Some concerns about new Sandbox features

[Pillock]

I know I'm jumping the gun somewhat with this, given that we haven't seen the new Sandbox features in action yet, but I've got a few concerns about a couple of them, as described in the Dev Diary. (Note: I really don't care much about the HUD, and I don't want to get into that in this thread!)

Firstly, Cartography: the big one that gives its name to the update.

I like the way it's described in the text, but I've got a problem with the screenshot, if that's how it's going to look. First, and most obviously, if you're using charcoal from a fire to make these maps, where does all the blue and green colouring come from?! It's absurd. On the face of it, I quite like the idea of having your character spend time sketching crude charcoal maps of the world as you find it - but this one looks like it was done by a professional illustrator using satellite imagery as a guide! It looks too detailed and too accurate for my taste, and I think I'd prefer it to look much more basic than that - both in terms of matching the 'charcoal-from-a-fire' description, and also so that it doesn't, as is claimed, make the game too much easier. There is the added danger that players will be able to judge the general scale of the map they're on - and roughly where to head to find resources - purely by the fact that (for example) Alan's Cave is on the middle-right portion of the map-page, and therefore the rest of the Points of Interest will probably be in the other direction. If the design could be made so that kind of exploit could be avoided, I think it would be an improvement. (Also, to claim that "if you don't want to use this feature and continue as before, you can!" is, frankly, quite stupid. It's a bit like saying, "if you don't like the eating mechanics, don't use them!")

 

The other point is about throwing stones and light sources:

Firstly, if throwing a torch at a wolf to scare it off is ever going to be a viable way of protecting yourself, then the campfire-lighting exploit needs to be fixed first: why would you throw your torch when you can use it to start igniting a fire instead, when that's a 100% guarantee of scaring the wolf and throwing the torch isn't?

Secondly, throwing stones at rabbits to kill them seems a bit silly to me, and is in real danger of making the game much, much easier (which isn't warranted). Obviously I need to reserve judgement to an extent until I've seen how it works in practice, but currently you can't really hunt rabbits until you're reasonably well established with a base and a workbench and some survival-time under your belt. You can live entirely on rabbits, and finding food in the early game is what makes that part most challenging and fun - I'm worried that this will be diluted. As a side-note to that, the new quartering ability also concerns me in that way if it means you don't have to risk being out in the cold for long periods to get food. We can already stay indoors to acquire warmth, water and sleep (3/4 of the basic survival needs), and so allowing players to do most of the food acquisition task inside shelter as well will potentially exacerbate this issue - we don't want to end up with the situation where the only practical reason for going outside is to avoid cabin fever.

 

I hope my assumptions about these things are wrong, and I hope the new mechanics add fun and extra challenge to the game - but I'd be interested in other people's initial reactions to the descriptions, and if genuine concerns can be raised before these features are implemented it might help the devs balance them?

[RossBondReturns]

Personally my only problem with the cartography is the color. But seriously they're 100 percent right. You do not have to use cartography.

I'm gonna give it a spin on the test track and if I like it I might use it.

As for throwing rocks and torches and quartering why not. Not to mention that there are dangers of quartering...and the odds of hitting something with a stone aren't the highest.

Bunnies are not easy targets and you'd probably just piss off a wolf.

 

I say wait and see.

[Pillock]

On 5/9/2017 at 1:33 AM, RossBondReturns said:

Personally my only problem with the cartography is the color. But seriously they're 100 percent right. You do not have to use cartography.

But if it provides an advantage, why would you not use it? Again, it's a bit like saying, "if you don't like the new clothing weight system, don't use clothes."

On 5/9/2017 at 1:33 AM, RossBondReturns said:

As for throwing rocks and torches and quartering why not. Not to mention that there are dangers of quartering...and the odds of hitting something with a stone aren't the highest.

Bunnies are not easy targets and you'd probably just piss off a wolf.

Again, I go back to the point that lighting a campfire is a 100% guaranteed way of scaring a wolf: therefore, it will never, ever be sensible to throw a torch or a stone at a wolf, since that is less reliable and no more convenient or fast to activate. Therefore the feature is largely pointless unless they alter the way wolves react to fires.

We will wait and see how easy it is to stun rabbits with stones... I hope it's really difficult, otherwise it's going to make food/gut acquisition much, much easier and resource-cheap (especially in the early game, where that matters more), which I don't think would be an improvement. But even if it is difficult, people are likely to become fairly expert at it with practice - and I think that will really upset the balance, given that stones are likely to be very abundantly available and probably infinite (like sticks). It could negate the need for snares, and therefore the need to collect guts; it could even negate the need for the bow and arrow. An infinite, abundant resource that requires zero crafting and allows you to catch as much food as you want... I'm worried. Snaring is already too easy, but at least you have to wait a bit until you have the necessary materials, and then keep a constant gut supply to maintain it.

