DarkGold

Another way roots and stumps are handled would be in a game like Valheim. Stumps have to be separately removed, but they aren't a bunch of blocks changing the terrain, just something left behind that shows a tree was once there, and take a little more time to remove (and grant a little more resource for the trouble) before you can replant a seed. I don't think the extra time would add too much to the Vintage Story experience, so keeping it streamlined might be more enjoyable for players, unless the stump could provide a unique resource, or the ability for a tree to grow back faster without replanting it from seed maybe? Something that has the stump contibute more than a time and tool durability sink to the game.

Hytale currently works like this. It does feel more realistic, but the downside is that as trees grow, their roots replace dirt. When you chop a tree down, you have to dig those roots out and replace them with dirt you've gathered from somewhere else before you can replant another tree in the same place. This can end up feeling tedious, and is more resource heavy than simply replanting a seed. For a game where you may be burning firewood more regularly for cooking, charcoal, and staying warm, and therefore farming trees more often, this could be an undesirable complication. Or it might be a good use for all the extra dirt people dig up when prospecting. Not inherently good or bad, just depends on what people like.

Potential solution was: Kill all hens that came from a previous version of the game. Other animals from previous versions can be ignored. Spawn in new hens using creative mode. /gamemode 2 Set new hens to gen 10 using /entity cmd l[] setgen 10 to set the generation of the creature you're looking at to 10. Close and reopen the game. Maybe. That's a rough approximation of what happened before things started working.

I closed the game and reopened it and the 3rd chicken started eating like normal. I would like to reiterated that I have previously closed and reopened the game (and rebooted my computer; this was persisting for weeks) many, many times before this without any of the chickens deciding to eat. You can see some flax in the corner of the screenshot. I broke the small trough, threw some flax on the ground, so they would be motivated to eat it, not whatever was in the trough, and the white chicken (which was a new gen 9 chicken that I set to gen 10 after confirming one of the new gen 10 chickens would eat) ate it in relatively short order. So now all the chickens are eating for the moment, no idea what fixed the issue. Nothing I tried before worked. Now it suddenly works. Will it continue to work? Who can say.

I cleared out the chickens, keeping only the gen 9 one that would eat, then spawned in 2 new chickens and set them to gen 10. Now we have a new gen 10 hen who will eat... ...and another chicken who won't eat regardless of what their gen is set to (tried 8, 9, 10, just in case it was a bug where only one of each gen would eat). So the issue seems to be generation independent and specific to individual chickens? All I can say, is something is deeply wrong with the hens in my game at the moment. Is anyone else seeing issues like this?

The chicken that is eating also seems to have graphical issues every now and then... My game is unmodded, by the way. Windows 11.

I tried both suggestions today (setting to 9, then setting to 11). Neither initially seemed to work, but then one of the new chickens I set to gen 9 did eat 2 portions (eventually 3). The other new chickens I set to gen 9 have not eaten anything in the same amount of time though. The old chickens that were set to gen 9 have not eaten anything either, so it seems inconsistent? I have considered removing the old chickens, so I might do that and see if that and rebooting the game help. Given the chickens from 1.21 were initially working without issue after coming over to 1.22, I figured it wasn't a version thing, but my new world was made in 1.22.1, and it may have been 1.22.3 that they stopped working. The rooster and the elk are still working fine, that wasn't my initial suspicion. Poor chickens.

Agree, if these got moved forward, this wouldn't be a problem either, but I imagine part of putting them after the first journey is to get the player to experience it on foot. And so the player has time to afford it. Big design change if brought forward, but possible.

But do you know how persistent bears can be?! If their stamina also runs out, as long as I don't round the corner on a fresh one, it should be ok though. Visions of rounding the corner, completely out of breath, seeing a fresh bear, the horror. Sure this happens too often for comfort.

Agree, overpowered at the moment. But it really raises the question; if sprinting is how the player currently chooses to engage or disengage with combat, do we want that taken away? I like being able to just decide "nope, I don't want to fight right now" and leave. I agree that it's very hard to design combat around that though. But putting a limit on sprint means getting to chapter 1 story location will be harder. Such far reaching impact! Do we need some sort of difference in movement between drawing/sheathing weapons, so the player is slow with them out, fast with them sheathed?

