On sleeping, rest and condition and why they need tuning.


pi972

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One of Hinterland's core design philosophies seems to be that mechanics should be intuitive, and at least somewhat realistic. No absurd or needlessly complicated system should be present in the final game if they can be streamlined, and "gamey" features should also be avoided.

 

The thing is, right now, everything involving sleeping and rest is unintuitive and a bit strange. For starters, why is it that I can't sleep if I'm not tired? People who been gravely injured tend to sleep a lot more than a normal person, so why can't I spend the whole day in bed if I get mauled by a bear? And even I, a normal, non-mauled person, can comfortably rest for anywhere between 8 and 12 hours a day - If I want to get more sleep before a big trip but I wake up 3 hours early, I shouldn't need to play cards for two hours and then sleep for one more. I should be able to do the same thing I do in real life, that is, remain in bed and sleep some more, even if it ends up being less restful than the previous 8 hours I spent in bed. Everything has a limit, of course, but we should have some leeway. We should be allowed to oversleep for, let's say, 2-3 hours, or even more if at low condition.

 

Adding to that, the bedroll mechanic is also a confusing one. Right now it's possible to die of exhaustion beside a warm fire with a full belly, simply because you forgot your bedroll somewhere (or it got ruined). Why am I not able to sleep on the floor of the dam, even if at a significant temperature penalty? Thankfully this part of my complaint seems to have an easy fix: Allow us to sleep without a bedroll, but with a warmth penalty. I'm not a programmer or designer, but (I know I know, it's harder than it looks) it seems to me that this would be a relatively easy feature to implement - the only potentially hard part would be detecting what kind of floor the player is on and how much the penalty should be.

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48 minutes ago, pi972 said:

I'm not a programmer or designer, but (I know I know, it's harder than it looks) it seems to me that this would be a relatively easy feature to implement - the only potentially hard part would be detecting what kind of floor the player is on and how much the penalty should be.

Maybe there could be a fixed penalty A for indoor floor and a penalty B for outdoor floor, added to the ambient temperature (negative penalties). This way wouldn't be super realistic, but it would simplify things quite a bit.

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6 hours ago, pi972 said:

That's a good suggestion.

Thanks!

6 hours ago, pi972 said:

We know they already have such a system in place for curing hides.

Exactly. And also the "indoor warm bonus" is already applied, so I guess it wouldn't be that hard to implement.

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IMO rest as a resource is one of the least immersive aspects of this game. I having to constantly consider if my daily activities will make me 'tired enough' to get a full nights sleep is not something that the game design should be encouraging.

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I completely agree, sarudak. Sleep/rest and animal AI are currently the least immersive aspects of the game and don't really match up to what you'd expect in an otherwise realistic game.

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I'm not sure that the goal is realism, it seems to be that enjoyable/challenging gameplay is taking precedence over realism in many mechanics in the game.

The current mechanics work, they could use a little tweaking perhaps, but other than that I don't really have a problem with the way they work.  You're right however than many aspects of the mechanics are non-intuitive, the whole melting snow for water mechanic is highly non-intuitive, when you start out there is no reason to believe that you'd be able to melt/boil water without first getting a suitable container to boil in and gathering some snow. I'm not suggesting that's what they should do, but it needs to be made more obvious that all you need to do is make a fire and everything else is just possible without any specific resources.

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On 5/30/2017 at 5:37 AM, pi972 said:

One of Hinterland's core design philosophies seems to be that mechanics should be intuitive, and at least somewhat realistic. No absurd or needlessly complicated system should be present in the final game if they can be streamlined, and "gamey" features should also be avoided.

 

The thing is, right now, everything involving sleeping and rest is unintuitive and a bit strange. For starters, why is it that I can't sleep if I'm not tired?

You lost me on your statement - why is it that I can't sleep if I'm not tired?

probably because your not tired( wow), therefore maybe rest instead if you have too, else go hunting, pick up sticks, cook etc etc, until you are tired then have your sleep. being mauled by a predator you should be able to at least rest , sleep , rest. etc

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On 2017-5-29 at 5:07 PM, pi972 said:

If I want to get more sleep before a big trip but I wake up 3 hours early, I shouldn't need to play cards for two hours and then sleep for one more.

I hate this. 