[AZHockeyNut]

Well, if you don't like the fire exploit don't use it. I don't. If a wolf kills me, so be it, start another game. I try not to use exploits because it takes away from my enjoyment. Everyone plays different.

 

As for the maps yeah I would prefer they look black and white like the charcoal would. With the nasty wetness they should smear or smudge if you do not take care of them too! Add another element of realism

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, AZHockeyNut said:

Well, if you don't like the fire exploit don't use it. I don't. If a wolf kills me, so be it, start another game. I try not to use exploits because it takes away from my enjoyment. Everyone plays different.

I'm afraid I don't think it's enough to say that. I call it an exploit but it might be intended, for all I know. I don't like the idea of deliberately refusing to use the most effective methods of survival, just because they feel a bit gamey. I'd rather it was fixed, personally! If they made it so that wolves took no notice of your fire until it was fully lit, it would solve the problem, and bring the other wolf-deterrent methods back into play.

[Timber Wolf]

2 minutes ago, Pillock said:

I'm afraid I don't think it's enough to say that. I call it an exploit but it might be intended, for all I know. I don't like the idea of deliberately refusing to use the most effective methods of survival, just because they feel a bit gamey. I'd rather it was fixed, personally! If they made it so that wolves took no notice of your fire until it was fully lit, it would solve the problem, and bring the other wolf-deterrent methods back into play.

I tend to agree with this line of thinking.  We can only play the game they actually create and cannot play the game they would like to create.  If they don't want fires to be used in this way, they should do the work and prevent it from being a possibility.  Just like if they don't want me to make an easy one hour trip down the side of Timberwolf Mountain to get from the Summit to the Mountaineer's Hut overloaded with stuff, then they should finish the job and prevent me from doing so.

[Mortan1234]

On 5/8/2017 at 4:13 PM, Pillock said:

finding food in the early game is what makes that part most challenging and fun

but food in isnt hard. its the weather. food is as easy as find guts, metal, and wood and then you have all the fish you could want, (and you should be able to survive 5 days for the guts to cure since cattails and deer carcass's are abundant enough. 

On 5/8/2017 at 4:13 PM, Pillock said:

if you're using charcoal from a fire to make these maps, where does all the blue and green colouring come from?! It's absurd.

i like absurd. it is the basis of most all humor.

[Pillock]

24 minutes ago, Mortan1234 said:

but food in isnt hard. its the weather. food is as easy as find guts, metal, and wood and then you have all the fish you could want, (and you should be able to survive 5 days for the guts to cure since cattails and deer carcass's are abundant enough. 

If you weren't out looking for food, the weather wouldn't matter: you could spend all your time indoors.

You can meet your needs for warmth, sleep and water by staying inside anyway - as long as you collect a small amount of firewood every now and then. The only reason to spend any significant amount of time outdoors is to look for food. If food acquisition is made easier, it renders the weather fairly negligible, as it does dangerous animals, since you can just avoid them by holing up until weather conditions are more favourable / the wolves or bear has moved on.

In the early game, you have to live off a limited supply of non-replaceable scavenged food until you can get a sustainable, renewable source going (like snaring, fishing and/or hunting) - but that takes time, and you have to make sure you don't run out of non-renewable food sources while your saplings and/or guts cure and you craft the necessary equipment - and that means you have to travel about and expose yourself to danger. If you can just jump straight into harvesting rabbits on day one by lobbing rocks at them, it might (depending on how hard it is to hit them!) mean you never need to bother exposing yourself much to the weather or the predators in order to scavenge in that early period; and you certainly don't have to wait for materials to cure or to craft anything. This is exacerbated by the potential for carrying rabbits back to your base for butchering: less time outside required.

You then get led to the situation where the only reason to spend extended periods outdoors (except for your own amusement) is to avoid Cabin Fever. And that's not a good reason.

[Mortan1234]

On 5/8/2017 at 6:33 PM, RossBondReturns said:

Bunnies are not easy targets and you'd probably just piss off a wolf.

bunnies are hard targets i once wasted a bow trying to kill 1 bunny (not the best idea but it improved my shooting ability)

wolves in this game seem to be pissed of anyway so would that matter? Currently if an arrow hits next to an unsuspecting wolf it becomes scared and runs of so using a rock in that manner already gives the mechanic utility against wolves. If we assume that you do hit the wolf (that is charging you) then what do you have to lose by hitting it with a rock? i dont have anything else to do in the time it takes for him to jump me. at worst the devs will have you still have to fight the wolf in a struggle just like normal. at best you could scare it off or damage it so that the struggle is shifted slightly in your favor (similar to how hitting it with an arrow before the struggle makes the struggle easier). Really these are some things that will need to be tested when the updated comes out but you are right in that throwing rocks should not be meant to be the most effective thing (if hitting it with a rock damages it more than a bow then that would need to be fixed).

