I’m very new to Stonehearth, only bought it yesterday after sort of following it for a year. I was a huge huge fan of dwarf fortress until a couple years ago when I found the feature bloat rapidly outpaced the interface and the game became a chore to play. I love minecraft but unless you were playing on a multiplayer server it always felt empty, I wanted to build a little village with NPC’s and spoil them and make everything pretty. I absolutely love rimworld, but there’s very limited range for making anything pretty or really town-like, and I don’t like that the dev keeps pushing the game to only about escaping the planet rather than putting down roots and building a town to be proud of.
In Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Banished, Anno or any game like that a huge part of the reward for me is going through survival to then thrive, but have to claw my way up every step. There’s so many things that can go wrong in Dwarf Fortress, so when you manage to create a peaceful safe egalitarian paradise of plenty and beauty it really feels like an accomplishment. It’s the same joy in rimworld, you have to struggle to simply survive at the start, but it makes the luxury that comes later feel so much more of an accomplishment. To know that you made it years with no one dying, that despite the harsh conditions you’ve really carved something out to be proud of.
In Stonehearth I don’t get this sense. The struggle isn’t to survive, the struggle is to grapple with the building interface and wait until skills grind up to unlock the next tool set. All buildings are equal, heck a bed out in the field seems equal to one in a palace. Everyone is always content, food is never a problem, nothing is ever a problem unless some enemy gets into your town and wipes everyone out. In stonehearth there’s no recovery, the enemy comes in and wipes you out, or you win, there’s nothing in between. In rimworld some bandits might come, get into a fire fight with your people, kill or injure someone, then run off. It’s a loss, it’s a setback, but you keep going. Also the combat is very interesting and the design of your base is very important. In stonehearth your “base” is almost entirely irrelevant, it’s just eye candy. Combat doesn’t involve anything you’ve built, it’s just a boring by the numbers RPG style fight where people hit each other until HP goes down. But they don’t stop, they don’t run away after dealing some damage, they keep attacking your civilians until you have nothing and can’t recover. This isn’t very fun at all.
Things I think Stonehearth needs to tell more interesting stories:
-Early game should have a real sense of scarcity and basic survival pressures. A reliable food supply harder to establish. Shelter from the elements being important and an actual game mechanic. Struggle to allocate your limited resources and labour to feeding, clothing, and protecting your people. More basic needs, like water/drinks, more early demands to split your attention. On top of this, dangerous animals, goblin thieves and so on. It doesn’t need to be all grim and dark, but have a sense that your people are struggling. They’re wearing tattered clothes, they’re not exactly happy but they are soldiering on because it’s a new colony. But you better hope things have improved before they run out of their early-game resolve or you’re going to end up with some miserable grumpy people. There needs to be some sort of a pressure pushing the player forward, to build them selves out of the unsustainable early survival phase and establish a basic sustainable existence.
-More of a sense of progress, more upgrades. Building materials should matter. Start out with simple log shacks or primitive mud bricks that don’t look very pretty but are better than sleeping outdoors. Unlock better materials over time that are functionally better within the game mechanics, and look prettier as well for a visual story. Watch as your mud block huts evolve into ornate sandstone and brick structures covered in gleaming tile mosaics and carvings that make the Ishtar gate seem bland. And have all this mean something in-game. More beauty to boost the mood of your people. Stronger walls that keep out sieging enemies, better insulation to keep the heat in/out, lower upkeep, lower risk of fire. Have buildings require basic upkeep and cleaning, with poor materials needing more upkeep to stay in shape. That crappy shack needs wood and labour every winter or after every storm to keep in good shape, while that solid fired brick house can sit for years without needing any repairs or upkeep.
-Better combat that isn’t just some uninspired RPG “take turns hitting each other until out of HP” system. Rimworld has fantastic combat with a very challenging AI that takes advantage of cover and terrain and intelligent enemies that try to bypass defenses and traps rather than just mindlessly run at you. I want to build a little wooden or mud wall around my town to funnel enemies through a single narrow gate that I can meaningfully defend. I want those same enemies to get wise and instead try to punch a hole through the wall in a weak back area. I want archers on towers having an advantage shooting at enemies below, and taking advantage of cover to be protected from enemy ranged attacks. I want some enemies smart enough to bring ladders and try to get up over my walls and my footmen smashing them up before enemies can climb up. I want my non-combat hearthlings to be able to man defenses like catapults and ballistas or toss rocks over the walls at people trying to break in. I want the design of my defenses to matter and attacks to sometimes feel like a proper siege, almost something out of the Stronghold series. Defending your town should be more a matter of good design rather than simply having higher level soldiers than the enemy, the enemy should always outnumber/outpower the player but the player having their defense as a “force multiplier”. I also don’t want to have to wait until the end-game to unlock archers. Too much content in the game is gated and it’s very difficult to get by without much of it, this seems specially unbalanced for the desert people. Let me build slingers or something early on, some sort of early ranged unit. Or have basic footmen all have both ranged and close attacks. Footmen on walls throw rocks or have a little shortbow, while dedicated archers have longbows for ranged and a simple knife or hand-axe for close. Less hyper-specific locked-in classes, more flexible units that are just better at some things. More basic classes unlocked from the start but with gradual upgrades over time.
-More ways to pamper your people. It’s not all about struggle, it’s also about reward. That bigger bedroom, those new comfy work chairs, that amazing fountain in town square, that solid gold dining room table, the ample and varied supply of food, drink, and luxury items, the free time to relax and enjoy life. All the hard work you put into surviving can now go towards thriving, building luxury on top of the security and stability you achieved.
All in all the combat system in SH really need an overhaul and i look forward to see what will be done to it in the future.
its basically just a game of systems without any content! its just never an issue thanks to the workshop.