Did voyager get harder?


jonque007

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Before the update of FC I could make it around 80 days. Now I struggle to make it to day 10 lol.And that is starting in ML lol and I know that map ! I know a lot of you thought interloper was to easy before did it get harder as well?

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 This seems to be an ongoing debate! Some claim yes, some no without a clear winner. I played on Voyageur only briefly after the update then returned to Stalker and personally didn't find it more demanding. The wolves seemed to be more numerous and a tad more 'roided up, but still lots of loot. Maybe the game has been slightly tuned up in general, something with which I would be inclined to agree.

 I'm not sure if we will ever get an objective answer to your question, but good luck anyhow!

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Apart from the tougher wolves, the main thing I've noticed is less loot than I'm used to seeing on Voyageur. Sometimes down to the kind of levels I'd expect to see in Stalker. However, others report no differences in loot levels, and Hinterland state that they haven't messed with loot levels. So possibly, the levels are simply more variable than before..

Also, the weather generally seems to turn crappy sooner. But again, this may just be bad luck on the RNG rolls.

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I can definitely say in this current Voyageur run I am doing since FC released, I have yet to find a dang prybar.  I started in Mystery Lake, scoped out Camp Office, all of the lake cabins and fishing huts, but then I made for Carter Dam before the wolves got themselves too settled.  I explored Carter Dam pretty thoroughly, especially since Fluffy surprised me and died after our fight.  Made me sad, I don't like killing Fluffy.  Wolves in the open are one thing, but one stuck inside a structure like the dam it seems harsh to take down.

But even in Carter Dam I didn't find a single prybar.  Now I am hanging out in Pleasant Valley after exploring the little town and giftshop, farmhouse, barn, and signal tower shack.  No joy.

It really comes down to a roll of the dice. Nothing is guaranteed.  If just one thing that can make the game easier doesn't show up right away, then it can definitely make Voyageur more difficult. However, in my case it is just limiting my looting. I have a rifle, decent clothes, knife, and hatchet.  I also have Fluffy's hide curing along with another wolf's, so am well on my way to a wolfskin coat.  In fact, I just got another hide while exploring the little town in PV.  Dang dog ripped up my Canada cap.

I did have a playthrough before the FC update where I couldn't find a knife at all. I think that actually contributed to my doom for that playthrough.

On the upside, it is something like that which helps keep the game fresh.  Imagine not finding a single hatchet through all of Mystery Lake, having to make do with sticks and whatever furniture you can break down for firewood, plus whatever is already lying around.  That can jack up the difficulty, especially if you need more than one day to explore all of the lake.  I actually wouldn't mind experiencing that challenge.

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5 hours ago, Samsonguy920 said:

Made me sad, I don't like killing Fluffy.  Wolves in the open are one thing, but one stuck inside a structure like the dam it seems harsh to take down.

 You're doing the wolf a favor. The ones outside can at least hunt for food; Fluffy is doomed to die from starvation.

 No prybar at Signal Hill under the tower? Pretty harsh Voyageur run mate...it's always there.

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8 hours ago, Carbon said:

 You're doing the wolf a favor. The ones outside can at least hunt for food; Fluffy is doomed to die from starvation.

 No prybar at Signal Hill under the tower? Pretty harsh Voyageur run mate...it's always there.

I know, but I guess it bothers me most because it doesn't feel sporting.  Once I get myself in good shape with decent clothes and weapons, I more avoid the wolves out of not needing the food or hide at the time.  If I have to kill a wolf, I will harvest it for at least the hide and meat. It's a strong game rule of mine. Nothing goes to waste.

I may just have to go back up to Signal Hill and give the tower a closer looksee.  That will be easy now with the rope coming right off of the rock that is right there.  I had moved it from the lower rock. Interesting how it gained enough length to reach the bottom of the cliff there.

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27 minutes ago, selfless said:

Havent seen an answer as to why this is, but when I play the game live there is a lot of loot that fails to appear.  When I play a restored saved game, it is all there as expected.

