Temporal storms... just... why?

[DuperSoupy]

is it just me or does the whole temporal aspect of the game hurt the experience overall? 

this game has one of the greatest executions of survival mechanics i've ever played in a game... aside from everything to do with temporal storms.... which, considering how prominent theses aspects are in the game, is unfortunate.

Survival against the elements, nature, and ones own choices is a great challenge. moving up through tiered progression and building up into a thriving homestead is a fantastic experience. if some form of conflict is wanted in game you could have tribes spawn in, they could have camps throughout the world. that would work so well. It would also get rid of the whole wobbly screen thing when there's an encounter. 

everything temporal related, the little mole people throwing rocks and spawning in the most random places and just generally being a nuisance is not fun to me. its just not. and it ruins the whole vibe of the game for me. they spawn in my home and kill me over and over. all i can do is just wait for it to pass. i just don't interact with that aspect of the game. i've turned off that aspect as much as one can but they still spawn in. and aside from console commands or mods, i can't seem to have a world generate without these aspects. Which really does hinder how often i end up playing this otherwise fantastic game. 

but if i were to be blunt and truthful, It really does feel like it was tacked on to have a dimensional aspect akin to minecraft. and it just ruins it for me.

i understand there is a vision the creators have. and I don't mean to come off as rude. the game is otherwise lovely and when i get those moments where the temporal side of the game is no where to be seen it is a top tier experience.

Whatever the case, i'm just a bum on the internet, perhaps once things are more refined i'll have a different outlook.
Keep up the hard work!
 

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! Out of curiosity, have you tried the Homo Sapiens game mode? It removes the temporality mechanic, traders, and the rest of the lore stuff in favor of a pure survival experience. You could probably pair it with the Outlaws mod(and others) to have a more "realistic" survival experience without the supernatural elements.

Personally, I've found the temporal mechanics an interesting take on the survival/adventure genres, as it's not quite science fiction, but it's not resorting to the "magic" excuse that a lot of games tend to. And while the drifters and automatons are creepy, the game doesn't feel like it really delves into horror territory. A lot is left up to your imagination, and the pieces of lore that do exist have to be found and pieced together by the player themselves.

As for the drifters...they do annoy me, but they've become oddly endearing as well. I light my base fairly well, so they don't tend to spawn indoors, and the way the rift activity works means that they don't always spawn at night either. Much less hassle to get things done when it's dark out.

15 minutes ago, DuperSoupy said:

and aside from console commands or mods, i can't seem to have a world generate without these aspects.

I'd also say don't be shy about using console commands when needed or modding the game to fit your personal taste. The game was built with that in mind.

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums.

If you are only playing for the survival, turn off storms, temporal stability, rifts, etc. Remember that drifters are your principal source of temporal gears, needed to set your respawn and fix the translocators.

I think it won't take you very long to realize that the survival aspects of the game are not as challenging as you now do, and you need something to liven things up.

[DuperSoupy]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

have you tried the Homo Sapiens game mode?

I am not familiar with this mode. I usually create a custom game. But I will have to give it a shot. Thanks for the heads up.

 

 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Remember that drifters are your principal source of temporal gears, needed to set your respawn and fix the translocators.

Yeah, this is one of the major downsides for me. the drifters seem like a sloppy implementation of a very neccessary game mechanic. If temporal gears are needed to establish a home it would make sense the player character would have it as a non-dropable item as they are native to the world itself and would've needed a home to begin with. Why would these drifters have them?  Why wouldn't The player character already have them? 

Its one of the points of the game that make me think twice before getting too deep into the game. 

Admitedly part of my problem is myself. I love building up a homestead in a nice spot. So I usually adventure for a few hours before establishing a home. Having an appropriate way to establish a home spawn makes sense to me. But needing temporal gears to gain and maintain a spawn point is just kinda tedious and pulls me out of the fun.

Perhaps if there was a mod or a built in game mode with no drifters, no temporal mechanics and no lore with a non-dropable gear that would benefit the whole experience but i haven't yet seen anything in game.

