I've recently started playing VS, and it has become one of my favorite games to date! I had a suggestion about the hydrograph, to be specific the rivers.
I haven't done any of the story, and so I have not seen any of the oceans (I think there are oceans?) or used the tameable elks, so I could be missing an important aspects. However, I know that there are boats, and I think it would be fun to have more rivers that would allow for quicker transportation and the transportation of more objects. I think this could improve the game in a few ways.
The first improvement is realism, because in olden (or vintage) times, most settlements were formed around a source of water to allow for drinking, farming, and transportation. I think this would also make for some interesting multiplayer experiences, as it could promote building towns along the riverside and cause more player interactions near or on the river (note that I have not yet played on a server, so let me know if this is wrong). It would also allow biomes to be generated larger and still be accessible.
It would also be useful in singleplayer, for example, recently in my world I had to travel a decent bit to find a sedimentary area. Then, when I found the area I had to slowly mine it and drag it back to my base in many, many trips. All of which I was doing for some decor on my base. Had there been proper rivers I could have crafted a boat, loaded it with some food and base-building supplies, sailed till I found a good spot, built an outpost, and then sailed back with all my newfound goodies. It would also help in singleplayer, not only for item transportation but player transportation. Some of my friends I play with are less experienced in this sort of game, so running 5000 blocks to first story event can be quite a hassle. It took me around 40 minutes of running to get there. Some of my friends just never made it as they died too many times, and we felt that it wasn't fun for everyone to be running over and over for more than an hour. The addition of rivers to travel on to at least get to a more manageable distance, makes the trip much quicker and makes the whole experience more fun. Inversely, it might make transversing certain biomes like deserts more difficult and allow them to pose an interesting problem.
The specific rivers I was imagining were something along the lines of the one generated by the Minecraft mods: Tectonic, Lithosphere, or Continents. These mods include wide, deep rivers that would spread through the land like veins through the land and make swimming across them not impossible but more of a challenge, which I think would fit well with the current realistic lakes (especially if there become hostile animals in some areas of the water like gators).
Average map:
Mod that adds rivers to the game:
(This mod exists just discovered it.)
