Early Game Overhaul

[theJalden 21]

Hey, this topic seems to be drifting. Fofi, implementing a swarm behaviour would involve much more coding than is practical. Nice thought, but not high on priorities. Soulrakyn, fertiliser has already been mentioned, and I believe Dunk has said he would consider it. The problem is that agriculture lends itself to being more practical in SMP worlds, which are always running.

My original point was trying to extend the early stone age. With the overworld being more survivable during the night, it isn't vital to build a full fledged shelter. So by increasing the time it takes to advance, and the benefits of advancing, more satisfaction can be achieved.

With the removal of wood working early game leatherworking doesn't take effect until later. Hides will still be gathered from mob drops, and there is no reason they should just remain a useless resource until you can craft a saw. I would really like to know if people like the idea of dried hides as armour.

[Srgnoodles 1,030]

Northern deer, you say?

Have you considered adding in several types of deer with different models then? I reckon moose can be here too.

my gods, i nearly died when i saw that freaking deer.

[theJalden 21]

0. At some point you have to draw a line and say, "From here on it's a game." It seems that you want to keep pushing the line further away from a game and closer to a simulation. Simulations are fine, but they rarely play like a game. Many of the suggestions you have here are going to make TFC not a fun game to play, but instead a challenging pseudo-simulation. If that's the way things go, I'm not interested. I already half feel like quitting every time I spend an hour in front of a firepit for 1 ingot. I don't give two whits that it takes at least an hour to smelt ore in real life - my time is valuable.

Your points:

1. It already takes an annoying amount of time to cut a tree. Granted, it's tons faster than in vanilla MC if the tree is big, but I don't build out of logs for fear I'll miss-click and have to rest something against my mouse button, sit back, and wait for the block to get broken. You're talking about making it take longer? Pointless and backward. Likewise with the hand trowel - the difference between a stone shovel and the speed of doing it by hand is already slight, so I don't see anyone justifying using their resources to make a tool that doesn't save them any time in the long run.

2. If you could get a branch from leaves that could be used as firewood, it becomes an alternative to using logs for that purpose. I don't think it's necessary to replace one of the utilities of logs. It's not as though logs are in short supply, and it's believable that your efforts to keep warm are going to have a bigger impact on a forest than just on its leaves. As for it being a weapon, where do you see it in relation to the knife (which is more than just a weapon)? What justifies me wanting to keep track of another tool in order to use a branch as a weapon, when a javelin gives me range and a knife has other uses? I don't care if it's realistic, if you have to keep track of more than about 5 tools the clutter overshadows the variety.

3. This is the only point you've made with which I totally agree. It makes animal pens just as useful in the same ways they are in real life, and it would be kind of exciting. Especially if pigs are really fast, hehe.

4&5. Typically before I get metal I'll make around 50 or so stone tools. I've gone through a whole stack of rocks in one play session just for axes and shovels. Are you really suggesting I'll need to kill way more animals than I could ever replace, spend hours killing grass, find a source for tar and build infrastructure in order to process it, and use up durability on more tools in order to do the same thing? See point 0.

The lashing idea itself is good, even if I strongly disagree with the use you have in mind for it. I like the idea that a subcomponent could be made out of a slew of different raw materials, if for no other reason than to consolidate my inventory and increase the utility of the materials (like zombie flesh). But requiring this much effort for stone tools is just pointlessly granular and time-consuming.

6. Why would armor have to wait? Make a clay "barrel" to do the same thing you do with a wood barrel.

7. I agree with what Xechon said about stamina. Stamina is already in the game, it simply doesn't have the label you want it to have.

Thank you. I'm quite impressed, your criticism is well thought out and brings a lot of good points. But here is the way that I view it. TerraFirmaCraft is a true survival way of playing Minecraft, which has deviated from survival and focused more on creating tools for adventure maps, not that there is anything wrong with that. But being a survival game I think it should represent being placed in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the resources around you and your own ingenuity. The game transistions from being controlled by the environment to controlling the environment, that is the great human transition.