I doubt it is intentional.

And yet I record every moment I play and have ordinary amounts of gear...though some are more sparse than others. That's how it should be.

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The only tuning changes we've made recently were the ones detailed in our patch notes for Faithful Cartographer. While some changes, such as to weapon usage during wolf struggles, could lead to certain survival situations feeling different, we haven't specifically tuned Voyageur Mode to be "harder." 

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6 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

The only tuning changes we've made recently were the ones detailed in our patch notes for Faithful Cartographer. While some changes, such as to weapon usage during wolf struggles, could lead to certain survival situations feeling different, we haven't specifically tuned Voyageur Mode to be "harder." 

That's not entirely true as the patch notes for the patch and/or the hotfix made no mention limiting rope climbing encumbrance to a hard cap of 30.0 kilos.

So I am sure other changes were probably made to gameplay that were unannounced and no one knows about.

It is even possible things were changed on accident that haven't been realized.

Maybe someone with access should actually check the code to see if Voyager was made more difficult by way of adding more wolves and making loot more sparse....

If someone as experienced as @JAFO says it feels like there is less loot in Voyager now than there was in the past, I would take him at his word and check the code that governs the loot drops and where static loot is supposed to be in the game.

Someone could have had a bad day...

Accidents happen... 

I am playing Voyager now and I have a lot of loot in general (after looting 2.5 maps), but the drops are nowhere near what has been described by other players in forums and in videos of people playing.

I have heard players saying things like while searching a building your chances of getting a drop on Interloper are like 1 in 10 searches to 1 in 20 searches.

I have searched many a building on Voyager and gotten loot on the scale of 1 in 10.

There has been one crappy item in both safes I cracked. And the two stacks of file cabinets next to each other in the Dam gave me like 1 tinder plug.

So either I have the worst luck in the history of gaming, or someone did something naughty to the looting code....

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I don't know how it was on Stalker before, because my Savegame back from Deep Forrest (?) was on Voyager, but the Wolfes are pretty hard. It took me 5 tries to make it above day 5, mainly because i never found a melee weapon for self defending. Without that, one wolf pushes you from full live to nearly 15-25%. And when you stink 3 times, good night! :D

It is too hard for new players, but i personally like it :D

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Let me be more specific - this question has already come up once or twice in other threads. We haven't made any changes to loot spawns in the game - I inquired about this with the design team already. Loot can change from game to game though, and there is a chance factor at work in what you will stumble across. Sometimes rifles and pry bars seem to be everywhere, and other times, it can be a while before you happen to come across one. 

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1 hour ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Let me be more specific - this question has already come up once or twice in other threads. We haven't made any changes to loot spawns in the game - I inquired about this with the design team already. Loot can change from game to game though, and there is a chance factor at work in what you will stumble across. Sometimes rifles and pry bars seem to be everywhere, and other times, it can be a while before you happen to come across one. 

But changes have been observed.  One of these is specific to containers.  v0.388 maintained container contents as a fixed result.  When a container was created its contents were also created and those contents were fixed and enjoyed decay even if never opened/observed.  v0.426 also has container contents fixed but removes the decay element instead generating a "reasonable" condition for the contents upon opening.  This might have been invisible except the new formula includes a zero condition that results in all the contents of a container that rolls poorly to be removed from the game.  Checking now whether containers effectively "contained" their loot has resulted in many more containers coming up "empty".  

Intentional or not, this has changed the amount of loot appearing. Other changes have also been observed affecting the appearance of objects. All told the observed changes have opened what was once a relatively consistent save/loot system to one prime for wild inconsistencies and ripe for save scumming; hardly an innovation.

