Perfecting Cabin Fever (With a Minor Tweak) — Next Patch?


Hadrian

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Hi all,

So I'm prefacing this topic pretty heavily up front for those that want some context / rationale for participating in what I hope will be a lively and important community discussion.

If you just want to get to the meat and potatoes of what we're talking about, skip down to the 3-point list at the bottom.

I did a quick search on Cabin Fever prior to this; I'm not sure if this idea has been raised before and doubt I'm the first to think of it. Seeing as the game's first substantive new patch since Wintermute has been announced, I thought it would be a good time to discuss what has been — for many of us — the game's most cumbersome and frustrating mechanic.

As a consequence of the frustration that it tends to cause, Cabin Fever has already been re-balanced once. Patrick said the following** of how it worked at that point (how it still works, I believe), a year and a half (!!) ago:
 

Quote

* To get Cabin Fever, you now have to spend the majority of 6 days indoors. 
* If you develop Cabin Fever, you will now be prevented from Resting *indoors* for 24 hours. 
* We've added a "grace period" of 50 Days in Voyageur (25 Days in Stalker), during which you will not develop Cabin Fever. This is to "simulate" the idea that Cabin Fever only becomes an issue if you have been isolated for a long time. 
* There is no risk of Cabin Fever in Pilgrim. 

** If any of this needs to be clarified (looking at you, Patrick/Hinterland, or anyone else who can speak with authority on whether additional changes have happened), let me know and I'll update the post.


I have a small set of suggestions that I believe will bring Cabin Fever into what I feel is a long-delayed state of harmony & alignment with the rest of the game's design. Just to set the tone, let me throw some important disclaimers down very quickly.

• I both expect and welcome disagreement on this issue, from the developers themselves and/or the community. My goal here is to start a helpful discussion on behalf of those who feel the mechanic needs adjustment, not to simply start a bandwagon. If you're happy with how Cabin Fever works, I want to hear from you. On that note...

• I am not interested in seeing any discussion on this topic or another topic related to TLD devolve into finger-pointing and flaming matches. This is, I believe, a contentious discussion point. So I'm asking folks, as I do on my channel, to be measured in their reactions so we can have a quality discussion & continue to raise that bar.

• I am not interested in doing away with Cabin Fever. Cabin Fever was added to prevent players from exploiting the game to rack up "days survived" when a state of survival equilibrium, so to speak, had been reached and a survivor could reasonably camp in one indoor location while hunting outside when necessary, rinse and repeat.

So, here's my idea. Let me know what you think, and I'll see you next t—oops. Habit.

- — -

1. Cabin Fever should no longer prevent players from resting indoors. This is the most immersion-breaking aspect of Cabin Fever for most of us, I think, and it's the component that should be completely removed. While some would argue that some unrealistic and  "gamey" mechanics are necessary to maintain the feeling of fun and even escapism in video games, the total inability to rest at all is too unrealistic. Nix this component completely — perhaps preserving the inability to pass time indoors, because at least that makes more sense than not being able to rest (discuss!) — in favor of the following...

2. Cabin Fever should, however, prevent players from recovering any condition (0-100%)  indoors. So, you can rest inside all you want. You can recover from exhaustion and afflictions such as sprains, food poisoning, etc., but if your actual condition is below 100, you won't be able to actually recover if you're resting inside, because you have those Cabin Fever jitters. While Cabin Fever should never have a persistent condition drop effect (it does not now; I'm just saying keep it that way), restricting condition gain while indoors would preserve the spirit of Cabin Fever and prevent players from exploiting the ability to perpetually rest indoors without a major restriction on gameplay mechanics (just not as major as not being allowed to close your eyes at all!)

3. Cabin Fever should likewise reduce the rate at which exhaustion recovers (among other suggested tweaks, per discussion on this thread). I think it also makes sense to replace the current full restrictions on rest and passing time with nuanced tweaks to the player character's normal state of being in addition to being prevented from recovering condition. Reducing the rate at which sleeping recovers is one obvious change — you have Cabin Fever, after all; you can sleep indoors, but you're not going to be sleeping well — but what else can be done? Should passive calorie degeneration increase due to anxiety / increased heart rate, requiring players to eat more?

- — -

Having laid all of that out, please share your candid thoughts and additional / alternative ideas for Cabin Fever. If anyone at Hinterland finds this idea — or even just pieces of it — resonating with them, especially Raphael & veteran team members, all of them (and the players in turn) will benefit from a lively, detailed, & respectful discussion.

Thoughts?

-H

Edited by Hadrian
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I think it would work fine if you are not able to recover anything resting indoors with cabin fever, and reduce maximum amount of time one can sleep at a stretch to 4hrs instead of 12. you can sleep anywhere you want, as much as you want, just no real benefit from sleeping indoors when you have cabin fever, and a little more clicking while indoors. It's  really just a "nag" incentive to get out and explore, too hefty a penalty (no ability to rest/pass time at all) feels unfair, too nuanced effects just confuses players.