 

[Mortan1234]

7 minutes ago, Pillock said:

If you weren't out looking for food, the weather wouldn't matter: you could spend all your time indoors.

but but cabin fever......

no seriously i see your point. in the early game you travel for food and pick up sticks up on the way while hoping for the hammer and saw (if not in interloper then you look for the gun). i assume that rabbits will continue to be a pain to hit (they are already hard to hit with the bow which is also a short-mid ranged weapon). perhaps it will make for interesting challenges like how "long can you live in the bottom of the ravine" where you spawn in mystery lake and go straight to the ravine and stay there till you die for one reason or another. anyway i think this will be an exciting feature to try out. anyway i hope you can still be challenged in the new updates to come (i know i will).

[Pillock]

21 minutes ago, Mortan1234 said:

but but cabin fever......

no seriously i see your point. in the early game you travel for food and pick up sticks up on the way while hoping for the hammer and saw (if not in interloper then you look for the gun). i assume that rabbits will continue to be a pain to hit (they are already hard to hit with the bow which is also a short-mid ranged weapon). perhaps it will make for interesting challenges like how "long can you live in the bottom of the ravine" where you spawn in mystery lake and go straight to the ravine and stay there till you die for one reason or another. anyway i think this will be an exciting feature to try out. anyway i hope you can still be challenged in the new updates to come (i know i will).

It would be alright if they improved the animal AI's fleeing behaviour - so that when they run away they don't come back! That way, you wouldn't be able to just stand there repeatedly chucking pebbles at them while they ran in circles until you scored a lucky hit, because they'd be completely gone as soon as you'd missed once or twice.

(Same goes for deer, on a side note - if you startle them, they should be on the horizon, taking their friends with them, before you have time to say "Dammit".) 

[Mortan1234]

6 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Same goes for deer, on a side note - if you startle them, they should be on the horizon, taking their friends with them, before you have time to say "Dammit"

as a hunter this hits so close to home.

[shade_grey]

13 hours ago, Mortan1234 said:

Really these are some things that will need to be tested when the updated comes out

Yep. We can't really tell how all this will turn out until we've tried it out many times. The devs will try to balance everything out before the first iteration but realistically they'll have to rely on the players to try and exploit all the new mechanics before they're able to begin to iron things out.

[RossBondReturns]

Oh by the by:

That Charcol Mapping System...and Raph's responses.

LOVE IT!

 

[Pillock]

3 minutes ago, RossBondReturns said:

That Charcol Mapping System...and Raph's responses.

LOVE IT!

 

Seconded. Looks great!

[Patrick Carlson]

Just to add some info to this thread -- we're working to get the test branch open later this week: That's our goal. The team is working through a list of known issues right now to get it ready for the test phase. Thanks for everyone's interest. We can't wait to get the new stuff out to you all to try out (mapping!). 

[Karl Grylls]

21 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Seconded. Looks great!

Thirdened

 

That looks like i imagined

[ArmagedDan]

Something to note about the Campfire Exploit: you can't always start a campfire.  And even if you might have technically been able to, with a wolf bearing down on you, you sometimes don't have time to scan that red campfire around your feet until you get the green. It also costs a match.  Throwing your torch is a twitch save-or-die reaction in the split second you do have.  I believe it has value even in a world of campfires. 

I'm also hesitant to really call the campfire thing an exploit.  It's true that (if there isn't one already), there could stand to be a sliding "animal deterrence" percentage that scales as fire progress builds. But lighting a newspaper on fire at your feet while watching a wolf come on doesn't feel entirely immersion-breaking, nor in gameplay terms like an invincible cheat, either.

[Docterrok]

I'll just leave this here...

[i8turky2]

It looks good. They mustve changed it 

My biggest hope is that they release the updated map art and scenery in this update...that would really make it a proper update.

I love the idea of carcass quartering. 

Stunning rabbits with stones though...i think it would be cool to have to kill them after catching them in a trap sometimes. But stunning a rabbit with a rock???? Ive never seen this done in real life before...and ive spent a lot of time hunting rabbits

[Pillock]

15 hours ago, ArmagedDan said:

Something to note about the Campfire Exploit: you can't always start a campfire.  And even if you might have technically been able to, with a wolf bearing down on you, you sometimes don't have time to scan that red campfire around your feet until you get the green. It also costs a match.  Throwing your torch is a twitch save-or-die reaction in the split second you do have.  I believe it has value even in a world of campfires. 

