Mystix's new wishlist


Mystix

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Hi team,

I know you're reading, so thank you for making my favorite game! When I took a look at my previous wish list (link) I was glad to see that most of the things found their way into the game over time. The thing I'm most grateful is the bow - it's been my favorite tool in the game ever since you added it.

Here's my second list of things that I think will improve the quality of the game and will bring a bit more realism to the experience. I'm sorry it's too long, but I prefer to have it in one place instead of making 20 threads about everything. Also I know some of the stuff may already be written somewhere but I'll write them anyway so you see that there is high demand.

High priority list (definitely should be implemented when you have the time to do it):


1. Let meat have it's own smelliness factor on it's own so animals would be attracted to it. The way it is now when you carry meat on you, you become a wolf magnet. But when it's on the ground, and the wolves didn't see you drop it they would just walk over it and ignore it.

2. Allow a dragging action (for example with the right button) for small outdoor containers (like backpacks, plastic and metal containers) to compliment the above wish. If we can move these closer to our bases we can safely store the meat in closed containers right there. The dragging action should also be possible for other small objects, like branches for example, and we should be able to slooowly drag dead wolves and deer.

3. Fire temperature should affect the speed of cooking and boiling. For example a slow fire will take longer time for both actions and a bigger fire will take less time. For example a fire made with 2 sticks can get you 1 liter of water for the same amount of time like the fire in a forge with lots of coal and 200 degrees output.

4. No melting of snow should be required when you are inside a fishing hut with a cleared hole. Why would you melt snow when you have water right there? Skip right to the boiling.

5. Have free time while fishing. I know some people find ice fishing boring so they want a minigame for reeling the fish out for example but I think it's okay - it is boring and it's meant to be. What I wish though is to have free time while the tackle is in there. For example I'd like to be able to tend the fire and cook, read a book, rest in my sleeping bag or prepare some rose hips for boiling while I'm fishing. There should of course still be the option to skip the time as it currently is if you have nothing better to do.

6. We should be able to look around unlimited at 360° while in cars and move between the left and the right seat, no matter front or back. The current viewing limitations inside cars makes it impossible to track the movements of an animal for example.

7. Wounds should not only drop the character's condition for the current moment and then allow him to recover but should affect the condition like the burns currently do (with the red bar) and slowly minimize and allow for recovery to occur. Burns do this better but they should not keep your condition low for 5 days straight and then suddenly disappear and allow you to recover. Both wounds and burns should have the red bar that will slowly make room for recovery, just like in reality when you have a wound or burn hurts you (which makes you feel that you're not at a 100%) and as they heal you feel better and better and feel less pain over time.

8. Painkillers should work for all pain. When you pop 2 pills you can't choose whether they should affect your wrist or your foot,  they help for all your pain. You can achieve that with an injection, locally, but I don't want to see needles in the game. :S And I'm not going to complain about the amount of sprains, I definitely think they happen as mush as they need because the character is walking and occasionally running on snow, that probably has ice below it, with a load on his back - this is begging for a sprain.

9. Walking uphill should give a degree of warming bonus, running should give a few more degrees. Climbing on ropes should get your blood boiling for at least half an hour after you've stopped. Anything that makes you spend too much calories too fast should make you give off heat. It could be added like the bonus from a hot drink and the duration could be determined according to the calories spent.

10. Make toilet water non-potable. Everyone wants to boil that water they got from the toilet.

11. Pause activities when there are animals approaching.
Example: I have a rabbit in my backpack and I go to explore. I stop to do some mapping with the charcoal and when the activity is done (the loading bar dissapears) there are three wolves already circling around me and waiting for me to be done, each one takes their turn at me and I die. In this situation this mechanic had an unfair negative effect. 
Another example: I'm harvesting a wolf carcass and cooking the meat, when I'm done (and loading bar disappears) I see that a bear walked through me and is standing just a few meters away, but when my character was in this "weightlessness" state it caused the bear to ignore me. In this situation the mechanic had an unfair positive effect.
My suggestion is to pause the current activity, whatever it is (harvesting, cooking, mapping, etc.) when the character notices that there is a dangerous animal approaching. This will give enough time to take some action - light a fire, pull a weapon or run towards a safe place, because when you see a bear approaching you won't just stay to finish your chapter of "Advanced Guns, Guns, Guns".

12. Review boundaries of open windows at outdoor buildings so shooting through them is possible. I was in a situation where I tried to shoot a wolf with an arrow through a window of the maintenance shed and I ended up breaking the arrow. A test to place an object through the windows showed that they are blocked and objects don't go through. I was pleasantly surprised to see that shooting is possible through the broken windows of the PV farmhouse's sunroom. I'm not sure about other locations with broken/open windows but I think they should be reviewed.

13. Add the following commonly found IRL items:
- axes for chopping wood faster, at the expense of being much heavier than a hatchet. Wouldn't carry it around with me but will leave it in my base.
- kitchen knives that would be more common that the hunting knife, at the expense that they'll get ruined faster. Apparently the people that lived on the island left their houses in a hurry and left behind some food and clothes, but they took all of their knives with them?
- lighters that should be rare and weigh a bit more but should be good to fire anything between 5 to 20 fires depending on the fuel they have. When you get a really good fire starting skill you will be able to use just the spark for at least 20 more fires until it breaks.
- reading glasses, that could be used to start a fire but probably more slowly than a magnifier.
- pens and pencils to use for mapping. When you go out on a mapping session you have to take 10 kilos of charcoal with you instead of a light pen or pencil? I love the hand-painted charcoal look of the map, but we should probably need a bit charcoal to just start a map of the region and then continue to modify it with a pencil.

