Possible Gameplay issue that locks you out of the summit on Timberwolf map?


Tobtoh

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The Location

On Timberwolf Mountain, to ascend to the summit the first time, I believe the only route is via the Deer Clearing area.

To get to the Deer Clearing area, there is a rope climb with a rope already in place (call it 'A'). Near this rope climb is another rope climb area (without a rope) - call it 'B'.

If you attach a rope at the 'B' rope climb, you can descend from Deer Clearing, however the rope doesn't reach the bottom. Instead it stops at a small ledge, which you can then climb down to the path, but not back up (ie you cannot use this rope climb at B to access Deer Clearing).

The Issue

So I ascended the rope climb at 'A' (entering the Deer Clearing zone). I took the rope at 'A' and moved it to 'B', and then climbed down to the path.

Now I can't climb back to Deer Clearing via 'B' (because the rope is inaccessible from the path), nor can I ascend via 'A' (since the rope is no longer there). And I don't believe there is any other method to access this area the first time you are trying to reach the summit.

So it looks like if you do what I did, you lock yourself out from ever reaching the summit.

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I only ever use one rope to get up to deer clearing...and then it's a straight regular climb the rest of the way up TImberwolf from there. In fact all the ropes needed to climb Timberwolf are already in place, you can however (find one) to place a rope on the way down which will work from at least one position- I've just personally never done it.

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18 minutes ago, RossBondReturns said:

I only ever use one rope to get up to deer clearing...

Yup - although that's not the issue I'm raising. My point is that if you move the rope at 'A' to 'B' (in my case, to create a shorter path from the Cave to Deer Clearing), you prevent yourself from being able to re-access Deer Clearing again.

Hinterland has been very careful with the design of the maps and the rope climbing sections so that there always an alternate path to access an area so that you can never lock yourself out of a zone because you removed a rope. The one exception is Deer Clearing - and hence why I'm raising it as a gameplay issue.

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5 minutes ago, Tobtoh said:

Yup - although that's not the issue I'm raising. My point is that if you move the rope at 'A' to 'B' (in my case, to create a shorter path from the Cave to Deer Clearing), you prevent yourself from being able to re-access Deer Clearing again.

Hinterland has been very careful with the design of the maps and the rope climbing sections so that there always an alternate path to access an area so that you can never lock yourself out of a zone because you removed a rope. The one exception is Deer Clearing - and hence why I'm raising it as a gameplay issue.

And I'm just saying that such a route seems to be very indirect and circuitous. It might not even be a route they had considered, I dunno.

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5 hours ago, Tobtoh said:

I took the rope at 'A' and moved it to 'B', and then climbed down to the path.

Now I can't climb back to Deer Clearing via 'B' (because the rope is inaccessible from the path)

I can confirm this.  The rope drops straight into a ledge.  You can walk down this ledge safely, but you cannot get back up.  You can't even see the end of the rope.  I also tried using the rope I found in the Mountaineer's Hut and I tried the rope I took from the cliff by the Engine.  All of the ropes deploy the same way.

Either this was intended not to be a way back up, or perhaps @Tobtoh was the first person to ever even try this and so it hadn't yet been reported as a bug!

Cheers buddy!  I hadn't even noticed that you could take the ropes back after deploying them!

 

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2 hours ago, cekivi said:

I've never gotten stuck on a ledge...

The rope climb at 1700,1400 is what I was referring to as 'A', and the rope climb (with no rope) at 1500,1300 is what I referred to as B (the one that leads to the cave).

The issue isn't that I'm getting stuck on the ledge, the issue is that if you step off that ledge, there is no way to get back to the deer clearing if you have moved the rope from B to A.

ie.

  1. Start at base of 'A' rope climb ... ascend to Deer Clearing zone
  2. Take rope from 'A' and move it to 'B'
  3. Climb down rope at 'B' and you end up on a ledge
  4. Jump off the ledge to the path below

Now how do you get back to the Deer Clearing? You can't climb back onto the ledge to reach the B rope. And there is no longer a rope at A. 

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5 hours ago, cekivi said:

Are you sure you locked yourself out of the area completely? Looking at the map as long as you left some route down you should always be able to get back up...

