Please do something to make it challenging

[SecretAgentDirt]

The game is way to easy.

I know some of you will chime in with "it's a chill game" thats fine.
Why not have the option to make it not chill. Make winter harder, make food more scarce, make wolves attack, make bandits attack, raise taxes, plagues, famine something....

[Apocalypse]

Although you cant make bandits attack your village you can make the game harder and raise taxes and villager needs through customizing your game settings. I agree that everything on normal settings feels way too generous.

Maybe try my settings of my currect game, I really like them:
Still play at normal three days.
Taxes at 500%, and then I roleplay the kings gets corrupt and raises them to 1000% in year 9
Food needs at 500%
Water and wood needs at 400%
Animal and bandit HP and damage at 200%
Technology gain at 50%

This way you will pretty much have to make ends meet for quite a while and do your best to be able to pay the taxes.
You will be needed really hard in your village for a very long time, and will have to make the right choices on how and when to expand your village for things to go well.

I believe some play with even higher settings to make it even more challenging.
Without settings like these I also often lose the drive to play pretty quickly usually

[Apocalypse]

OW and I am also not allowed to work through nights, have to go to sleep before 22:00

[pdoan8]

Originally posted by SecretAgentDirt:

The game is way to easy.

I know some of you will chime in with "it's a chill game" thats fine.
Why not have the option to make it not chill. Make winter harder, make food more scarce, make wolves attack, make bandits attack, raise taxes, plagues, famine something....

Like asking Toyota to make their minivan have an option to drive like a Ferrari. Options like that are expensive. May be non-existent.

Similarly, game developers can't have the luxury to make options for everyone. Moreover, game should retain some uniqueness that cater to a specific group of gamers. Otherwise, there no need for hundreds of games to be developed each year.

[Jeff FaFa]

Originally posted by Apocalypse:

Although you cant make bandits attack your village you can make the game harder and raise taxes and villager needs through customizing your game settings. I agree that everything on normal settings feels way too generous.

Maybe try my settings of my current game, I really like them:
Still play at normal three days.
Taxes at 500%, and then I roleplay the kings gets corrupt and raises them to 1000% in year 9
Food needs at 500%
Water and wood needs at 400%
Animal and bandit HP and damage at 200%
Technology gain at 50%

This way you will pretty much have to make ends meet for quite a while and do your best to be able to pay the taxes.
You will be needed really hard in your village for a very long time, and will have to make the right choices on how and when to expand your village for things to go well.

I believe some play with even higher settings to make it even more challenging.
Without settings like these I also often lose the drive to play pretty quickly usually

I like the idea of role-playing a run like that! Though I play vanilla myself, I do like to start with the default season length and increase it by 1 more with each passing season, until it caps at 30. But since most things are on a seasonal clock (e.g. crop growth, aging, merchant resets), it gradually makes things more difficult and drawn out. But it allows me more time to spend doing side quests and enjoying the scenery of this beautiful and magnificent game that this already is (and has been from the start). I couldn't have even fathomed the notion of asking more from this masterpiece. Like asking to add more flavor to tiramisu: it's already perfect!

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Jeff FaFa:

Originally posted by Apocalypse:

Although you cant make bandits attack your village you can make the game harder and raise taxes and villager needs through customizing your game settings. I agree that everything on normal settings feels way too generous.

Maybe try my settings of my current game, I really like them:
Still play at normal three days.
Taxes at 500%, and then I roleplay the kings gets corrupt and raises them to 1000% in year 9
Food needs at 500%
Water and wood needs at 400%
Animal and bandit HP and damage at 200%
Technology gain at 50%

This way you will pretty much have to make ends meet for quite a while and do your best to be able to pay the taxes.
You will be needed really hard in your village for a very long time, and will have to make the right choices on how and when to expand your village for things to go well.