I would actually like to see things move farther from what I have suggested in the original post. I think that you should at first only be able to pick up rocks from the ground and food from plants (also wouldn't object to having sticks be a surface block akin to small rocks) at the point of spawning, and requiring a hand tool to remove branches, cut grass, dig dirt and otherwise manipulate other overworld blocks. Knives would be required to cut grass into a lashing, making it available only after killing an animal for sinew, or a spider for string. This way you literally go from having nothing to manipulating the environment. Each minor advancement, especially in the first few days would be vital to improving number of resources and making an otherwise hard life easier. I don't know, I may just find a nice poetry in my line of thinking.

Now to go point by point:

1. Hopefully addressed in my last paragraph. Cutting down a tree is hard. I know the game isn't going for realism, but overcoming the small victories is fun and is what should be expected in a survival game.

2. You make a fair point, a tool needs a niche, otherwise it is used for a short time and just takes up space. This is why I suggested being able to use sticks, a very common item, as spears. After you stop needing spears, just use sticks for something else. The branches are trickier, they would have a use in the earliest game, but would become next to useless later on, which is why I suggested being able to craft them into sticks, perhaps two sticks to make it worth the trouble. Not exactly sure how it should be implemented. The niche of these two tools is proto-stone tool defense. You may still need food before you are able to fashion a javelin or a knife.

3. Thanks, but as Dunk said, some of this might be hard to implement :-)

4&5. Could be fixed by making stone tools more durable I guess, but it won't exactly be hard to create cordage given how abundant wild grass is, and it even respawns over time.

6. You win on this one. I didn't even consider this for all the thinking that went into this. I might have just been hoping this point for a greater historical accuracy. All I can say is clay barrels might not be made, leaving a need for early game armor.

7.Stamina has been giving me a lot of grief. I don't want players to be able to swim in an ocean indefinately if they have the mind to bring a few porkchops. I really like how Skyrim handled it, making it only really necesary to mind in combat, and sprinting. I certainly wouldn't object creating this sort of system.

Thank you once again for your feedback, this is an evolving idea. I think I'll make some edits to the original post now.

[davoval0001 19]

I would really like to know if people like the idea of dried hides as armour.

Great idea, Tanning rak to complement this maybe....Crafted out of sticks, and placed on the ground, which then hides can be strung on....Would give a great ancient, aestheticfeel

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

sinew won't be required for making tools. A clay urn for tanning hides was part of the deal from the start, and I'm pretty sure I mentioned that in the "new beta 3" post. It will have about half the liquid capacity of a barrel, making it less efficient. Tanning racks won't be coming in, it already take a long time to complete the process.

I'm not saying stamina will or should be implemented, but you could handle it with a 4th bar, which was depleted when you acted like sprinting, swimming or swinging a tool. It would regenerate over time, but the "maximum" would decrease constantly, so that it would restore itself to a smaller and smaller fraction of full until you next ate something, at which time the max would begin to slowly increase again. This would give you the advantages of the stamina bar without allowing players to just bring some food to swim forever; they'd have to stop and rest to regenerate their stamina

[theJalden 21]

sinew won't be required for making tools. A clay urn for tanning hides was part of the deal from the start, and I'm pretty sure I mentioned that in the "new beta 3" post. It will have about half the liquid capacity of a barrel, making it less efficient. Tanning racks won't be coming in, it already take a long time to complete the process.

I'm not saying stamina will or should be implemented, but you could handle it with a 4th bar, which was depleted when you acted like sprinting, swimming or swinging a tool. It would regenerate over time, but the "maximum" would decrease constantly, so that it would restore itself to a smaller and smaller fraction of full until you next ate something, at which time the max would begin to slowly increase again. This would give you the advantages of the stamina bar without allowing players to just bring some food to swim forever; they'd have to stop and rest to regenerate their stamina

Way to shoot a guy down ;-) But I totally understand. Sinew and cordage complicates things, and you are already slowing down the game through ceramics. That does not mean I wouldn't eventually like to see my suggestion implemented, even if it is a lost cause. The stamina suggestion is similar to mine, at least that makes me happy. It could be improved with skills you set out to implement, and it would balance out the colors of the HUD, if you choose to put it over the health bar.

It's at least nice to see that the devs take stuff into consideration from the community.

