Slept into the long dark


Wolfbait

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Hello,

I'm not a very active forum member, but I do enjoy, fear and love this game. Even in Alpha it shows a mature degree you can hardly see out there.

I started this topic because I just had my first sour moment playing TLD.

I've achieve 21/22 of steam badges and I was about to beat 200days (stalker) badge before starting a higher difficult challenge. I was wearing +22ºC clothes and sleeping in a Bearskin Bedroll (+5,6º bonus by then... a bit used) and I just died of Hypotermia while sleeping at a fishing cabin. :(

As you can see in the screenshot, I've played some other long runs and I spent as much time outside as I can but never died of hypotermia before so I believe the heaviest blizzard ever struck CH that dammed night.

Have you ever experience strange temperature fluctiactions that might cause you dying while sleeping? If you pass time you can monitor your status and weather while looking thru the window (which makes sense), but dying while sleeping SO CLOSE to the 200th night has been a bit heartbreaking.

Maybe a last warning from your body and natural instinct.. enough to use an emergency stim and drink a hot beverage (5 or 10 minutes game time) would make sense?

Anyway... "never think you can outsmart the death" are going to be my first words every morning in the next sandbox. And everytime I go to bed. :P

Keep up the good work and thanks for your comments/suggestions.

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Oh my that hurts. 500+ hours of play and that's the one I have yet to do 200 days... I just keep dying but that one is too close. I only sleep an hour or two at a time when I am outside can't take the chance.....I got awoken by a bear and mauled....And I have slept into the lo g dark...I did that one in the hut on TWM! Oops

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13 hours ago, Wolfbait said:

As you can see in the screenshot, I've played some other long runs and I spent as much time outside as I can but never died of hypotermia before so I believe the heaviest blizzard ever struck CH that dammed night.

Or maybe every other time an equally cold blizzard happened before your Bedroll might have been in a better shape. Even two or three degrees can really make a difference depending on the mode, and your bedroll lacked 6.4°C. I haven't played Voyageur for ages, but I can imagine that it might be balanced in a way that you either need a fire or warm clothes + a bear bedroll in good condition to be safe during late night/early morning hour blizzards. (These are the coldest blizzards ingame).

It might also help you to sleep only for 2-3h in a row during your next games. I generally recommend this strategy on Interloper, but it may also be a useful advice for the other modes under certain circumstances (especially if one doesn't have max. warmth clothes or a top-condition bedroll).

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I still think this is terrible game mechanics. If you go to bed warm and your reach freezing you should wake up. That's how it happens in real life and it would benefit the game if it worked this way. A death like that just feels cheap and it cheapens the game experience. If you go to bed cold on the other hand....

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@Wolfbait As indicated in your profile pic, freezing to death while sleeping can be a tough way to go. Sorry to hear it stopped what sounded like a great run. I think many of us can relate to that feeling of "just so close..."

@sarudak It's an interesting suggestion about differentiating falling asleep cold or warm. Certainly part of the current design is to prod players into thinking through their situation at all times. Do you feel like the game "waking you up" would create a less compelling experience for you? (We have other areas of the game where you get more hand-holding, but I wouldn't say this is one of them) 

 

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3 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

@sarudak It's an interesting suggestion about differentiating falling asleep cold or warm. Certainly part of the current design is to prod players into thinking through their situation at all times. Do you feel like the game "waking you up" would create a less compelling experience for you? (We have other areas of the game where you get more hand-holding, but I wouldn't say this is one of them) 

I don't think it would make a less compelling experience at all. It just feels wrong that a perfectly healthy person could die from cold without ever waking up (https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-will-sleeping-in-extreme-cold-kill-you) as if you were mauled by a wolf in your sleep and the game didn't wake you up but simply let you die. I'm all for game difficulty but given this is a survival game it's important that the way the player interacts with the world *feels* natural and realistic, note that this is not the same as *being* realistic. It's also important that the game feel fair, which is why bears don't ever just maul you to death even though that would be more realistic.

Another example of a game mechanic I dislike for very much the same reason is the 'rest as a resource' mechanic. The idea that the best was for my extremely injured character to heal quickly is to go out and repeatedly climb a rope to exhaustion so he can sleep more just feels all kinds of wrong. And the constant minigame of trying to manage your rest bar so you can sleep through the night but not suffer extreme penalties just feels very gamey and not fun. It pulls me out of the experience. Does it make the game harder? Yes. Does it make the game more fun? No.

There are so many ways the difficulty could be increased that would make the game more compelling without feeling unfair or unfun. Just some examples:

  • Dramatically reduced healing rate
  • Reduced wildlife spawn to make hunting harder
  • More danger from wolves
  • Reduced loot (esp tools)
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totally agree with @sarudak... when you are already freezing tired and go to sleep, yes, you can die freezing, but when you go to sleep warm and the weather turns into a blizzard no way you wouldnt wake up. even the first noisy cold windblows would make you jump out of bed. and while i understand this is a game, survival is a game of instincts so realistic, or rather lets call them logical, instincts should be the way of survival not some learned illogical mechanics. sure, sometimes it will take away from difficulty but sometimes it will add to the difficulty.

8 hours ago, sarudak said:

There are so many ways the difficulty could be increased that would make the game more compelling without feeling unfair or unfun. Just some examples:

  • Dramatically reduced healing rate
  • Reduced wildlife spawn to make hunting harder
  • More danger from wolves
  • Reduced loot (esp tools)

agree with this too. rather give less tools and decrease the silly quick item decay, make us go out hurt but dont die for a scratch. let us use a bow with hurt wrist but make the aim more unsteady and introduce a timer how long can you hold the bow drawn (when healthy and rested you can hold the bow and aim, when hurt or tired freezing you can barely pull and fire) etc. make wolves less aggressive so less likely to attack just randomly but make them come in hordes when its about meet or when I get unnecessarily close to them. give tools against them like branches, rocks etc but make the fight harder instead of just smashing my mouse. and make hunting really hunting. ohh, and wolves should eat the deers they kill, they are not sporting on game. please make us fighting for our survival but make it a logical way.

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9 hours ago, sarudak said:

I don't think it would make a less compelling experience at all. It just feels wrong that a perfectly healthy person could die from cold without ever waking up (https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-will-sleeping-in-extreme-cold-kill-you) as if you were mauled by a wolf in your sleep and the game didn't wake you up but simply let you die. I'm all for game difficulty but given this is a survival game it's important that the way the player interacts with the world *feels* natural and realistic, note that this is not the same as *being* realistic. It's also important that the game feel fair, which is why bears don't ever just maul you to death even though that would be more realistic.

Without disagreeing, the link contains the opinion of a nurse and offers no caveats (such as drug and alcohol use).

Also any fairness in a game is highly subjective and it's perception will vary widely from person to person. For example, not too long ago, after walking through a blizzard (nekked), I forgot to put my clothes back on when I went to sleep and died from hypothermia. Frankly it was a relief not to be killed by wolves again.

9 hours ago, sarudak said:

The idea that the best was for my extremely injured character to heal quickly is to go out and repeatedly climb a rope to exhaustion so he can sleep more just feels all kinds of wrong.

It seems strange that you would bother to do this when in exchange you wish for a dramatically reduced healing rate. Don't worry about climbing ropes - just alternate sleeping and resting and your wish will come true.

9 hours ago, sarudak said:
  • Reduced wildlife spawn to make hunting harder
  • More danger from wolves
  • Reduced loot (esp tools)

Afaik this is called Interloper.

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