Edited by KinoUnko
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I agree with Hadrian. Something needs to be adjusted in regards to cabin fever. Since cabin fever is a mental affliction it should affect you as such. For example, if you have cabin fever and are indoors trying to sew/cook/improve items then your chance of success should plummet. As far as resting I don't honestly see the connection. Also, since cabin fever is akin to being cooped up or bored then exciting or informative encounters should help cure it. Project Zomboid has this element and I think they do it right. Risk of cabin fever should go down when reading a skill book or when encountering wildlife that threatens you. Heck, you could add special books that are read for that sole purpose instead of leveling a skill. Excited to hear everyone's thoughts. Thanks Hadrian for starting this discussion and thanks to Hinterland for the escape all these years.

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Cabin Fever should develop from repeating similar actions indoors for long periods of time. For example;

Passing Time with cards for days on end. 

Sleeping for long periods of time. 

Breaking down furniture and not stopping. 

Repairing clothing. harvesting clothing, repairing tools etc...

Crafting.

You should be forced to vary your actions to combat cabin fever since Cabin Fever is a mental affliction regarding boredom from being indoors too long. But if you are indoors for too long but are doing various things it won't cause you to go crazy. 

The whole point of CF was to prohibit hibernation as a cheaty gameplay style. So they made it so you couldn't sleep for infinity and you had a limit. So they added passing time for those moments where you need to pass some time but aren't tired enough to sleep. But this can be exploited still so they had to implement Cabin Fever to combat this NEW way of hibernating (which is the same as the old way really) but I think that it should stay this way for Cabin Fever. 

It should only be caused by PASSING TIME or doing very similar actions for too long. 

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32 minutes ago, KinoUnko said:

didn't hibernation style develope because there was a leader board for longest survival time?

Yes, it did.. now that the leaderboard is long gone (and we know that it's not hard to survive for thousands of days if you can stand the monotony), then so is the real reason for having cabin fever. Which is not to say I think it should be done away with. Just made more reasonable in effects. I like @Hadrian's ideas, and also @J.P.'s.

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4 hours ago, J.P. said:

Heck, you could add special books that are read for that sole purpose instead of leveling a skill.

I'd love to see more books in the game, even if they serve no other purpose than this.  At least allow us to use random books to pass the time before they become fuel.

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Jeez! In one page of replies, you lot have already taken what began as a discussion on bringing the mechanic up to snuff and piled on a bunch of things that can take it far beyond that. Call it "Cabin Fever 3.0." So, as I see it so far, we've got two sets of propositions. I want to keep the near-term set simple, based on the most straightforward fixes we've discussed; i.e., things that can be implemented swiftly and with moderate to minimal effort.

I will update this list as more replies come in. Thank you, everyone!

Original Post — 11/9 @ 9:55 am ET
Updated w/latest discussion points — 11/11 @ 1:04 pm ET

Cabin Fever 2.0 — Suggested Changes (Comprehensive; not all listed points would be implemented)

  • Remove total indoor rest restriction in favor of assorted penalties to normal resting process, such as...
    • No recovery of condition (0-100%) during rest (but conditions such as sprains, food poisoning heal normally) — H
    • Or perhaps you can recover, but only up to a certain percentage? 50%? — H
      • This particular restriction is important for preserving the protection against the hibernation exploit that Cabin Fever was designed to provide.
    • Slower recovery from exhaustion during sleep — H
    • Faster degeneration of calorie store (due to anxiety) — H
    • Inability to pass time idly indoors — Fuarian
    • Reduce maximum amount of time one can sleep — KinoUnko

Cabin Fever 3.0 — Possibilities (Comprehensive; not all listed points would be implemented)

  • Implement better UI-based indicators of Cabin Fever (CF), for both risky and beneficial activities — selfless
  • Associate Cabin Fever Risk (CFR) with repetitive similar actions instead of with proportion of a given period spent indoors...
    • Passing time repeatedly (Using cards) — Fuarian
    • Sleeping repeatedly — Fuarian
    • Breaking down furniture repeatedly — Fuarian
    • Crafting — Fuarian
    • Repairing clothing, any other form of work / time passage, etc...  — Fuarian
  • Tweak CF restrictions based on Game Difficulty (Perhaps ease them on Interloper, see Fu's post above) — Fuarian
  • Chance of success while repairing/crafting/firebuilding/etc indoors penalized — JP
  • Dangerous wildlife encounters (drawing aggro from a wolf, especially a bear) should reduce CFR substantially — JP
  • Reading a skill book should reduce CFR — JP
  • Add recreational reading books as a means of reducing CFR or eliminating full-blown CF. — JP
    • "Locket" or other sentimental items, as original Road Map doc described — Raphael, technically?
    • Musical instruments for same, ability to increase skill (reducing overall CFR over time!) — Prestermatt
    • Give us the chance to become the Bob Dylan of the apocalypse. — JP

-H

Edited by Hadrian
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How about just make the indicator suggest the mechanic?  Right now it's just goofy.  Suddenly your character realizes he has 21% cabin fever risk.  21% of what?  What causes it to go up?  Or down?  Some of us figured it out but most players won't because they don't have idetic memories.  The text only suggests more time outside but gives no quantity.