 

 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I think it won't take you very long to realize that the survival aspects of the game are not as challenging as you now do, and you need something to liven things up.

I doubt it. I really do find the survival aspects much more enjoyable. I play games No Mans Sky because it doesn't force the player into it's own narrative. The player can unlock most ingame items as they play and explore. They can avoid combat and not feel railed into an encounter. I feel like the whole alternate dimensional conflict and all the random mole men(drifters) aspect of the game too disjointed and unneccessary. 

An alternate mode such as what i suggested above would benefit the whole experience in my opinion.   

[LadyWYT]

43 minutes ago, DuperSoupy said:

If temporal gears are needed to establish a home it would make sense the player character would have it as a non-dropable item as they are native to the world itself and would've needed a home to begin with. Why would these drifters have them?  Why wouldn't The player character already have them? 

Without going too deep into spoiler territory--I'm not sure that the player characters are native to the world. The player characters are seraphs rather than humans, which is the reason for the oddly colored skin, eye colors, and height difference between the player and the traders.

As for why the drifters have them and the player character does not...I would chalk it up to drifters essentially worshiping the technology, or perhaps wresting it from the hands of some poor soul that came before you. The player character, on the other hand, has reappeared in the current world after an unspecified amount of time, having escaped whatever calamity befell the Old World. Assuming it was a narrow escape, it stands to reason that the player character has nothing but the clothes on their backs to work with at the start. However, I could also see this changing in a future update, perhaps as an option to start with a temporal gear(or some other one-use item) to set your spawn.

[Dilan Rona]

I for one think the temporal aspect of the game is perfect for what is essentially a world fallen and broken due to a massive calamity that ripped time itself apart. as for the drifters, they were in all likelyhood seraphs themselves at some point before the fall. If in doubt as to what could happen in a world in chaos, take another look at the dark tower series.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, DuperSoupy said:

If temporal gears are needed to establish a home...

If. Turns out they are not. You need them not to establish a home but to create a spawn point. I play permadeath, so have no need of them apart from repairing translocators, which I largely find pointless, at least until I have the map to the RA. And usually then, too. Seems they never take me anywhere I have any interest in going. I could save-scum, I guess, but just feels too cheaty.

2 hours ago, DuperSoupy said:

Admitedly part of my problem is myself. I love building up a homestead in a nice spot. So I usually adventure for a few hours before establishing a home. Having an appropriate way to establish a home spawn makes sense to me. But needing temporal gears to gain and maintain a spawn point is just kinda tedious and pulls me out of the fun.

Then, yeah definitely look into Homo Sapiens mode.

2 hours ago, DuperSoupy said:

I really do find the survival aspects much more enjoyable.

I'm just saying that I think once you get a handle on how food works, you will find it's less a survival game and more a cozy builder game.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm not sure that the player characters are native to the world.

I'm not sure the gears are, either.  

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

...perhaps as an option to start with a temporal gear(or some other one-use item) to set your spawn.

I think maybe it used to do that. A few bread, a temporal gear, and miscellaneous other stuff.

Edited July 9 by Thorfinn

[ifoz]

If you knew the lore, the drifter threat and temporal storms are very well-integrated into it.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for bad game design, but I personally don't think that they are bad game design.

If you're skilled enough, the storms offer a way to get some pretty good loot, and they spice up gameplay every now and then.
If you don't like them, you can always turn them off, which is the beauty of a game as customisable as this one.  

[Wahazar]

BTW, I discovered (while playing on server with 80% land cover setting), that safest place during temporal storms is raft on the ocean.

[Maelstrom]

Why temporal storms?   Coz the devs wanted to bring you on their acid trip.

Snarky comments aside, there's nothing else I have to contribute that hasn't already been said.  

[BTubbs200]

I think temporal storms are a neat concept and tie in with the game's lore pretty well, but from a gameplay perspective they need a redesign. They're interesting the first few times, but the longer you spend in your world the more they become downright annoying. Nothing makes me more frustrated than when I'm in the middle of a large project or am journeying away from home and I get the dreaded "a temporal storm is approaching" popup, which completely throws me off of whatever I'm doing, forces me to sit around several minutes waiting for it to begin, then makes me spend a few in-game hours running around fighting repetitive drifter spam.

