PC What mods you think should be in vanilla?

[Riamus]

I would be quite annoyed not to be able to nerdpole.  Not that I nerdpole to loot (I'll maybe snag the loot out of the vet POI if I happen to be running by it) but I do it so much while building stuff that it would a real bother.

Yeah, it saves a lot of time when building tall buildings.  I also sometimes use it if I happen to fall off the side of a tall building rather than run all the way back up.  I wouldn't consider either cheesing the game because they are both just time savers and do not change difficulty or resources or anything.  I don't use it for looting the loot room without running the POI (I like running the POI), but if others want to, it doesn't hurt my game and I don't see why I should impose how I play on anyone else.

 

[theFlu]

makes building and planning much more difficult as you cannot just place down blocks fast to block off areas/zeds and specifically: it kills nerdpoling.

I don't mind nerdpoling, kinda the opposite. The unique point of this survival game is the voxel world; and I think it's being terribly underutilized. There's horde night, so you'll build a base, but the quests and general combat have little to do with it. I'd rather POIs be designed as puzzles to be solved via building than trying to prevent building.

Now, swapping to a "slower" build system wouldn't break that idea; you could of course still build POIs to be solved via building, it'd just need to be more premeditated with a slow build. But as long as the voxel world isn't being actually utilized, I'd rather keep the small bits we do have; nerdpoling, hatches and such.

 

[doughphunghus]

The unique point of this survival game is the voxel world; and I think it's being terribly underutilized.

I totally agree! Any thoughts on how to utilize it better? Personally i have had these:

- the underground is a massive waste of space most of the time. So "bring caves back" (or allow some cave generation option) as well as allow underground water or mini POis in these caves (like a camping area, etc). I liked caves, but without some nice decor/moss/surprises its a lot less fun. 

- the "block stability" being calculated for weight and "horizontal stability" is a really cool mechanic, but its rarely seen in action during a game (usually its just your base falling). I think this is because the default stability attached to blocks is way too high. I made a mod to drop these numbers significantly and (i feel) it  makes the voxel nature pop a little. 1. Because you have to be much more careful building and supporting your base 2. All POis were not designed for the lower numbers, which can lead to "easy collapsing" of parts of a poi when any changes are made to it (or looting a container) usually in ways that "look right" like old wood bridges collapsing, or a roof of a building falling down with you on it. My favorite is breaking a pane of glass causing lots of connected glass to break/fall. But sometimes its weird (loot a container and a metal block above it falls)

- similar to above, but with "underground things" like sand collapsing easier. Make digging underground be more if a challenge requiring some thoughtful supporting structures. The stability calcs are built into the game, lets use them and make underground be more dangerous to go into.
 

- more of big pois having deeper underground levels, and the "city/road parts" pois are put into having many tunnels that may or may not connect to them.

- i have heard some requests for "to be able to offset or have mini voxels" or whatever they are called so we are less limited in how blocks are placed, but i read on these forums this was a "no", but not sure who it was from.

- ability to use mods to attach random played Sounds to blocks. So we can make clocks creepily tick, stairs creak, metal groan, broken windows whistle, etc. spooky stuff. The game is very quiet when indoors and i feel it could use more ambient sounds, and if sounds were attached to blocks we could destroy and remove them if we wanted. For outside we could put bird sounds in trees, crickets in grass, etc. having the ability to trigger on fay/night and the weather would prob be needed. tFP has attached some "always playing" passive sounds to blocks (running fridges, big signs, a few lights) and it feels/sounds really nice, but its too few and far in between. We have millions? of voxels in a game, lets be allowed to easily liven things up!

 

[doughphunghus]

Also: for all the nerdpole lovers/haters  and my comment to remove it via slow build, i would like to elaborate:

i guess to me its just a bit too much "not reality" and allows an immersion break thats too far for me. But ultimately (as you can just build ladders and this is "reasonable" in a way) its more of the quickness and speed at which one is allowed to nerdpole. If it were slowed down enough so that you couldn't pole up in 2 seconds with a few blocks in your toolbelt and escape zeds/bears/etc without any planning i would be more ok with it. And i also feel when playing multiplayer it would make the world a little "nicer looking" if all the pois that had been nerdpole looted had ladders or some decently crafted effort to get there from the outside vs "yet another stack of 40 straight up frames that looks weird".

