Hi all, brand new player to VS and really enjoying my time so far. Apologies if this is a common suggestion, I didn't find anything with a quick search.
Something I found immediately odd is how firewood is made from logs. It's one of the first things you'll do in the game so I think it's important to make this mechanic engaging and set the tone for the rest of the game mechanics. As someone that has a woodfire and splits logs for winter each year, I found the method of dragging a log into the crafting menu and combining it with the axe to be a bit weird and disappointing considering the more in-depth knapping system to create tool heads. It wouldn't surprise me if the devs already realise this.
Manually chopping logs into firewood seems like a pretty easy goal that would create much more immersion and realism. Even in Red Dead Redemption you can cut firewood at the camp.
My suggestion would be that players should place a log on the ground to create a chopping block (alternatively the stump left over from chopping down a tree could be used as a chopping block as they're very difficult to remove in real life and often involves the use of machinery), then place another log on top and swing the axe to split it in half, then rotate around and swing the axe into those halves to make it into quarters. This is how most people split wood for fires in real life, the log underneath raises the log to a more comfortable swinging level and also provides a nice stable surface so the log you're splitting doesn't just sink into the ground or have the soft dirt underneath absorb much of the impact.
When using a sharp axe on dry logs, you can typically split a log in half with a single swing. Of course, unless VS plans to add wood seasoning to the game I think perhaps the dryness of the wood is probably not a fun mechanic as it can take a year for logs to dry out, so perhaps a few swings on each side with a stone axe would suffice so that later on in the game a sharp metal axe can split in a single swing.
I'd also improve the animations so that when chopping the wood on a chopping block it's an overhead swing.
To balance this out if players find this too tedious, the time to chop down a tree could always be decreased slightly to compensate for the extra time players would spend splitting logs.
It would be cool if wood cutting in general was a bit more physics based, kinda like Valheim but I'm not sure how well that would work in a block based game. I really enjoyed the fact that chopping trees down in that game provided just a little bit of danger and thought instead of just swinging into a tree without thought. Also the axe swinging animation could use a bit of work. A bit of wind up and slower more powerful swings would add to the immersion as the rapid swinging of an axe into a tree would do more damage to your arm than a tree. As the trees take a while to cut down you could make it take the same amount of time but have the animations play much slower and get the same result.
I'm still early on in the game so far and look forward to seeing how it progresses.
