Mushroomancer

To be fair to moderation, who did get perhaps overzealous, the 'tone' of this entire event started and remained relatively uncharitable and vitriolic from the start. Everything said, no matter how reasonable, has been picked apart for the worst possible interpretations that could be pulled from it, and added as fuel onto a very intense fire that sprung up overnight. Like a pit kiln buried in a peat bog. While I do think a response on the forums would be appropriate, I don't personally believe that a response somewhere like the devlog is necessary for Anego, who clearly wants to maintain that space as a point of discussion for progress and development news. I think it also, in part, comes from a belief that this isn't as big a deal as it's been made of. Their assessment of the damage does not 'justify' a sweeping response. My only issue with that potential logic is that the community reaction alone DOES justify that level of clear communication and transparency. Admittedly, it could also be that the discord is more irreverent and fast moving, and this can all be moved on from there much faster. Personally, I am content with Anego's response and Maltiez's punishment, though I do wish they would communicate to the entire community engaged in this discussion and not just the discord where it was at its briefest and most intense. (Although I do believe a Reddit post was made.)

Brass, personally, but bismuth bronze gets a close mention for second place. Meteoric Iron is a natural choice because as a limited resource, it's perfect for something like lanterns that don't have durability. Generally if I really feel like flexing, gold/Silver/Electrum is a way to go, considering you get to double down on their use for bright lanterns and show off how much money-element you have at your fingertips.

My only real complaint about Toolsmith is that more advanced handles aren't as sturdy and still require binding to be fully 'Toolsmithed', while in reality, most traditional hand tools are just a head and a handle. Maybe some rivets. You will always benefit from a binding which isn't always true of reality. It also adds tinkering and reforging, but I haven't explored those systems in depth enough to recommend, but they do seem quite interesting.

Although it doesn't do this, exactly, the Toolsmith mod has a system that allows you to join a handle, binding and toolhead into a new tool, and gives each their own durability. It does so in the hands, still, but assuming inventory management is fine, it doesn't require a crafting grid for actual tool assembly. It also adds a sharpening mechanic I am a little more mixed on, but functions quite well for its intended purpose. Overall I find it tends to make tools, especially metal tools later on, last longer and it serves as a good point of immersion.

I was going to say, I was having some serious hangs and snags and after uninstalling the Farseer mod it worked much better. Which was strange and unfortunate because my earlier tests an update or two ago on Farseer ran fine.

In regards to whether or not the code hides other malicious features, they can read his code and know exactly what it did after it's been poured over for a week now. It wasn't particularly sophisticated, really, and was essentially a parcel loaded in two parts: one to identify and crash with a manufactured incompatibility, and one to misdirect the source of the crash to obfuscate the code causing that incompatibility. The three points of contention regarding the code are 1.) The code was not disclosed to users who installed it onto their system. 2.) The code's means of identification allowed it to target unintended mods as bycatch primarily because Maltiez seemed to be under the impression other mods would not obfuscate (technical term this time) code when publishing to an open-source database as it means something could be hidden inside that can't be reviewed by the community. And 3.) The code did not match the easy-to-read open-source repository file meant to communicate the actual things that the mod was doing, instead being sideloded onto the Mod DB to, again, delay the discovery of what was causing the initial incompatibility. These last two are the more severe breaches, in my opinion. The second, because it was somewhat sloppy even if no meaningful alternative was available. And the third because it's where the actual deception is occurring. It IS what someone looking to smuggle more harmful code into a mod could do if they so choose to bypass the community's open-source security. It's also a security issue that most community driven modding spaces have, unfortunately. It is also somewhat a testament that Maltiez was not attempting to do something more malicious, because if he were, he would have done it well before this point of discovery considering how long the 'crash code' was active. What Anego knew about the situation before it blew up is still somewhat unclear, it seems like the most likely scenario is that when they tapped Maltiez for assistant development, he confessed/boasted to creating anti-cheat.The issue is that they did not actually look into the vehicle and methods that the anti-cheat employed, choosing to have faith in Maltiez, rightly or wrongly. You could argue that was their primary failure to do due diligence, as the DB is hosted on their official site. How they've responded after seems to be based on their personal assessment of the damage done and the risk of more or worse damage happening in the future (which, to be clear, is kind of the standard that most legal systems use when deciding judgement in these kinds of cases, as well.) If you don't trust them, I would say the best action you can take is to request a refund and move on to other games, especially if after ten years this has so fully eroded your faith in them that you have no hope they can steer things back in the right direction. I'm not saying 'if you don't like it leave', just that it's the best option as far as personal comfort and sense of safety. Edited for language clarity and further context.

