I agree completely.

My brothers and I used to love playing the game together. As we all live far away from one another, SMALLAND was place were we could gather together, game, and chat. One of our favorite things to do was gather around a fire in our four chairs and just hang out in-game.
Four brothers sharing conversation around a fire.
Now we can't just hang out, we have to constantly monitor the fire and add fuel, which just kills the feeling that we'd come to know and love.

Thanks for taking away that home-like vibe.

Entirely agreed, and I'd say I have no idea how the fuel system got out of testing but they quite clearly didn't test it. If they were insistent upon having this mechanic, then just copy Valheim like they did everything else - 10 wood that burns at rate X and you can use any function with the campfire for it. They could've done the same with the forge / oven, 20 fuel storage and each ingot / meal consumes 1 fuel. As things stand right now the scaling for fuel is just nowhere remotely close to what it should be, it's waaaaayyyyy too high. A dear friend of mine and I started playing after 1.0 and we were enjoying it right up until this change and the absurd Hoots grind, but that's another post entirely.

Originally posted by GhostBearPRIME:

I agree completely.

My brothers and I used to love playing the game together. As we all live far away from one another, SMALLAND was place were we could gather together, game, and chat. One of our favorite things to do was gather around a fire in our four chairs and just hang out in-game.
Four brothers sharing conversation around a fire.
Now we can't just hang out, we have to constantly monitor the fire and add fuel, which just kills the feeling that we'd come to know and love.

Thanks for taking away that home-like vibe.

I'd suggest Grounded to scratch this itch if you haven't tried it yet. It's a fantastic game and every campfire has a on/off toggle, no fuel requirement at all. You can even turn off structural support requirements in a custom game so you can build the wildest bases you can think of together.

I kind-of agree here. The game isn't completely ruined for me, but I have to say my delight had taken a nose-dive over time.

I do appreciate the additional decor, the ability to level and allocate points to fit your play-style, and the ability to craft from nearby storage without holding materials in your inventory.

But so many changes since the game's beginning are not good changes.

--The new start zone reduces the game's story to trivial, instead of a mystery we pushed to solve through the quest-like clues.
--The crafting allows you to make better armor and weapons, but the stats are pre-set. If you craft a legendary sword, it will always have the same stats. It's also RNG what grade of item you craft, so you don't feel like you actually did anything to affect the outcome.
--The fuel for crafting is too much, and adding it after-the-fact was just silly. The loss of constantly-burning fireplaces is very disappointing, too.
--The ability to craft from nearby storage is fantastic. But it would be better if it were reachable from further away. Lots of players built bases that are very spread out, with a workshop separated from the storage room of boxes, which are now all too far away to take advantage of the new craft-from-storage thing.
--The levels of tameable creatures remains weird. The level 100 gecko is still easy compared to level 1 scorpion, for example. It makes no sense. It seemed better before there were levels in creatures- though I do like allocating my pets' points where I want them.
--In the beginning, there were ten Great Trees to build on and move your base around to, so that you could be near your current interest. But no Great Trees were added in any of the three new zones, which severely cripples the appeal of the Great Tree system we started with (and loved).
--Then there's the faction events. Great idea, but implemented badly. The points you earn are too little for your time, and the rewards they buy are too trivial.

Lastly, they keep adding things to the game, but they don't add what players ask for, and some bugs remain unfixed.

--Players have asked for Stables of some kind, to keep their un-partied tames from wandering off until they want to party again. They've asked for Stables that will keep their pet bird from shaking the world with its idle movements.
--Players have asked for the ability to silence their tames. Those repetitious noises can get on a person's nerves.
--Players want better multiplayer co-op. They want to ride each other's tames and help each other more. Conversely, they want better protections from griefers on servers they share with other players.
--Players have asked for a Season Indicator, so they know whether or not to bring their winter clothes for tomorrow's change in temperature.
--Players have asked for their equipped armor and weapons to be taken out of their inventory, to stop taking up space there and thus stop confusing people about which pair of gloves are equipped.
--Players have asked to be able to use beds to rest or heal even if they are not bound to the bed as a spawn point. Speaking of beds, players hate their tame spawning in bed with them. A stable or placeable Tame Spawn Point would be better.
--Since 1.0 all the hornets in the game have lost their beautiful colored wings. Not fixed.
--Since 1.0 an invisible wall appeared near the snake that once guarded a lovely cache of gather-able saltpeter. Now the resources are unreachable.
--Tames on follow get too close to the player, which causes all kinds of issues, from hitting them with a resource-harvesting-tool, to knocking the player off cliffs.
--Ladybugs, which are tames that do not fight, tend to zoom off and aggro other far-away mobs in their fear-flight, which often gets the player and/or the ladybug killed.

