Anybody think new Rabbit mechanic made Interloper too Easy?


KD7BCH

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Mixed feelings.  I like the concept, but I feel like rabbit AI is far too inept.  I've hunted rabbits IRL and they are a lot more wary and skittish than what you see in the game.  Not saying the game should perfectly mimic real life, but it feels kind of odd that you can crouch in the snow and have a rabbit pretty much hop right up to you.  I think if they increased their sight detection it would balance out the mechanic a bit more because you'd have to throw from farther away.

I still find interloper to be a hefty challenge despite this mechanic, though.

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Interloper has become easier with all the new bunny game mechanics.  Harvesting the rabbit indoors greatly improves your odds of survival.  If I wanted to catch rabbits before I would place the snares near trees to act as wind breaks during harvest.  Habits are hard to break; I still place snares in the windbreaks.

On my current interloper play through I made it from TWM to DP and back to CH all without harming a bunny.  No gloves either so it was tempting.  When I returned to CH and crafted a bow I began to hunt rabbits to increase my archery skill.   Now when picking coal in the mine I just wear the rabbit mitts.

The stone throwing should be more difficult in interloper.  Two improvements would be decrease effective range and handling rabbits could cause injury.

Hitting a rabbit with a stone to stun it should need a precise hit otherwise that rabbit should high tail it out of there and be gone never to be seen.  Horseshoes and hand grenades is the colloquialism I am thinking.  When a stone hits near a rabbit that rabbit should leave the area.   Currently rabbits enjoy being hit by stones.  In fact they often come waddling straight at me after waking up. 

Maybe if there was some risk involved.  Picking the rabbit up to wrench its neck could have the downside such as a bite and infection.   Increasing the scent on the gloves or bare hands after handling and greater scent effect for killing.  This indirectly could cause injury by a wolf or bear attack.  Killing rabbits after using stones to stun seems to be only affecting the player and not the character.

There was mention of a "Well Being" effect for the character's mind.  If that is implemented then that might bring some balance.  The rabbits are not scared of stones and there is little risk to harvest rabbits on interloper.  Interloper light is what I think about killing poor George.

During the test build picking up rabbits was a thing.  If rabbits acted more skitterish I think plucking rabbits could work in the game.

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I agree there should be more challenge. If you miss, then that should be the last you see of that darn ol' bunny rabbit.  If it ends up in a dead end, just have it disappear in the snow.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if you could use rabbits for decoys. Instead of killing it, wrap it up and take it along. If you attract a wolf, you set the rabbit loose to shoot off in a random direction, with the wolf chasing after it.  Bear in mind that random direction might be the one you are currently headed.

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If anything, Interloper has become harder after last patch, for me.

This is due to the new smell mechanics (animal AI) and most importantly, the loss of the quick stats window with all the weather, temperature and hours left in the day.

This is because interloper for me is all about micro managing your time spent outside down to the last 15 min or so, because a simple mistake or timing misjudgment can be fatal.

I do agree that the new UI is more realistic though but I also think that the new rabbit catching mechanics was a needed help to balance the new Loper difficulties I mentioned.

 

The last patch wiped my 110 days interloper save with 60+ matches, full crafted clothing , 4 skills on level 5 and about 30+ kg of raw meat on ice and a massive wood stockpile.

After patch I can't seem to get past 50 days because of stupid mistakes and timing screw-ups, rabbits or not.

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Stones are definitely a gamechanger for Interloper but to say it is easy now is a bit far stretched. It helps with the first few days to get some guts for fishing and to craft the first cloths, but that's about it. I welcome this change, before the update I used to spent my first days in Interloper running around looking for deer carcasses which I could harvest for hides and guts and I didn't think this was much fun. Thanks to the new mechanic we can now focus on decision making and plan for the worst right from the start, I don't want to miss that anymore.

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I do think the rabbit stun time should be reduced.  Tossing a stone that might even bounce once or twice before bopping a bunny should knock it over for second or two - gotta be quick, or they'll recover and sprint off.  Perhaps if the rock doesn't bounce, meaning it's a straight pitch right into the rabbit, the stun time would be similar to the current state. 

I feel like you should be able to hold down the left mouse button to wind up for a sterner throw, which will stun the rabbit longer but also change the trajectory, making it a skill factor.

Either way, in interloper, I feel like all the rabbit meat in the world won't help you if you don't have matches to cook with.  It might make the interloper mid-game easier, but as mentioned above, it seems like that's offset a bit by the smell mechanic.

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I think its just right.  I mean subsisting off rabbits is a pretty obnoxious way to get by, so its not something you're going to be doing when you have another option.  Which means for me rabbits are mainly for supplementary food when travelling across zones or exploring, and being able to round up a few quick and carry them off to harvest later is what makes that viable.  Before when you had to trap or shoot them they were totally non-viable as a food source on the move.

