My top five wishes

[grrbear]

Gameplay for the survival genre tends to focus on resource management and cost-benefit analysis, presenting the player with choices that force him or her to think about the consequences of the decision.  You leave your camp for some foraging, you take a moment to look at your inventory and decide what to bring and what to leave behind.  You consider the possibilities, weigh them against your own skills and style of play, and then take the plunge.  This is what's fun for me.  I like having choices to make and then being rewarded when I make a good choice or frantically dealing with bad ones.  Sigh - a lot of bad ones.

In that spirit, here are a few additions I would like to see in TLD:

1. Alcohol: Cabin Fever getting you down? Can't get that eerie wolf howl out of your head? Have a nice cold beer. Or maybe a snort of whiskey. That'll calm your nerves, relax you, maybe even warm the insides a bit... but would also double your rate of dehydration, make it harder to aim a weapon for a short time, and increase your chances of hurting yourself while walking around.  You could even use whiskey as a rough substitute for antiseptic in a pinch. Hey, the game is set in Canada, where the hell's the beer?
2. Foxes: We know the roadmap promises more wildlife, and I hope to see foxes added some day.  Imagine an animal that is competing with you for the same food.  The fox will hunt rabbits, of course, but not you.  If you kill any wildlife, the fox could be a threat to steal anything you leave behind. You'd have to make a decision about how much to harvest and carry back to your camp, because there would always be a risk that a fox could come along and snatch what's left.  I know many times I've fought a wolf and let him run away, knowing that he would eventually return to his spawn area and die, so I'd come back the next day after healing up to harvest the body.  Adding the fox means that you might have to follow that dying wolf because there might not be a body left to find later on.  Also, killing the fox would be much more difficult than killing a wolf - he'd be quicker and less susceptible to ambushes.  The whole map would be his spawn area so you'd never know where to find him, but the reward would be a fox pelt scarf with double the stats of the regular scarf.
3. Wet/dry clothing: I've seen this requested before, so let me add my voice to this.  The decay rates on clothing seem a little out of line with reality unless you added a wet/dry factor to the mix. Spending five minutes outside in a blizzard shouldn't drastically drop your clothing condition, but could make them wet, reducing their effectiveness until you dried them out in front of a fire.  The open water shoreline has provided the risk of thin ice, but it should also make your boots and pants wet.  
4. Moose: All I want here is if you shoot a moose and you don't kill it, he charges you instead of runs away. I've seen a moose charge in real life and it is terrifying as hell.  If he hits you, he does as much damage as a bear attack (drops you down to 10%).  
5. Toboggan: Again, let me add my voice to the others that have asked for this. I would especially like it if we could get this and it also makes you a target for wolf attacks if you're carrying meat on it.

Apologies if some or all of these ideas have already been brought up.  I also thought about bowel movements as a gameplay mechanic but that's probably a little too immersive.  Otherwise, I love this game and can't wait to see what comes next.

[alone sniper]

Hi @grrbear !!
Welcome to TLD forum ! 

[silversun]

Foxes and alcohol sound great to me, also the wet dry dynamic would make the clothes decay more realistic. Not sure about the moose charging everytime though, I think it would be more realistic or unpredictable if sometimes he charges and sometimes runs away.

[AZHockeyNut]

the game IS set in Canada eh? LOL Loved that. Where's the beer and the Whiskey? SOOO true!!!!

Totally need some of that and I love the idea with how it could effect the game play. I too have thought of foxes stealing the leftovers or even the food/hides I store outside (they decay a lot less) so the porch is a good spot to store stuff since no sneaky sly fox is around to swipe it.

 

[MarrowStone]

+1 to all except I heard the devs are aiming for a T-rated game (for Teen) so alcohol use may not make the cut. 

Dont take my word for it though.

