How To Up Our Game

[ttoyooka]

Lots of wishlist ideas seem to be aimed at making the game easier. I confess, most of my ideas, when I've had them, were born out of a sense of unfairness after I died in the game for some reason I disagreed with. But life isn't fair, and I've always thought that TLD is at its best when it's unforgiving.

So, in that spirit, I want to float ideas and have a discussion about making the game harder.

Let's first all agree that these are "what if" ideas, not fully fleshed-out change requests, and so game mechanics would still need to be balanced or you'll end up either with an exploit, or a rage-quit mechanic.

Here's a few to start. These all relate to skill levels.

• Cooking level 5 eliminates all risk of food poisoning and intestinal parasites from your cooked food, which I consider overpowered. What if the risk were significantly lowered, but never eliminated.
• Fire-starting level 3 makes tinder optional with no side effects, which renders a whole class of items obsolete. What if tinder were optional, but not using it either decreases the chance of success or increases the time required.
• Archery skill can be increased by a bonus from merely crafting an arrow, which makes it a bit too easy, in my opinion. What if this skill bonus were eliminated after reaching level 2. In other words, after level 2, skill is only increased by successful hits and skill books, just like the rifle.

Thoughts?  Your own ideas on making the game harder?

[odizzido]

I 100% want this game to be harder, I think it's way too easy. I agree with the tinder, not using it should drop % chance. I don't care about archery skill though because it's never been something I've needed(food is incredibly easy to get)

I disagree with the intestinal parasites, I personally think the risk should be 0 at cooking lvl 2. If you're getting parasites from what you're eating it simply means you didn't cook it enough and what kind of terrible cook can't even cook meat through? If anything you should only get them once and then start losing more calories from cooked food because you're burning it.

 

These are the things that do not pose a challenge for me:
1) Having enough firewood - houses are just warm forever so you don't need a fire unless cooking. If house temps dropped sometimes that would give us something to prepare for and something to be dangerous if we hadn't. This is a problem with matches though(we need a fire bow or something at lvl 4/5)
2) Having enough food - Animals are everywhere constantly, it's impossible to starve. Wolves even come right up to you to give you their meat.**more below**
3) Water - Water is something you just always have and poses no challenge at all. What if it got cold and eventually refroze? Maybe we could also eat the ice/snow with a cooling down penalty?

**Okay so food**
So I think people should have to put more effort/thought into food. The very start of the game should be a little easier though so for rabbits I was thinking something like this:
Rabbit zone A has a population counter of 15
Player moves into zone, kills the six that are up, zone A now has no rabbits in it and a population counter of 9
New rabbits will spawn after a little
The population counter goes up by 1 every few days
If the population counter ever goes below 2 the population counter stops going up and a new month long timer begins to put the population back up to 3
Population counter will drop even if a wolf kills the rabbit
 

Having more up at once will allow you to see if there aren't many left. Like if you go into the rabbit grove and can only count three you could visually see that it might not be a good idea to kill them. If you see 8 then you can safely kill 4 of them. If you kill all 8 you risk killing off the population in that area. It would give people a reason to pay attention and think about what they're doing while also reducing the number of rabbits you can get long term without decreasing the number you get short term.


The wolf population should be reduced by 90% and they should be more dangerous so encountering them is meaningful. Currently they're just everywhere and they pose very little threat while offering you a lot of resources.

Deer should also be much more rare, though not as rare as wolves. I think they should be trackable on good days too

[Carbon]

 This topic needs some serious qualification.

 One can make the game more difficult than Interloper with custom settings, so the most difficult scenario possible must be a base line. Here you go: a code that is actually quite realistic.

 Code: 8MHM-vSMP-Dwmn-CpuW-VwAA

 A video of a guy who did just that (actually a bit easier): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFcl_h1HOHg

 Good luck.