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2 hours ago, continuity said:

the whole melting snow for water mechanic is highly non-intuitive

You are absolutely right.
The first time I played the game, as I was getting thirsty, I started to look for a river that somehow wasn't frozen. I couldn't find any and my condition started to drop. Eventually I found the waterfall in Raven Falls Railway Line and desperately tried to get some water, but to no avail. So, I proceeded with my search for water, and when my condition was about 15% a wolf finished me off. :(

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I think if rest as a resource should continue to be a thing it needs to be more forgiving. Basically the only way to sleep through the night is to work yourself to exhaustion which leaves you weak if you end up in a wolf fight. Since they changed the game such that nearly all activities require light and running light sources for hours to do some time wasting activities (like repairing clothes) is just an insane way of resources that part of the game both doesn't feel fun and doesn't feel intuitive.

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Nicko, pay attention to the rest of my post. The impression I was going for (and maybe I could have worded it better, you're right) was: "Why is it that I can NEVER sleep if I'm not tired, even though there are situations where I should be able to?"

 

 

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On 6/6/2017 at 10:39 AM, pi972 said:

Nicko, pay attention to the rest of my post. The impression I was going for (and maybe I could have worded it better, you're right) was: "Why is it that I can NEVER sleep if I'm not tired, even though there are situations where I should be able to?"

Used to be, you could sleep as long as you wanted to however that is now prevented to stop people who abuse the sleep function to pass time. It was called hibernation and then they added cabin fever to stop that. Make sense?

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Steve, I'm not trying to say we should be able to sleep unlimited amounts of time like we used to. I'm just saying that there needs to be some leeway regarding the "You are not tired enough" thing. As it stands, it is unrealistic and annoying.

 

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I dunno about you, but I can certainly lay down and nap, even if I am not tired.

Waking up 'early' and being forced to go and do something, or being forced to go and do something so you are "tired enough" to go to freaken' bed is asinine.

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14 hours ago, pi972 said:

Steve, I'm not trying to say we should be able to sleep unlimited amounts of time like we used to. I'm just saying that there needs to be some leeway regarding the "You are not tired enough" thing. As it stands, it is unrealistic and annoying.

 I don't see how this is possible without it being all or nothing. You claim that you are not a programmer or designer and this is where it shows; how would the game know or decide when to allow you to sleep and when not? When you're injured you can sleep indefinitely until healed? This will collide head on with cabin fever, I can tell you now and then people will be up in arms making claims of non-realism because "the only reason I was sleeping was to heal". It's Pandora's in terms of where to draw the line.

 It's a game, not a sim. There are parameters that have been implemented in order to force decisions and to make the game compelling. Giving players a secondary out for every circumstance would make the game less compelling. Sleeping on the ground is a fool's errand in RL as a sure way to induce hypothermia and again, implementing this would remove a meaningful parameter from the game and would make it less compelling.

Not sleeping when you aren't tired makes perfect sense, as does convalescing when injured. But convalescing doesn't equal sleeping. If you can sleep for 10 hours then pile back into bed in RL, then great, but I can't, so what does that say for any claim of realism? It says that its subjective and at best, one version of reality. Convalescing in-game means eating, drinking, not freezing and avoiding predators as much as it does sleeping. You can regain condition throughout the active day if you do this.

 As for waking up early, go to bed later.

 There is a fine line between a game's missing or broken mechanic and simply a player's desire. This thread seems to be making a case that the game is somehow flawed for not implementing something desired, which is no way to go about a discussion. Not everyone agrees with you, certainly not I, so to make claims of universality is not true indicating that the game is not broken or flawed, but more that you aren't happy with an aspect or two. There are a great many more pressing and irrational ideas that need attention before anything mentioned here: the new climbing mechanic as a good example.

 Looking at the thread title: "....why they need tuning". State your opinion, but don't make a claim to mine. And as such, there is nothing to argue about or re-state anything. Make the case clearly for what you want and let it be. If it is rational and reasonable, it will get looked at, but otherwise, it's not consensual: selah.

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I find that the sleep as a resource is one of the most annoying aspects of the game. When I am planning my activities for the day I am shocked how I can only climb three ropes in one day, then I need a full night's rest again.  A similar thing happens if I spend a day collecting firewood - wow that day went quickly, whereas having cut firewood in real life, albeit with an axe not a hatchet, I am get far more than my character can before being exhausted.

The player also appears to need far more sleep than what is normal. I need 7 hours sleep a day, some people need 8 hours. The player typically needs 9-10 hours a day. I think activities like crafting, mending, and reading take too much of a toll on consuming sleep. I am essentially resting for the most part when doing these activities.

