Deterioration of Landscape


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I think that something that could potentially increase the difficulty of the game would be landscape deterioration.

The idea is that the presence of buildings or campfires will over time lessen the health of the land.

I understand there is a bit of dislike with the concept of being able to just turtle and hide, and this could really force players to be constantly on the move.

As the landscape deteriorates, it takes much longer for twigs, grass tufts, farms, and berry bushes to grow their yield. Trees would actually begin to die and despawn. Over time the area becomes uninhabitable.

The deterioration would use the biome system to work, originating from a building or campfire, the biome under it would start to die. It would have a few layers of life; healthy, unhealthy, and dead. Slowly this deterioration would spread, taking up more and more room.

Buildings, were they ever implemented, would now only last for perhaps a week at most. After that point there'd be no point to staying inside your shelter.

Campfires work a little differently. The basic campfire, as it is less contained, could poison the landscape more quickly, giving reason to set a campsite still. Campsites would last longer, perhaps only poisoning the landscape while they're burning.

This would also make pumpkins fairly useful, as being natural they wouldn't upset the landscape. They have their own deterioration however.

Now how does one prevent their entire world from dying?

Well there are two ways of approaching this situation:

1.) Have the actually possibility of destroying all land on the map. That would probably make things too impossible though, and not be a very fun way to die.

2.) The land will slowly come back to life over time. Players will be forced to up and move base every few weeks, or face the potential of running out of resources by the time the baddies come. It's a forced migration. Eventually, players could go back.

I like idea two, because while a player trying to squeeze resources could stay in an area and use it quickly, a second kind of player might take a more nomadic approach, constantly being on the move. Instead of planting everything in one place, they might spread them out further so that they are safer from deterioration.

Deteriorated land, as if a lack of resources wasn't enough, could have the potential to be a spawning ground for some tougher enemies at night. That sort of thing could force players to remember to tear down their buildings when they're done with them.

The whole idea is to generally make staying in one place forever very difficult, encouraging exploration.

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I really like this idea and i would like to suggest that maybe when the land deteriates all the baddies become more common in those areas so players would have to be more careful and when the land comes back after time the bddies would still be there.

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