomes a core combat gameplay element rather than just some tedium. Because higher maximum damage reduction doesn't block more damage than the percentage reduction, armors having higher maximum damage reduction would be resilient for longer against durability loss, while not necessarily being more defensive overall as a side effect. Naturally, with tier being gone, there need to be some adjustments to monsters and animals, who have previously relied on the tier system. The simple solution is to give their attack durability damage and have them actually "wear" armor, with their own durability, damage reduction and maximum damage reduction. Overall these changes will lead to a lot more dynamic combat, as durability is now actually important to keep track of, like a second health bar, that can also be manipulated by opponents. Naturally the removal of the tier system is probably a bit controversial, but the durability damage system and defense scaling with durability basically fulfill its purpose of preventing damage and defense inflation while keeping new materials useful and additionally does a whole bunch of other nice stuff. For making the system even more accessible for the player, displaying health and armor bars of enemies may be a good idea, as well as signifying if a weapons attack is strong enough to exceed the maximum damage reduction. What do you think about these ideas? How would you like the armor system be? Any feedback is welcome.

When combat will be improved there will definitely be some sort of blocking/parrying implemented. This however poses a problem: How to prevent the player from hiding behind his shield forever? The answer would be something I abstractly call a combat endurance system. The most straight forward solution may just be to have blocks not block all the damage, but to only reduce it. This however either makes blocking useless when the health cost is to high or makes it overpowered when it is too low, letting the player still hide behind the shield forever. This balancing problem is especially mostly impossible to solve when armor gets involved. So I will rule out health as a good solution for the problem. The next possible solution would be a stamina system. Blocking costs stamina, when the player is out of stamina he can't block. Simple and effective, as well as allowing to limit evasive actions (i.e. running away, dodging). This new player character stat could also be integrated into other gameplay systems, like the nutrient system (certain nutrient groups increasing stamina instead of health) and the armor system (stamina penalty instead of somewhat annoying lowering of movement speed for heavier armors). The stamina system would generally be useful in preventing/discouraging spam of certain actions, like possibly attack cancellation in combat, allowing to balance the gameplay systems more carefully. So what are problems of stamina? Stamina would obviously regenerate over time, which could lead to players abusing the system in combat against mobs, being able to quickly hide behind some blocks to regenerate stamina and be able to block again. Waiting for stamina to regenerate is also not the most exciting thing, but may be something that commonly occurs when stamina is a thing. And as most people have gathered there is a third possible solution: Durability. I think this is the solution the devs will most likely adapt, based on their current implementation of armor durability. Blocking costs shield (or weapon if blocking with a weapon) durability, if the shield/weapon is broken it can't block. This very effectively limits the length of fights and puts a big focus on gear progression, which some may like, others may dislike. The obvious problem with this system is that it would really need a repair system, as otherwise combat will just be a way to burn through work and resources and be not just pointless, but strongly discouraged, making evasion the only proper way to play. Swapping armor or shield in the middle of combat also needs to be disallowed in some form, or players could just swap the shield to instantly regain all lost "combat endurance", but that isn't exactly a hard thing to implement either. The real problem with this system is that it can't be as universally applied as the stamina system, evasion (running, dodging) and attacking (specifically canceling attacks, missing attacks) can't be balanced by it in the same was as defense, as they are not tied to gear in a logical way. I personally still think the stamina system is the better way to go, as it is more flexible and the durability system putting too big a focus on gear progression rather than player skill for my personal taste. So, what is your opinion on the matter? I'm be very interested to hear about other views and solutions/problems I didn't think of.

