Zombies in Faithful Cartographer


dbldrew

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Downloaded the new update after not playing for months. Played for a good 30ish min and noticed the mindless zombie horde (wolves) are still as prevalent as ever. Shut the game off and will try again in 3-4 months for the next update..

Its to bad the game has such potential.  

 

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If it's only the wolves that bother you, you might try to play Pilgrim mode. ;)

Wolves will be present there, but they behave more or less like "real" wolves and will run away from you instead of attacking. Alternatively, (if you want wolves to be aggressive) you might try voyageur mode. There's really not THAT many wolves on voyageur. (If a certain area of the map is inhabited by an unusual number wolves, other areas of the map are usually wolf-free at the same time).

High wolf numbers are primarily a key feature of Stalker mode, so if they bother you a lot, you should preferably either play Pilgrim or Voyageur mode.

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6 hours ago, Scyzara said:

There's really not THAT many wolves on voyageur. (If a certain area of the map is inhabited by an unusual number wolves, other areas of the map are usually wolf-free at the same time).

I could be wrong but I feel like Voy has had a significant bump in wolf numbers in the new build.  Doesn't feel miles off stalker, though there are still definitely less.

Honestly i get a bit tired of the wolves myself, i'm banking on mods or custom difficult being a reality, because I love challenging survival with low resources and harsh weather, but the high wolf numbers change the character of the game from surviving against the elements to surviving the wolfocalypse.

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I dont usually mind the wolves, but its a shame so many people leave because of them, i understand why they dont wanna play on pilgrim to avoid them though, pilgrim changes much more tham just wolf numbers and makes the game too easy, maybe wolf numbers and agression should be a seperate option upon game creation.

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ha one day they want it harder next day softer?

as @Scyzara mentioned maybe try pilgrim game play or one of the other game level options later on.

ha wait until they introduce the couger lol :) maybe that might jump you from a tree on interloper or even pilgrim ha?

 

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1 hour ago, nicko said:

ha one day they want it harder next day softer?

as @Scyzara mentioned maybe try pilgrim game play or one of the other game level options later on.

ha wait until they introduce the couger lol :) maybe that might jump you from a tree on interloper or even pilgrim ha?

 

I do want the game harder but throwing hordes of wolves makes the game less fun. Get rid of magic warm houses, fix the calories needed, make hunting harder etc. are all ways to make the game harder and it keeps with a survival game.. throwing zombies at us is not the game i'm looking for. Simple as that. If I want to play a zombie game, there are much better zombie games out there.  (and this game with the wolves is a zombie game) 

People begged for slider bars for a custom settings. if they did that problem solved.. unfortunately we got interloper.  

 

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yeh thats why i play pilgrim mostly. so who knows maybe the wolves still need tuning. pretty sure its an ongoing issue to with the devs.

either way you get the wolves going for you hard or not with each different game level type? not sure what else it could be? pack adjustment balancing maybe!

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On 6/19/2017 at 11:25 PM, dbldrew said:

I do want the game harder but throwing hordes of wolves makes the game less fun. Get rid of magic warm houses, fix the calories needed, make hunting harder etc. are all ways to make the game harder and it keeps with a survival game.. throwing zombies at us is not the game i'm looking for. Simple as that. If I want to play a zombie game, there are much better zombie games out there.  (and this game with the wolves is a zombie game) 

People begged for slider bars for a custom settings. if they did that problem solved.. unfortunately we got interloper.  

 

Don't know what difficulty you are playing but I play on Voyageur, and Voyageur only. My only desire is that Hinterland make Voyageur as close as possible to "realism/real life," with the minor exception of wolves all behaving as if they are starving and thus more likely to attack humans than run from them. And though there are wolves in Voyageur, there are not 'hordes.'

Hinterland has made really good progress and I am happy with how things are in Voyageur, with the minor quibble of knives seeming to be made of aluminum instead of steel.