These two lists are by no means exhaustive. They are examples of what I see, and my personal opinion.

The point to all this is simply that in the beginning of this game, there was so much wonderful potential. Unfortunately, the game-maker has added new, unrelated, and often unwanted things to the game, changing the initial delightful experience into a much different game experience.

Personally, I'm still playing, and I'm still enjoying it because I'm doing it on my own terms within the confines of what is available. I do wish some corrections would be made, but this game isn't made just for me, and I'm not a game programmer to know what's possible. We'll just have to see what they do with it over time.

i agree completely. Just unnecessary and detracts for the enjoyment of the game.

Originally posted by RedPixie:

Lastly, they keep adding things to the game, but they don't add what players ask for, and some bugs remain unfixed.

--Players have asked for Stables of some kind, to keep their un-partied tames from wandering off until they want to party again. They've asked for Stables that will keep their pet bird from shaking the world with its idle movements.
--Players have asked for the ability to silence their tames. Those repetitious noises can get on a person's nerves.
--Players want better multiplayer co-op. They want to ride each other's tames and help each other more. Conversely, they want better protections from griefers on servers they share with other players.
--Players have asked for a Season Indicator, so they know whether or not to bring their winter clothes for tomorrow's change in temperature.
--Players have asked for their equipped armor and weapons to be taken out of their inventory, to stop taking up space there and thus stop confusing people about which pair of gloves are equipped.
--Players have asked to be able to use beds to rest or heal even if they are not bound to the bed as a spawn point. Speaking of beds, players hate their tame spawning in bed with them. A stable or placeable Tame Spawn Point would be better.
--Since 1.0 all the hornets in the game have lost their beautiful colored wings. Not fixed.
--Since 1.0 an invisible wall appeared near the snake that once guarded a lovely cache of gather-able saltpeter. Now the resources are unreachable.
--Tames on follow get too close to the player, which causes all kinds of issues, from hitting them with a resource-harvesting-tool, to knocking the player off cliffs.
--Ladybugs, which are tames that do not fight, tend to zoom off and aggro other far-away mobs in their fear-flight, which often gets the player and/or the ladybug killed.

I'm bumping this up because these are all really great suggestions. The damselfly sounds are driving me insane.

And I think the fuel system needs reworking. As a new player I seem to be spending most of my time just trying to gather more fuel.

Originally posted by RedPixie:

--Players have asked to be able to use beds to rest or heal even if they are not bound to the bed as a spawn point. Speaking of beds, players hate their tame spawning in bed with them. A stable or placeable Tame Spawn Point would be better.

If you remove them from party/team before logging out, they will stay where you left them next time you log in instead of spawning on top of you in your bed.

Necessary with the Bird for sure.

for the love of god yes, I was so hyped for this game since I first saw this game announced. Me and the wife played this for so long and now it almost feels like a mobile game. The sudden switch to not only having to gather the materials for the things you want to craft , you now have to gather 3x the amount in fuel to be able to even craft the things you want and on top of all that you have wait times as the cherry on top of that.

Its turned from a fun game that was enjoyable to a slog that is more of a "you need to eat your greens before you can have your dessert " kinda game. The contribution points were done so badly it all just feels like false game inflation to add time for the sake of adding time. The fact that your equipment takes space in your backpack majority of the time half my space is just taken up by all the equipment you need to survive specially the late game stages.

