Honest criteria of TLD

[Tsayers1068]

Overall the game is excellent, and I enjoy it immensely.  However, with a few changes it could, imo, be truly awesome:

1. The wildlife, predatory and otherwise, needs to be much more unpredictable in where you find it.  At present wolves for instance seem to just hang out in particular spots, marching back and forth as if guarding the location.  This feels inauthentic and is also annoying if one needs to get to/through the location.  They also seem to have a tendency to persist in a particular spot for days on end which can be very aggravating as the player is forced to detour around the location over and over.  Wolves should be a hazard, not a persistent obstacle.  It seems to me the solution would be lots and lots of spawn points--the amount of actual wolves or other animals in the map at any given time would remain the same, the animals would just spawn at a different set of points every time with many different points to choose from.  The animals would periodically disappear and respawn at new points every 6-24 hours, preferably only in areas out of sight of the player or when the player is indoors.   Also it would help if the animals would range for much, much further before turning around.   This may not be easy to implement but it would sure make the game feel a lot more immersive.

2. The same deal with items--the game would be much more challenging if it weren't possible to just visit all the known locations where there might be a rifle, for instance, until you find one.  A better approach would be to have each item spawn point capable of spawning one item from a list of different items.  Each item on the list for a particular point would have it's own probability of spawning: obviously you would be far more likely to find, say, a prybar at a given point than a rifle.  Each point would have to have it's own list to prevent things from happening like finding an item where it wouldn't fit or otherwise make sense, like finding a rifle in a small drawer or where there isn't room for it.  There would always be a chance that nothing would spawn at the point.  And yes, a rifle rack would always spawn a rifle if anything, maybe even at an increased chance over a normal point.  This would cause the game to require thought and planning rather than just looking at an online map to see where all the spawn points for the item you want are.

3. Am I the only one that would like a difficulty level that's like Stalker, only with the less frequent/dangerous wolves from Voyageur?

[LucidFugue]

1 - I honestly prefer a commitment to making all wildlife as permanent as possible (e.g. avoiding de-spawning and re-spawning to simulate movement). It would be really frustrating trying to track deer or bears if you knew that the game essentially teleported them around on you every day. 

2 - I'm not sure I'm recognising the difference between how the system currently works and what you're describing. Containers and interiors randomise their loot from a defined list, pretty much exactly as you have described. The lists are based on themes, so you're much more likely to find food items on or inside kitchen cupboards, and much more likely to find clothing laying on top of or stored within bedroom drawers. 

There are pre-defined spots that have a chance (but not guarantee) of specific item spawns, like hunting rifles in rifle racks. Unless you make things near completely randomised, players are naturally going to catalog where it is possible to find key items. 

3 - This is a common request. People either want wolf aggression dialled down to Voyageur levels, or Pilgrim levels, while maintaining Stalker or Interloper level item spawning. No signs of it happening yet, but it's always a possibility I suppose. 

[StrayCat]

#1 is a really good point. You summed it up very well : "Wolves should be a hazard, not a persistent obstacle".

For #3, check the topic about custom difficulty.

[Hadrian]

I concur with @StrayCat; #1 is an excellent observation. I hope to see future sandbox updates add this in. #2 is a little tougher, as I think the game mostly already works that way (*hat tip @LucidFugue*). I think what you're proposing is kind of a different version of what the game currently does, but it might not be as different as you perceive. Essentially, you're proposing a "variable items at fixed spawn points" instead of a "fixed items at variable spawn points" approach; the game currently uses the latter when it comes to certain valuable items, like rifles, and uses the former for the rest of the more common loot.

So the game already uses what you're suggesting; you're just saying that the spawn points of certain valuable items should be less predictable, I think? If I understand you? In the case of some items, like Prepper Caches in Mystery Lake, the game guarantees that they will spawn *somewhere*... but you don't know where. Sure, more spawn points could always be added... that might approximate the effect you're going for, because even a player going down an exhaustive list of spawn locations would have a much longer list of places to check.

 

Even then, whatever Hinterland does to expand upon the current spawn points to add more randomness will always incur certain players endeavoring to map out every possible place things can spawn, because that's just how some people like to do it. So I'm not sure it would achieve the full effect you expect.

Definitely in favor of having custom difficulty sliders built into the game so we can tweak the heck out of Sandbox runs to suit our playstyle.

Side note: Judging by the context of the rest of it, I think you meant to use the latter word of the two below in the title. :-)

cri·te·ri·on

noun

plural noun: criteria

a principle or standard by which something may be judged or decided.
---

cri·tique

noun

a detailed analysis and assessment of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory.
 

Good ideas. Applaud you for taking the time to articulate them. Cheers!

-H

[Fuarian]

I think that areas where we would normally find lots of supplies should sometimes be empty or looted. And other areas may have lots of supplies.

Example; A preset could be that Quonset has little supplies but some survivor out there stockpiled a bunch of supplies in a locked cabin. 

Or we could have it so that main key shelters like the Camp Office, Trapper's Cabin, Trailers and other shelters have a chance of being burned down. They would have some supplies around the burned site. This would force us to use other shelters like small cabins as our main home. This would drastically increase the difficulty for Voyageur and Stalker.