[odizzido]

I wonder if you could burn enough calories to eat two whole deer per day if you ran around enough with the very high setting. The number of animals you eat in this game is hilariously high.

[JAFO]

3 hours ago, odizzido said:

If you stuff your character like a xmas turkey the number of animals you can eat in this game is hilariously high.

Fixed that for you..

It's possible to get by on much saner amounts of food, if you choose to. My character thinks it's xmas if he gets more than 2 1000 calorie meals a day. He gets a steak for breakfast, then that's it until bedtime, when he gets another steak. Only rarely do I exceed that, it's unnecessary, and wasteful of both food and ammo.

[odizzido]

I've found if you switch "at-rest condition recovery rate" to none and put "condition recovery rate" to low you will need to keep yourself fed much more often. It's silly to not gain life when sleeping but it's even more silly to get by on less than 1000 calories per day which is what I could do with the at-rest recovery.

[JAFO]

16 minutes ago, odizzido said:

I've found if you switch "at-rest condition recovery rate" to none and put "condition recovery rate" to low

Must admit I haven't really messed much with the custom settings.. been waiting for Hinterland to sort out the many problems with it (and the game in general) before coming back to TLD. So my remark really only applies to the stock game, as to what I regard as a reasonable balance between starvation tactics and the ridiculous levels of overeating the game permits/encourages.

[Hotzn]

On 14.4.2018 at 8:37 PM, ttoyooka said:

Lots of wishlist ideas seem to be aimed at making the game easier. I confess, most of my ideas, when I've had them, were born out of a sense of unfairness after I died in the game for some reason I disagreed with. But life isn't fair, and I've always thought that TLD is at its best when it's unforgiving.

So, in that spirit, I want to float ideas and have a discussion about making the game harder.

Let's first all agree that these are "what if" ideas, not fully fleshed-out change requests, and so game mechanics would still need to be balanced or you'll end up either with an exploit, or a rage-quit mechanic.

Here's a few to start. These all relate to skill levels.

• Cooking level 5 eliminates all risk of food poisoning and intestinal parasites from your cooked food, which I consider overpowered. What if the risk were significantly lowered, but never eliminated.
• Fire-starting level 3 makes tinder optional with no side effects, which renders a whole class of items obsolete. What if tinder were optional, but not using it either decreases the chance of success or increases the time required.
• Archery skill can be increased by a bonus from merely crafting an arrow, which makes it a bit too easy, in my opinion. What if this skill bonus were eliminated after reaching level 2. In other words, after level 2, skill is only increased by successful hits and skill books, just like the rifle.

Thoughts?  Your own ideas on making the game harder?

Agree with all your ideas. Also concerning the wolves, I would love to see less wolves but more meaningful encounters (wolf struggles being more dangerous). I would further love to have wolf packs roaming the landscape. Best thing would be to have them announce their presence with howling (and maybe a message "a wolf pack is on the move!"). You would then have to be very careful not to run into them - best would be to seek shelter close by and wait it out (until a message appears "the wolves have moved on"). Of course, if you're caught in a bad spot or do not have the resources to hole up somewhere, you may find yourself in a tight spot. Such roaming packs would force you to make interesting decisions - try to venture out to that interesting loot point and risk getting cornered there by a pack appearing before you return?

[TheEldritchGod]

I think the problem is a bit more basic. Frankly, the staff at HL seems to be very very good at programing. They do not seem to have the indepth background in game theory that I would have liked to see. Their success seems to have been by accident and not by design. That said, it's a wonderful accident. Regardless, I could have predicted the outcome quite easily because it's obvious. I'll highlight the basic Game Theory they are ignoring:

Different Gamers like Different Things.

The game seems to have sort of stumbled across the concept of different strokes for different folks. The game is non-conflict, by which I mean there is no PvP. This appeals to a certain sort of gamer, but their are many sub groups of that type. The main two groups are, the "tourist" as I call it and the power gamer. The ones who just want to enjoy the game and absorb the fluff want to forget what is going on. These types of player lover the hidden object aspect of the game.