[Bihlbo 29]

I'm not saying stamina will or should be implemented, but you could handle it with a 4th bar, which was depleted when you acted like sprinting, swimming or swinging a tool. It would regenerate over time, but the "maximum" would decrease constantly, so that it would restore itself to a smaller and smaller fraction of full until you next ate something, at which time the max would begin to slowly increase again. This would give you the advantages of the stamina bar without allowing players to just bring some food to swim forever; they'd have to stop and rest to regenerate their stamina

I'm not sure how this would help the game. It would change the game, but I don't see a benefit from that change.

If the stamina bar is overly restrictive, I can't really make a 10km trip to the tropics in less than 3 game days because I can't sprint over all the flat ground. IRL one can run 10km between breakfast and lunch, but not in TFC? There's already more than enough in the game to slow down my progress there, but now there's stamina telling me that I just can't.

If it's not overly restrictive so that long trips don't become more about resting than about progress, then how often will it really come into play? Just in combat? How many zombies am I allowed to fight at once before my stamina forces me to die? Did I have fun with that?

How long is a period of rest in comparison to the length of the day? If you stretched out MC hours to equal real hours, the comparative land speed of a Steve makes a turtle seem fast. Can't rest periods lie within the folds of that time crunch along with relieving your bowels and cleaning your bruised knuckles?

Why penalize players for wanting to swim an ocean? I understand the realism argument - you should only be able to swim for about half a day if we want realism - but there's a boat. It's lots faster. If someone is so hard up they can't boat, they are already paying the price with their precious gaming time. Swimming is super boring and frustrating if all you want to do is get across the ocean. If stamina loss imposes penalties to swimming long distances, then you just can't and you lose your stuff if you try. And if your boat spontaneously implodes or hits a ninja squid, as they are wont to do, you get to drown. Was that fun?

[Bihlbo 29]

Northern deer, you say?

Have you considered adding in several types of deer with different models then? I reckon moose can be here too.

Early man used bone, antler, and horn for darn near every tool that didn't need to be as hard as stone. Boar tusk, cow horn, deer antler, ram's horn, and skeleton bones would be more useful than sticks to that guy. Rocks are for throwing at pigs and for scraping an antler into a deadly spear.

Just throwing that out there. Also, I wanted to see the image again.

[Xechon 58]

Since this thread is now about stamina, my personal stance is: Why? Humans may be squishy, have no natural weapons, and terrible senses to protect from predators and get their prey, but along with large socially-oriented brains and fine manipulators (opposable thumbs FTW!), we are naturally better in endurance. This is largely due to our shedding of fur and starting to use the more efficient sweat glands instead, because before bows and stone-pointed spears, our ancestors would pick up a big stick or stone and chase the animal to exhaustion, club it to death, then drag it back to his clan. All of this is to say, along with the other points made by myself and others, there is no real point to make a stamina system, and to have one would be more limiting than real life in these situations. Since so many people are intent on calling this mod a 'game'( ), it follows that things should be as hard or easier for the sake of not being frustrated out of your mind, not pointlessly harder. But hey, that's just my opinion.

[PanRouge 5]

You run into problems about stamina when you play on a group server. Suddenly, you're at your bed and you need to rest but 'Billy' is afk, leaving sleep to be not an option. Additionally, you just can't sleep during the day. So if you log in at night, wear yourself out by noon, then you're stuck with low stamina until the sun goes down. You'd have to change how beds work if you were to implement such a thing.

[theJalden 21]

I'm not sure how this would help the game. It would change the game, but I don't see a benefit from that change.

If the stamina bar is overly restrictive, I can't really make a 10km trip to the tropics in less than 3 game days because I can't sprint over all the flat ground. IRL one can run 10km between breakfast and lunch, but not in TFC? There's already more than enough in the game to slow down my progress there, but now there's stamina telling me that I just can't.

If it's not overly restrictive so that long trips don't become more about resting than about progress, then how often will it really come into play? Just in combat? How many zombies am I allowed to fight at once before my stamina forces me to die? Did I have fun with that?

How long is a period of rest in comparison to the length of the day? If you stretched out MC hours to equal real hours, the comparative land speed of a Steve makes a turtle seem fast. Can't rest periods lie within the folds of that time crunch along with relieving your bowels and cleaning your bruised knuckles?