I get that this is a game that isn't supposed to be convenient and cater to the player at all times, but man, after you gather all the temporal gears you need, temporal storms are just lame.

Edited July 11 by BTubbs200

[Maelstrom]

Sounds kinda like real life.  After the first hail storm or three, they're just annoying to wait out so that outside activities can be resumed.  

If you don't like temporal storms after the first few, you can enable sleeping through temporal storms in the game settings.  There should be a command to enable that if the world has already been started.

[BTubbs200]

Yeah I sleep through the majority of my temporal storms when I'm not hurting for temporal gears.

To build onto my last comment, I think there needs to be more of a reason for players to endure temporal storms. Perhaps each temporal storm advances you closer to some sorta lore element? In their current state they're only good for obtaining temporal gears and the occasional Jonas part.

Edited July 12 by BTubbs200

[Maelstrom]

I think how they work currently IS the lore they present.  Their recurrence and other similarities to normal weather indicate this world is damaged.  Something dreadful happened in the past and we have to piece it together given the in game lore.

Granted the storms become pretty monotonous, fairly quickly for most.  I find it fun to find a big open field and run around bashing the baddies just for the sake of bashing baddies.

[Thorfinn]

On 7/11/2024 at 8:59 AM, Maelstrom said:

After the first hail storm or three, they're just annoying to wait out so that outside activities can be resumed.  

You guys stop working during temporal storms???  

The only ones worth bothering with are the double headed and the ones that just won't leave you alone.

Sure there are lots of things you can't do, so do those things when there are no storms. Storms are a great time to gather dry grass, or collect sand for mortar, or dirt for paths or closing off worthless dead ends in caves, though digging is pretty tough until you have at least bronze. 

[Maelstrom]

@Thorfinn I think you misunderstand, brother.  The cessation of activities was for the real life storms.  In game I go out and bust heads.  I look at my job as a seraph to exterminate drifters.  I go into blackguard class hard core, taking on the two heads nekkid with flint spears at the first storm of the world.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, I understood that you do that. The post just before mine said pretty much that. I was just riffing off that meme that gets used frequently, just today I saw,

"I have nine guns."

"Nine? I have 14."

"I have 33."

"You guys know how many guns you have?"

I was just kind of hoping to bring some levity to a discussion about how awful temporal storms are.

Edited July 17 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

Well, in that case...

I just put on whatever armor I got and only give a rip about the wealthy 2 heads.

[Mirveil]

@DuperSoupy

 

This game is your personal sandbox, so if you don't like the temporal storms aspect, you don't have to have it in your world. You can disable the storms, and set your spawn point anywhere you want without having to use gears, or be less extreme and just reduce their impacts on you.

Disable temporal storms:
/worldconfig temporalStorms off
(Or you can set it to any of these: [off|veryrare|rare|sometimes|often|veryoften] )

Set your spawn point to where you are:
/serverconfig setspawnhere

Without storms it will be harder to activate teleporters without cheating. So if you want to compensate by giving yourself temporal gears to repair the teleporters, type /gm 2 to get into creative mode, press E or ctrl+F and type "gear" in the search bar, and give yourself the gears to repair the teleporter with. To make it feel less cheaty, you could sacrifice some resources of your choice in exchange. Type /gm 1 to get back to normal survival mode when you are done.

 

If you don't want to disable this mechanic completely but just tone it down:

Disable the wobbly effect from storms:
Settings -> Accessibility -> Glitch Strength Waviness all the way down.

Change the duration of the storms:
/worldconfig tempstormDurationMul 0.5 (1 is the default, so 0.5 should be half the length of a normal storm)

 

I love the freedom that is given in this game. These commands can easily be used to cheat, but they can also be used to tailor your experience to how you want it.

