Housing before Forest
closed
B
Bob Stuntsville
the forest being ported to quest standalone is likely going to be the next update, and here's why it shouldn't be.
TL;DR: Housing adds an invaluable amount of playtime and goals to the base game, especially when compared to what the forest will add to the game.
Joel already confirmed in a voice chat that when they will be porting the forest, they are likely to not add any features to it because it would be better for people to experience updates for the forest after the base forest is added, so they can experience new features separately instead of getting them from the start. this means that in all likelihood the forest will be ported to quest in the same or very similar state it is in on pc currently. that would be really cool, if the forest was any good. i wont get into it too much here but the forest provides three main resources: redwood, redwood cores, and big leather. once the player gets these three resources they no longer have a use for the forest, assuming that they want these recourses in the first place. every one of these can be completely ignored to achieve meta setups by most experienced players. spending time working on a new area in the game that most would consider completely optional is probably not in alta's best interest in this current state in time. I'm one of the players who likes the forest far more than the mines, i enjoy exploring the forest, but i cannot lie to myself and others that the forest is worth exploring in its current state. players want more content, but what they really want is more goals. climbing tower is a goal for until they complete it once, then most will likely never climb it again out of fear. not a big enough goal to keep them coming back. so what could we add that adds a lasting goal which the player will want to complete and takes a good amount of time to accomplish?
Housing. Players want a goal to work towards, and a very large goal players can work towards is owning and building their own house. collecting the materials for the house would take time by itself, and designing the layout of the walls, floors, windows, and furniture adds a long goal the player can work towards. this goal also provides a visual representation of their work as the finished product, which they can spend time in socializing with friends. housing will also add a fix to a large problem the game has right now: player storage. players want to store a larger amount of their items. the lockbox no longer has enough storage space to satisfy players. the majority of pcvr servers added their own extra storage solutions in the form of voiding, which players are quick to use. Even if players are not interested in the prospects of building their own house, they still have a reason to interact with the housing system so they can store the items they want.
you may be thinking right now: "do you expect players to build their house out of only oak wood?" yes, but not really, so no. rocks and sandstone should provide a decent enough pallet for the time being if that were necessary, but it isnt. pcvr players already have access to all wood types, so that is not a concern. quest players currently do not have this privilege, so how will they get access to these materials? even though mod shops for spawned items are extremely common on quest servers, that is not a substitute for gameplay features. i suggest something that i have a feeling could be in the forest update, but i cannot know for sure. the small forest is being replaced with a handmade area instead of it's old randomly generated one. while it is understandable for why they would remove the randomness from the small forest, there is still some good we can take from the old system. the new small forest could have different types of trees in an alternative path which the player can go down if they want the extra wood types. different trees could spawn here, either of the same variety or of different varieties in the same generation. the terrain would not variate, so that would not be a thing you guys need to change. all gotera types would spawn here, though the big bad one, redwood goteras, would be a rare spawn. this is to ensure redwood is still somewhat challenging to get. this would allow for all wood types to be accessible for all players on both quest and pcvr. server owners should be able to wipe this area of land for it to generate again in case we go down the route of one tree type spawning in this area per wipe. of course the normal forest would be a far superior place to get these materials, so that should be the update to follow housing. housing provides far more valuable goals and rewards for participating than the forest does.
Housing is just too valuable an update to be delayed unnecessarily by lesser additions
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Cody_Alta
closed
We will not be adding Housing before Forest. The given plan is Forest and Combat Trials before any new content for both platforms. We will also be sprinkling in smaller QOL and balancing content in between content port updates.
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orekay
With housing added, if done right, the forest could become an alternative to the town as well for late game. If you could build a smelter, or a crafting deck, than you could create your own town in the forest, and that wouldn't be possible on quest otherwise.
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orekay
Now that they've merged the code base I assume (and hope) that it won't take too long to add the forest on quest. The forest is too big a place (physically, not in features) to not add to quest. The forest would be a great place to build houses, as there aren't many places to build them otherwise. The best places there are, are either in important places that are commonly visited by players, or extremely boring. With the forest added to quest, when housing is added to both, both versions could use its massive amount of land to build housing. The quest version is also very lacking in content compared to pc, and although there isn't much use for it, it would be huge for quest. They could also update and add more to the forest with the quest port. And of course I could add more points, but bob already said that in his comment.
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thunderdrop6
I have only played on PC once but just the forest was amazing but even with that housing would be nice climbing is totally useless on quest because the chests you need climbing to get to are worthless i think what they should do is put different types of wood in the new climbing chests so climbing has a use and make it so you can get seeds from the chests but they are rare and the stronger the wood the increase in rarity and you could add redwood cores to wakizashi chests but make them really rare
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OC01
All for it.
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MarvelousGenki
This proposal has definitely earned my vote.
Even though I am usually the person who roams the forest and collects food for new community members, even having my farm at the entrance of the forest, I can only agree with Bob.
The forest gives me a lot personally but housing is simply a greater gain in game quality for everyone.
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Bob Stuntsville
a counter argument that can be made is that the forest is already planned and that alta needs to port the forest before any new additions because that was the plan and they need to catch up quest to pcvr before adding anything new to the game. thats the reason why you will choose to delay housing? its more important to say that quest is caught up with pcvr sooner than it is for both platforms to have a much larger average playtime? the forest adds very shallow goals, housing adds large and expansive goals, especially if larger plots and swappable plots are implemented so a player can create more than one house. delaying that just because thats not the original plan is short sighted and damaging to the playerbase who need a better base game
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Fyre
Typical Bob W.
In all seriousness, I really hope Alta listens to what you're putting down here. The Forest just isn't justifiable enough to be ported, yes it's a fantastic piece of tech but it's as shallow as a pool. I hope in future it is better utilised but right now a more substantial (and not to mention more performant) feature like housing just makes more sense.