If it's any consolation I don't think what you were doing was vigilantism. You were putting the onus of action in the hands of an authority rather than taking justice into your own hands. I don't think that anything islikely to come from it, just because as potential cybercrimes go this seems to have been relatively small fish in a sea of very terrible actors and considering how legal systems tend to move, it's very possible that the 'negligible' harm (in a statistical sense, I know people wasted time, but I suspect that's the kind of thing that a criminal court would push toward civil avenues if at all) is justification enough to just close the book on it by a legal authority.

You weren't being empathetic. You called people with a lot of posts on the forums sycophantic addicts and implied that anyone who had a lot of posts was one of these people. You implied that the only people ardently defending Anego were overly parasocially invested and would make up any excuse not to criticize a game that had become 'part of their identity.' Despite the fact that at least two high-involvement posters have been highly critical of Anego's response in this thread and I, although fond of VS, was not active in the forums until very recently despite having shifted over to a more defensive stance. The reality is that most of the people active on the forums in this particular topic are probably the most invested in it, yes, but to pretend that it's only high posters defending and low poster casual players criticizing is ridiculous. There is no clear polarized archetype of who is and isn't a defender or critic in this situation. Most of the people who don't care about this, are mildly upset about this or are moderately on Anego's side/content with the response will never post on the forums. Ever. Because that's just the nature of the forums. I had to reread your post a few times to get any sense of empathy out of it and all I see is a bad faith 'call out' of people who 'can't imagine their future without VS'. I understand being disatisfied with Anego's response, and the situation. I understand being so upset you feel you need to move on from VS. What I don't understand is pretending that you are the only one who has a genuine perspective on this and everyone else is either a plant or an addict jonesing for the Crafting Survival fix.

I do think there was enough nuance to some of the threads for them to have stayed split, but I also think that keeping that firestorm form spreading out across the entire board was the goal and it certainly was doing that. Unfortunately that kind of means that more technical discussion has been merged with the emotionally charged 'debate' here. Though if I recall, it was already leaking into that thread at a slower pace, too.

While I agree with a lot of folks that pickaxes and hammers are the ideal, I always get a particular glee out of finding scythes. I hate cutting grass by knife, and so a single scythe can make roofing an early game home or gathering grass for pit kilns so much more bearable.

This is an especially odd take. If the logic is that Maltiez is on the dev team and so the dev team can't be trusted, singleplayer isn't trustworthy, either. If the logic is that mods can't be trusted because they're inherently carrying a risk just in how they function, then that makes sense, but isn't tied to this controversy except that the controversy would make you aware of that fact and the fact it extends to mods in EVERY game. But by that logic vanilla Multiplayer is still fine.

You can kind of hear it burning and smouldering, the problem is it isn't very obvious how different that is from the sound of your firewood just burning up and it isn't totally obvious immediately when the lighting happens, so I think I agree that something more intuitive in addition to the text confirmation is ideal. Something that you can reflexively know means it's time to close up the fire and walk away. A sparking sound probably isn't best, maybe a flare up, that kind of 'fwush' of air you get when a fire really catches.

I think something like this could be interesting in an anthropological sense. Dressing in and as animals in religious ceremony or war practice has been a facet of a lot of human cultures as far back as we can know in history. I do think, unfortunately, that in a limited capacity it will be seen as something of a modern anachronism just because of the common perceptions of those things. A lot of people will have digested media tropes and seen things like the Bear armor and be fine with it, but given the way that wearing tails and ears is commonly depicted in social spaces and media in modernity, they're going to carry some of that bias into seeing it within the game.

It's a shame, really. To have so little faith in the game they all loved so much after a decade.

I will keep this in mind the next time my architect friend throws me into the lime pits.