Why DONT you want jars

Adam the Waster

Adam the Waster

Hunter
So I wanna see people's thoughs on not having jars and why. Personally i want them for immersion and if implement correctly could add another scarce item. Like imagine you only have 1 jar but 3 slots in the dew collector to collect you water. That would slow things down and make you want to explore.

But your thoughs on why there shouldn't be jars
 
Disclaimer, I do want them back.

The only upside for me from having them removed is the inventory clutter aspect of it; no need to make decisions on the go between jars of murky and jars of air. No dropping jars when drinking with a full inventory. Now I just keep half a stack of murkies on me at all times; less decisions at the cost of an inventory slot.
 
Adam the Waster said:
So I wanna see people's thoughs on not having jars and why. Personally i want them for immersion and if implement correctly could add another scarce item. Like imagine you only have 1 jar but 3 slots in the dew collector to collect you water. That would slow things down and make you want to explore.

But your thoughs on why there shouldn't be jars
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I think the benefit of jars is small compared to other things like bandits, random encounters integration, temperature, parts quality and schematics, and making questing less repetitive to name but a few.

So it's not that I don't see the appeal of a properly working jars system, but I don't think it changes much outside of making water sources viable.

So the issue is time spent developing the changes versus other, more impactfull gaming elements that people are woefully ignoring because of jars.
 
Vaeliorin said:
The better solution would have been to add plates, bowls, jerry cans, etc.
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Some of those things used to exist. It's simply not needed, and in some instances makes as much sense as not having these extra items.

For instance, the bowls don't have lids. How are you supposed to carry a stack of 10 bowls of stew around? You obviously have a container that holds 10 servings of stew. It's not important what it is.
 
If it's decided to ultimately return single-serving water containers (with the accepted notion that one "water" right now is one serving-sized "unit" of water and not one "jar", same as gas is in "units of" and not "cans of"), I don't want it to be a jar. You aren't boiling the water inside the container, you're dumping it into a cooking pot to boil then returning it to the container; practically speaking, there's no good reason for it to be glass. I've seen it suggested that the jars could have a breaking risk if they're in your inventory when you get hit, but that would be annoying.

For acquiring them- looting jars, fine, sure, you'd find jars; but why empty? Who keeps empty spaghetti jars in their cabinets? (Edit: Only being able to loot empty jars out of trash receptacles might be a consideration.)
For crafting them- making a glass jar that can accept the depicted metal lid? Every survivor in the apocalypse has mass production credentials in making glass because they read Stained Windows Weekly that specifically instructed them how to replicate Ball®'s standardized cap threading?

I don't care if you want to call it a Realism™ or Immersion™ sticking point, but using glass jars is silly to me. Bringing back empty metal cans and update the physical model to have a piece of string holding leather over the top when it's got water? Fine, I'll begrudgingly accept it. Hefty plastic jug with a cork stuck in the top? I might like that. But specifically glass jars feels ridiculous. I'd personally rather they not do single-serving empty water containers, instead expanding/tweaking the current water system to accommodate active collection alongside the passive generation the dew collectors bring. Maybe a station that functions like the forge with a 'contained' water resource that can 'smelt' murky water and snowballs, maybe a simple purifier to process murky in bulk from buckets; whatever is done, or if something is done - I just don't want it to use glass. I don't miss jars, but I enjoy systems being expanded on.
At this point maybe I should just make a Pimp Dreams with my envisioned water system because I've had to think of it so danged much.
 
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Ostentatio said:
But specifically glass jars feels ridiculous.
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It does feel like that, being surrounded by plastic bottles everywhere.. but depending on the time scale and so forth,
- plastic does end up aging really quickly compared to glass, so a decade in the plastic stuff might be rather crappy
- glass is a lot easier to make - although I'd assume that 99% of people wouldn't even try IRL, figuring out making plastics is .. worse
- glass is also really easy to sterilize, with heat treatment or chemicals, either of which is going to be questionable for random plastics

But having said all that, the jar sim could well be "random jars" .. crafted from plastic, sand or iron.. even tin etc (although the closest option in game is lead, that'd work too, but with known issues.. :P ).
 
theFlu said:
- plastic does end up aging really quickly compared to glass, so a decade in the plastic stuff might be rather crappy
- glass is a lot easier to make - although I'd assume that 99% of people wouldn't even try IRL, figuring out making plastics is .. worse
- glass is also really easy to sterilize, with heat treatment or chemicals, either of which is going to be questionable for random plastics
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The player-survivor is an archmagus of materials processing already, being able to make plastic tarp out of rubber tires and rubber tires out of TVs and making the same motor run a moped slowly OR an off-roader quickly (but can't figure out how to turn snow into water, we've all got our flaws)

Glass is certainly easier to make than plastic bottles, but clay and ceramic vases/pitchers would be even easier, wouldn't they? And more justifiable for the break-after-use aspect.

Random-crap jars on the art side I'd be a little more okay with; the cobbled-together nature of the art direction, I'd say, is pretty important for a post-apocalyptic game- which standardized glass jars don't really fit into.
 
You guys are overthinking this, IMO. Once again, the glass jar discussion isn't about glass jars. It's about, "why is my character thirsty when they're surrounded by open water.... and my only choice is to drink the dirty water directly from a pond, or try and find bottled dirty water that I can boil?"

Jars (or whatever containers you want) give players the option to gather water from the wild to boil. The major problem with the old implementation, again, IMO, is that they stacked to 500 which made it ridiculously trivial to manage water. If they stacked to 15 like boiled water, it would require a bit more inventory management which means you cant just keep a crazy amount in stock for when you need it.
 