Honestly, I'd be happy with any update, but find it sad that there is no worldgen update listed. I suppose the ocean update would be kind of a worldgen update, but it probably won't include such important parts as rivers (which I suppose would be somewhat needed for waterwheels), ridged noise, deeper underground, maybe chunk column offsets and new kinds of flora. It would make sense to put all the big worldgen features into one big update to not potentially break (seamless) world compatibility in multiple updates. The Lovecraftian update seems like a really cool story update and I'm very excited for a mechanically interesting alchemy system, but I feel like that would probably need to build upon brewing and alcohol, if it aims to be somewhat realistic. I feel like I don't have to explain how much I crave for a combat update, but I have to advice not trying to be too simplistic for the sake of simplicity. Adding shields alone won't make combat better and can create some issues of it's own, it's important to first improve on what already is there: Attacks. Decent readable animations, maybe different attack types and most importantly cone based hit detection, swords aren't short range guns. Blocking should realisitically also be able without a shield, though that requires some form of a stamina system. I suppose when blocking is only possible with shields, the durability bar of shields could be the stamina, but that opens up exploiting the system by having multiple shields in the inventory, which seems a bit stange imo. The Homesteading update is improving on what the game already does the best, which is farming and food. I mean, it would be a nice update, but I feel the focus of the next update should be on improving systems that are not quite on the level of farming to bring them up to the same standart. Though bringing fruit trees could be used to overhaul trees as a whole, since fruit trees require progressive growth anyway, which would be something very nice. More mechanical stuff is always nice, I'm also very pleased to hear that a firepit overhaul is planned as that is also an excellent chance to improve on the survival side of things even more since we now have a body temperature system. Only thing I worry about is that there might not be enough incentives to use mechanical power other than the obvious automation of some crafting processes. What would be the reason to build an elevator for example? Other than being fancy there is no reason right now. Some changes to the ore system though could make building long mineshafts with minecarts useful and minecarts would obviously need an elevator like in real life, not behaving like the ones in some other cube building game.

The ore and prospecting system is certainly the hardest part of the game for new players to understand and I think that is down to the presentation of the data provided by the propick. The propick has two modes like Streetwind mentioned, a node search mode which searches for actual ore blocks and a density search modes which searches for the concentration of ores in the general area. The node search mode is rather useless, it is only partially useful when you already are in a area you know to contain a lot of ores, helping you to track these down a little easier. Copper is the easiest metal to obtain, but a lot of new players don't realize how easy it is to obtain: Directly under surface copper nuggets there is always a copper vein, which can be mined and processed if the player has acquired a copper pickaxe and hammer. Tin and iron however require prospecting. The density mode will give you values of how much ore of certain types there is in the area, if there is no tin, move 100 blocks and prospect again, until you find tin. When you found if, there are usually higher concentrations nearby if you prospect around the area where you detected it. This is not really obvious to the player, but the concentrations are distributed among the world like a landscape with hills of high concentration and large areas of no concentration. It would be a way better representation if these concentrations were actually added as a map overlay that is revealed around the player in a certain radius when he prospects, so the player also gets a sense at which distance the values change and doesn't have to manage a lot of waypoints for documenting ore. Once you have found a high or medium concentration of the ore you are looking for, actually finding the ore blocks in the ground is rather easy, thanks to the way ore generates: in thin flat disks. You will just have to dig a lot of vertical shafts down and you will eventually hit a disk, often even on the first try. This also means that strip mining is useless, as the chance of hitting the flat side of the disk is rather small. Tin disks can be rather small, but thankfully you don't need much tin, as only tiny amounts are needed to make bronze. Iron can appear in quite huge disks, which is also nice. I personally think the ore system is not that bad, it just needs some tweaks in the presentation, like the ones I mentioned. I would also like to see alternate ways to reliably obtain ores like tin by exploring caves. Some ore geodes on the wall of caves that can be crushed down to nuggets would be a nice way to get quick access to small quantities of these resources, especially to smoothen out the progression into the bronze age.