What other survival games have you played that you are comparing this with?  BTW if there are zombies or "infected people" in the game, it's not a survival game -- it's a zombie game :P  Just saying.

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30 minutes ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

Don't know what difficulty you are playing but I play on Voyageur, and Voyageur only. My only desire is that Hinterland make Voyageur as close as possible to "realism/real life," with the minor exception of wolves all behaving as if they are starving and thus more likely to attack humans than run from them. And though there are wolves in Voyageur, there are not 'hordes.'

Hinterland has made really good progress and I am happy with how things are in Voyageur, with the minor quibble of knives seeming to be made of aluminum instead of steel.

What other survival games have you played that you are comparing this with?  BTW if there are zombies or "infected people" in the game, it's not a survival game -- it's a zombie game :P  Just saying.

I play stalker and interloper.

 

exactly my point. TLD has "infected" wolves just like other zombie games have "infected" dogs.. 

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2 hours ago, dbldrew said:

I play stalker and interloper.

 

exactly my point. TLD has "infected" wolves just like other zombie games have "infected" dogs.. 

Zombies are fictitious and an epidemic of infected dogs borders on fictitious.  Hungry wolves do not. 

I suggest you play on Pilgrim difficulty so your complaint will self-resolve.

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11 hours ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

Zombies are fictitious and an epidemic of infected dogs borders on fictitious.  Hungry wolves do not. 

I suggest you play on Pilgrim difficulty so your complaint will self-resolve.

hungry wolves do not attack humans so we are right back to fictitious. Pilgrim is way to easy. 

the problem is there are so many wolves it makes the game just irritating. forcing people to crouch walk all over the place is a bad game mechanic. and then when you get a bow or gun and you kill off all the wolves in an area in just a few days the horde of wolves are back. the never endless supply of zombies is not a good game mechanic for a game that the devs have said is not a zombie game 

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On 18.06.2017 at 9:42 AM, Scyzara said:

but they behave more or less like "real" wolves and will run away from you instead of attacking.

Why everyone is so convinced that "real" wolves would not attack people? They did and they will. Did you know that wolves attacked and killed people in Russia in the XX century? In the nineteen forties during the WWII and after it  when the country was greatly depopulated, wolves multiplied and started killing and eating people.

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2 minutes ago, LeeHarveyOslik said:

Why everyone is so convinced that "real" wolves would not attack people? They did and they will. Did you know that wolves attacked and killed people in Russia in the XX century? In the nineteen forties during the WWII and after it  when the country was greatly depopulated, wolves multiplied and started killing and eating people.

I attend to agree nearly any animal will kill and attack if it is hungry enough just like us humans.

Either way we seem to be on top of the food chain again or are we!

I'm glad to see they have a wolve program in USA https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolves.htm

 

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1 hour ago, AZHockeyNut said:

hmm it does say on the launch screen that they are well aware wolves do not generally attack humans.....must be some folks don't bother reading that, whoda thunk it

Yes, as we state in the opening screen for the game, we're aware the wolf behaviour in The Long Dark doesn't map 1:1 with reality.

 

On 6/17/2017 at 6:04 PM, dbldrew said:

Downloaded the new update after not playing for months. Played for a good 30ish min and noticed the mindless zombie horde (wolves) are still as prevalent as ever. Shut the game off and will try again in 3-4 months for the next update..

Its to bad the game has such potential.  

 

There are multiple ways of dealing with wolves, including avoiding them altogether. Have you tried a stealth approach at all? Avoidance can be a good strategy, especially if you get to know the maps very well. 

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47 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

 

There are multiple ways of dealing with wolves, including avoiding them altogether. Have you tried a stealth approach at all? Avoidance can be a good strategy, especially if you get to know the maps very well. 

I know how to deal with wolves, I can turn myself invisible and crouch walk all over the place (doesn't get much better and exciting then crouch walking at a snails pace!) and once I craft a bow I can drop bait and slaughter them by the 100s and the hordes just keep coming and coming. 

the problem is not that I cant deal with wolves its just dealing with them is not fun. I dont play the game anymore because of the wolves it just is an irritation rather then a fun challenge.