I guess its a minor annoyance to me and for a survival game it just feels like a huge hole (to nerdpole fast like today) to take away a lot of the danger of surviving. I do like there is at least ways/mods to turn off nerdpole ability (works in multiplayer as well) and its not baked into the game but "slower building" would probably be a middleground unless you really like to be able to just hit all the lootrooms directly and escape almost any situation by just "up and on a roof". I know everyone has different playstyles (and time to play) but "fast cheap nerdpoling is the default" seems like it should not be the default settings for this game (or any survival game with puzzle buildings or attacking enemies). I guess its also Its kinda like having a "super high jump" and you can just jump over and on top of everything, day one. No need to fight anything (mostly.... the loot rooms are usually/always defended)

 

[theFlu]

Personally i have had these:

I don't hate any of that, but they don't really touch what I meant. Well implemented block sounds would be nice

Say, quests where building something is part of the "proper path". Starting with an introductory Tier one quest with a broken ladder you need to fix to get to a loot cache, and some kind of an instruction for it; then increasing in difficulty from there. With or without an actual optimal solution, preferably without actual "place a ladder here" -placeholders. Just POI/puzzle design, with placement and removal of blocks in mind. Currently the trend seems away from this, while you're given some POIs with several routes around the place, the "proper paths" seem more and more hardened; and world permanence is being eroded for "surprise" attacks.

Another easyish option would be quests to fortify a position.. an NPC wants you to build him a fort / fortify his house. He's satisfied once an invisible pathing check shows a "strong enough" path to him from the outside, and afterwards you may or may not have to help him defend the position. This obviously requires friendly NPCs in the world, so it's a bit of a pipe dream at least for now. But it seems like a type of quest they would've tested by now (with traders or just random empty POIs), and on that front there seems to be an underutilization going on ...

 

[doughphunghus]

I don't hate any of that, but they don't really touch what I meant. Well implemented block sounds would be nice

Say, quests where building something is part of the "proper path". Starting with an introductory Tier one quest with a broken ladder you need to fix to get to a loot cache, and some kind of an instruction for it; then increasing in difficulty from there. With or without an actual optimal solution, preferably without actual "place a ladder here" -placeholders. Just POI/puzzle design, with placement and removal of blocks in mind. Currently the trend seems away from this, while you're given some POIs with several routes around the place, the "proper paths" seem more and more hardened; and world permanence is being eroded for "surprise" attacks.

Another easyish option would be quests to fortify a position.. an NPC wants you to build him a fort / fortify his house. He's satisfied once an invisible pathing check shows a "strong enough" path to him from the outside, and afterwards you may or may not have to help him defend the position. This obviously requires friendly NPCs in the world, so it's a bit of a pipe dream at least for now. But it seems like a type of quest they would've tested by now (with traders or just random empty POIs), and on that front there seems to be an underutilization going on ...

ahhh, i see. Yes these would be cool as well and i would categorize them as "open building challenges" or something. Hmmm... just thinking aloud...

The first one could almost be there today but yeah they dont seem to ever make you place blocks to get around a poi. Even like for a small gap/break in stairs/ledges. I would think the "easiest" and cheapest way to be "sneaky" would be using the rope and maybe a block that could be placed above (like in a hole in the ceiling) to indicate "rope can attach to this block and you can climb up here". But its rather simple and doesn't even exist (craftable rope in vanilla). The "trap blocks" could almost do it too: see loot and walk to ward it, fall down, have to build to access it.  Other than "TFP doesn't want to do it" (and this seems to be the case, judging by all existing pois) the only "gotcha" i know of is if you are trapped and "have to build to escape" that is painful if you don't have blocks or tools to harvest and craft them on you. TFP could probably easily make 2 (smaller)loot rooms and 1 is "on the path" and the other is "have to build to discover/access"

- for the second one: yeah that would be fun, but nothing in game comes even close except maybe "the digging quests kinda counts block removing in an area showing a circle" so why couldn't it count "block adding" and (simple concept) to count to say 100 blocks in an area around a point/npc/trader and then spawn attack waves? Basically: fortify around x and defend. You get to place x blocks. Hacking it would be to place a lot of blocks outside the determined area (and that would be a lot, given area size) so... spawn zeds inside the area at the edge. Something like that.  I could see the traders having a tiny hut at game start (or living in a trailer) and your defense quests keep asking you to build it up, with larger and larger area for more and more waves. You fail, trader is now zed food, you lose your trader! You could base at the trader too, because that that point why not?

 

[theFlu]

yeah that would be fun, but nothing in game comes even close except maybe

Aye, but I don't think it would be THAT big of a task to implement; the minimum necessary bits being 1) suitable POIs (yeah, needs design) 2) the regular zed pathfinding applied to an invisible (or even visible) "horde starting point" => if less than 1 cobble / concrete / whatnot HP limit in the pathfinding path, quest isn't complete and the NPC complains about it. Plenty of fun to achieve with "just" the POI design for such quests.

I could see the traders having a tiny hut at game start (or living in a trailer) and your defense quests keep asking you to build it up, with larger and larger area for more and more waves. You fail, trader is now zed food, you lose your trader! You could base at the trader too, because that that point why not?

Now you're just making me dream of good times in an infinitely modifiable voxel game...!