For those unaware, metal tools are often heat treated to have better properties. The most common heat treatments are quenching, a form of hardening, and tempering. Quenching is rapidly cooling a hot metal tool from a certain temperature to preserve certain crystallization phases, resulting in raising the hardness of the tool. Tempering is often performed after quenching. It is heating the tool up to a certain temperature below the critical point and then slowly letting it cool down, to reduce internal stress in the metal, resulting in slightly lowering hardness, but increasing toughness, the ability to withstand stress without fracturing. The temperatures for quenching and tempering are different per metal and also vary for the desired properties. For Vintage Story, it is currently planned that quenching will improve tools based on the fluid they are quenched in, which is really unrealistic but would work for gameplay purposes. I'm here to present a different, more realistic mechanic for quenching (and tempering), that also adds a little more depth to metalworking. When we compare the real processes with the game, it would seem that to be realistic, we would need to add two new properties to tools, hardness and toughness. But we already have those in a more streamlined form: Mining speed/Attack power and durability. So quenching would increase the mining speed or attack power and tempering would slightly lower these, but increase durability by quite a bit. The quenching process itself is simple: Throw your hot tool head into water or another liquid stored in a barrel or something. Temperature is the thing that really matters, like in real life quenching, there would be an optimal temperature for each metal to quench it. Quenching returns a better (mining speed/attack power) tool head, the closer to that optimal temperature. Tempering would work in much the same way, where there is a optimal temperature for each metal to heat it up to before letting it cool down again. It would always result in lowering the mining speed/attack power by a certain fixed value, but the durability would be increased the closer to the optimal tempering temperature. The optional temperature for tempering would however always be below the optional quenching temperature, which is below the smelting temperature. Optional temperatures are however not statically set for each metal, so that anyone could just look them up in the wiki, but randomly generated for each world seed. That means that players will have to discover them by trial and error, possibly sharing the secret on a server for a price or profiting of the secret knowledge by selling the best tools. Traders could maybe also sell lore pieces with secret optimal tempering or quenching temperatures for certain metals or they could be hidden in ruins. Each tool head should only be able to be quenched and tempered once, so players can't quench the same tool head again and again until they find the optimal temperatures. In addition, different quenching fluids would also still work with this approach to quenching and tempering, if they gave static bonuses. This suggestion is inspired by the mod Era of Steel, which implements a very similar quenching mechanic:

What degree of realism/complexity will this whole metallurgical working have? It's quite the complex topic and there are many different variables connected to it in real life (carbon content, impurities, homogeneity, crystalline structure, hardness, toughness, malleability, etc.) so I think some simplification has to happen. The main property of a steel that effects hardening and tempering is of course carbon content, but I imagine VS won't have it as a property of steel, but different types of steel/iron (iron (being wrought iron), mild steel, (medium) steel, hard steel, cast iron (pig iron)) reflecting it. Crystalline structure makes the most sense to reflect, as it is probably the biggest contributor to the properties of the steel and could be expressed reasonably realistically with just five carbon content states.

Good combat alone won't attract or lead to a toxic community. Competitive PvP however could. Competitive multiplayer games, especially team based ones (Counter-Strike, Rocket League, League of Legends, etc.), have always been a breeding ground for toxic behavior. For survival games there are also a few examples of particularly PvP focused ones like Ark Survival Evolved and especially Rust, where the core enjoyment revolves around raiding other peoples bases and trying to conquer whole servers. When the core gameplay motivation is griefing other peoples bases, you can bet that it will get toxic very quickly, especially in unmoderated environments that official game servers offer. However both of those games have arguably bad combat systems, where player skill is a very low factor and gear is decisive, so I don't think adding some improvements to PvP combat while focusing mostly on PvE combat would do much harm if any at all. The combat system won't be the biggest factor that leads to the emergence of a potentially toxic competitive or PvP survival community, Minecraft evolved both things without ever having a good combat system for example. The forming of toxic subcultures are a thing that can't really be prevented, when anyone can host their own server, but as long as Vintage Story will stay primarily a survival sandbox game, the larger community is gonna stay nice.