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Well I'm not a master at this stone throwing thing but I have hit rabbits twice only to watch them run away when I get close. Maybe I'm throwing from too far back ;) I do like the fact you can carry the whole carcass back which makes total sense. Played a lot of PV games and had to build fires by my snares so I can harvest them without freezing which makes no sense when I could just pick the whole rabbit up. And the new scent mechanic balances that out nicely. 

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4 hours ago, Ahatch said:

Well I'm not a master at this stone throwing thing but I have hit rabbits twice only to watch them run away when I get close.

Pro Tip to succesfully kill rabbits: position yourself on the side of the rabbit's path, don't let it come come to you from the front. Always crouch and get about 2-3m to where it's going to run. Aim (right click) and wait until it's head passes the lower half of the imaginery line between your index finger and thumb, throw.

Then you have to run to pick it up, don't walk because you only have a very short time before it recovers. This way I've killed 4 rabbits in a row without a single miss, it's all about position and knowing how to use the aim. Enjoy your meal ;)

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I don't know how it's affected Interloper directly, but having played about with it a bit in Stralker, I do think the stone throwing has made the early game unnecessarily (and, for me, undesirably) easier. 

I have two suggestions : 1) you should have to hit the rabbit in the head to stun it, otherwise it just runs off; 2) you shouldn't be about to throw with enough power to stun it from a crouched position. 

Or, perhaps, combining the two abovementioned, you can stun it with any hit from a standing position, but need a head shot from crouched? 

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Thanks @ChillPlayer I managed to get two in one day :) But still have to be pretty quick as they run off pretty fast. You have to be fast with the left mouse pointer as I hit lots of times but too slow pointing at the rabbit LOL. Still tough going on Forlorn chucking rocks at rabbits isn't going to feed me enough I reckon to stay on this map. 

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1 hour ago, Ahatch said:

Thanks @ChillPlayer I managed to get two in one day :) But still have to be pretty quick as they run off pretty fast. You have to be fast with the left mouse pointer as I hit lots of times but too slow pointing at the rabbit LOL. Still tough going on Forlorn chucking rocks at rabbits isn't going to feed me enough I reckon to stay on this map. 

FM contains more than 300 cattails stalks if I remember correctly - you don't have to kill a single rabbit to survive at least a week there without any trouble.^^

@topic: For me personally, throwing stones at rabbits made Interloper way easier, yes.

I haven't tried to survive this way in the long run, but during my first 20-30 days I barely eat anything else but rabbits and cattail stalks now. I guess over the course of time rabbit populations would probably decrease considerably (less respawns, longer respawn timers), but I've never played long enough in one place to actually notice if that really happens.

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5 hours ago, Scyzara said:

I guess over the course of time rabbit populations would probably decrease considerably (less respawns, longer respawn timers), but I've never played long enough in one place to actually notice if that really happens.

It does.  Usually there are quite a few rabbit spawns in a zone so if you are willing to travel a little it's not a big issue.  But that's harder in FM than most regions due to the lack of shelter.

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Yes it did. Not only interloper but also other mods. Actually it made other mods fairly easy but if we're talking about interloper, at least it balanced hardness of the most unreasonable, illogical, irrational, absurd, senseless mechanic: cabin fever. 

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2 hours ago, Nicholai said:

Yes it did. Not only interloper but also other mods.

Why would you want to throw stones at rabbits on other mods when you have a rifle which you can usually find on the first two days? One bullet and you eat for a week plus you get guts and hides to craft cloths or snares.

The reason why I find it useful in particular for Interloper is because I don't have a rifle to shoot a deer/wolf combo but I need guts for fishing lines. Before stones I'd run around the map looking for carcasses I would unfreeze but that brought a multitude of other problems with it, wind blowing out my fire being the worst but also senseless waste of matches and good firewood just to not freeze to death while harvesting.

I agree about Cabin Fever though ;)

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I've found the smell mechanic to do a pretty good job of balancing out how much easier it is to get rabbits. Especially since so many good shelters when you're starting out have wolves near them. Usually, if you know their habits, you can approach cautiously and it's not much of an issue. But with a fresh bunny on your person... I've seen those wolves take some noticeable detours to come hunting me. To the point that I often try to move locations during blizzards, if I'm carrying a rabbit, and I'm entirely confident that I know the way with little visibility. 

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1 minute ago, cullam said:

I've found the smell mechanic to do a pretty good job of balancing out how much easier it is to get rabbits.

or you abuse the mechanic and use the Rabbit to lure Wolves to you, standing near a herd of Deer. Drop the Rabbit and let the wolf catch the Deer for you ;)

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