BFT2020 said:
I already have murky water and drinks in my inventory, I don't need glass jars taking another spot.
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That’s why I think the dew collector, and the way it currently works, should stay in the game. Just because I (and others) want jars back and the ability to craft them, it doesn’t mean they should be forced on everyone. My suggestion is to make the old system harder—jars should be more difficult to craft, and purifying water should take more effort. Dew collectors would remain unchanged, and empty jars shouldn’t appear in loot, so players who don’t want to deal with them never have to. I think that’s a fair compromise.
 
Kalen said:
If they stacked to 15 like boiled water, it would require a bit more inventory management which means you cant just keep a crazy amount in stock for when you need it.
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You underestimate my ability to craft crates upon demand... ;) That, plus bucket water; there's a couple issues to solve if _getting water_ needs to be gated. At the expense of crafting boxes, and moving water blocks in buckets; I don't think that gate is ever going to be worth it.
 
Ostentatio said:
For acquiring them- looting jars, fine, sure, you'd find jars; but why empty? Who keeps empty spaghetti jars in their cabinets? (Edit: Only being able to loot empty jars out of trash receptacles might be a consideration.)
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I have a couple dozen empty glass jars in my cabinets. They're there for when I feel like making Jam or anything else I'd want to store in them. They are, in fact, the very Ball jars you mentioned in your post.
 
theFlu said:
You underestimate my ability to craft crates upon demand... ;) That, plus bucket water; there's a couple issues to solve if _getting water_ needs to be gated. At the expense of crafting boxes, and moving water blocks in buckets; I don't think that gate is ever going to be worth it.
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Yeah, the whole bucket thing needs to be fixed for sure. But yeah, thats kind of where I was going with that. If you put in the work, by building lots of storage and filling many stacks of jars, then you can effectively solve water..... just like you can now by putting in the work and building a bunch of dew collectors. I want there to be multiple ways, whenever possible, to overcome challenges.
 
First, I don't want them taking up inventory space again. If they are brought back, they should not be in any loot so I can avoid ever having to deal with them. That, or have a game option that will automatically delete any empty jars in a loot container as soon as I open it so I won't even see them

Second, I prefer to see them work on finishing the game rather than spending time going backwards for the small percentage of people who want them back. This isn't like adjusting 2.0 based on feedback. This is going back to revert something that was changed years ago.

In the end, if they add jars back, I want an option to not ever see them. As long as I can play the game without them, I don't care what they do, though I would still rather they work on finishing the game instead of spending time on such a little thing. There are far bigger things they could choose to "fix" instead of jars is they want to go down that road.

I am not opposed to adding something like a canteen that holds a few jars worth of water and doesn't stack and can be filled at a lake or river. Or making it possible to boil a pot of water that you fill from a lake or river. Those give you the immersion that some say they are really asking for without bringing jars back.
 
Riamus said:
Second, I prefer to see them work on finishing the game rather than spending time going backwards for the small percentage of people who want them back. This isn't like adjusting 2.0 based on feedback. This is going back to revert something that was changed years ago.
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Two things.... first, how do you know its a small percentage or people? It was enough that Joel made a post asking people about jars. Secondly, adding them back would be trivial.... it almost certainly would be nothing more than an xml edit so I wouldn't worry too much about it cutting into other features.
 
Kalen said:
Two things.... first, how do you know its a small percentage or people? It was enough that Joel made a post asking people about jars. Secondly, adding them back would be trivial.... it almost certainly would be nothing more than an xml edit so I wouldn't worry too much about it cutting into other features.
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It is just an educated guess that fewer than half of all players (likely less than 10%) want jars. If I were to make a guess, I would say about 85% don't care either way (and potentially up to 95%). And the remainder is split between those who don't want them and those who do. I could be wrong, but I think it is a good guess. Almost all players who started playing the game in the past few years (after jars were removed) probably don't even think about jars. For players who have experienced jars in this game, I am certain that most don't care how they get water as long as they can do so.

As far as time spent, if they bring back jars, they aren't going to just add them back as they were before. They will do some change to them. Whether that is something that someone has suggested here (like a chance to break in inventory) or something they choose, they are almost guaranteed to do something different with them from what was there before. That means time spent implementing it and testing it and tweaking it and so on. Look at temperature. That should be just as easy to being back, right? So why isn't it already back? Because they are making changes to it and need time to implement and test and tweak those changes. Bringing back jars is likely to push 3.0 out at last a few weeks by my guess based on the sites TFP does things, and probably closer to 6 weeks. Again, it is a guess. Maybe they do it in a day, but it isn't likely.

I would also point out that other games with a food and water survival mechanic that do not include collecting water from a lake or river in jars don't have all these people complaining about it. If about jars never existed in this game, there would be far fewer people upset about them not being in the game. Take two games I currently play... Subnautica has you getting water from fish or salt plus bleach. Eventually you do get a filtration machine, but until then, you don't get water from water. You also can't drink water at all from a lake on an island even though you would think it was not salt water. And guess what? Jars disappear after you drink the water. Next, The Planet Crater. You start by using ice for water, which makes sense since there isn't standing water, but once you have lakes, you have to build a machine to collect water from the lakes if you want to do more than drink directly from there. They also have rain collector, which are basically what we have here. And again ... jars disappear when you drink them. But you won't see the uproar there that you see here.
 
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