Players without Cabin Fever are freezing themselves outside trying to avoid actually getting this thing that has not yet affected them and become puzzled when the only number given sometimes doesn't change.  All because it is poorly described and rendered.

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4 hours ago, Prestermatt said:

Or how about musical instruments?  A guitar that you can find somewhere.  The more hours you put into playing it, the more you level up your skill, the more it helps to reduce/combat cabin fever.

The game needs more small but interesting ways to kill time.

+1 A harmonica would be great. Finally I could pretend to be the Bob Dylan of the apocalypse! 

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I've only run into cabin fever problems on interloper, because the cold temperatures keep you indoors a lot more than usual. In stalker or Voyageur I have the *luxury* of spending time outdoors to collect resources or travel. My playstyle just doesn't involve staying indoors a lot. 

On interloper it can be like a cascade of maladies. Food poisoning weakens you, then you have to recover afterwards, suddenly you've been indoors for the better part of 3 days, and if you're not prepared to go fishing or have a bedroll to hang out in a cave, it's tough. 

So, if people's playstyle is being hampered by cabin fever, how does that happen? On the surface, tying cabin fever to excessive waiting makes sense. But maybe it's worth asking how people are attempting to play the game and how cabin fever prevents them from doing so? 

 

Edited by LucidFugue
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4 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

So, if people's playstyle is being hampered by cabin fever, how does that happen? On the surface, tying cabin fever to excessive waiting makes sense. But maybe it's worth asking how people are attempting to play the game and how cabin fever prevents them from doing so? 

@LucidFugue That's the goal here no? to adjust Cabin Fever since it's very narrow in scope, currently the only way to alleviate it is going outside and on interloper that's sometimes life and death. All the suggestions are geared to expand the mechanic so there are variety of ways to alleviate it, both indoors and outdoors. Take your example specifically, instead of being forced outdoors by cabin fever when you're trying to recover from food poisoning and taking shelter from extended storms, you could stay inside long enough without dying (if not recovering), and/or attempt to do some leisure reading, or noodle on a guitar, to alleviate cabin fever and pass time till such time you can go outside.

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1 minute ago, KinoUnko said:

@LucidFugue That's the goal here no?

That's what I'm not clear on. There's a perception that Cabin Fever was introduced because of hibernation/starvation play. I'm not sure that's really accurate, but if it is I don't think it's a problem anymore. Min-maxing survival time was a thing when you could calculate survival time in the world based on the number of bandages left in the world, assuming there were no bullets or flares left. That was a thing because if you wasted your resources you might run out before day 100.

Such a number doesn't exist anymore. You might run out of non-renewable resources, like bullets or flares, but there are renewable options now. The maximum theoretical survival time has extended out so far it isn't worth calculating. Players interested in testing extreme resource management do so by restricting themselves so the total amount of available resources can be an issue.

Raphael has said the game design isn't intended to favour a roaming/nomadic playstyle over a "hunkering down" playstyle (or vice versa). Both are legitimate. If you want to hoard everything of use in a single cabin and live out your days there, you can. There are challenge modes based on each theme. From memory, cabin fever was changed because it was affecting hunkering down playstyles too much. 

As afflictions, food poisoning & hypothermia both tend to push players towards indoor environments to rest up. But in doing so they both increase your risk of triggering cabin fever. At higher difficulties, food scarcity is enough of a pull factor to get you out of the house quickly. My understanding is that cabin fever acts as a pull factor to get people out into the world and interacting. Does it serve that function well? Is it redundant? 

 

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@LucidFugue not sure what you're getting at. My understanding is CF was put in place to counter hibernation style play to compete for longest survival time leader board. That leader board is no more, so there's no real incentive for hibernation play, which in turn means no real reason to keep Cabin Fever. Hunkering down playstyle doesn't come close to exploiting game mechanics as hibernation play style from what I understand. Currently CF prevents passing time or sleeping indoors completely, that is rather drastic, especially in the situations you mentioned. Trigger condition is very simplistic as well, only the amount of time spent in doors matters, with no regards to activities undertaken during that time. 

The suggestions address both mechanism to counter CF as well as more sensible and nuanced trigger conditions. 