The reason the stagger is split into multiple types is to give combat a better flow and never leave the combatants out of options. Block staggered? Well then it might be a good idea to attack. Attack staggered? The enemy will then probably launch his attack and I can prepare to block. If properly balanced, it should provide a good back and forth. Sure, when stagger is more powerful (like combining all three types into one), it will feel better to stagger enemies, but being on the receiving end will feel much worse. This is why the player can't be staggered in Skyrim, but as Vintage Story has a multiplayer mode, allowing the player not to be staggered would essentially rule out the whole system from PvP, making PvP feel much less satisfying. I thought a lot about punishing the player more for having no stamina, but I think it should only effect defensive and evasive options. The player is already very disadvantaged when out of stamina, being unable to block, dodge or run away. The only way for the player to defend then is to either evade attacks without dodging or attack block attacks, which should be difficult to do. Attacking is still an option, but it comes at the drawback of not regenerating stamina, so overaggressive play on low stamina is very risky, which is why I don't think it needs to be punished even further by dealing lower damage. The problem with "fast", "normal" and "strong attacks" is that it's hard to balance, so there isn't a "best" attack against all or a certain type of enemies. I kinda went that way with the directional attacks anyway, the stab essentially being the fast attack, swing the normal and overhead the strong and hope that the drawbacks of each attack balance out the advantages, so there is not superior option. That they are kinda standardized is that that is required to make attack blocking work, as it is essentially directional timed blocking which means that the defender has to be able to read direction of the enemy attack very quickly, which is why having types of attacks that are different based on the weapon is very problematic, making an already pretty hidden mechanic even more hard to get into. I like the idea of attack blocking "chaining", escalating the damage and thus creating more tension the longer the attack blocking "duel" goes on. It may be good to not only increase the damage, but also slowly increase the attack speed, so making a mistake gets more likely as the "duel" continues. It's a very risk vs reward situation, as players could opt out of it by blocking at any time if they feel they are outmatched, but doing so will be a big hit to stamina. Or they continue, while slowly loosing stamina with each new attack until they either overpower the enemy or are overpowered themselves, getting a huge chunk of damage. Having parrying stagger the enemy could make it into a powerful offensive maneuver, like bashing in Skyrim. It would also take the risk out of parrying, as the player can't parry too early, because the parry would always cause the enemy to stagger and thus cancel his attack. The classical "shield bash" is just to powerful and versatile in my opinion, which is why I decided to have the parry be a kinda weakened purely defensive version of it. I could however see a small attack stagger after a successful parry, if you mean that. I purposefully left out such details, as I feel especially stagger needs to be finely balanced to provide a good pace to combat, which requires playtesting anyway. The idea raising your block in the last moment, of "timed blocking" is also something I thought about a lot, because it is such a prevalent feature in Skyrim mods. I decided against it for two reasons: Parrying and especially attack blocking already kinda is timed blocking mechanically and as there is a constant stamina draw while blocking, the player is already encouraged to block as short as possible. Furthermore, timed blocking is a somewhat "hidden" feature you specifically have to inform the player about, as it is very conditional, while a parry is very self explanatory to perform, as it is just hitting attack while blocking. Attack blocking also suffers from being kinda hidden, but I think it's less of a problem as it is intended to be a very difficult and thus generally less useful move anyway, mainly for PvP. I think dodging is especially hard to balance and fit into the system. I feel like there must be some balance between defensive and evasive playstyles. One thing to note is that dodging is more of a evasive counterpart to the defensive parry, while walking is the counterpart to blocking. Dodging and parrying are both timed, but for parrying it is only really important to not parry too early, while for dodging it is potentially the other way around. The dodging distance should be just great enough to evade a swing attack, it shouldn't replace player movement, just enhance it. Having the player be fully staggered after dodging would not only leave the player venerable, but also disallow any offensive actions and I think this would make dodging almost useless. The greatest potential difference of parrying and dodging is that dodging can be used offensively, first evading the enemies attack by walking and then dodging into the player and attacking, which would make for a potentially very fun and interesting playstyle I wouldn't want to lose. Don't worry about this getting buried, you can bet I will annoy Tyron with this once he plans making a combat update Anyway, thanks for the comprehensive feedback!