I want this to be enjoyable again. Even if they only add equipment take no space in backpack, they get rid of the fuel requirement , they add more trees you can build on and give more tokens for doing events or missions to do for said tokens. it would be SO much more fun and more of a game, rather than a game that feels like gearing towards micro-transactions to lower time.

What happened to the taming treats, I haven't used one in a while and decided to today. but they took the labels away and now the treats I already have make me use them to craft a trap.. this game just gets worse everyday.

I still think they need to put the animation back on fire land oven etc.

Very Frustrating.

Do you have to recharge the torches?

Originally posted by Buff Bagwell:

for the love of god yes, I was so hyped for this game since I first saw this game announced. Me and the wife played this for so long and now it almost feels like a mobile game. The sudden switch to not only having to gather the materials for the things you want to craft , you now have to gather 3x the amount in fuel to be able to even craft the things you want and on top of all that you have wait times as the cherry on top of that.

Its turned from a fun game that was enjoyable to a slog that is more of a "you need to eat your greens before you can have your dessert " kinda game. The contribution points were done so badly it all just feels like false game inflation to add time for the sake of adding time. The fact that your equipment takes space in your backpack majority of the time half my space is just taken up by all the equipment you need to survive specially the late game stages.

I want this to be enjoyable again. Even if they only add equipment take no space in backpack, they get rid of the fuel requirement , they add more trees you can build on and give more tokens for doing events or missions to do for said tokens. it would be SO much more fun and more of a game, rather than a game that feels like gearing towards micro-transactions to lower time.

you can disable fuel use in the game settings. so just do that. this was supposed to be a survival game not another lame ass casual rpg.

fun is subjective. stop trying to use "its more fun" like its an argument. it aint one. it never will be one.

this game inventory is giant sized. you have craft from storage. and yet you STILL WANT MORE. just request infinite inventory and remove chests. like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rpg out there. thats what you apparently want. but then it has no right to call itself survival game anymore either. and you cannot change the type of a game all of a sudden. so these requests are just plain ignorant and borderline crazy entitlement.

game balance is one thing. but asking for mechanics to be flat out removed is dumb.

overall this game has improved alot since it started. it started to add some depth and actual survival mechanics to the game. it added reasons to build bases besides "for the sake of it" now aswell. this is good for a survival game.

it still has a long way to go now of course. but it has definitly improved itself atleast in small steps.

the whineing about haveing to put in some effort in a survival game is only done by 1 type of player. can be safely ignored.

i hope the game adds more regions and more underground sections to explore on top of adding more and more reasons to actually build bases. they even added a reason to build base defenses now with the new update. more actual gameplay reasons to build is always welcome.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

Originally posted by Buff Bagwell:

for the love of god yes, I was so hyped for this game since I first saw this game announced. Me and the wife played this for so long and now it almost feels like a mobile game. The sudden switch to not only having to gather the materials for the things you want to craft , you now have to gather 3x the amount in fuel to be able to even craft the things you want and on top of all that you have wait times as the cherry on top of that.

Its turned from a fun game that was enjoyable to a slog that is more of a "you need to eat your greens before you can have your dessert " kinda game. The contribution points were done so badly it all just feels like false game inflation to add time for the sake of adding time. The fact that your equipment takes space in your backpack majority of the time half my space is just taken up by all the equipment you need to survive specially the late game stages.

I want this to be enjoyable again. Even if they only add equipment take no space in backpack, they get rid of the fuel requirement , they add more trees you can build on and give more tokens for doing events or missions to do for said tokens. it would be SO much more fun and more of a game, rather than a game that feels like gearing towards micro-transactions to lower time.

you can disable fuel use in the game settings. so just do that. this was supposed to be a survival game not another lame ass casual rpg.

fun is subjective. stop trying to use "its more fun" like its an argument. it aint one. it never will be one.

this game inventory is giant sized. you have craft from storage. and yet you STILL WANT MORE. just request infinite inventory and remove chests. like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rpg out there. thats what you apparently want. but then it has no right to call itself survival game anymore either. and you cannot change the type of a game all of a sudden. so these requests are just plain ignorant and borderline crazy entitlement.