14. Add an option for making individual notes on the maps. I for example want to indicate where I've left a rifle, which building has a workbench or a forge, which buildings have laptops or PC's that I should check during the next aurora. Also it would be good to be able to "erase" some of the icons (like cat tails or saplings) when these resources are not there anymore. This kind of customization will increase the feeling of ownership of the map, making it truly your own.

15. Allow sleeping anywhere, without the warming bonus from the bedroll and add a penalty for sleeping on a cold surface - for example your "feels like" will be lower and you might wake up with a "stiffness" that will lower your condition with 10% percent until you sleep in a real bed or bedroll.
Also make it possible to make a bedroll out of wolf skins too (why not take 6 of them to make one). It's just silly not to do that with the tons of wolf skins you have but go and kill two bears just to make it. It should be warmer than the sleeping bag but not as warm as the bear's.

 

Low priority list (should be implemented some time but I won't cry a lot if you don't):

16. Allow us to extinguish fires and collect some of the wood back and also add an option to remove a campfire (probably an "X" icon as a last option in the picker will do).

17. Make caves dark again. It's great that some caves have openings to have light and wood go through, but the places that are further from an opening should be darker. The cave should punish you for forgetting to bring a lantern and cause you to use a few matches if you don't have anything else. Of course we also have the possibility to "feel" our way around by dropping an object and dragging it around in the cave to find a way you can walk towards.

18. Move the bow and arrows from the workbench to the manual crafting menu. You can absolutely create a makeshift bow and arrows anywhere you are and while having some downtime (while fishing for example) and a hatchet or a knife. It absolutely does not require a flat surface like the clothes do.

19. Improve item positioning boundaries so items can be placed closer to each other and not require too much space between them.

20. Dry wood. I've read that you have a "hidden" dryness quality to wood. Please go on with this idea because this is one of the most fundamental issues a survivor will face in the winter. Wet wood will start a fire slowly (if they will at all) and won't raise the temperature as much as the dry wood. You'll have to plan ahead and put your newly collected wood closer to the fire. Newly fallen sticks will not be so wet but the wood from heavy limbs that have stayed in the snow will have to be dried for days. This will be a good challenge if you go on with it, because quite frankly we kind of have it easy with the wood.

21. Add possibility to listen for transmissions in Signal Hill control room (or similarly radio equipped areas) during auroras. Could be done by rotating a knob (similar to opening a safe minigame) to switch frequencies and listen for transmissions. Also the character could try to call for help with that equipment - say a few lines like "is anyone there", "if anyone can hear this...". Any pilot knows how to use a radio. Here's a chance to add a heavily distorted chatter that occasionally sounds on some frequency - this will be something to scratch our heads about, like the HRV signal fire.
Spoiler ahead (skip if you haven't seen the signal hill buffer memories): After reading the journal of the last lady that worked at the signal hill I know it's been used to transmit weather forecasts, and she is the one that put the the classical music we can listen to when the radios work. So the control room should be used for something like this.

22. Make climbing down ropes possible with any amount of gear. In reality you would tie your backpack to the rope, descend it safely and then you'd go down the rope too or just throw any unbreakable objects down first. I know this will be hard to execute in the game and you've talked about how hard it would be to separate the inventory from the character, so at least allow us to climb down while (encumbered) with more gear.

23. While the inventory is filtered alphabetically or by weight first, make it sort the items by quality second. For example:
Two liters of water (2 kg/100%), Wolf meat (1kg/100%), Wolf meat (1kg/85%), Wolf meat (1kg/70%)...

24. Add alternative key mapping option, for example to be able to open inventory with "I" key as well as be able to set an alternative "mouse button 4". Also please make it possible to switch through items in horizontal menus with "A" and "D" or "Left" and "Right" keys (like how many hours to sleep / what to use to break the ice in the hole / what item to cook on this slot) and switch through vertical menu items with "W" and "S" or "Up" and "Down" keys. The mouse scroller should be usable in all these cases as well instead of clicking tiny arrows on the screen.

25. Name screenshots by date first. I can see that the names of the screenshots contain some data related to the game, but when you sort them by name the way they are named now, they arrange themselves kind of randomly. Can you please make the name of screenshots begin with screen_yyyymmdd_ and then the rest of the code? 


Phew! That was a lot of stuff. I have collected these thoughts in a txt file for a while now, I hope they help make the game better!
I want to also say that I strongly support a suggestion in another topic to make items stored outside freeze so we'll have to unfreeze or warm up before consuming.
And also, animators, please give us an occasional falling star at night!
Screenshot_1.png.2f3a25775d90306fd8f27ab1ba925097.png

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1. Isn't that how "bait" works? Granted, I see what you're saying. Definitely not my #1 thing to put on any list though hah.
2. I don't know how big you are, but unless I polish the ice below that deer, I won't be dragging it anywhere. I get the concept, but I think the quartering idea covers that.
3. I think this is just too menial for implementation. Personal opinion, of course.
4. Yes, please.
5. Going to disagree with this one, especially since it's just a hook on a line.
6. Yes, please.
8. Painkillers are already a bit too ludicrously OP imo, so... hush. :)
9. I have mentioned this with running.
10. Actually, most toilet water (I assume you take it out of the tank, not where you dropped your kids off at the pool) is just as clean as anything running through any tap in the US. Granted, I know the game takes place in Canada, but I suspect it works the same.
11. Instead of pause, perhaps an interrupt option where you can choose to stop and react or ignore.
14. YES PLEASE!
15. Yes, please, but let you rest up aside the wall of the cave... and turn into one of those frozen corpses you loot.
18. Yes, please.
19. I suspect that involves too much code.
23. Sortability would be so great, on so many levels.

You've got some great ideas though. Just wanted to put in my 2 cents...

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