I like this idea in principle, but there are 2 troubles with weapon or armor strategy in the game at the moment: Inventory space: carrying multiple armor and weapons eats it up. In games where you are making these choices, you are usually tailoring it to the areas/enemies you are fighting. At the moment, the enemy variety in VS isn't so high that you aren't often fighting all possible enemies at once (besides choosing between hunting animals and fighting monsters). I don't think either of these problems are unsolvable, but they'll require looking at other systems to really make everything work together nicely. It's great that the whole next update will be tackling combat, because the implications of the changes will likely be far reaching if they want to make bigger changes like this.

A video on slow combat design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZHeexEa5ok Something I didn't consider is that I don't think we currently have a dodge or back step in Vintage Story. Something we do see in most action combat games, I think (Valheim, Zelda, most that come to mind).

What I said about servers and responsiveness makes me think about games like Final Fantasy 14. I think the kind of mechanics that they are employing to make combat interesting, but still allow the player time to react, rely on clearly telegraphed attacks with lots of time to move out of the way or letting players interrupt when an enemy is charging something up. The combat system is different, but the ideas might still work across genres. I'm sure there would be other games with more applicable systems to draw inspiration from, this was just the first that came to mind when I thought about how other games solve the problem.

How do you feel about parrying mechanics? I'm thinking about games where parrying is optional rather than necessary to kill enemies, but rewards higher skill and gives players a choice between a risky play (with a big reward if they time it right, if they time it wrong, the penalty is usually pain) or just playing it safe? Also curious how people feel about things like more damage if you stab the enemy in the back/when they have their guard down. Backstabbing the enemy is usually paired with stealth mechanics, but not always necessarily so; it just really emphasizes positioning and has additional rewards if you stun or otherwise lock down the movement of the enemy. It also requires enemy movement to be very responsive by default, or else it's easy for the player to exploit the enemy's positioning. I suppose a lot of these mechanics require the game to be very responsive to work in the first place. They might not be very viable on servers, but would work well in single player, and since Vintage Story supports server play, might not be strong additions to the game.

Sadly, the new chickens don't seem to want to eat either. Although I did notice that the new chickens have the new HP values, whereas the old chickens have the old HP values. Even though the old chicken in the screenshot says "Portions eaten: 1" that has not updated recently; they just don't eat anything out of the small trough or gain weight.

I've been investigating how I might been able to spawn new chickens (because I would really prefer not to have to breed them back to gen 10 from scratch, especially if this could happen again). I see on the wiki, this command is provided... /entity spawnat [entitytype] [amount] [position] [radius] ...but it may be easier to spawn chickens from creative mode (/gamemode 2) than try and figure the entitytype out. And then one would follow it up with this... /entity cmd l[] setgen 10 ...to set the generation of the creature I'm looking at to 10. I'm going to give this a go and see if the new chickens eat...

I had only been playing 1.21 for a while before 1.22 came out and I wanted to regenerate my seed to see what had changed. In 1.21, I completed chapter 1, had chapter 2 marked on my map, but had not yet set out for it. I didn't want to start from scratch, since replaying that part of the game so soon wasn't interesting to me, so I copied my base using the blueprints tools and pasted it into a newly generated world using the same seed. I found the map to the first and second story location carried across, and using the maps worked. I used creative mode to visit the first location, and it seemed to be in the right place (the coordinates were the same as last time, the location did in fact generate there). I presume this means I can go to the second location while skipping re-running the first location in this world? Will this break the game/miss showing me options? Maybe? I might have to use some creative tools to quickly complete the milestone bits of chapter 1 again if I don't want to repeat it the long way. Edit: What I wanted to share in bringing this up is that because the time investment players might have in their world is quite high, and the world is worth regenerating every now and then to experience new content, it is great to have tools like the ability to copy your base across. It could also be good to have the ability to play locations out of order for the scenario of players moving worlds after updates, mid journey. Maybe there is already some command that a player can run that sets their story checkpoints forward without having to repeat content?

