popcar2

Hey all. I've been playing the game on and off for about two weeks now and I really want to talk about how frustrating it is to try and get into this game as a new player. Some of this is a little obvious, but I still wanted to make it known. Usually these games with small but dedicated communities can be a bit biased, so here's some perspective from someone outside. Hopefully the devs can use this feedback to make the game better. Your knowledge about a game is split into two parts: Need-to-know information and good-to-know information. Easily the biggest problem with this game is the insane amount of need to know info that the game expects you to figure out. I'm not joking when I say this has to be the most obtuse game I've ever played, despite having a guidebook (that's almost useless, more on that later). For now, lets compare some other sandbox games. In Minecraft, your need-to-know info is really simple, the only thing you need to know is how to get started. Punch a few trees, make a crafting bench, look up some basic recipes, make stone tools and you're good to go. Everything from that point is relatively self explanatory, you can explore, build a house, mine down to get better materials. Everything else is good-to-know. In Terraria, your need-to-know is a bit more complicated. You need to know how to build valid housing and have a general idea of what your goals are, but it's still simple to understand when you spend some time. Build houses, explore the world, go to caves and look for ores and chests, fight bosses when you're ready, repeat. You'll learn good-to-know stuff as you play. In Vintage Story, it feels like everything you do in this game needs constant guidance. Most of the mechanics of the game feel like they're need-to-know, and it's all just dumped on you through the handbook. Just getting started is a hassle. This problem is only exasperated by having a small community, finding tutorials and good resources is really difficult. Lets get into it... When making my first world, I didn't really know anything so I decided to go with standard. It's labeled "The default survival experience of Vintage Story". This was a big mistake. Standard felt oppressive, and the game didn't warn me how difficult it actually is. I'm just starting the game and I'm already frustrated. After dying of hunger, getting killed by wolves, and trying multiple times to get my bearings only to lose everything, I decided to go back to Exploration difficulty. Finally, now I can learn how to play at my own pace. Standard is probably balanced... Only to people who've played this game before. One thing that irked me starting another world in Exploration is just how many things I need to get done just to start. I need to spend some time knapping my constantly-breaking stone tools, I need to find reeds for my inventory, I need to find food, I need to chop trees, I need to find sticks and remind myself to horde grass to make a bed so I don't spend ages waiting for the sun to come back up... The first day is just a lot of annoying tasks you need to do, and only after that do I feel like I get to play the game. I open the guidebook to see what I need to do next. The guidebook is full of information, but it usually lacks so much that I'd need to google things anyways. It says now I need to move to the pottery age and make pots. Lets do this! "Hold shift + Right Mouse with clay in your hand to create a clay forming surface". Okay, where do I get clay? What does clay look like? After fumbling around, I realized the guidebook says nothing on this. Back to google. I spent a ton of time looking for them... Some people mentioned being able to see them in the map as slightly discolored tiles but I had a terrible time with this... All while fighting my hunger meter and not settling down yet. The pottery age went kind of smoothly. I didn't grasp what a pit kiln is, but after some googling I got the hang of it. Now it's time to move to the early copper age. This is it. This is when I think most players will give up on the game. I barely understood how to make charcoal from the guidebook. In hindsight, the text guide makes sense, but it's hard to grasp without any visual representation. Great, now how do we find copper? The game fails to mention that you find copper under loose bits. It says this in a throwaway line in the guidebook, but as a new player I have no idea how important that is! I've OBVIOUSLY been picking up copper bits and not been marking the map, how was I supposed to know!? It's a mechanic that technically makes sense but it punishes me for not knowing this beforehand. Fuck me. Finding copper was a nightmare, I spent over an hour blindly wandering outside of my comfort area that I've settled in (because I've picked all the copper bits in it) just looking for any bits on the floor. After finally pushing through and finally having enough copper, I later realized panning wasn't a bad idea and not a bad source of copper. Some of you will mention it was written in the guidebook, but the guidebook is so full of hyperlinks and data dumps that it's difficult to tell what's actually useful and what you should know in passing. While hounding tutorials and guides for the game I also watched a bit of a popular streamer (Tomato) play this game, and he had the exact issue, and this is exactly when he stopped playing. A lot of this game has this same tone in that it expects you to fully understand things on how to play. I was faced with similar issues in the late copper age, the guidebook says you should do XYZ with no context or emphasis on how. "Create an anvil mold and make fine tools". Okay, how? The progression guide says very little on this, so I search for smithing in the guidebook. It says lots of words on how to smith. I don't know where to start. I click on "Smelt" and see the guide for smelting. Four lines in, it says "Before you begin, also prepare a fire and one or more tool molds". I click on tool molds and see a long list of molds. I don't know which I should be doing first and which is more important for my progression considering how difficult finding copper still is. TL;DR: Figuring out progression feels like a rabbit hole. I am now four pages deep the guidebook with many questions and an overwhelming amount of things I should know and keep track of. You might think I don't like the game, but I do. It's just that figuring out what I SHOULD do is so, so bloody difficult. The new player experience is a nightmare. The amount of need-to-know information is overwhelming. The handbook is simultaneously missing vital information and feels like a massive info dump. It's only thanks to youtube tutorials that I managed to keep playing this game at this point. I really, really hope the devs can smoothen the experience. Not necessarily a tutorial, but maybe a redone guidebook that actually teaches how to play, has pictures that show how things are done, and tell you where to start and not just list things that need to be done. Some things such as difficulty options also need passing over to make it easier for beginners to know what they're up against. Maybe it goes against what the devs want, but I hope the early game can be less tedious too. Even the most complex games I've played ease the player in. This game doesn't do that, it feels like everything here expects you to understand and plan everything, because I fear that the devs are only taking feedback and building the game around the die-hard fans in their community, not realizing that most (probably) people end up bouncing off of this game without offering feedback or interacting with the community. A small community can give one-sided opinions, because in my opinion this game desperately needs better new player experience to retain a bigger playerbase and following. Whew. That was a long post. Thanks.