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3 fresh starts: Pilgrim, Voyageur, Stalker. Started in ML, went right to the Camp Office, dropped everything I spawned with at the door then proceeded to loot the place. Results:

Pilgrim:

1_Pil.thumb.jpg.f9e5f7eb358e2985f293acf2aa7337bd.jpg

 Voyageur (edited the screenshot to get all of the loot on one page):

59655e08ca13c_1_VoyAll.thumb.jpg.4d7b83015fc39ba59be54f222ca175d3.jpg

 And Stalker:

1_Stalk.thumb.jpg.88a71ff3d07562589bbf7ff5dfedc0b5.jpg

 Turns out that Voyageur got more loot than Pilgrim and of course Stalker. It is random with no guarantees of anything. I didn't take a screenshot, but my starting gear was as expected: highest in Pilgrim, then Voyageur, then Stalker, so that is consistent.

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6 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Let me be more specific - this question has already come up once or twice in other threads. We haven't made any changes to loot spawns in the game - I inquired about this with the design team already. Loot can change from game to game though, and there is a chance factor at work in what you will stumble across. Sometimes rifles and pry bars seem to be everywhere, and other times, it can be a while before you happen to come across one. 

4 hours ago, selfless said:

But changes have been observed.
...
Intentional or not, this has changed the amount of loot appearing. Other changes have also been observed affecting the appearance of objects. All told the observed changes have opened what was once a relatively consistent save/loot system to one prime for wild inconsistencies and ripe for save scumming; hardly an innovation.

 

Personally, I still think someone "tweaked" the RNG system. That alone might explain a lot of the weirdness that's been observed. @Patrick Carlson, could you look into that possibility for us, please?

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4 hours ago, JAFO said:

 

Personally, I still think someone "tweaked" the RNG system. That alone might explain a lot of the weirdness that's been observed. @Patrick Carlson, could you look into that possibility for us, please?

Possibly, but one of the sure ways to know a system is actually random is if a human thinks "there's no way this is random!"  We tend to feel that random means "evens out" but in most random sets there are far more "runs" of good or bad results than we would expect. 

I'd bet all this is the result of the save file wipe. Lots of new game starts = lots of new RNG rolls = more data than before = humans assuming something is up with the roll they got.

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32 minutes ago, vimrich said:

Possibly, but one of the sure ways to know a system is actually random is if a human thinks "there's no way this is random!"  We tend to feel that random means "evens out" but in most random sets there are far more "runs" of good or bad results than we would expect. 

I'm quite aware of the difference between true random and pseudo-random.. and that most devs use pseudo-random, because it delivers the experience people actually expect from "random". My suspicion is that Hinterland used to use pseudo-random, and abandoned it for true randomness.. leading to all the WTF? reactions we've seen since FC was released.

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I play mostly on Voyager and I have experienced a few pretty severe loot table bugs.

The most serious was at the gas station in CH.

When I entered it the first time there were 4 locked lockers and one unlocked locker. When I looted the locked lockers each one gave me THREE decent items...coats, fisherman's sweater, ammo, lantern....all sorts of cool stuff.

I exited the game without sleeping or going in and out of the door again like a dummy.

The next day no matter how many times I reloaded the original save upon entering and quitting, at most only one or two lockers had those items. When they did spawn stuff it was the exact same items in each locker as the first time....when they were there...with varying conditions each time. I could never get all 4 to spawn with three things each again though. Just one or two of the lockers at a time at most.

I figure whatever mechanic that caused that to happen, is the same thing that is happening to others that feel like Voyager gives less stuff than it did before. 

Maybe back in the day Voyager loot was to the degree that a locked locker meant a few good things.....pretty much guaranteed. Something is causing things to be empty, that shouldn't be empty...

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57 minutes ago, Thrasador said:

I play mostly on Voyager and I have experienced a few pretty severe loot table bugs.

The most serious was at the gas station in CH.

When I entered it the first time there were 4 locked lockers and one unlocked locker. When I looted the locked lockers each one gave me THREE decent items...coats, fisherman's sweater, ammo, lantern....all sorts of cool stuff.

I exited the game without sleeping or going in and out of the door again like a dummy.