Thanks for the advice @LadyWYT, and for verifying @MKMoose. Great to know it's possible to take an elk with you, but reading some of the stuff on the forums about potential translocator bugs, and thinking about the dimensions of the elk, has definitely made me think twice about the wisdom of the act. If I attempt it, I'll be sure to plan well ahead of time that there is enough space on either end, and be prepared to use command tools to correct anything that might go wrong in unexplainable ways.

This resonates with me. It does make me think that combat situations in the game are quite diverse, but the enemies between those situations are often the same. Situations: Surface spawns of drifters and bowtorn. Usually lower stakes 1 on 1-2 fights. Fighting bells. Pick off a bell from outside its activation range, so as not to trigger summons or run right at it and prioritise killing it as fast as you can before dealing with whatever it summons. Temporal storm hordes. Dealing with an evolving fight, probably more than 1 enemy, probably tough. Spelunking. Maybe 1 tough enemy at a time if you are lighting the path as you go and progressing slowly, or possibly finding yourself in the middle of a group of tough enemies if you are just running into a series of dark tunnels with only a lantern in your hand. Ensuring choices are interesting in all situations with all the same enemies will be an interesting challenge. I wonder if more enemy types or different behaviours depending on whether enemies are in groups/alone/higher tier will be important.

I posted this in support a while back, and haven't got any replies yet, so maybe that was the wrong place to ask. Posting here to see if anyone has an answer. So a while back (after I made a new 1.22 world, pasted my base from 1.21 across, spent some time playing 1.22) my gen 10 hens stopped eating. They were initially eating, then one day I noticed they were low weight despite still having about half a trough of food. This is inconvenient since they won't breed or lay eggs any more. My rooster and elk are still eating, it's just them (all 3 hens) not eating. I'm playing the latest version of the game. I have tried moving the trough and replacing the flax. I have tried closing/reopening the game. Neither worked, nothing in their enclosure has changed between them not eating any more. This has persisted over several play sessions. Has this happened to anyone else? Is there a way to fix this? Can I use a command to spawn in gen 10 chickens (assuming there is no fix and I need new chickens)? Your help is greatly appreciated.

How does it work for: 1) base return teleporters? 2) translocators? I haven't been able to build a base return teleporter yet, but I'm wondering if it will send my elk back with me if were to use one. If it won't, that's going to change how much I value trying to make one and the strategies I employ in the future.

The mandatory fighting in certain story locations certainly leans this way, when it comes to playing through the story. I've just looked through the other game modes to see how they tweak the experience. Exploration mode makes creatures passive, so one would be unlikely to die unless they starve or fall to their death. They may still need to change their respawn points, so demand for gears doesn't disappear. Monsters still spawn so they could go and beat them up without them fighting back to easily get gears in this mode? If that's a little too easy, Standard lets one boost player health and weaken enemy strength down to 25%, so they can certainly make combat easier if they wanted an experience where enemies still attack, but it wouldn't be so hard to survive and kill them. It seems like there are decent number of options baked into the game at the moment. In the cases where temporal gears are still in play, it seems like the game still wants you to do the same actions you would be doing by default to get them, but you could make combat easier, if not the other 2 sources. This doesn't so much make temporal gears more plentiful for players, but it does make it easier to handle combat. I guess it's fair to say that if you want something as tailored as a higher drop rate for temporal gears, when the game is providing other difficulty adjustments already, you could look for that in a mod, rather than the base game. I do think, given the wide variety of player expectations, it's fair to expect players test the standard experience, find it doesn't suit them in one way or another, and decide to modify the settings after some time in game. It looks like you don't have to start a new world to change any of the survival settings in your world, and they are all pretty clearly labelled, so that experience isn't bad.