Before you guys made interloper we where asking for a custom setting with slider bars. that way we could of tweaked things like wolf aggression and re-pawn rate along with other things like weather and available resources etc. if you guys would of done that rather then interloper we wouldn't be having this conversation (and I still would be playing your game) But here we are..  

 

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2 hours ago, AZHockeyNut said:

hmm it does say on the launch screen that they are well aware wolves do not generally attack humans.....must be some folks don't bother reading that, whoda thunk it

that or a post meant to be as a joke sailed right over someones head? 

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All this would be avoided if players had more control over how their game balances out, most players who are annoyed with the wolves do NOT want pilgrim loot levels.

Personally, i wish i had the ability to select interloper wolves with voyageur/stalker loot upon game creation. Wolves far and few between, but a formiddable enemy, rare enough that encountering one would bring excitement rather than annoyance. Yet useful supplies left in a fashion it feels looted before you, but in a hurried fashion.

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Well, in the kind of disaster that hinterland is portraying, that's kind of how it should be. predators would be driven vicious and hostile due to the event, and their main prey would be scattered and rare to find, so they'd be hungry and traveling in large numbers in an attempt to find food for their pack.

That being said, I'd like to see wolves be hostile against one another aswell. wolves are VERY territorial creatures, and it'd be awesome to see packs going at eachother for stepping over boundaries :D

But that's a discussion for another topic :P

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4 minutes ago, MarrowStone said:

Personally, i wish i had the ability to select interloper wolves with voyageur/stalker loot upon game creation. Wolves far and few between, but a formiddable enemy, rare enough that encountering one would bring excitement rather than annoyance. Yet useful supplies left in a fashion it feels looted before you, but in a hurried fashion.

Precisely this. Id love to have wolves of interloper, or even harder, but i also like my scavenging part(main reason i dont play interloper is that already small pool of items get reduced even further in this mode).  Having 4 out of 5 containers being empty is not my definition of fun.

I want a challenge, but i also want engagement, instead of boring sifting thru dozens of empty containers. I want my activities to have impact, not just waste my time. Spending 20 minutes doing something that bears no result of any type is not my definition of fun. Also, dodging dozens of wolves in Stalker, who are not particularly dangerous, but come in large numbers, making engaging them feel like a chore, is also not particularly interesting.

Especially considering that there is apparently cornucopia of them somewhere, so regardless of how many i kill every day, there is no end to them. They are not even remotely challenging, so there is no thrill. Killing them is not rewarding in any manner, so there is no profit. And there is never-ending supply of them, so there is no point in engaging them in hopes to bring their population down. And at the same time, there seem to be more and more of them with every update, for no good reason whatsoever. For me personally, more of those weak ass wolves there does not equal greater challenge, but greater annoyance.

For me wolves, at least on stalker, are like this small and extremely annoying rock in your shoe, except that you cant get rid of it. They are not strong enough to be real threat, 90% of damage they do is thru secondary traits, like their meat being crap, bleeding and infection risk. Something that simply feels cheap, to be honest, as player has no control over it(especially with latest changes to their scripts, where their behavior seem to be modded to go even further that route, with constant disengagement, running away for a bit and attacking again to maximize waste of bandages and antiseptic). But at the same time there is so many of them, that ignoring them is impossible and player is forced to dodge them all the time.

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I'm not exactly clear on precisely what has changed with the wolves but they now are definitely something to be feared rather than the annoying, easily dispatched, animal from before the update.

Before, I could easily kill a wolf with a bow, pretty much every time with a one-arrow kill to the head when it charged. Using a gun was a little trickier due to the angle at which the wolf charged but still a pretty easy kill. Now, especially when not skilled up, I can't seem to shoot a charging wolf to (literally) save my life with a gun, and I've yet to one-arrow kill a wolf. I'll get a hit but will still end with a knife fight (albeit a shorter fight). 100% of my experiences with a charging wolf since the FC update has ended in a fight, and I seem to be taking more damage I think. One wolf attack (on Stalker) now takes half my health, a second will pretty much  finished me off.