game balance is one thing. but asking for mechanics to be flat out removed is dumb.

overall this game has improved alot since it started. it started to add some depth and actual survival mechanics to the game. it added reasons to build bases besides "for the sake of it" now aswell. this is good for a survival game.

it still has a long way to go now of course. but it has definitly improved itself atleast in small steps.

the whineing about haveing to put in some effort in a survival game is only done by 1 type of player. can be safely ignored.

i hope the game adds more regions and more underground sections to explore on top of adding more and more reasons to actually build bases. they even added a reason to build base defenses now with the new update. more actual gameplay reasons to build is always welcome.

You CAN NOT disable fuel in game settings. Period. No need to waste more time reading the rest of what you wrote.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

Originally posted by Buff Bagwell:

for the love of god yes, I was so hyped for this game since I first saw this game announced. Me and the wife played this for so long and now it almost feels like a mobile game. The sudden switch to not only having to gather the materials for the things you want to craft , you now have to gather 3x the amount in fuel to be able to even craft the things you want and on top of all that you have wait times as the cherry on top of that.

Its turned from a fun game that was enjoyable to a slog that is more of a "you need to eat your greens before you can have your dessert " kinda game. The contribution points were done so badly it all just feels like false game inflation to add time for the sake of adding time. The fact that your equipment takes space in your backpack majority of the time half my space is just taken up by all the equipment you need to survive specially the late game stages.

I want this to be enjoyable again. Even if they only add equipment take no space in backpack, they get rid of the fuel requirement , they add more trees you can build on and give more tokens for doing events or missions to do for said tokens. it would be SO much more fun and more of a game, rather than a game that feels like gearing towards micro-transactions to lower time.

you can disable fuel use in the game settings. so just do that. this was supposed to be a survival game not another lame ass casual rpg.

fun is subjective. stop trying to use "its more fun" like its an argument. it aint one. it never will be one.

this game inventory is giant sized. you have craft from storage. and yet you STILL WANT MORE. just request infinite inventory and remove chests. like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rpg out there. thats what you apparently want. but then it has no right to call itself survival game anymore either. and you cannot change the type of a game all of a sudden. so these requests are just plain ignorant and borderline crazy entitlement.

game balance is one thing. but asking for mechanics to be flat out removed is dumb.

overall this game has improved alot since it started. it started to add some depth and actual survival mechanics to the game. it added reasons to build bases besides "for the sake of it" now aswell. this is good for a survival game.

it still has a long way to go now of course. but it has definitly improved itself atleast in small steps.

the whineing about haveing to put in some effort in a survival game is only done by 1 type of player. can be safely ignored.

i hope the game adds more regions and more underground sections to explore on top of adding more and more reasons to actually build bases. they even added a reason to build base defenses now with the new update. more actual gameplay reasons to build is always welcome.

The mechanics of fuel and crafting time were not initially in the game in early access. It is possible to turn off the time mechanics but there is no for fuel.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

you can disable fuel use in the game settings. so just do that. this was supposed to be a survival game not another lame ass casual rpg.

fun is subjective. stop trying to use "its more fun" like its an argument. it aint one. it never will be one.

this game inventory is giant sized. you have craft from storage. and yet you STILL WANT MORE. just request infinite inventory and remove chests. like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rpg out there. thats what you apparently want. but then it has no right to call itself survival game anymore either. and you cannot change the type of a game all of a sudden. so these requests are just plain ignorant and borderline crazy entitlement.

game balance is one thing. but asking for mechanics to be flat out removed is dumb.

overall this game has improved alot since it started. it started to add some depth and actual survival mechanics to the game. it added reasons to build bases besides "for the sake of it" now aswell. this is good for a survival game.

it still has a long way to go now of course. but it has definitly improved itself atleast in small steps.

the whineing about haveing to put in some effort in a survival game is only done by 1 type of player. can be safely ignored.

i hope the game adds more regions and more underground sections to explore on top of adding more and more reasons to actually build bases. they even added a reason to build base defenses now with the new update. more actual gameplay reasons to build is always welcome.

