DarkGold

I'm not a member of the Discord, or on the Reddit, but I was curious about this on the 3rd, so I looked up some numbers. The views on the forum (that aren't on hot topics like this one, that will definitely have more views than unique users) tend to peak around new releases, at under 30k. This might not account for unique users, so something like the vote that was done on the Vintage Story Cover Art Rebrand is something else to consider; that had 2,301 votes before the poll was closed. For Reddit, r/VintageStory had 125k visitors and 8k contributions per week. The Discord had over 37k online members and over 152k members (at the time of day that I checked). (These numbers were from the 3rd of September) This led me to believe that things were probably a lot busier over there at the time (and probably are on a day to day basis). Discord tends to have an incredible pace of information in general. Edit: Another piece of data; at time of edit... This topic has 912 replies, started on the 2nd. The official post on Reddit has 2.1k+ comments, 7 days old (so posted later).

I see an embed with a "Read More" drop down in it, so I don't have to go to reddit to read the post? I don't have a reddit account or any browser changes that should change the default experience for me, and this works in Firefox and Chrome on desktop. Do you see that or something different? Or do you just mean that you didn't previously organically discover this on reddit (me either)? @Zaldaryon I presume it isn't possible to pin information at the top of this topic is it? Would that require @AtomicWinter (as the topic owner) to edit their original message? @icesharkk's message has most of the info people who are trying to figure out what is going on might be interested in, but it's 6 pages into the topic, and the topic is +35 pages long now, so it's harder to find: It would be helpful for people that hear about the news later if that was one of the first things they could read on this topic, unless Anego adds an even better source of information on the forums. I imagine that it will still take a few weeks for people to get caught up (I know I've taken breaks from the forum for weeks), and this topic will probably stay active as long as people are discovering the topic and posting to ask what's going on.

I think the best summary at a glance is on page 6: The embed from reddit includes the updated info that came later. Certainly the thread is very long now, and it's hard to catch up from scratch.

I've not seen the post either, but they could be referring to the fact that some of the lore (that indicates the timeline of the apocalyptic stuff that happened to the world) implies technological progress should stop around the end of the 14th century. Trains are obviously a much newer technology, although steam power itself is ancient. Between Jonas tech and other changes to the world, it's possible someone could invent a steam train (or something powered by Jonas tech) out of time.

From October last year: https://youtu.be/5uvFrR9ZtV4?t=2001 at 33:21, Tyron says... That sounds like they might be open to the idea of steam powered engines in the future?

I'd like to provide another perspective, since I've been thinking about this post since I saw it: When a topic like this is so hot, and some mud is being flung, I have an inherent desire not to walk into the middle of it and potentially get caught in the crossfire. I'm also just not likely to comment in the first place because I'm not likely to add anything new to the conversation. I'm sure lots of people probably feel the same, regardless of their feelings on the issue at hand. I (and probably many others) come at this from a perspective of "what does my posting add?" and think about "what is within my control?" in a situation like this. The studio's actions are unlikely to change based on anything I add to the conversation, so what is within my control is continuing to play, or getting a refund and not continuing to play. Given these are the options within my control, I appreciate that Anego's response has focused on providing facts, and has offered players a refund. I don't see offering refunds as a request to leave, but supporting players given their options. Like hellmother said, I'm thinking "is it productive or elucidating?" I've appreciated the posting of people like @Diff who have provided more information so that people can come to an informed decision. I understand that either for ideological reasons or because of their risk assessment, some people will not want to continue playing. Some people (especially the ones who remain on the forum) are likely to still want to continue playing, because they have a different view or risk assessment. I believe there is enough information available to decide one way or the other now. I personally would be poorly equipped to handle the situation Anego finds themselves in right now, and I think it's great their team is going to skill up to deal with the community challenges they will inevitably continue to face in the future as they grow.