[Wastelander]

+1 for alcohol. About the rating issue @MarrowStone mentioned, I don't think adding alcohol will change much of the rating unless alcohol consumption is mandatory or glorified, both of which could be easily countered by just giving it downsides (dehydration, game stating an incorrect feels-like-temperature, a hangover-affliction and so on). The Spongebob movie got away with at least heavily implying binge-drinking out of frustration. If we look at Wikipedia's definition of the T-rating by the ESRB:

Quote

Games with this rating contain content which the ESRB believes is suitable for those aged 13 years and older; they can contain moderate amounts of violence (including small amounts of blood), mild to moderate use of strong language or suggestive themes, and crude humor.[16][35]

I think it's safe to assume that a bottle of whiskey or a sixpack of beer as alternate ways to rectify cabin fever still counts as "mild to moderate". 

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @grrbear

I particularly like the idea of adding foxes to the game. Ravens/crows which pillage your carcasses would be interesting as well.

[MarrowStone]

@Wastelander thanks for your thoughts on that. Yes I do remember the spongebob movie part haha. 

An incorrect feels like temperature coupled with an inability(or incorrect) to see your warmth bar would be a very great downside. 

As long as they dont make it required to drink for survival Id be ok with it. If it was strong enough, non-drinkers could use it for a low grade antiseptic as well.

[heck]

4 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

As long as they dont make it required to drink for survival Id be ok with it. If it was strong enough, non-drinkers could use it for a low grade antiseptic as well.

Ethyl alcohol is  somewhat effective against bacteria, but only as long as it's something like whiskey or everclear (beer and wine feed bacteria, so it's a really bad idea to try to use that as antiseptic), and even then it only cuts down bacterial colonies by three-quarters, over hours of exposure. Even if you were able to keep the wound soaking for hours in the grain alcohol of your choice, you'd be hurting yourself more than helping--ethyl alcohol works as an antiseptic by infiltrating cell membranes, destroying the cell's proteins and enzymes, and basically dehydrating the cells. It doesn't discriminate between your cells and bacteria, and even then there's some types you're not going to kill, like tetanus, and the bacteria that cause gangrene and botulism. By dumping whiskey on an open wound you're causing more damage and slowing healing, which leaves you at even higher risk of infection, without any added benefit. 

Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol does the same thing as ethyl alcohol in terms of killing germs, and as such is still not recommended for flushing open wounds. It's good as a skin disinfectant, which is why it's common to swap rubbing alcohol over small cuts--it kills germs on the skin around the wound, but doesn't enter the wound itself and impair healing. The same goes for hydrogen peroxide, the only difference between it and the alcohols being that it can kill bacterial spores, and is far more effective in a far shorter span of time. 

Open wounds need to have debris cleared and then flushed with a saline solution or mildly soapy water (the latter being obviously more available in this situation), not treated with contact antibiotics. Penicillin is a good general antibody because it kills bacteria like gangrene, and is often a go-to for any sort of bacterial infection. 

 

tl;dr: alcohol will literally destroy your cells and increase your risk of infection.

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @heck

Very informative post

[heck]

@cekivi 

Thank you! 

[Wastelander]

15 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

An incorrect feels like temperature coupled with an inability(or incorrect) to see your warmth bar would be a very great downside. 

 

There was a discussion about how to treat alcohol in @Tbone555's thread about New Food Items (too lazy to link it right now, sorry) a couple of months ago. Basically it boiled down to this (some of these weren't in the original discussion and I am adding them now):