Are you suggesting Cabin Fever should be done away with altogether? I don't see any thing really bad about that option. But overall consensus seems favor adjusting the mechanic to add more depth rather than getting rid of it totally. Like others here I think expanding cabin fever rather than eliminating it is good opportunity to add width and depth to game play.

Edited by KinoUnko
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My first instinct is that if a mechanic isn't adding anything, it needs to justify its existence. But I'm not assuming it isn't adding anything just because I haven't experienced it much personally. I'm also not assuming it couldn't be changed so it does add something. If we accept the objective as stated (emphasis mine): 

On 11/9/2017 at 1:23 AM, Hadrian said:


I have a small set of suggestions that I believe will bring Cabin Fever into what I feel is a long-delayed state of harmony & alignment with the rest of the game's design. Just to set the tone, let me throw some important disclaimers down very quickly.

 

I agree with that. I raised a point about the tension between hypothermia & food poisoning forcing players indoors to rest, and cabin fever forcing players outdoors. That, to me, is part of why it isn't in a state of harmony and alignment. Others may disagree, particularly if they experience cabin fever more commonly just playing their way.

But the way I see it, most afflictions are punishments for risky behaviour. Eating spoiled food, dashing across thin ice, staying out too long in freezing temperatures. Even sprains are a result of dashing with heavy loads over uneven terrain, or climbing when you're too tired. You know the risks, but you take them because there are rewards, or more pressing needs. 

You normally don't have the luxury of simply staying staying inside all day because of food and water. Cabin Fever comes about because there are no more pressing needs. It's safe to stay indoors, eating and sleeping. You've got it all under control, and so you're bored. Is Cabin Fever about trying to keep the game interesting when players are are risk of sitting back and feeling like they've done everything there is to do?

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Some more thoughts now that I've mulled this over for another day. 

I don't think Cabin Fever works particularly well as an affliction. @selfless sums it up pretty well. You have this amorphous risk rating, and unlike most other afflictions, it isn't immediately clear how to properly impact it. But Cabin Fever thematically fits in with a lot of other ideas that have been brought up over time. They centre around the concept of psychological wellness. 

This was once on the old roadmap, and Raphael made several mentions of a locket as an item that would be connected to this system. I'd assume there have been attempts to incorporate a concept into the game, but Hinterland just haven't been satisfied with the results so far. Perhaps it has been shelved to focus on other things. 

Reading the summary of ideas for CF 3.0, what has emerged is a multi-factor cause of CF risk, and a multi-factor means of reducing it. It also seems like there's a shift away from just focusing on hibernation. Focusing on time indoors versus time outdoors is too blunt.  

If we're not explicitly targeting hibernation anymore, are we looking at how to simulate a higher level need? I've been a bit sour on heading in this sort of direction previously. Mostly because starting from "a sanity needs bar" and thinking of uses for it doesn't appeal to me.

But the more I think about the types of maluses people are suggesting, the factors proposed to add to and remove from its impact... Is this a system whereby if you are having a richer game experience - exploring the world, gathering resources, making the most of each day - you are getting a more restful sleep and in higher spirits, reflected through condition recovery and success chance at repairs/etc. 

If your worldview has shrunk to just 4 walls and repetitive actions, you become restless and fidgety. If it was a little more nuanced than just hitting a trigger and contracting Cabin Fever, but instead a mechanic woven into the game, that sounds pretty neat actually. 

But I don't know whether the range of current player behaviour makes it possible to construct a more detailed sense of what a "making the most of each day" looks like. 

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22 minutes ago, LucidFugue said:

But I don't know whether the range of current player behaviour makes it possible to construct a more detailed sense of what a "making the most of each day" looks like. 

Very good point. There's also the consideration that once past mid-game, long-term play tends to become a matter of maintaining a regular routine, weather permitting. Often over a 4 - 5 day schedule, so as to best conserve remaining resources. Things like a "hunting day", a "cooking day", a "water-making day", a "wood-gathering day", and so on.

And I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, either. Humans are creatures of habit, and often tend to perform best when their life has structure and routine.

But such routines would clearly need to be taken into account in a re-vamped CF mechanic.

And yes, I'm aware of those players who, like @Hadrian, prefer an unstructured nomadic play style. From what I've seen, it often seems to be a side-effect of the constant movement required to succeed at Interloper. I've noticed that many settled, base-building play-style players become nomadic types after getting to grips with Interloper. But then too, nomadic players generally don't try for for extended long-term games, either.

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On 11/10/2017 at 1:08 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Great stuff. This is the kind of thoughtful, mature discussion that I like to see.

Just to set expectations -- we're far into the December update work and Cabin Fever tweaks are not on the list, but it's something we could possibly look at for the next Survival Mode update.

Can we expect some of your list details that are coming? surely some teasers coming soon would be awesome! even just one or two!

Edited by nicko
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