I believe some play with even higher settings to make it even more challenging.
Without settings like these I also often lose the drive to play pretty quickly usually

I like the idea of role-playing a run like that! Though I play vanilla myself, I do like to start with the default season length and increase it by 1 more with each passing season, until it caps at 30. But since most things are on a seasonal clock (e.g. crop growth, aging, merchant resets), it gradually makes things more difficult and drawn out. But it allows me more time to spend doing side quests and enjoying the scenery of this beautiful and magnificent game that this already is (and has been from the start). I couldn't have even fathomed the notion of asking more from this masterpiece. Like asking to add more flavor to tiramisu: it's already perfect!

That also def osunds like a nice way to go about it.
I do admit at my settings there is not that much time left to stare at the sunshine in the early years and I have to spend my time wisely, I like that that adds a time management element to the game. I sort of have to earn the point where things get more relaxed.
Although I have asked myself on several occassions in the first years if I actually made the game more enjoyabale cause I had to work my ass off lol.
But I am in year 8 now and at this point say bring those raised taxes on you corrupt piece of work hehe.
Cheers

[dany_ps06]

"Make winter harder, make food more scarce, make wolves attack, make bandits attack, raise taxes, plagues, famine something...."...and I think this is what is missing from this wonderful game!

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by dany_ps06:

"Make winter harder, make food more scarce, make wolves attack, make bandits attack, raise taxes, plagues, famine something...."...and I think this is what is missing from this wonderful game!

Weather is indeed too easy to handle. I am just doing no insensitive perk playthrough and, honestly speaking, winter is too easy to handle. Sewing hut 1 gives you all the cold-resistant clothing you need for ~80% of the time. The remaining 20% you can handle by consuming the potion of temperature or some food with the temperature tolerance effect. Get better clothing, from sewing hut 2, and you are done with cold weather. Hot weather doesn't matter.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by Apocalypse:

Although you cant make bandits attack your village you can make the game harder and raise taxes and villager needs through customizing your game settings. I agree that everything on normal settings feels way too generous.

Maybe try my settings of my currect game, I really like them:
Still play at normal three days.
Taxes at 500%, and then I roleplay the kings gets corrupt and raises them to 1000% in year 9
Food needs at 500%
Water and wood needs at 400%
Animal and bandit HP and damage at 200%
Technology gain at 50%

This way you will pretty much have to make ends meet for quite a while and do your best to be able to pay the taxes.
You will be needed really hard in your village for a very long time, and will have to make the right choices on how and when to expand your village for things to go well.

I believe some play with even higher settings to make it even more challenging.
Without settings like these I also often lose the drive to play pretty quickly usually

It's not much of a difficulty and more of a chore that has simple solutions.

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by darkestkhan:

Originally posted by Apocalypse:

Although you cant make bandits attack your village you can make the game harder and raise taxes and villager needs through customizing your game settings. I agree that everything on normal settings feels way too generous.

Maybe try my settings of my currect game, I really like them:
Still play at normal three days.
Taxes at 500%, and then I roleplay the kings gets corrupt and raises them to 1000% in year 9
Food needs at 500%
Water and wood needs at 400%
Animal and bandit HP and damage at 200%
Technology gain at 50%

This way you will pretty much have to make ends meet for quite a while and do your best to be able to pay the taxes.
You will be needed really hard in your village for a very long time, and will have to make the right choices on how and when to expand your village for things to go well.

I believe some play with even higher settings to make it even more challenging.
Without settings like these I also often lose the drive to play pretty quickly usually

It's not much of a difficulty and more of a chore that has simple solutions.

Yeah arguably, well its at least more of a grind and slower way of playing. If its a chore is subjective.

Although my fallback for food and income resources wisent hunting gets a little harder. And with these settings you can actually make mistakes that let you get in debt.
But with enough knowledge about the game mechanics slower would probably be a better discription than harder yeah

[rick813]

The game you desire is already out there. It's called Farthest Frontier.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by rick813:

The game you desire is already out there. It's called Farthest Frontier.

That is a whole other game.