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I think part of the issue is that the max sleep duration corresponds so closely to the hours of darkness. This means that ideally, due to chilly morning temps and the difficulty/danger/resource intensity of traveling or working during darkness, the player's day starts a few hours after sunrise and ends a few hours after dark.

If you happen to get off of this schedule, perhaps by overextending yourself on a long journey or getting mauled by a wolf, you either need to spend multiple days incrementally returning to the correct schedule, or spend substantial extra calories sitting in bed playing cards. We've all experienced the frustration of waking up "fully rested" with 5 hours of darkness remaining. The OP points out that allowing players to oversleep by just an hour or two could really help to aleviate this issue, while not breaking gameplay and immersion the way the permanent hibernation strategy used to. After all, if I was in Trappers and woke up an hour or so before sunrise, I think i'd just try to roll over and dream about home, probably drifting in and out of sleep until the sun came through the window. I sure as hell wouldn't try to play solitaire in the dark!

Further, the cabin fever mechanic already punishes "hibernating" behavior, so while a bit of oversleeping would allow you to return to the right schedule quicker/cheaper, you'd need to make really good use of that benefit to offset the extra hours spent indoors.

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 I don't see how this is possible without it being all or nothing. You claim that you are not a programmer or designer and this is where it shows; how would the game know or decide when to allow you to sleep and when not? When you're injured you can sleep indefinitely until healed? This will collide head on with cabin fever, I can tell you now and then people will be up in arms making claims of non-realism because "the only reason I was sleeping was to heal". It's Pandora's in terms of where to draw the line.

I see nothing wrong with disabling cabin fever risk increase if the player was sleeping while heavily injured. In fact, I even made another forum post about cabin fever (I think it still needs work).

 

8 hours ago, Carbon said:

Sleeping on the ground is a fool's errand in RL as a sure way to induce hypothermia and again, implementing this would remove a meaningful parameter from the game and would make it less compelling.

As I said... Give us a heavy temperature penalty then. Force us to have a fire going the entire night, I don't care. But actually dying because you were exhausted but couldn't sleep without a bedroll is very stupid, not a "meaningful parameter". It's a bit like dying of starvation because you have food but not a plate to eat it on. I understand you're desperate to defend the game's every flaw but make an effort to see it my way.

 

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Have to agree that the 'mechanics' of sleeping and resting tend to force the player to do tasks that expend all their daily energy completely, and somewhat controls what ultimately feels like a forced routine which the game tries to impose.

The problem is that there is simply nothing that the player can really do during these hours other than waste callories and energy passing time. Sure, if you are not playing to survive long-term you can use up matches and spend the time boiling water. Or, if you collect enough wood to maintain a permanent fire, you can do the same. Or you could venture out in low visibility against more alert wildlife, weather depending, but that's about it. Everything else needs daylight.

Surely it should be pretty simple to allow 'unneeded' sleep to occur if it is still night time, with perhaps a reduced 'max' possible duration when you are already fully rested. Thirst and cabin fever still prevent eternal hibernation and the 'not tired enough' would still apply if trying to sleep outside of the average person's circadian rhythm, i.e. during the daytime.

The other slight issue with relation to night time is even though outside, extreme fog/blizzard notwithstanding, there is reasonable visibility. When inside, the screen is pretty much entirely black, with not even any indication of whether you are looking up or down. I'm not saying it should be equally as light inside as out, but some vague hints of shapes would at least allow some mobility rather than swirling the mouse cursor randomly hoping to highlight an object for a sense of position and even y-axis/vertical calibration.

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5 hours ago, pi972 said:

I see nothing wrong with disabling cabin fever risk increase if the player was sleeping while heavily injured. In fact, I even made another forum post about cabin fever (I think it still needs work).

 

As I said... Give us a heavy temperature penalty then. Force us to have a fire going the entire night, I don't care. But actually dying because you were exhausted but couldn't sleep without a bedroll is very stupid, not a "meaningful parameter". It's a bit like dying of starvation because you have food but not a plate to eat it on. I understand you're desperate to defend the game's every flaw but make an effort to see it my way.