The smell mechanic, although apparently was there before the update, now seems more pronounced, and it's not uncommon to harvest a deer fully only to encounter a pack of wolves walking back to a base. I was followed by a pack of four across the ice in Desolation point last week and my heart was beating rather quickly. Carrying fresh meat is now a major risk/reward decision.

I play on Stalker difficulty and the above changes have gone to make my TLD experience much tougher and scarier. I'm now far less complacent when i see a wolf, and i find myself immediately crouching and hoping that I'm not spotted. I now walk in fear as I traverse the landscape and I cannot express just how much better the game has become because of this. So a big thank you to the devs.

I do have one suggestion to make wolves even better. The wolves never attack me if I keep them in my sights and walk backwards. I like this mechanic to a point because it's what I would do (and have done) when facing a dog that's growling at me but I'd prefer there to be a random time limit imposed on this before the wolf becomes emboldened and goes on the attack. Walking backwards for ages, knowing I'm completely safe from attack is one of the only things about TLD pulls me out of the immersive experience and makes me feel I'm playing a game. I could use that window of time when a wolf is stalking me to quickly decide how to tackle them, either by getting a weapon ready or maybe dropping some heavy gear and risk running for safety. Knowing they are going to attack not knowing when would raise the tension of the encounter massively.

 

 

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Oh i so so agree with the above post. I love how much more intense i find the game regarding wolves and i religiously play on Stalker mode. I get nervous just stepping out of a door now!

I did also find that slightly odd mechanic where if i walk backwards the wolf just seems to match my pace and growl but doesn't charge at me. In a way i think thats kind of realistic as its as if the wolf is stalking me and weighing up his or her odds of winning a fight, or finding its moment to lunge. But i have found that the wolf never attacks and i can literally backwards walk half a map without that wolf actually running at me. Maybe that could be tested and considered for tweaking. A timer sounds ideal.

As far as wolf behaviour, i would like maybe one day to see just a little more randomness in their animations and moods and alertness. For example i love seeing wolves together in this game. I love seeing 2 or 3 walking together on the same purpose as a pack. Its beautiful and i often risk detection just to watch. But i would like to see a little more variety in the animations. Maybe sometimes they lay down, even sleep. Maybe they trot quicker as a pack and little animations added to the already nice ones. More investigative animations where they check out cars or trash cans or more often animal carcasses. Maybe they sniff around the doors of buildings or even now and then play together, skipping and yapping excitedly. Not always so serious. Not too much as i still want to fear them but enough to give them just a little more character. 

I also have stated many times before that i do wish they was not all black. I may be wrong but most of the very dark wolves in those winter regions in real life is the younger wolf tones. as they mature they get lighter fur tones? Someone can correct me if i am wrong. But even if the game just added light grey or white wolves. They would be harder to spot from so far away. that would scare me! :)

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 Stalker here and I can't count the number of times I just walked away from a wolf. I hear him bark and I just keep on walking. I have no statistics, but I would say that maybe 1 in 5 end up attacking (no scent) and usually I end up walking - sometimes very long distances - out of their zone and they just turn around. Fighting them is more brutal than ever I admit, but avoiding them is the same as it ever was. Its maybe a kind of exploit, but they have hard set paths within areas and when you understand their routes - where they can/can't / will/won't go - this can be exploited. I know the maps like my home and have no trouble avoiding them altogether, only seeking them out when I need meat or a pelt. Chasing deer into their path is easier than ever perhaps due to their being more vicious?

 Anyhow, to each their own, but I don't find them to be anything more or less than they ever were. Loads of them on stalker, but if there is one or three in a zone, it makes no difference to my play style.

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