The other ones are like me, die hard number crunchers. We turn off the graphics so the cattails are easier to find. We starve all day and then only eat right before sleep to maximize caloric benefit. We drink .09 kg of our brewed cups of Rose Hips and save the last .01 kg of each cup because 6 pain pills only restores 3 sprains for a weight of .10 kg, and 3 cups of rose hip tea does the same thing at a weight of .03 kg.

Some of us look past the fluff and care only of the mechanics. Some couldn't give a CRAP about the mechanics and only want great immersive fluff.

As I stated before, they got a great balance of the two, but the more I play and the more I look into the fluff, the more it seems like an accident. The problem always is when you have happy accidents, it's hard to reproduce. I think they might be going in the right direction, but there are many many easy fixes that they can do to greatly improve the game and I assume would be very code-lite to implement. I have spoken of this elsewhere and will not repeat myself.

This is why I think the story mode is failing. They are taking the great balance of sandbox and screwing it up. I made suggestions on how to correct this and that's up to them.

You are correct in that the game needs to be harder. But it also needs to be easier. It got a fairly steep learning curve, but when learned, it's too easy. The game doesn't scale well. You need it to a bit more forgiving in the mid range, but much harder at the high end.

Having watched the video at the last developer's conference, I think they are finally getting a handle on the fluff aspect. We'll see if they follow through. Ironically, fluff is the easiest part to create in a game. A few notes here, a few bodies there, boom. Fluff. And fluff is important. Many of us ignore the fluff, but the fluff appeals to a large number of players and we need those players to buy the game to keep the money flowing so the developers can keep their job and make more content.

However, you need to appeal to number crunchers as well. Which brings me to the fact they need a DLC. Yes, people hate DLCs, but this DLC should be mostly fluff. A wide selection of new clothing and other items that are basically recolors of old items. Don't charge much. Don't add any new functions But for 1.99 you can replace your soda with coke products or find RIT dye to change the color of clothing items. Nothing functional, just cosmetic. They've had the game out long enough that we can give them a pass for a DLC to drum up extra cash to keep the lights on.

ONE. DLC. Just... ONE. Don't push your luck.

Then they need to put out more objects and blueprints that scale and become unlocked as skills advance. Nothing game breaking, but things that give you small advantages. Objects you can craft out of dozens of rocks and new clothing you can craft. I would love to add bone as a craftable item. Nothing game breaking. In fact, the objects can be slightly inferior. But I know I wear some things just because I want my clothing to match. Not everything is about number crunching. Some of it is all about style and having fun.

This is a more in depth analysis of the psychology of the game I put together.

If any changes do not reinforce the psychology of the game that made it fun to play, then the changes will ultimately harm the game in the long run.

[stapeliad]

13 hours ago, TheEldritchGod said:

The game is non-conflict, by which I mean there is no PvP.

In the context of TLD, do you mean PvP in the sense of the player versus himself?
Otherwise PvP makes no sense in TLD.

The PVE is all about conflict here.

Crafting with bones is an excellent idea, and also quite realistic.

[ttoyooka]

Hey all, thanks for the replies. It must have looked like I abandoned this post, but I didn't mean to; things got busy in life. I haven't had a chance to read all the replies, but I will when I can get a bit of spare time.

I'll just add that my original line of thought with this thread was not "interloper's not hard enough for me" but rather, that it's very easy to come up with ideas that make things easier, like "let me jump so I can go places I can't currently go" or "give me a sled so I can carry more than I can currently carry" or "give me more weapons so I can get more food than I can currently get."  I hasten to add that I do sympathize with a lot of these kinds of suggestions.

But it's perhaps more interesting to propose things that make the game harder - and across all difficulty levels.

