Moony_Otter

This happened in my world, too, I had a total of 3 villagers present. It also happens to some traders; their trading carts will be lit up and everything, but nobody will be there. One time it happened, I was wandering around to see if they had walked off or something, but when I came back to the cart, the trader had miraculously appeared out of nowhere. It was a tiny cart that had 3 spaces of walking room, so I couldn't have missed 'em. NPCs seem to just not spawn upon chunk generation sometimes.

Yeah, I get this, I like this strategy, but to be honest this seems like a bit much to ask of an average player. Strategies like these should make the game better for those that are experienced enough to employ them, rather than an expected way of accomplishing such a vital goal in a game's progression. There's no way to reasonably expect the average player to do something like this, I feel the early game should be at least a little more inviting, or at the very least made to be less tedious. It's understandable that your way of playing tends to work, but for the average player that doesn't know these strategies or about how copper works, it ends up being extremely tedious and sometimes hardly worth the immense time and effort put into getting that initial 40 bits; and that's including hoping that you used those bits on specifically a hammer and pickaxe, not another tool.

Thanks for the welcome! I will steal your tactic of a partial quote for the sake of saving space as well haha I just wanted to say that these criticisms I posted aren't outright negatives, just things I took note of that I thought could be improved. Especially with bears; I want to clarify that I have nothing wrong with the actual design of the bears, both visually and gameplay. I like how massive of a threat they are, I think they should be super oppressive, really restricting where you can go; that's what wolves were for me on my first playthrough, before I got good at combat. In my first world, I had a small wolf duo near my house, and I always made sure to avoid it when I went to the trader that was close to where they liked hanging out. I love that decision making aspect, makes the game less brainless, which I love! My issue with bears is not what they are inherently, but how they're implemented into Vintage Story's world. Vintage Story has hostile terrain; bushes are inconsistent to get through, shrubs block your view, trees and blocks really make you think about how to traverse even simple terrain, finding what you need often involves a massive day-long search; and I love that! I love the immersive and natural and hostile terrain in the game, and I love bears, but you put the two together and that's when I feel there's a problem. Primarily, Vintage Story has a LOT of bears. When I'm out prospecting to find what I need, or whatever I'm out to do, I will come across bears CONSTANTLY. And, yeah, multiple times when I come across them, I can avoid them. But, there are very often times where there was no reasonable way for me to know that there was a bear nearby, and it was virtually guaranteed to see me before I see it. And, when that happens, it's basically guaranteed death unless you're kitted up the wazoo. Also, I feel like the bears are absolutely faster than you. I rarely wear armor or restrictive clothes when exploring, when I can I'm just in my commoner gear because I value the movement over the protection (yeah, maybe I'm setting myself up for failure by going into potentially dangerous forests unprotected, but... like 20% of the entire world is forest, I can't avoid all of it unless I want to spend a majority of my time tiptoeing around the edges of forests when I want to explore), and bears still easily keep pace with me if not catch up to me. I am almost certain that bears are faster than the player at a base level, at least when just running away in one direction. Pair that with the hostile terrain and lack of retaining momentum when jumping up a block, and a bear attack is 90% a guaranteed death if you're not prepared for it; and, when just out exploring, you likely won't be-- or, at least, I'm rarely prepared for the bear that appeared behind me with zero sound effects or other tells and no way in hell I could have possibly seen it before it saw me. That's happened over 5 times now, and it's the only time I've ever cheated in Vintage Story, because I feel cheated every time it happens and with how often it happens, so I go into creative and fly over the hundreds or thousands of blocks I explored to get my stuff back and continue in survival from where I left off. Again, I have no issue with the bears themselves. I have no issue with the hostile terrain. I don't even have an issue with how impossibly difficult to escape or kill bears are. What I do have a problem with is how unBEARably often they spawn-- for a "surface boss", they sure do spawn a LOT-- and how little indication of their presence there is other than just seeing them laying down in the heavy shrubbery and trees before they see you. When I think of a surface world boss, I think of the Talus from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you're going to make a boss that can appear in areas that the player isn't expecting there to be danger-- no, I do not think that the general concept of "bears are near forests" is enough of an indicator; again, forests take up like a quarter of the game world and aren't outright coded as dangerous like caves are-- then you need proper indicators or counterplay to their existence. Even then, many Stone Talus are placed in areas that look like they would hold a dangerous creature, similarly to other games when you walk into a big empty room, you likely expect some dangerous enemy or boss to appear. For example, the Talus is almost impossible to see coming for a new player. Looks like a normal rock, but, once you step on it, the rock rumbles and lifts. The player is given time to realize that there is something happening, and that they should be on high alert for it (similar to wolf howls, sounds of their pups yipping, and warning growls). However, even if the player doesn't immediately run away, once that boss bar appears and the boss is ready to fight, the player can still get away. Likely not without a few scratches, maybe even a death, but the player always has options, and for a boss that can appear unexpectedly, that is very important. Imagine if, in BotW, a Stone Talus could immediately rise from the ground in a mere second if the player was in the general area and could easily keep up with the player even if they sprint away. That would suck, and would feel unfair, because it is; the player being punished with a boss fight for doing something that isn't immediately coded as something that would lead to a boss fight is unfair. Bears are everywhere, they're quite often hard to notice, and if they notice you then there's little to no counterplay. They have the spawning requirements and indicators of a normal animal, but the health, speed, and damage of a major boss battle. Again, nothing wrong with the difficulty of bears or how oppressive they are. But, they spawn way too often, have almost zero counterplay once it sees you, and have very little indication of the danger they pose; that's not an issue with their difficulty, that's an issue with their implementation; they need the proper indicators you'd expect of a boss enemy, you should be aware of such an immense danger before that danger is already on top of you; but, if you're not going to do that, then you need to give the player options should that boss appear out of nowhere. A boss lets you know that it's a boss way before you actually fight it, and that's for good reason. Bears just show up and kill you, often times (at least for me) at seemingly random, and I don't feel like forcing the player to label every single tree line as "nope, there could be a couple boss enemies there" is reasonable, especially in a game with such heavy focus on long-distance exploration and how common said tree lines are. If I'm exploring the surface in the middle of the day with no rift activity, I shouldn't be on the same level of edge as I am expected to be while deep in an open, winding, pitch-black cave. As in, I shouldn't be expecting minibosses to just appear out of nowhere like Bells or Corrupt Sawblade Locusts or Bellhead Shivers, the setting of the caves are designed to have you on edge and ready for anything to appear from the darkness, whereas the surface isn't designed as such; yet, the arguably even more dangerous bears can seemingly appear just as randomly and frequently as those difficult cave enemies, out of nowhere with little to let you know that this is bear country other than "too many trees" in a world full of trees almost everywhere I rambled a bit here, but I hope I've made it clear that I don't dislike bears in a vacuum. They're a good enemy! But, their implementation into Vintage Story's actual world is very heavily flawed, in my opinion.

I love this game, I've spent weeks playing Vintage Story, and I've barely tapped into the lore events yet, just working on my various home tasks and building up my farm of crops, animals, and tools. However, as someone that has played this game for a good while, I have a few criticisms; criticisms that I make as a fan whom hopes for these perceived issues to be improved on. Bears. I think bears are a bit overpowered for the game they're in; I want to clarify, bears on their own are great! A fantastic and immersive way of threatening livestock, difficult enough to avoid yet fair enough to be an enjoyable achievement when killing one. However, when you put that incredibly designed threat into Vintage Story's world, that's when it becomes too much. Vintage Story's world-- especially where bears are most common-- is intentionally hostile to navigate, with foliage making it difficult to see, bushes being difficult to sprint through reliably, and Vintage Story's movement mechanics being not well made for speed (more on that in a second). Pair that with an enemy that can ambush you, makes little noise, has better sight than you (and will therefore see you before you see it 80% of the time), runs faster than you, takes minimal knockback, deals absurd damage to you, and can navigate the hostile terrain much more reliably than you, while being very common and hard to see in the brush (especially if it's lying down)... bears make exploring very tedious and annoying, and can feel like essentially an RNG 'you die now' whenever you're bordering a forest. Is it realistic? Yes, bears are better than you and them ambushing you makes sense. But is it good game design? No, randomly being punished with near-guaranteed death just because you existed in an area with little to no indicators of danger other than "bears can spawn here" is poor design. Personally, I think bears should have a better indicator of their presence, or some way of better escaping them. I think they should remain a massive threat, but one that RNG check guarantees your death unless you go in prepared for combat (which isn't common in a game where you sometimes need to explore thousands of blocks while having a limited inventory) I think makes exploring worse. Whenever there are wolves, I think "Ooh, I better stay away from those howls" or "I can knock it back with my spear while I run away!" Whenever there are bears, I think "Ok, well that's annoying." or "Well, guess I'm dead, I'm not looking forward to the next 10 minutes of just getting my stuff back only to maybe die to another bear." Bears should be balanced like a more threatening wolf, but right now they're a "you got unlucky, you die now" enemy. An incredibly rare instance in Vintage Story where I feel cheated, and like I had little to no options other than get more lucky next time. Climbing. Vintage Story, believe it or not, is a voxel game. But, it's a voxel game with movement mechanics not fit for a voxel game; specifically, jumping and climbing blocks, or the lack thereof. I don't want to compare Vintage Story to Minecraft, but in this case it's warranted, because Minecraft has a block stepping mechanic that I think Vintage Story should adopt. In Vintage Story, if you jump up a block and the very edge of your collision box grazes a block, your momentum is being halted or thrown off. In Minecraft, your momentum is retained when you jump up a block; when you jump up a block, hit the side of it, then go above it, your velocity isn't stopped, which makes climbing blocks in Minecraft feel so much more natural and intuitive. In Vintage Story, climbing up blocks; especially when you're trying to sprint to somewhere; it can feel like a chore being constantly stopped by the side of a block, or being thrown off to the side when you try and jump up a block at an angle and just clip the edge of the block. Starting Copper. In early copper age-- before you obtain and crush your first copper ores-- the grind is extremely tedious and unfun. On my first playthrough, I didn't know I could explore around to find copper bits and the nodes underneath them, so I spent 4 HOURS panning for enough copper to create a pickaxe, prospecting pick, and hammer. That's 60 pieces of copper; panning was such a tedious chore. I nearly stopped playing, the only reason I kept going is because I felt stubborn on that particular day. Even in my newest playthrough, where I did search for copper bits rather than panning and kept note of the nodes underneath them, it was still annoying to get both the pickaxe to mine the ore, and hammer to crush the ore. I think that some alternate way of crushing ore-- even just copper-- that doesn't involve another metal tool would be great for rushing into proper ore mining and the copper age. Maybe a quern or something? Maybe smashing the ores against a rock surface, which would take several tries to break it open? Maybe you could do a similar process to knapping or cleaning up an Iron Bloom? Anything to make grinding towards being able to mine and use ores a little less tedious. Rifts. Honestly, this is less of a balancing criticism and more of just an art design or spectacle criticism; I think it would be really cool if there were more alternatives to Rifts. Different Rift types, different Rift sizes; something that makes you pay attention to the Rifts near you more than just taking note of their position and how light or dark it is. I dunno, I just think it would be awesome to have the current Rifts we have now be the common type, but there's a rare Black Rift or something that spawns harder enemies or something; just to make Rifts feel more like a weather event than a "is it light or dark right now" check whenever Rift activity is high. Bowtorn and Shivers. I like these enemies, and I have little to say as criticism against them, except for the fact that there sometimes feels like there are situations where you have very little to combat them; specifically in caves. A Bowtorn in a large cave can shut down an area if it happens to have literally any verticality, as climbing up to a Bowtorn is just asking to be shot at, and climbing down to a Bowtorn is a massive risk in the darkness of a cave, as you don't know what other enemies could be down there. If you can get right up to them, they're a well-balanced enemy as you have to either get out of their line of sight or close the gap, but put them somewhere where their 'disadvantage state' of them running away is extremely risky and difficult to get to, and it can sometimes feel like wherever they are is essentially a no-go zone. Shivers are in a similar state, but to a lesser degree. If you can get them in a place where you can fight them, an open and flat space to run in circles around them, then they're not bad! But, in a cave where any open level ground is a rare luxury, and fighting Shivers can really feel unfair at times. And, Vintage Story is a difficult game, but rarely is it unfair. Except with bears. And sometimes Bowtorn and Shivers. I want to be clear that I could be wrong about these, could be missing something, but I voice my criticisms in hopes that maybe it helps to improve this game. Other than these things, I love this game, there's a reason I come back to this game all the time, I love making my keep and I love exploring and farming and mining! But these-- especially bears while exploring-- can cause me to genuinely not enjoy playing this game.