Why penalize players for wanting to swim an ocean? I understand the realism argument - you should only be able to swim for about half a day if we want realism - but there's a boat. It's lots faster. If someone is so hard up they can't boat, they are already paying the price with their precious gaming time. Swimming is super boring and frustrating if all you want to do is get across the ocean. If stamina loss imposes penalties to swimming long distances, then you just can't and you lose your stuff if you try. And if your boat spontaneously implodes or hits a ninja squid, as they are wont to do, you get to drown. Was that fun?

Perhaps penalties to fast travel in this system will be removed by the new horses, if they are introduced in the game next release. I seem to remember Dunk saying he was working with the creator of Mo' Creatures to create a "new" style horse. I imagine the period of rest to be quite short, say 10-20 seconds to recharge completely, believe me, I, like you, do not want to stand around for 5 minutes waiting for stamina to recharge. As for the swimming, exploration always seemed like the result of technological achievement, which is why there was no real effort in Europe until the 15th century.

Since this thread is now about stamina, my personal stance is: Why? Humans may be squishy, have no natural weapons, and terrible senses to protect from predators and get their prey, but along with large socially-oriented brains and fine manipulators (opposable thumbs FTW!), we are naturally better in endurance. This is largely due to our shedding of fur and starting to use the more efficient sweat glands instead, because before bows and stone-pointed spears, our ancestors would pick up a big stick or stone and chase the animal to exhaustion, club it to death, then drag it back to his clan. All of this is to say, along with the other points made by myself and others, there is no real point to make a stamina system, and to have one would be more limiting than real life in these situations. Since so many people are intent on calling this mod a 'game'( ), it follows that things should be as hard or easier for the sake of not being frustrated out of your mind, not pointlessly harder. But hey, that's just my opinion.

I know your point. This mod is not a "survival simulation 2013" but at the same time it does skew towards believability. Yes people have a long endurance, but the problem arises in short bursts of high energy. We cannot keep up a sprint for more than a few minutes, at best and this is what I thought double tapping "w" meant. I'm looking at the big picture as well. With stamina combat becomes more than just spam clicking a sword, because that could very easily be penalized by spam clicking. It also would promote a faster shot from arrows if they can't be held fully drawn indefinitely. For fighting those zombies in a cave it may help to have some decent armor, but I was hoping this mechanic would be more fun in PvP. If it helps you can think of it as a creative constraint.

You run into problems about stamina when you play on a group server. Suddenly, you're at your bed and you need to rest but 'Billy' is afk, leaving sleep to be not an option. Additionally, you just can't sleep during the day. So if you log in at night, wear yourself out by noon, then you're stuck with low stamina until the sun goes down. You'd have to change how beds work if you were to implement such a thing.

I'm not sure if you missed it, but I thought I crossed out relating stamina to sleep, and Dunk said nothing about that. It would work by having a constantly decreasing maximum, and increase again once you eat again, I hope this clears that up.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Perhaps penalties to fast travel in this system will be removed by the new horses, if they are introduced in the game next release. I seem to remember Dunk saying he was working with the creator of Mo' Creatures to create a "new" style horse. I imagine the period of rest to be quite short, say 10-20 seconds to recharge completely, believe me, I, like you, do not want to stand around for 5 minutes waiting for stamina to recharge. As for the swimming, exploration always seemed like the result of technological achievement, which is why there was no real effort in Europe until the 15th century.

I know your point. This mod is not a "survival simulation 2013" but at the same time it does skew towards believability. Yes people have a long endurance, but the problem arises in short bursts of high energy. We cannot keep up a sprint for more than a few minutes, at best and this is what I thought double tapping "w" meant. I'm looking at the big picture as well. With stamina combat becomes more than just spam clicking a sword, because that could very easily be penalized by spam clicking. It also would promote a faster shot from arrows if they can't be held fully drawn indefinitely. For fighting those zombies in a cave it may help to have some decent armor, but I was hoping this mechanic would be more fun in PvP. If it helps you can think of it as a creative constraint.

I'm not sure if you missed it, but I thought I crossed out relating stamina to sleep, and Dunk said nothing about that. It would work by having a constantly decreasing maximum, and increase again once you eat again, I hope this clears that up.

not Mo' Creatures. I don't respect mo' creatures. Simply horses.