Would love to see any posts if you do! The only other figurehead I saw shared when I took a brief look was from a player who discovered they could use a gnome they had chiselled as a figurehead

I think I'd probably really like rivers for interior navigation too. I really like to sail around on my sailboat. I've only played on one world (I'm the kind of player to invest a lot of time into 1 world), and I happened to spawn in the middle of a big ocean (roughly 5.5k x 7k blocks), so I've not actually done a large amount of travel that isn't walking distance from the coast. Having such a large coast to explore, only story locations have taken me very far inland, because I've found everything else less than a day's walk from the coast. I've really enjoyed the convenience of that, so more routes inland by boat would be lovely.

I'm pretty happy with the base game; there's not too many things I find myself wanting to modify as I play (and I'm doing a vanilla run at the moment). Some things I've previously posted that I'd be eager to see added to the game that sit at the top of my list: The ability to invest in Trader infrastructure, so the player could earn the ability to view Trader information remotely (I like to trade a lot, this makes the trade experience better). A tool like a spyglass that lets me zoom in on distant things, and tells me what animal or butterfly I am looking at from a distance. If this was a game that magically appeared in my lap without context, I'd eventually discover that the story did not continue after chapter 2, and I'd want to add more chapters to the story. I like to pursue the story type goals set out in the game (gradually uncover answers to the mysteries of the world, conquer challenges set out by the game, rather than purely setting my own build challenges), so more of that would be good. I'd like some more overland travel inventory; I really like the additional inventory on the sailboat. I see people sometimes use cart mods, but I like being able to travel off the beaten path, so I'd personally probably like a beast of burden that could be tied to a mount or other beasts of burden, to form a caravan train. Some birds beyond chickens. Ducks, cranes, gulls, ravens, puffins, more. Given there are 13 types of deer in the game, 10+ different types of bird would fit in easily enough. Different sights and calls depending on the locale. There's some stuff I've previously mentioned wanting to change (rather than complete new additions to the game): Changes to the way Jonas Parts work (to make it easier to pursue building specific machines). Changes to the way Base Return Teleporters work (so that they are useful in a few additional scenarios). Changes to the Rift Ward to create spaces of temporal stability/spaces safe from temporal storms (still powered by gears). Adjacent carpets dynamically connect. Because I just play single player, so I'm not worried about PvP in my personal experience of the game, I'd make bow hunting more skill based and more lethal for larger non-aggressive game. I would like it if the best bow with the best arrow killed a deer in 1 hit if I hit the right spot (say the head, or the heart). What I have seen of some of the expanded chiselling mods in YouTube videos looks really good; I'd probably want some of those abilities in the game (being able to grow or shrink a whole plane, mirror chiselling, copying blocks). They'd really help with larger builds. Generally, I really like the direction the game is actually moving in. It's always exciting to see what the developers are adding to the game over time.

I've since updated the figurehead a little... I swapped the pine plank on the base for debarked pine log (for a more seamless join) and embossed the circles on the side. I also made a copy of the bird (so I had a reference if I wanted to create another bird in the future, without removing the figurehead), so now the Little Dove can fly home to its mate.

I'd been interested in adding a custom figurehead to my sailboat since I learnt that was an option. I finally made one today! I used: pine log for the wing and tail details plaster for the bird's body and the central circle details birch planks for the beak and outer circle details pine planks for the eyes and the base that connects to the sailboat Really pleased with how it turned out.

I've accidentally misclicked more than once before, so I'd appreciate this functionality.

Nice idea! This would support using carpets as something like fancy placemats on a table, or other situations where you might not want them to automatically connect. I'm all for providing players with more ways to express themselves like that. A sewing kit seems like a sensible tool for the job, and given traders sell them (and the only way to get carpet is from traders, so not a homo sapiens game mode issue to rely on them), I don't see a problem with putting this on an item the player might not be able to craft depending on their class.

I put down a couple of carpets next to each other and noticed they don't connect. It would be nice if their textures dynamically connected to adjacent carpets, so you could make larger connected rugs. A rough example of what I am thinking of: Is there a mod that already does this?