I'm also hesitant to really call the campfire thing an exploit.  It's true that (if there isn't one already), there could stand to be a sliding "animal deterrence" percentage that scales as fire progress builds. But lighting a newspaper on fire at your feet while watching a wolf come on doesn't feel entirely immersion-breaking, nor in gameplay terms like an invincible cheat, either.

Lighting a campfire is 3 clicks. I can do it (and have done it) in 0.5-1.0 seconds with a wolf nearly on top of me. As soon as you are in the fire-lighting screen, the wolf pikes it and runs off, even if he's mere inches from you at the time. You then immediately cancel the fire, and it doesn't cost any fuel (On one occasion I went from walking normally to seeing the wolf to starting the campfire to canceling the fire to continuing to walk onwards, and the whole process from start to finish took all of about 2.5 seconds.)

It can cost a match, yes; but not if you are carrying a lit torch - then it costs nothing except for one tinder (therefore throwing the torch would be risky and pointless, since it might not actually succeed in scaring the wolf). The only time it doesn't work is if it's too windy, but if that's the case you can't use the torch either. It's a near-total failsafe: it needs fixing.

 

EDIT: The way I'd like to see it work is this:

Have it so that wolves took zero notice of a campfire unless the ignition process was complete. To compensate for this, we would need some sort of 'free-look' function in the fire ignition screen, so that we could monitor how close the wolf was getting while we were trying to get the fire lit. If it got too close for comfort before the fire-ignition bar reached the end, it would be good to have the option of an 'Add Accelerant' button to speed it up; alternatively, we could decide to cancel the fire and either attempt to run away, attempt to shoot at it with rifle/bow/stone, attempt to get a flare lit instead, or just prepare for the struggle.

[Mortan1234]

4 hours ago, Docterrok said:

I'll just leave this here...

thanks.

[ArmagedDan]

20 hours ago, Pillock said:

The way I'd like to see it work is this:

Have it so that wolves took zero notice of a campfire unless the ignition process was complete. To compensate for this, we would need some sort of 'free-look' function in the fire ignition screen, so that we could monitor how close the wolf was getting while we were trying to get the fire lit. If it got too close for comfort before the fire-ignition bar reached the end, it would be good to have the option of an 'Add Accelerant' button to speed it up; alternatively, we could decide to cancel the fire and either attempt to run away, attempt to shoot at it with rifle/bow/stone, attempt to get a flare lit instead, or just prepare for the struggle.

This, I would be on board with.  The alternative that I'd mentioned was to have a sliding scale - if the fire meter is halfway up, there's a low chance of scaring off a wolf, while a 90% full meter slides up to halfway decent odds.  That might be difficult to implement and tune - but on the other hand, your simpler all-or-nothing model would completely eliminate the use of emergency campfires without accelerant.  Not making a call on whether that's good or bad, just how it is: if a wolf has tagged onto you, you will never get a full manually-started fire going before he rushes you, cancelling your burgeoning fire to eat your face. 

Whatever changes are made to wolf behavior, even if it's no changes at all, I would still like the ability to free-look at least in a 180-degree arc while starting a fire.

[Pillock]

27 minutes ago, ArmagedDan said:

tely eliminate the use of emergency campfires without accelerant

yeah, I think that'd be a good thing. It feels like a cheat as is, effectively scaring off a wolf with a match and bit of tinder. And accelerant is pretty redundant at the moment as well - I only use it if I'm feeling lazy or frustrated - and this would give it a genuine purpose and make it valuable.

 

35 minutes ago, ArmagedDan said:

Whatever changes are made to wolf behavior, even if it's no changes at all, I would still like the ability to free-look at least in a 180-degree arc while starting a fire.

agree with this, too. But it wouldn't have a great deal of purpose unless we were given a real reason to need that situational awareness while lighting a fire. At the moment there isn't really any, except for "it would be nice".

[SquanderBot]

I've been avoiding user-created maps and trying to work with purely what's included in the game. It's a good challenge. 

That said, it would be nice to have some realistic way of creating waypoints for yourself. Like if you could take a long branch, tie a piece of cloth to it, and stick it in the ground like a flag. Just something to use as a temporary reminder of where to turn or whatever.

I found something similar that works well in the caves... when I find a dead end I will track back and then leave a few red berries on the ground at the opening to the dead end. They stand out really well in the dark and are a great reminder not to go that way. In the outdoors they are not effective because you can't see them until right on top of them. You can also drop a few pieces of wood carefully in a line to point in a direction, but who wants to carry that much wood and waste it on that. I guess brightly colored ragged clothing could be used for this purpose as well.