While not every attack makes as much sense on every weapon, for attack blocking to function, every weapon has to have every attack. War axes frequently have pointed metal tips, so a stab makes some sense. Having the swing and overhead of the spear be sideways and overhead stabs could work, but the animation might be too similar to the stab and may not cover enough area in case of the sideways stab. I think some suspension of disbelieve is possible, as whacking someone with a spear would still hurt, as would poking someone with an axe. In the worst case, the attack damage of those attacks could be lowered, which would however have a strong impact of the usefulness of different weapons, especially spears.

The problem with an "auto mode" is just that it turns a visually appealing repetitive task with low player engagement into a visually appealing repetitive task with even less player engagement. It turns knapping into holding down a button and watching a glorified progress bar. Furthermore, everyone would use this feature if it was faster or equally fast, making manual knapping redundant or when it would be slower, people would complain about how annoying it is to having to hold down your mouse for so long. For it please everyone, both manual and automatic have to be equally tedious, which ends up pleasing no one. I only support the "auto mode" as a optional accessibility feature that has to be configured in the world settings or enabled via command on a server, which replaces manual knapping (and other voxel minigames) completely and once turned on can't be turned off. It shouldn't be a convenience feature or a solution to the problems of the system, but a way to allow more people to play the game. I've outlined real solutions to reduce the tedium of the crafting systems a bit further up, the easiest solution is just to increase the default weapon and armor durability.

Darkness is supposed to be dark imo. Gamma is for adjusting the already visible areas, not the completely dark ones. If it were like Minecraft, anybody could see everything in the night, so carrying a torch would be practically useless (if not even discouraged, because it drains your hunger faster). The darkness is there for the atmosphere of the game, providing the fear of the unknown, and for gameplay reasons, making going into the dark more dangerous, as enemies could be coming without the player being able to see them beforehand.