Agree, this makes it very hard to design combat. As you say; a fast bear catches and kills players who can't fight, a slow bear is ignored or killed by players who can fight, a bear that moves at the same speed as the player is hard to shake if there are no obstacles to lose it on. I do like the idea of having to dodge an initial charge and then run away as the bear overshoots. That seems learnable and fun. Hopefully the combat update the team is working on at the moment is going to include improvements to bears too.

I think this is a very fair point to raise. The primary way I deal with bears in my game is by wearing leather armor, so when I am caught by surprise by them, I am not killed before I can run away. I have only played 1 world so far (but spent a lot of time in that world), and in that world I found chalk maybe 2,000 blocks away from spawn. So I can't speak from experience of multiple worlds on this, but the scenario you mention seems likely to me based on RNG. Not having leather armor (which is my counter to sneaking bears) would make bears much more of a threat. What @marmarmar34 and @Ravensblade say is true, this is the way I most come into conflict with bears; being got from behind because they have snuck up on me. With leather armor, this doesn't bother me. Without leather armor, this is pretty lethal. I do think an audible warning when a bear targets you, but before it starts chasing, could possibly solve this problem. I would also suggest the shears as a solution to the "I am in dense undergrowth, ah, I can't get away from the bear" problem. Obviously not an option before copper, which does make the early game far riskier, but some strategy available to the player not too late into the game that doesn't involve avoiding forests or completely clearing the landscape/using a mod. I don't personally use that strategy (I tend to retrace my steps instead if I am in dense underbrush, or always have an exit route planned, and the leather armor creates a lot of room for error), but I heard someone mention this is how they navigate forests on elk the other day and filed it away in my mental drawer of good ideas. Credit to KyoShinda, I think.

Agree, it's odd that there is no interaction between monsters and animals. I heard someone mention in another thread it could be because of the consequence of corpses being left lying around if they were regularly killing each other. I think monsters attacking livestock during temporal storms would be untenable with current temporal storm spawning mechanics. The whole player-owned spaces problem again. I think it would be more compelling if animals and monsters did interact, but even seeing "monsters and animals ignore each other" is interesting in some ways. Because the player is not a human, maybe the animals just hate seraphs for some reason? Maybe seraphs have incredibly bad vibes? The lack of an answer doesn't really bother me, because I don't assume the world should be simulating reality. I see the world not obeying the same laws as reality in various ways as reasons that all sorts of things we take for granted in reality should not be taken for granted in this world. My thought process is more like "huh, things are different here. I wonder why? What an interesting mystery. I wonder if the game will ever explain that?" rather than "this is not like real life, the devs have done a poor job representing real life." Because the world is clearly operating under different rules, I experience little ludonarrative dissonance. I agree; I think telegraphing the location of bears better, so players have a better chance of avoiding them could be helpful, but I think it would be odd if bears made a lot of noise while sleeping, and they spend a lot of time sleeping. Ultimately, I think the speed players want to move through the world vs a bear emitting sounds at a reasonable frequency will still lead to players stumbling into bears (though the odds could be reduced). I find bears relatively fair at the moment because you can outrun them. When you say they could be significantly faster than they are now if they just gave up the chase sooner, I think that would force combat, because if they were faster they would catch fleeing players? They can do so much damage if they hit you, that as a new player, running is really your best choice until you are better equipped and more experienced with combat? Do you suppose they should be faster in a straight line, so players must zigzag as a strategy? If so, I think that would still allow skilled players to succeed in combat, while not really changing the current strategy of avoiding bears (run away). Could you explain a little more how player behaviour changes based on the new bear behaviour you suggest?