You can NOT disable the fuel mechanic, only the crafting time. The fuel is still necessary. Did you even look into the settings?

And it is a game, it's meant to be fun, or why do you play? So, "it's more fun" is the best argument there is.

I played Smalland as soon as it was in early access, and it was fun. Then they released what they called v1.0 (and it was far from v1.0 then), and they made it worse ever since. Even the starting area is worse now then before. Why did they have to change that?

And some weeks after "release" they completely changed the crafting system, introducing fuel.

Perhaps the game is now more like the devs wanted it to be, and hardcore survivalists like you might enjoy the stupid fuel mechanic, but the casual players that were drawn to the unique setting are angry about those changes, and stopped playing. We want the beautiful world the devs created, and the fun gameplay we had, and step by step they are sucking the fun from it.

Originally posted by chemiman:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

you can disable fuel use in the game settings. so just do that. this was supposed to be a survival game not another lame ass casual rpg.

fun is subjective. stop trying to use "its more fun" like its an argument. it aint one. it never will be one.

this game inventory is giant sized. you have craft from storage. and yet you STILL WANT MORE. just request infinite inventory and remove chests. like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rpg out there. thats what you apparently want. but then it has no right to call itself survival game anymore either. and you cannot change the type of a game all of a sudden. so these requests are just plain ignorant and borderline crazy entitlement.

game balance is one thing. but asking for mechanics to be flat out removed is dumb.

overall this game has improved alot since it started. it started to add some depth and actual survival mechanics to the game. it added reasons to build bases besides "for the sake of it" now aswell. this is good for a survival game.

it still has a long way to go now of course. but it has definitly improved itself atleast in small steps.

the whineing about haveing to put in some effort in a survival game is only done by 1 type of player. can be safely ignored.

i hope the game adds more regions and more underground sections to explore on top of adding more and more reasons to actually build bases. they even added a reason to build base defenses now with the new update. more actual gameplay reasons to build is always welcome.

You can NOT disable the fuel mechanic, only the crafting time. The fuel is still necessary. Did you even look into the settings?

And it is a game, it's meant to be fun, or why do you play? So, "it's more fun" is the best argument there is.

I played Smalland as soon as it was in early access, and it was fun. Then they released what they called v1.0 (and it was far from v1.0 then), and they made it worse ever since. Even the starting area is worse now then before. Why did they have to change that?

And some weeks after "release" they completely changed the crafting system, introducing fuel.

Perhaps the game is now more like the devs wanted it to be, and hardcore survivalists like you might enjoy the stupid fuel mechanic, but the casual players that were drawn to the unique setting are angry about those changes, and stopped playing. We want the beautiful world the devs created, and the fun gameplay we had, and step by step they are sucking the fun from it.

repeat till it gets into your brain finally :

FUN IS SUBJECTIVE.

therefore claiming "its the best argument ever" is the same as saying NOTHING. you may aswell have said nothing.

why? fun is defined differently by every single player out there. its therefore an IMPOSSIBLE request to make a game FUN for EVERYONE. what you dislike others enjoy and vise versa. you cannot slove that problem as a gamedev. thus no devs designs thier game based on someone saying "this isnt fun" or "this is fun" because thats an undefinied and therefore meaningless term.

you can just say "i dont like it" which is not an argument for any changes. so you may aswell say nothing next time.

theyll add a setting to disable the fuel mechanic sooner or later just like they did for the crafting time. i tought they already did given they did it for crafting time aswell. so theyll probaly do that on next update or so.

here is another catch for EARLY ACCESS game you bought and "FOUND FUN" what you liked was an UNFINISHED PRODUCT. and the early access disclaimer is clear "your experience might change" so bad luck on that front.

they aint gonna remove these changes unless a GOOD gameplay reason is provided for doing so. "this isnt fun" aint one as explained above why.

and this game aint hardcore. its still stupid easy. it just takes some more effort now and base building is finally worth doing gameplay wise.