[JarutheDamaja]

I would also like to see some sort of a hard mode. Here just some ideas:
- No food, water, health and cleanliness recovery during season change.
- No health recovery during sleep.
- Food and water need during sleep, so you could wake up hungry and thirsty and if your health is low it means you could die instantly when waking up.
- Saving only at a campfire/bed or with a potion.
- The need to sleep, max stamina reduction and stamina recovery reduction over time,
Character falling to sleep if pushed too hard.
- Events that prevent you from planting a certain crop in that season, or the harvest is reduced by 50%.
- Fresh meat rots after 1 season? Probably annoying when you make a product that needs raw meat.
- Instead of unlimited health and inventory, add multipliers that allows us to reduce them in the game options. Maybe also split the multipliers in character, mount and storage's (resource and food storage).
- And make this adaptive with seasonal events, maybe the character has broken a leg and can only carry half, or the mount is weak in this season.
- Recipe prices increase.
- Player must sacrifice a Tier 1 and Tier 3 skill from each category that he then cannot pick.

[darkestkhan]

Originally posted by JarutheDamaja:

I would also like to see some sort of a hard mode. Here just some ideas:
- No food, water, health and cleanliness recovery during season change.
- No health recovery during sleep.
- Food and water need during sleep, so you could wake up hungry and thirsty and if your health is low it means you could die instantly when waking up.
- Saving only at a campfire/bed or with a potion.
- The need to sleep, max stamina reduction and stamina recovery reduction over time,
Character falling to sleep if pushed too hard.
- Events that prevent you from planting a certain crop in that season, or the harvest is reduced by 50%.
- Fresh meat rots after 1 season? Probably annoying when you make a product that needs raw meat.
- Instead of unlimited health and inventory, add multipliers that allows us to reduce them in the game options. Maybe also split the multipliers in character, mount and storage's (resource and food storage).
- And make this adaptive with seasonal events, maybe the character has broken a leg and can only carry half, or the mount is weak in this season.
- Recipe prices increase.
- Player must sacrifice a Tier 1 and Tier 3 skill from each category that he then cannot pick.

The last 4 are not that important, but all the other would up the difficulty, even if only a bit. Taking away the ability to save at any time is the big one, though also not that important - especially once you get a decent bow and arrows. I partially disagree with "no recovery during sleep" though I would definitely take away full recovery. 20% recovery should be plenty enough.

Make weather matter again. At the moment you really only need one level of perk and basic winter clothes to handle almost any winter. Rarely would you need anything more.

[Morri]

Originally posted by JarutheDamaja:

...

Some of those things you can do yourself already. I love a hard struggle in survival games, and MD is way too easy for me in that regard; so I set my own challenges.
Example:
- limit the amount of schematics i'm allowed to buy each season, how many buildings to place (max one per season), only building the better version once i learned all recipes in the old building, only selling things that make sense (arrows to the hunter, cups and pitchers to the tavern, plates and bowls to the cooks, knives to the fishermen, etc), taxes on 1000% and not taking the free loot from abandoned carts/camps etc, not buying from vendors,
- in winter i set the production of food lower to simulate less wildlife around and force myself to put a stockpile
- i don't use any food that's less than 75%, not for my villagers either
- newly hired villagers start working at 10% and i only set this gradually higher for each season they are in the village, Making just hiring more people not a good idea cause it's an extra mouth to feed that won't instantly contribute
- simulate the need for clothes by making my villagers work % less if i don't have clothes in their house chest
- only saving in my own house
- restrictions when my character gets pregnant (i won't be doing heavy lifting (no overloading) or fighting or heavy work like mining and chopping trees in my last trimester)
- i roll a dice every season change to see if i get an event (got several random ones like failed harvest where i throw half the produce away, villager ill where they won't work that season, ...)

So a lot of things you can do yourself to make it more challenging and fun.

I'm going to steal your broken leg idea for my events btw :-)

[Min]

This game is amazing , maybe that's why people try to find even more ways to enjoy it, i agree on bandits aspect, if they can't attack you then maybe there could be more of them, cause i hardly find them , and ofcourse it is more of a medieval peasant game than medieval knight but as i see this game it could be even more than peasant one, potential is great as is this game as a whole