I think keeping bears realistic is not the goal of the game. The Artisan traders sometimes sell tapestries. One of the tapestries, "Ambush", mentions the behaviour of animals being unusual. This leads me to believe that the goal of the game is to have bears be a real threat and challenge to players on the surface, while backing that up with lore to hint that the behaviour is intentional. Agree, we hear many players say they would like bears to be less sneaky or control animal vs monster hostility separately. I personally like the challenge, but know not everyone does. Something that gets brought up during these discussions, that I will reiterate here for reference, is that VS is supporting more than 1 game mode. In the Homo Sapiens mode, temporal threats are turned off, as is lore. So there, there would be no explanation for the behaviour of bears. At the same time, since monsters aren't spawning, there would be no dangerous creatures to kill you if bears and wolves weren't unusually out to kill you. This would lessen the "unforgiving survival" challenge of the mode. Balancing all these concerns must lead to some compromise on realism vs challenging gameplay.

Correct. To be clear, because the standard game mode with default settings has aggressive creatures wandering around on the surface, and predators will currently spawn in your base and kill your livestock without adequate precautions taken, the default standard game mode already encourages the player to build both lights (to stop spawning) and fences (to stop undesirable things wandering into your base). So LadyWYT isn't suggesting big changes to default gameplay by pitching palisades instead of fences. They just look a little more in line with a defensive perimeter; a strategy the game encourages with default settings something we see at trader locations something we might see in other places in the game, like tapestries Instead of building fences (which don't necessarily look like they were made for defense) to keep things out, build palisades (or stakes or spikes, I add) to keep things out (because they look like they are made to keep things out). Of course, not everyone wants to play the standard game mode with default settings. We're just discussing how the game could look when players don't want to set the animals and monsters to passive (so there is an element of danger to ignoring them), and what options the player has and could have to deal with threats.

The idea is to replace the functionality that fences currently offer (protection from shivers entering your base) with stakes and palisades. So the need for something to stop a shiver entering your base already exists, we are just changing which item you would build to address the issue. This doesn't make the game into a different type of game, as the need for and availability of an item to stop shivers is already present in the game. A tower defense game also usually requires you to kill the enemy to stop them destroying your base, and defenses are designed to either soak damage while you deal with the threat, or actively damage the enemy. The suggestion does not propose either; it just proposes a different aesthetic for the walls the game already requires, that matches the aesthetic we see in structures that already exist in the world. My suggestion to ensure the inclusion of stakes as an alternative option to palisades increases the aesthetic choices available to players; instead of only being able to build palisades to block shivers, the player would be able to build stakes and spikes (which functionally behave the same as stakes) to block shivers instead if they wanted to. LadyWYT proposes that palisades would offer both cover and the ability to stop climbers (like fences in the game currently do). Stakes and spikes would not offer as much cover, but could be paired with other blocks that do (walls/fences). If you just built fences or walls to provide cover, shivers would be able to climb them (like they can climb walls now), but if you put stakes or spikes at the base or on top, that would block their path.

Agree, there's definitely things I could do to make my life easier. This is a bit of temporary measure while I only have 1 iron trapdoor (I have so many other things to spend iron plates on at the moment), but it did make me think that it would be nice to be able to look through the door.

I see you've thought about this before! And I'm not the first to want a system where we can get information from traders remotely.

Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Tyron from October last year and I heard him discuss some thoughts on improvements to the trading system. https://youtu.be/5uvFrR9ZtV4?t=2677 44:37, Tyron said: This was exciting to me, since this aligned with one of the pieces of feedback I had when I first started playing the game. https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/20317-v121-a-new-players-thoughts/?&_rid=941726#findComment-106624 I said: And in a reply... So I wanted to make the improvements to the trading system I was eager to see a little more visible, rather than another thought among many in a thread about my impressions as a new player in version 1.21. I know 1.23 is supposed to be focused on combat, and beyond that, work is focusing on chapter 3, so I'm not sure when the trading system is next likely to be a priority, but here are my thoughts for when that day eventually arrives... I'm a player who is already relatively invested in the trading part of the game and I use a spreadsheet to manage information about the traders in my game. It looks like this (but much longer): Explanation for various things in the image: I've got trader types color coded by the color of the map icons I'm using for that trader type. Names in pink are traders who are living with other traders (I found a group of 3 traders living together, marked their group in pink). Because I have several of the same types of traders on the map, I also record trader coordinates, so I can remember which trader is which and easily find them on the map. I have a second spreadsheet that has the trader info from the wiki and populates the drop down lists on this spreadsheet, and uses the drop down selection to retrieve the price range (PR) an item can sell at, so I can see at a glance where the current price sits compared to its range. I keep a bunch of the items I am interested in buying or selling listed, then when I visit a trader, I fill in the price ($) and number (#) of any of those items that trader is currently buying or selling. I also track how much money the trader currently has in their wallet (Wallet) and when their next delivery of stock (Delivery) is. I might clear the info out when the Delivery expires, or keep the Delivery and Wallet there for reference, if I am going to need to wait for the trader to save up more money before I try and sell to them again. Item color coding just makes it easier to pick circular trades or specific items (like temporal gears, things I can't make because of my class) out of a list. I'm not looking to completely replace my spreadsheet; it works for me. What I am looking to do is remotely check the info that I am filling in manually, so what is currently being bought and sold, Wallet, $, #, Delivery. I want to skip traveling to the trader to get this info IF I have invested in a way to get this info remotely. I want to earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work, then am happy to still travel to make all the trades I want to make before Delivery changes. I see the travel problem as something that can be solved separately (because there are things like base return teleporters in the game and I see travel infrastructure as a separate system I could invest in that could compliment this system). I see 2 ways I could earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work of traveling around and visiting traders in person: Do quests for traders to help them improve their bases. Then they will grant me this ability now that they have the working infrastructure and as thanks. Their factions could come into this (you could advance a factional relationship) or it could be a process for each individual base/trader. I could see this being something you could achieve without being further along than iron progression. If traders fundamentally lack the technology to communicate at distance, then we could use Jonas technology to craft items that would allow this, and gift those items to specific traders to gain this ability. We would have a piece of Jonas tech that we can use to contact any of the gifted items (and therefore the trader at the other end). There could even be some kind of combination of the 2; we could get a blueprint for the tech by sufficiently raising our standing with a trader/faction. This is my biggest desire for the trading system. All other desires are secondary to the earned ability to remotely check trader info, because I find the system relatively engaging and useful already, the information gathering is just a little tedious. One other thought I have had that relates to communicating at a distance, but I don't think is necessarily going to work for the trading system, is homing pigeons (or other birds that could be used to deliver information, like ravens). I don't think they serve the kind of instantaneous communication the player would be looking for, but they are something that relate to the communication problem that I thought was interesting. Maybe birds aren't even able to navigate in this world full of rifts?

I have built a little place to fire my charcoal next to my coke ovens. Something I like about my current set up is that I have a glass slab that lets me easily see when charcoal production is finished. I do have to break it every time I finish firing my charcoal to get in, but it's not terribly inconvenient. I was thinking it would be nice if there was a version of an iron door or trapdoor that could have a glass window in it, so that I would be able to look through the door, rather than a separate glass block. Apparently quartz glass can have a continuous use temperature limit of 900°C to 1,100°C, whereas charcoal kilns typically operate at 400°C to 600°C. So it seems plausible that an iron door could support both a glass window and function in a high temperature environment. We do have windowed iron doors, but they do not seal rooms (they use iron rods, not glass), so it's not possible to use them for charcoal making. Would a third iron door recipe that uses a glass slab be possible? Or a version of the iron trapdoor that uses a glass slab?

I generally like this solution, as long as stakes also stop monsters climbing, so players have a few options. They can choose between stakes + fences/walls or palisades. The addition of some metal spikes (that behave like stakes, stop climbing) that can sit on top of fences/walls later in the game would be nice too, so you could do something like build a glass wall around your base (with all that quartz you have lying around) and just top it with spikes.