 I'm not sure "very stupid" is a qualifying argument. :P

 Not agreeing with you isn't laziness, but quite the contrary; I'm taking the time to reply to you. As I stated clearly, I am no apologist and have made my share of accusations and complaints against the title, but my complaints were made against mechanics that are objectively broken or irrational (climbing mechanic) while your complaints are against reasonable aspects which you simply don't like and are easily refuted. As it is you who is making reference to real life, sleeping on the ground outdoors in the winter is a ridiculous proposition in RL (even with a fire) and people simply can't sleep when they indeed aren't tired (fully rested). Now you want more exceptions, modifying cabin fever which again, is reasonable as it is; that there is a very small minority who still take issue with it is telling enough.

 I see your points but if you want to make that claim, then you must make efforts to see it my way instead of glibly dismissing me as an apologist. You can't have it both ways and making rebuttals like "it's very stupid" do nothing to further your cause.

 To edit this post with an idea that I think we need to entertain: the game is as much about dying as it is living. I once compared the game to Devil's Daggers in this sense; while DD is extremely hostile toward the player - so much so that it becomes its charm - but the end goal is death. Past this, it only becomes a question of how long one can evade this destiny. TLD is fundamentally no different; it is at its core doing everything it can to kill the player, but within wider parameters while maintaining the fantasy that things can go on indefinitely, which they cannot. Thus, expecting the developers to implement mechanics that go against the foundations of the game - further widen the parameters - are in reality only postponing the inevitability of death. Your character will die sooner or later and asking the developers to assist you in eking out another day is simply a kind of denial.

 I know this because my first post on these forums was stating this exact idea; I was dismayed at the hostility of the game and it took me some time to actually understand what this title was all about. Now that I have, I have a clearer context for the decisions made and much of what I had initially railed against became more reasonable to me. Now, I am not satisfied - as I have stated in detail in other posts, the climbing mechanic is flawed - but I have grown up and into the game in a sense, something which I think you also need to do. Embrace death as a part of the game as much as you do surviving another day; to deny it is foolishness.

 If the game is broken or an aspect irrational or implausible, then fine, an argument can be made but none of these criteria are satisfied in this thread; sleeping where or when you like doesn't make sense, certainly less sense than the current limitations.

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sleeping on the ground outdoors in the winter is a ridiculous proposition in RL (even with a fire)

Not talking about outdoors, in the open. Certain caves or the dam can reach very high "feels like" temperatures even without a fire. I'm not sure why you think this is a good scenario: Here I am, in a perfectly warm cave, with a full belly, actively dying of exhaustion, yet I can't sleep because I'm afraid the ground might be a bit cold. As a result, I literally die from exhaustion (or am forced to go out into a blizzard to look for shelter, because surely that's better than sleeping on the floor).

 

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 and people simply can't sleep when they indeed aren't tired (fully rested).

Did you even read my post? I can sleep 7 hours a day and be fine, absolutely zero extra tiredness the next day. I can also sleep for 12 hours and be fine. So why is it that our character can only sleep for a fixed amount of time? If my ingame character sleeps for 7 hours, he'll wake up tired, not at full energy. Meanwhile he is phisically incapable of sleeping for 12 hours, even if he just got mauled by a bear and is barely holding onto life. I don't need to argue about this any further, I can just call it what it is: Stupid.

As for cabin fever, go read my post about it if you want to.

 

I'll tell you what this game is really about: An immersive survival experience. Everything in this game is meant to make me feel like I'm really a hardened survivor doing their best to stay alive in northern Canada. Some of its features, however, are incredibly gamey and gimmicky. They do nothing to increase our immersion or the authenticity of the setting, and unless they make gameplay more fun or enjoyable (they don't), they should be removed. If I'm to die, let it be because I made a mistake, or didn't prepare enough. Not because a wolf tore my bedroll to shreds and my character is afraid of sleeping in warm caves.

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To be entirely fair, losing heat into the ground is a very real possibility in a survival situation. Depending on the terrain beneath you, you can lose heat far faster to the ground than to the air, and develop hypothermia even if the air itself is warm.

However, that doesn't change the fact that we can't use broken-down cardboard boxes, rags, pine boughs or anything other than a bedroll or bed to sleep.

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That's a pretty good suggestion, Boston. I believe the temp penalty you'd get from sleeping on the ground wouldn't be life-threatening for someone wearing two bears, but for all other situations, there isn't any valid reason I'm not able to use makeshift beds. Another example of a location where this happens would be those houses in PV with no furniture and a lot  of planks laying around - no bed, but the enviroment is still really warm, so you should be able to sleep on the floor.

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