Caves are important in the identity of Vintage Story. In the lore of Vintage Story, the people retreated into them when the surface became uninhabitable for them. At the time the player arrives, only ruins and temporal instability are left, bringing with it drifters. The caves are now a place of unbeknown dangers, becoming stranger the deeper you venture. Well, that is at least what I gathered from the bits and pieces of lore I encountered and it clearly tries to build up a lovecraftian horror atmosphere. For the gameplay component of it, there is this idea of stronger drifters spawning deeper down. This sounds like a fine concept, but there is a fundamental flaw with it: Further down is really relative with how random the cave depth is caused by the cave generation. So there is no clear tiering happening, as a cave might lead straight down to bedrock or might be limited to near surface. So the player can't really choose to venture deeper, the tiering system kinda falls apart, as any cave could be anything. Even if a cave goes through multiple depth layers with multiple drifter tiers, there is still the issue of the player not knowing how deep he has gone, as judging vertical distance underground is really difficult and using the coordinates feels really unimmersive. I therefore suggest the implementation if tiered cave generation. The idea is to have multiple layers of caves, which don't vary a lot vertically. The upper layers are connected with lower layers by distinct vertical shafts, like they already exist in the current world generation. A shaft never skips a layer, so it can't go from surface drifter caves straight to nightmare drifter caves, it has to connect two adjacent layers/tiers, so only surface drifter to deep drifter, deep drifter to tainted drifter, etc. Tiered cave generation, while being less realistic and more gamey, fits the tiered systems of VS much better in my opinion. It provides a clear progression and makes caves more like dungeons, where the player clears a tier and then can decide to go deeper. Not every cave system would encompass all tiers and therefore go down to the nightmare drifter level, but most cave systems would go down at least three levels, so to the tainted drifter, only few to nightmare drifter depth. Translocators would teleport the player into a different system and a layer deeper than where the original translocator was found. They might even be the only way to access layers deeper than the nightmare drifter level. cave systems that don't start on the surface level and are there very unlikely for the player to discover might be connected via translocator for example. There is however one problem with this approach: The underground is not deep enough for five cave tiers. Since 255 blocks is the recommended world height, the sea level is 110 blocks. That leaves each cave tier with a width of 22 blocks. The average cave segment in VS right now seems to be five to six blocks high, but even caverns and segments up to 20 blocks tall aren't unheard of nor uncommon. This would leave very little room for vertical variation in the cave tiers, which leads to very flat and boring caves. Then there is the additional fact that there needs to be some space separating the different tiers, I'd suggest at least 10 blocks to highlight the transition in tiers, but 20 blocks would probably be better. So what is the solution to this problem? A higher default world height? That would mean much slower terrain generation, much more RAM required and much higher data amounts servers have to transport. Also much less detailed looking terrain generation and more noticeable terrain generation artifacts. When looking for solutions, we first need to know how the chunk system in VS works. Chunks in VS are cubic, 32 by 32 by 32 blocks. Does this mean we could easily have infinite world depth/height? Well yes, but actually no. The world generation system heavily relies on generating chunk columns. Chunk columns are vertical stacks of chunks, going from the bottom of the world to the top, like the chunks in another well known block building game. Terrain is generated one chunk column at a time and changes to this basic concept would require a whole new terrain generator. Furthermore, chunk columns are used as a convenient chunk storage format and for transferring chunk data between client and server. The solution: Underground dimension(s) So what did Minecraft do when it wanted "deeper caves"? It created the nether, a separate dimension with its own chunks. Vintage Story could do the same, have the underground be essentially a differently generated world relying on the existing chunk column infrastructure already in place. The main difference would be that there would be no magic portal, the dimension would be seamlessly reached by just digging down or going through a cave. Going near the underground would load a few chunk columns directly beneath the player, entering the underground would load more underground chunk columns around the player and unload surface ones, except a few directly above the player. Since the underground offers much lower visibility than the surface, the loading distance could be significantly smaller. The "world height" for the underground dimension could also be reduced when there would be multiple underground dimensions, allowing even greater performance and lower RAM usage. Lets say we have three 128 block tall underground dimensions. That would easily allow for six cave tiers, two per dimension. Furthermore, the generation on the surface doesn't have to provide much or any dedicated underground at all, allowing for a lower sea level and much more terrain height variation. When a seamless transition would proof to difficult to implement, using the translocator as a portal would alternatively also work. This implementation of a deeper underground would also mix very well with the idea chunk column offsets (and a static sea level).

The bronze age collapse caused iron to be used more widespread, not the fall of the western roman empire. You also undersell wrought iron quite a bit. When looking at hardness tin bronze has the upper hand compared to wrought iron, but wrought iron is still significantly harder than copper. Furthermore, wrought iron is also lighter and more malleable, which makes it more desirable as a sword and much more repairable. An iron sword might bend but a bronze sword might break. Iron can also be more effectively hardened and tempered, making it a much more flexible material and being able to surpass tin bronze in keeping an edge that way. In terms of gamedesign, the suggestion would also not really work all that well imo. Making copper more rare for realism purposes seems like a really bad idea for progression, as when it would then remain the starter metal, it would be frustrating. When making iron the starter metal instead, it will be much harder for the player to get some starting metal tools and stone anvils and hammers need to be introduced. The player is then likely to skip bronze, since the gains wouldn't be all that significant and getting steel would probably be more efficient, since there would be no reason for steel to be gated behind bronze. Keeping copper common and the starter metal and being able to make iron with just copper tools/anvils also makes bronce kinda obsolete for the same reasons, it would also be degradated to an optional metal. The copper -> bronze -> iron -> steel progression is simply better, because bronze is a natural step from copper, as is steel from iron, crafting processes increasing in complexity with progression and material strength. It also mimics the historical progression which I would count as an advantage.

An alchemy system could also be a reason for brewing that is kinda realistic, I have some more detailed suggestions on it here: