Perdido Street

This is definitely an idea for the future, after the current armor rework has been implemented, but, once that is done, it would be nice to see armoring (Barding) options for mounts. While the practical use of protecting our mounts is pretty obvious, there is also the element of style (looking at many of the reference photos in the thread on the armor rework, the armor for horses is usually as elaborate and decorated as that worn by their human riders). Barding for mounts (and for other animals, like dogs/wolves whenever those become domestic-able) doesn't need to be nearly as complex as the system for crafting armor for the player model. There would be fewer individual components overall, but, hopefully, with a broad range of visual models:

I think that it's fair to say, at this point, prosthetic limbs could be a nice aesthetic choice during character customization, but probably wouldn't work with a dynamic system in VS because of the limb-loss issue. - - Going back to where this started, this discussion has been very informative for my thinking about how the new injury system should be implemented. It seems to be the consensus that having major-debilitating types of injuries would be too unbalanced, even with the possibility of counter-play. In more fast paced games and RPGs, having injuries slow the player down can be useful for shifting up game play (taking a break from fighting to do more gathering or trading); whereas, in a slow-paced game like VS (where the main loop is already about gathering and trading), these types of roadblocks just slow things down rather than move play in a different direction. And, while being a slow-meditative experience is what makes Vintage Story so good, that is because it has a very well balanced progression (for the most part). Even for very long or complex crafting recipes, the challenge is balanced with the amount of new opportunities created by going through it. Yeah, metal working is hard, but the system is loved because it is proportionally rewarding. Even the way that hunger is implemented is made enjoyable by the fact that having a varied diet gives health bonuses, so it's not just that the player will be punished for engaging with it "wrong," they also get rewarded for doing it well. The challenge that any potential injury or disease system faces is that while its very easy to say when a player is doing poorly (losing fights, falling in holes, or being too long in the cold), it is hard to know what doing well means in this context, or translate that into rewards. Whereas the opposite of being hungry is being well fed, the opposite of being sick is usually just not being sick, and the opposite of being injured is just not being injured. Implemented like this, injuries and disease would just be doubling down on punishing the player (and, yeah, some people might be in to that, but more people like being challenged than tortured by a game). To balance things out, Injury and disease will need more than just counter play, but an alternative (for lack of a better term) "Wellness" status. If being in a cold-damp environment can cause illnesses that applies a negative effect, then being in a dry-warm room should build-up a positive effect (separate from just making you less likely to get sick). Broken limbs and other injures should not be something that happens when you are already on the back foot. A better way would be: if you have over 75% health for a long enough period, and you suddenly receive an amount of damage that would just barely have killed you, instead you drop to 50% and receive an injury. That way the Injury System actually balances against sudden deaths from RNG, instead of just being a "you lose more" effect. (I get that might sound a little weird at first, but keep in mind that it's much better to take a bad fall on your legs than to your head. Being injured is an alternative, not an addition, to being dead). This is only me spit-balling, and there should be counter play in the form of herbal remedies and bone splints/walking-crutches, but if there is anything that this thread has shown me (in addition to prosthesis in-game being a doomed idea) the injury/disease system needs to balance problems with rewards, and those rewards have to be more than just the absence of the problems.

That is one of the things I don't understand about how diseases and broken bones are going to be added, but the devs have said that they are on the way (I think that they said in an interview they had been looking to add this is 1.22, but decided to keep it back a little longer). I see how these could be problems when you are far away from your re-spawn, but if you can die and comeback healthy why would you bother with treatment? The only reason I can imagine is if they make injuries carry on after re-spawn, which I also have incredibly mixed feelings about. Anyway, I hope they find a way of implementing that system that isn't just punishing the player more (losing health or dying already gets the message across if we messed up, and that's only in cases where it is actually our fault - wolf/bear rng is hardly fair). So, alongside bringing in new ways to set the player back, it really needs to be balanced with new ways to get ahead too (like herbal potions or prosthetic limbs that open up new opportunities/bonuses).

I know that a system of status effects, particularly for disease and injury, is in the works, and I wonder how far it could/should be taken. I love the dynamic systems of limb health from games like Kenshi and Rimworld, with the organic stories they create, but feel uncertain on how to bring it (in a fun way) to VS. Would prosthetic limbs be a reasonable (or even a practical) addition? Historically, as long as there have been people there have been limb replacements. While many of these prosthesis were crude pegs or hooks with attachment points for tools, looking as early as the medieval period, there were surprisingly complex mechanical devices being made. -Ex of a prosthetic hand from the 1400s and a prosthetic leg: There could be craftable prosthesis that are better for particular tasks. In the context of Jonas tech in Vintage Story, I can imagine this being taken to some interesting designs: So, I think that prosthetic limbs would fit into the world of Vintage Story very neatly, my only worry is about the problem of "how do limbs get lost?" If it is a fully dynamic or debilitating system then that could lead to some pretty unfair game-play situations (getting jumped by a bear is already bad, but getting jumped by a bear and losing your arms would be a whole new universe of annoying). That doesn't even get into whether or not lost limbs should carry across once a player re-spawns after death (which is admittedly something I have mixed feelings on in general with how the rest of the injury/disease system will be implemented); It would have to be adjustable in world settings, or else a start choice during character creation.

I'm not sure what level of gore is appropriate in this context, but (with the new hit detection, combat mechanics, and injury system that the devs are implementing) having critical hits (or hits received once below a certain health level) cause a red splotch or spatter on the model would certainly make things more visceral and reinforce the sense of lasting impact. Having poultices visually show up over these wounds when used would be an exceptional touch. That's just for the player model (assuming the Seraph has red blood, which admittedly I don't know...... and the more I think about it having temporal-gear green/blue blood seems just as likely - not to mention useful for getting around that "appropriate level" of gore issue) though, having a similar effect on animals or rust mobs (but probably in the spectrum of black or brown for the latter) would also be useful for showing how well, or poorly, a fight is going.

I wont disagree about coal being the dirty-est, but I come from a quarrying town and, trust me when I say, breaking any kind of stone is dusty work: -doubly so if it's in an enclosed space like underground.

There is already some modularity with the player model in response to the environment (getting covered in frost from the cold), and it would be nice to see that mechanic expanded. Specifically, moving over soil or sand could cause the lower legs of the Seraph to get "dirty" over time. There could also be a difference in how quickly (or high up the leg) this happens depending on if the player is walking, running, or jumping. The same with the frost caused by cold, dirt would be a temporary change in color; it would fade away once the player is no longer moving or is on a 'clean' block like stone or wood. These types of responsive changes, while being mostly aesthetic, add a lot of immersion. Additionally, digging/mining or planting crops could have a similar effect on the arms (like slowly getting a layer of soot on the hands while smithing).

This seems like a good middle ground for "custom" player skins. Even if what people make their Seraph look like doesn't totally 'fit in' with the setting, the way that appearance gets implemented is still grounded enough to feel reasonable (the same way that we can build anything, but still have to put in the work for materials to do it).

Being able to pursue different routes or play styles through the story would help a lot with its replayability in general.

One of the greatest strengths of the immersive sim is the sense of character it creates; Whether it's in a rpg context, a narrative context, or a survival context: Not only are our choices our own, but they have knock-on effects (which reinforces the 'reality' of our in-game personality, and shows internal consistency to the game world). In Fallout New Vegas, the actual combat sandbox that makes up the game is pretty sterile, but the ability to take the story in any direction and have the game run with that choice is what makes it one of the best rpgs ever made. Now, I recognize the folly of just saying "be like this other great thing" as if it were just that easy, but (for everything that makes VS both mechanically and thematically different from that game) VS has a much stronger core gameplay loop in its survival sandbox, and I believe that foundation could serve as an even stronger basis for a players to developed the Seraph (like our version of the Courier or the Dragonborn) into a fleshed out character through narrative choices. ...And, when I say narrative choices I don't just mean in the "main" story. Side quests are a possibility, and especially unscripted interactions created by dynamically interrelated systems (the ability to pull on a mechanical "string" and see what happens). It's a lot of work, but for an immense payoff.

Even without how often the words "immersive" and "simulation" are used when describing VS, the dynamic ability to travel through and reshape the world (where limitations are few, and grounded in the internal logic of the setting) puts the game in that category. In many ways, alongside a handful of other survival-builder sandboxes (particularly Minecraft), VS is probably one of the most elaborate immersive sim games in the world. The level of agency available to players even blows games like Deus Ex and Skyrim out of the water, however, that is in terms of physical agency (not only can you "See that mountain? You can climb it," in VS you can break down the whole mountain range and rebuild it as a stadium), whereas the types of narrative agency present in those games is still somewhat lacking here; This is less of criticism and more of a statement, given that (while the game is already massive) we are still in what is, relative to the overall vision of the game put forward by the devs, early-early access. What I'm getting at is that the survival game elements of VS are very "immersive sim-y" in nature, whereas the main story (at least right now) is a lot more linear and, at-times, relies on restricting players out of the immersive sim (picking-up and putting down blocks in different locations). While I understand some of that is an unavoidable concession to balancing, at least in its current state, there is no other developed mechanic (stealth, combat, character interaction, etc) that can step in and fully fill the void. To be clear, this is not a criticism of the contents of the main story (I think that it is compelling, and genuinely boasts some of the best presentation out there), just an observation about how the core mechanics of the game and the sandbox are much better integrated with one another than those same mechanics are with the story. It is a very natural and satisfying progression through the first year of the game (a sort of light narrative) going from the stone age to the late stages of metal working, all with the overarching challenge of building up to survive the winter (challenging enough that it has to be addressed, but open ended enough that it can be solved in numerous creative ways). Meanwhile, the story is not rooted the same way in survival (after all, if the story had to be completed as a survival objective then it would not be optional), so progression takes more of a "conquest" format, like in Minecraft (we don't go into dungeons or seek out story locations to secure our survival, but to unravel the mystery and test our abilities against escalating challenges - we 'conquer' the sandbox). I hope (and am reasonably confident) that the story will catch up with the sandbox in terms of depth eventually, but that (in my estimation) requires addressing its unique mechanical needs. The only reason I even bring this up is because I've been thinking about just how incoherent the connection between the story and the sand box is in Minecraft, where the Ender dragon is just there to be there and has no organic relationship with the journey players go on (VS is already light years ahead of that, but I still think that it can do better).

Standing water crops would be a nice addition. That said, it means being able to make tilled soil under water, likely as a new type of tilled-soil, and that probably would be best added with a dedicated tool for making it; Luckily, there is is just such an implement in real life: the Dibber (also called a Dibble in some countries). While hoes are still used to till furrows in rice farming, the actual planting relies on a Dibber (made of wood or metal) to make a precise hole for the seed through the soil and muddy-water.

Technically there is a type of armor like this called Jack Chain. It is a kind of cheap-light protection for the arms or legs (made of plate-metal, or hardened leather, splints linked via chain), typically tied/sewn onto a Gambeson or "Jack". At least in the realm of existing-metal armors, it definitely has the most "bare-bones" appearance. An interesting fact: Though there are examples of individuals wearing Jack Chains, or things like them, these only come from central Europe, and even there they were never widespread. However, 'authenticity' aside, Jack Chains are incredibly common in modern re-enactments, and for good reason, as they are cheap-functional protection against getting one's limbs broken (so, it's this odd reversal where in the past there was so much other armor circulating in the economy of Europe that soldiers could often buy or steal better protection without having to resort to Jack Chains, whereas today, when the only way your going to get metal armor is by custom ordering it, Jack Chain being the cheapest actually does translate into it being the most common). For my source - here is a discussion on the topic given by a medieval arms researcher in the UK, Matt Easton, on youtube :scholagladiatoria - What was this Medieval Armor and did it ACTUALLY EXIST?

I think that the new concept put forward is a better composition than the original logo, but also trying a bit too hard to be "charming" (like the advertisement for a cool mod, rather than a calling card of the game), to the point of losing the subtle "wrongness" that made the original design intriguing. "Rugged Whimsy, with a hint of Menace" - feels like the right tone. For some examples that I think reflect the artistic feeling I'm talking about, I found these concepts scattered throughout this thread (the first from @DarkGold and the second from @LadyWYT) The best concept for a ui/desktop Icon (imo): And the best concept for a Menu header/Brand logo (imo): For the sake of uniformity, it would be nice if they were in the same (or a more similar) style as one another, but these feel the most visually/thematically compelling and readable for those two roles (just in my opinion).

Since modularity is being looked at in the context of armor, I hope that the player inventory/bag system will also get a similar treatment eventually. In it's simplest form, bag spaces on the hot-bar could correspond to different attachment points on the model (for example: left-hip, right-hip, front, back) with an individual-button option for each to make it visible or not. Visually displaying the bags that provide the player's inventory on their character model could add a lot of customization to player appearance, just so long as it is an optional setting (after all, we always need our inventory, but might not always want the bags as part of our outfit). That alone would be a great addition, but making the most of it would also mean introducing more bag variants. I don't necessarily mean having more things like the Mining bag (though that would be nice), but more of a slight rework (really a "rephrasing") for the current inventory tier system: Instead of the first tier of bag being the "hand basket," which always has to be made out of cattails/papyrus anyway, have it be the "Woven/Grass" tier, with multiple different bag types/models within it (basket, sack, sheath, quiver, sling/bandoleer etc...), and the same advancing to the "Hide" tier, "Linen" tier, and so on like is already the case. To be clear, the number of inventory slots will remain tied to the material tier (nothing changes there from how the system is already set-up). The bag variants within each tier would be primarily aesthetic, displaying a different visual model when worn, and sometimes a relevant inventory item sticking out of it (your falx in the sheath, arrows in the quiver, spears or sticks in the sling). There could be room to have different bag variants, or attachment points, that provide advantages for preservation or specific item stacking, but, for now, the main idea would be to have more options for visual expression (not to mention find a practical way of introducing tool holsters/weapon sheaths and quivers).