Well this is part of the issue I'm raising :) By moving the rope from A to B, I think it's perfectly reasonable for a player to believe that they have left a route up/down to Deer Clearing at B. Except because of that ledge being a one-way path, you don't realise you can't get back up to Deer Clearing until it's too late.

And the repercussion of that is that you are forever locked out of the upper zones of the Timberwolf map - that seems like a fatally flawed game design. No other rope climb area in any other map has this flaw - there is always another way to access a zone.

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Well technically speaking you probably can get back to Deer Clearing still just not the way you had thought or intended.

Trust me after starting on Timberwolf so often using Random start for my region I've pretty much found my way to everywhere from everywhere. That's not to say it's gonna be easy but I do believe it's possible.

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3 hours ago, RossBondReturns said:

Well technically speaking you probably can get back to Deer Clearing still just not the way you had thought or intended.

There isn't. I've been all over the map - there are only three ways to get to the upper regions of Timberwolf (ie Deer Clearing, Erics Falls etc) from the lower regions. Two of the ways are at Deers Clearing - only one of which has a rope (A), and the other (B) is a one-way path (you can only descend). The third way is over at Eric's Falls which has no rope and cannot be accessed from the lower regions (which means it's impassable when you first enter Timberwolf).

If you know of an actual fourth way, I'm happy to hear you describe the exact location. But I strongly believe there isn't one.

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11 hours ago, Tobtoh said:

The rope climb at 1700,1400 is what I was referring to as 'A', and the rope climb (with no rope) at 1500,1300 is what I referred to as B (the one that leads to the cave).

The issue isn't that I'm getting stuck on the ledge, the issue is that if you step off that ledge, there is no way to get back to the deer clearing if you have moved the rope from B to A.

ie.

  1. Start at base of 'A' rope climb ... ascend to Deer Clearing zone
  2. Take rope from 'A' and move it to 'B'
  3. Climb down rope at 'B' and you end up on a ledge
  4. Jump off the ledge to the path below

Now how do you get back to the Deer Clearing? You can't climb back onto the ledge to reach the B rope. And there is no longer a rope at A. 

That's incredibly weird since that's the shortcut I've been using since the Timberwolf Mountain map was released. I always move the rope so I can shelter in the cave on my way up/down the mountain and then quickly resume climbing. I don't remember a shelf there unless the game map was altered in a recent release... Do you have any screenshots? I won't have time to play until the weekend but if something was changed recently it was certainly accidental.

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Sure ... here are four shots:

  1. fromtop.png - From the top of the 'B' rope climb (you can see the 'cave' in the distance at the end of the path)
  2. goingdown.png - the view of the ledge as you descend (notice it doesn't reach the path below)
  3. onledge.png - the view standing on the ledge. To reach the path below, you have to descend in a series of short jumps on the right
  4. atthebottom.png - view from the path. Note that the rope doesn't reach the path directly. Nor is there any way to climb back up to that ledge.

fromtop.png

goingdown.png

onledge.png

atthebottom.png

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35 minutes ago, cekivi said:

 I always move the rope so I can shelter in the cave on my way up/down the mountain and then quickly resume climbing.

Haha yeah that was my thinking too ... which is why I got caught out with that ledge :)

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Possibly an issue with the new rock models?

During the 4 days of night event, I went to explore TWM.

I was trying to reach the summit through the climbing rope at 400-1400. I was almost completely certain that wasn't a rope I had moved, but I was unable to find it. I gave up thinking it could be a visibility problem, but I haven't checked it up again now. 

Could it be that the last update messed a bit the geometry? I'll have a look as soon as I can :) 

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3 minutes ago, cekivi said:

I can guarantee you @Tobtoh that the rope used to go all the way to the bottom of the hill. This definitely looks like a bug/glitch/unintentional oversight. I assume you play on PC? I'll copy the post over to bug reports to start getting this looked at.

I play on an iMac - latest OSX.

Thanks for getting it looked at :)

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Once you climb down to that ledge you can't climb back up the rope either, I noticed that a while back but figured someone must have noticed it by then.

I didn't step off the ledge but didn't have the option to select the rope to climb back up so I just ended the game so I could start at my last saved spot.

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  • 4 months later...

Any updates on a fix for this? I'm on 190+ days, my longest campaign, and I just made this mistake and am now cut off from the summit. It's been 4 months since this was brought up, so I'm just wondering if there's any update or solution to get around this. 

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