I agree, that would be a problem if a) all outcomes were equal and b) this was the default mode of the game. I would not want this as the default setting for the version of the game I play. This is why I framed it as a setting that could be modified, like the spawn distance of locations, which the game currently supports. Instead of all outcomes being equal, you could either: Raise the drop rates of all equally, so panning is still a lower drop rate than fighting a high tier creature, but all rates are higher than base. This still incentivizes fighting over panning for convenience. Have a separate setting for each source. I believe players are likely to choose 1 strategy based on their preferred play style. Or at least favour 1 strategy as their primary means of acquisition for significant periods of the game. The problem we are trying to address by adding this setting is that some players simply do not want to engage with the existing options at all, because they don't find them fun. Panning has always been an option that is safe. Why do people still not have gears if they can do the safe thing? Because spending time to do that isn't fun. It's more fun for them to entirely skip the challenge (and use creative mode or a mod to solve the problem instead). By attempting to add an optional setting or an alternative source, we look for a solution that isn't "skip the content entirely" and instead makes it more rewarding to engage with content, or lower the barrier to entry. Eg; fighting is currently very rewarding. If players fundamentally don't want to fight, that means they won't get gears from this source. Or if they do, it feels like pulling teeth for them. If instead of trying and failing to kill the hardest enemies or having to kill 100 basic enemies, they could just kill 1 or 2 basic enemies (a high effort task for this player, comparable to a much harder task a more combat centric player could complete with the same effort), would they not feel more rewarded for their troubles? Would they be more interested in attempting to engage with this part of the game rather than simply ignoring it? This is the principle all difficulty settings in games work on, right? Make it easier or make it so you have to do less of the thing you struggle with. And in a single player game, difficulty settings are generally a positive?

I believe (based on the background the developers have in modding, and the positive experiences they have regarding mods) modding is an intended option for the game. This is also a strategic move for the game as a product being sold by a business; having a vibrant modding community is good for the product, good for sales. Mods definitely support this. Having multiple ways to solve a problem in game supports this too. Agree, "intended" does not equal "correct" or "only way". However, Vintage Story is still a game (with a story), and not a pure sandbox compared to a product like Gary's Mod (which is closer to a set of tools one uses to make games). It is still designed with the intention that players can play it without being required to add anything further to it for it to function and be fun. The developers still deliver "their vision" of the game. Their vision has been expressed to be a work in progress. One of the other benefits of having mod support is that while a game doesn't have as much content as you envision for it to have, and your development resources limit how quickly you can add content, others can provide content that can entertain the community while you focus on developing your vision of the game. When developers are building a game that does not require mods to function, they are actively setting challenges for players to solve and giving the players tools to solve them. If the game can have bugs, we acknowledge that the game has intended behaviour. We can take this further by saying if the game has a puzzle, the devs probably designed one or more ways to solve that puzzle (or maybe that part of the game isn't finished yet, if a game is in active development). If the game is not fun, we can acknowledge either A) we are not the intended audience (Elden Ring is not everyone's cup of tea, despite being a game many people enjoy and not a broken or unfinished game), or B) the design of the game could be improved to be more fun. Most developers are probably trying to produce a product where the design of the game supports a lot of fun without the player being required to modify the game. In either case, if you want to buy the product and modify it to suit your tastes, and doing that is fun for you, fabulous; money and time well spent. If you want to buy the product and play it without modifying it, that should also be a fun experience, and if it's not, you could look at refunding the game or modifying the game to make it more fun. Or you could wait and see how the game evolves since it's in active development, maybe send suggestions to the developer since they have a place for you to do that.

By intended, I just mean "supported and encouraged by the base game". By all means, you can play however you want, and that can involve modding the game to avoid certain challenges or create new ones. I can fill my a lot of my inventory with temporal gears, it just creates the logistical challenge of not being able to carry other things that I might want to. Sometimes that will be a frustration players want to grapple with. Sometimes there might be a different way to solve the problem that avoids that frustration. I like to play the game without mods (on my first play through at least) because I like to try and solve the problems the devs designed with the tools the devs provided. The game is still unfinished (most of the story is not implemented yet), so it's possible (maybe even likely) there will be other ways to solve problems in the future, and creative mode is always an option, but I am interested in playing the standard version of the game. You could say I treat the game as a series of puzzles to be solved, and I presume the puzzle designers wanted me to have fun while solving it. So if the first way I come up with to solve the puzzle isn't very fun, I look for another way to solve it that is more fun, without trying to change the bounds of the puzzle.