• Incorrect display of Feels-Like temperature, as you mentioned. This was my idea originally and I am irrationally proud of that
• Wonky controls - whether it's delay or just the inability to walk in a straight line. Also, high risk of self-inflicted injury during crafting/mending and other tasks that require tools (a friend of mine managed to hit himself in the foot with a hatchet IRL after just a few beers)
• Dehydration, since the body tries to get the poison (because that's what it is, let's face it) out of it's system by liberal application of kidneys, liver and bladder.
• Possibly a desire to consume more calories. The traditional beer gut isn't caused by beer in and of itself, but rather by a loss of inhibition. Thus, people who had a few drinks are more likely to go for a hearty meal that they don't physiologically require. (In fact, in Bavaria the beer gut is called 'Brathendlfriedhof', i.e. fried chicken cemetary). How that would be implemented with the current calorie-based system is beyond me though, so we might leave that one out.
• Possible side-effects when consumed in tandem with painkillers and/or antibiotics. In fact, a lot of drug-related deaths were also linked to alcohol consumption.
• Lack of pain reception, which can also be a good thing for minor injuries in absence of proper painkillers. Still, you might not notice a small cut or bruise in time, giving it time to infect.
• In cases of extreme consumption, vomiting and thus further loss of water and also calories and slight condition loss. I'd like this to not be represented in graphic detail but rather an affliction.
• The hangover afterwoods: Headache, dehydration, loss of appetite. Can be cured over some time with liberal consumption of water and other soft drinks and a good hearty meal.

As for the positive effects:

• Impromptu painkiller. Only for smaller injuries, and highly situational if you ask me (I for one have never run out of painkillers as far as I recall)
• A way to cure cabin fever, when just going outside isn't really an option.
• Roleplaying material. I'd love to play as both an absitent person and a raging alcoholic once. By far the most important point in my humble opinion.

[MarrowStone]

@Wastelander

Thanks for the informative reply @heck,

sorry wastelander, it wont let me delete your name for some reason. The reply text box keeps leaving my last comments in them so I have to delete them every time. 

[Wastelander]

@MarrowStone I am eternal, apparently. and you were the first to find out

[oh god a wolf]

ALL HAIL OUR DARK LORD AND SAVIOR @Wastelander.

[Wastelander]

@oh god a wolf is very intelligent, a scholar, very charismatic and of peak physical appearance. However, the Dark Lord's plans demand to go back on topic

[oh god a wolf]

What ever you say sire, but if you need something done (In a non-illegal way though), I got you @Wastelander. 

 

[cekivi]

You're all banned as heretics

[Wastelander]

19 minutes ago, cekivi said:

 

On 14.11.2016 at 5:58 PM, cekivi said:

I particularly like the idea of adding foxes to the game. Ravens/crows which pillage your carcasses would be interesting as well.

This is a good idea and adds an additional layer of gameplay to hunting, forcing players to ask themselves whether to gut the whole carcass or leave some behind, risking that a good portion of it won't be there by the time they return.

EDIT: Can't delete the whole thing, my apologies.

[grrbear]

Thanks to @Wastelander for the summary post on previous discussions concerning alcohol.  Glad to know others have thought about it too.  @heck for the win on using whiskey as an antiseptic (or preferably not, as it turns out).  Can't believe all those movies and TV shows steered me wrong on that.   Thanks to everyone else for the positive comments.

[Wastelander]

On 15.11.2016 at 0:39 AM, grrbear said:

Can't believe all those movies and TV shows steered me wrong on that.

Well, you can't really be blamed for that one. Most of us have never been in a survival situation (and I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that it remains that way because civilization is awesome if you think about it) and a lot of people aren't trained in survival, so media is often the most readily available source of information, wrong as it may be. If you spend some more time here, you will probably see some more myths debunked, happened to me and is still happening at least once a month, and that's a good thing I think!

As for @heck's post, what I got out of that was also that it could be done, but it shouldn't unless yoh have absolutely, positively, wheredidallmycommercialantisepticsgoally no other way. Bad antiseptics are probably better than none at all. Correct me if I'm wrong (although using plain water would probably still be better than whisky and also less painful, if you ever accidently cut your hand on a broken shot glass you'll know what I'm talking about).

Also, and I tend to repeat this phrase a lot in life: There are no bad ideas. If we dismiss an idea as simply 'bad', that just stifles creative thought. So, kudos to everyone involved in this thread for well thought-out, respectful and informative discussion, it's threads like this that got me hooked on this place.