 

And I would like to add, you can at least be perfectly safe during temporal storms by staying in a small room that has no space for drifters to come through, as long as the room has enough light in it. You can easily make windows by using slabs. The space isn't big enough for them to crawl through. And butcher them with your knife through the window. And you can try killing them with stones or a fire kiln trap, or if you are using the primitive survival mod, spikes.

Edited July 17 by Mirveil

[Lollard]

They're fun the first couple of times, then they just get old. They should be less frequent and do something interesting that isn't just drifter spam spam spam.

[Thorfinn]

You will be thrilled to know you can disable them, even in an active world. See @Mirveil's post just before yours.

If you really have to have temporal gears, maybe edit it in as a rare trash panda drop? Seems appropriate.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

If you really have to have temporal gears, maybe edit it in as a rare trash panda drop? Seems appropriate.

I think there's a trader or two that sells them, isn't there? I think they can be found sometimes as ruin loot. I know that they can also drop from panning, although it's a very low chance. The best method of getting them is still via drifters, and the higher tier the better, with the best being the double-headers that only come via temporal storm(at least at this time).

[Thorfinn]

True in all cases. I'm pretty sure I've personally seen all of those.

The most reliable, safest way, is to create a drifter trap. Drop them into a pit with a pit kiln and you can sit back and just harvest the crispy critters. Back in the day, I've even had good luck with them dropping into a moat with a small hole into my house that a crawler can't get through and letting them fight each other trying to reach me. I'd guess at least half the time I could get a risk-free temporal gear on the first high rift activity night, provided there was a rift or two nearby. And that's feasible with just storms disabled.

{EDIT]

The best drifter trap I ever made was just a ring of dirt with flowing water positioned just on the inside of that ring, and flows just far enough to push them to the center, and sized so that no matter which direction they approach, they get pushed into the pit at the center, where you can deal with them as you like. Hint: If they are adjacent to a pit kiln, they start on fire.

And, yes, that's potentially a day 1 build. It might even be possible to storm-proof it, or at least close enough.

[/EDIT] 

Edited July 26 by Thorfinn

[PvtWarloo]

On 7/9/2024 at 2:10 AM, DuperSoupy said:

is it just me or does the whole temporal aspect of the game hurt the experience overall? 

this game has one of the greatest executions of survival mechanics i've ever played in a game... aside from everything to do with temporal storms.... which, considering how prominent theses aspects are in the game, is unfortunate.

Survival against the elements, nature, and ones own choices is a great challenge. moving up through tiered progression and building up into a thriving homestead is a fantastic experience. if some form of conflict is wanted in game you could have tribes spawn in, they could have camps throughout the world. that would work so well. It would also get rid of the whole wobbly screen thing when there's an encounter. 

everything temporal related, the little mole people throwing rocks and spawning in the most random places and just generally being a nuisance is not fun to me. its just not. and it ruins the whole vibe of the game for me. they spawn in my home and kill me over and over. all i can do is just wait for it to pass. i just don't interact with that aspect of the game. i've turned off that aspect as much as one can but they still spawn in. and aside from console commands or mods, i can't seem to have a world generate without these aspects. Which really does hinder how often i end up playing this otherwise fantastic game. 

but if i were to be blunt and truthful, It really does feel like it was tacked on to have a dimensional aspect akin to minecraft. and it just ruins it for me.

i understand there is a vision the creators have. and I don't mean to come off as rude. the game is otherwise lovely and when i get those moments where the temporal side of the game is no where to be seen it is a top tier experience.

Whatever the case, i'm just a bum on the internet, perhaps once things are more refined i'll have a different outlook.
Keep up the hard work!
 

I turn off this aspect of the game too. Fun at the beginning, you can't survive a temporal storm easily, and it just becomes suffering.

[Zane Mordien]

Temporal Storms need some variety but the concept is good for me. The great thing about the game, as people have posted, is you can just turn off all of the temporal stuff if you don't want to mess with it.  One thing that might make your experience better is downloading a HUD Clock mod that warns you when the storm is incoming. I never notice the text saying they are incoming and the chat window goes away so fast that I don't have time to notice it.