So. Another thought (if someone hasn't already mentioned it above), is that I find the decoy mechanic makes killing wolves too easy. Perhaps the player should be required to back off from the decoy (a lot more than we currently need to), otherwise the wolf will just circle the decoy unpredictably, and possibly attack you anyway. Just make wolves a bit less predictable in general.

And another: as far as I can see, the bow & arrow has no sway while aiming.  I think it should, like the rifle.  Tho' maybe not quite as much.

[Wormer]

On 4/14/2018 at 9:37 PM, ttoyooka said:

Here's a few to start. These all relate to skill levels.

• Cooking level 5 eliminates all risk of food poisoning and intestinal parasites from your cooked food, which I consider overpowered. What if the risk were significantly lowered, but never eliminated.
• Fire-starting level 3 makes tinder optional with no side effects, which renders a whole class of items obsolete. What if tinder were optional, but not using it either decreases the chance of success or increases the time required.
• Archery skill can be increased by a bonus from merely crafting an arrow, which makes it a bit too easy, in my opinion. What if this skill bonus were eliminated after reaching level 2. In other words, after level 2, skill is only increased by successful hits and skill books, just like the rifle.

Thoughts?  Your own ideas on making the game harder?

These 3 points are great. I upvote for every and each one! Was coming with the first two ideas on my own earlier.

To make game harder and less irritating are two big differences. Some settings make the game harder through annoyance. Take a high weather change rate for instance. On interloper I have to consider not to go into a building (even just in and out!), because stupidly enough there is some sort of a trigger that changes the weather every time you go outside the building. Annoying.

Some more ideas to increase the difficulty of the game:

1. Allow melting water only when using an outside fire.
2. Wolves shouldn't be scared of an unstarted fire. When the weather is not very windy there is a legit tactic to drop a fire right under the wolf's nose. Poor animal running like a puppy. This should work in 50% of cases: sometimes wolves don't directly attack you but stand around preparing for a fight. If the fire got burned during that time then wolf will run, if not it's chasing you.
3. Require to find item's blueprint before the item can be crafted.

In addition to the second point more about fires that doesn't make the game harder but could make game deeper/more interesting:

• As a compensation for the second point, allow to fight wolves with a burning torch/flare. This should scare them off almost immediately with little to no consequences even on interloper. Though you can always get a little bruise or a bite that have to be bandaged. This seems more legit than a fire turtling mechanics we have.
• Allow fires stared (or supported) with an accelerant or fuel last even in a stormy weather.
• Make a small bonus to starting a fire on an existing place and a bigger bonus in a stove, barrel etc.
• Increase time and/or chance penalty for making a fire with magnifying lens. In addition with mag lens allow to start fires only using tinder or accelerant/fuel even on level 5.

Finally, would love to see more long-term goals. Number three helps with making the long-term game harder. Consider putting a rifle on interloper somewhere on a very hard accessible location like containers on the top of the Timberwolf Mountain locked with a key you have to find somewhere else. Even better, make rifle a craftable item from a stock and a barrel. One part is found in a container locked with the key that may be found in Prepper's Cache. The other part is locked under the electronic lock that works only during the aurora. The code for the electronic lock must be obtained on one of the computers in Hydro Dam during another aurora. That computer have to connect to a mail server... somewhere. Connection isn't working and you have to fix the translation tower in Forlorn Muskeg first. Put rifle's blueprint somewhere too! This makes for an excellent long-term quest-goal to achieve!

The game needs sort of "events" or special "quests" to make the long game interesting. Since I touched the long-term goals I'll drop several ideas about that too.

• One have been proposed before and also mentioned in the second post in this thread: make a somewhat repeatable event down the road when temperatures drop off below zero even indoors.
• Make an Old Bear sleeping in a cave somewhere (random location) that when bothered will hunt you. Can't kill it with the bow (only scare away), need assemble rifle for that.
• Make it possible to repair the Radio Tower using a component from a crashed plane or somewhere else which will translate music throughout the world radio during the aurora.