The next day no matter how many times I reloaded the original save upon entering and quitting, at most only one or two lockers had those items. When they did spawn stuff it was the exact same items in each locker as the first time....when they were there...with varying conditions each time. I could never get all 4 to spawn with three things each again though. Just one or two of the lockers at a time at most.

I figure whatever mechanic that caused that to happen, is the same thing that is happening to others that feel like Voyager gives less stuff than it did before. 

Maybe back in the day Voyager loot was to the degree that a locked locker meant a few good things.....pretty much guaranteed. Something is causing things to be empty, that shouldn't be empty...

 Is this illustrative of a bug or the result of the proverbial roll of the dice? I mean, is the loot generated upon the world being created when you enter or within each structure when you enter? Or even later, when you open a locker for example, is the loot generated at that moment?

 I'm not sure of the answers to those questions, but the latter seems the most likely to me and if so, then you were just a victim of probability and chance, not a bug. At least it woulds like 'the way it is' as opposed to something being wrong.

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57 minutes ago, Carbon said:

 Is this illustrative of a bug or the result of the proverbial roll of the dice? I mean, is the loot generated upon the world being created when you enter or within each structure when you enter? Or even later, when you open a locker for example, is the loot generated at that moment?

 I'm not sure of the answers to those questions, but the latter seems the most likely to me and if so, then you were just a victim of probability and chance, not a bug. At least it woulds like 'the way it is' as opposed to something being wrong.

If it was simply a bad roll of the dice then reloading the save 20-40 times would at some point make all 4 locked lockers contain items again all at the same time. This never occurred. Best I could get was 2 out of 4.

I assure you, something is amiss. Others have reported similar occurrences...

I have experimented with the loot rolling mechanics in this game extensively. Out of curiosity. Like @Timber Wolf does with struggle mechanics. 

This was not normal behavior for the way loot normally works, simply because the original outcome was not reproducible. All other occasions of me reloading saves upon entering a structure, I was able to reproduce the same items in the same containers. It was simply a matter of patience. This was a one time occurrence.

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On 7/11/2017 at 10:19 AM, Patrick Carlson said:

Sometimes rifles and pry bars seem to be everywhere, and other times, it can be a while before you happen to come across one. 

I have to say, like many others here, I also noticed "less loot" in the game I started after the last update. I only play on Voyager, and normally there is enough food at and around the "major" locations that you can survive at each one for a decent amount of time, living only off of the packaged food. But in this game, there was clearly less food. I had to start relying on wildlife for food a lot sooner than in previous games. But on the other hand, at one point I found literally 5 prybars in about 1 minute of gameplay. There were three of them in one location, the basement in crumbling highway, and two more nearby.

 

But there was one thing that happened that I feel is important to point out. When entering buildings, once you enter, there is something like a loading screen for about a second, where the screen is dimmer. Then once the location is considered fully loaded, it goes away, and you can move around. I don't know how long this lasts for others, but for me it's about a second, maybe 2. Well one time I entered a building that had a table right in front of the door, so you could see the table as soon as you entered, without having to move. And during the 1-2 second "loading" screen, I clearly saw a sewing kit on the table. Then once the room fully loaded, the kit disappeared right in front of my eyes.

 

It was like the item was there, but then the game decided to "hide" it from me. It was very strange, and not something I ever noticed happening in prior versions of the game. I think it's related to the other issue people have mentioned, where you can exit/enter locations and find new loot there that wasn't there just seconds before.  

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Update on Operation Prybar, @Carbon :

Found the prybar at the bottom of the Signal Hill antenna. I don't know why I didn't look there when I was first there.  Granted I wanted to get to the farmhouse ASAP, I could have still given it a quick glance.

As to your question on when loot is first generated, I think it is set upon your first visit to each instance, be it the region altogether (i.e. Pleasant Valley) or location (i.e. Farmhouse), and it is set in stone for that gameplay. This comes from experience with other games. It is an efficient process.

@Supermax For your appearing and disappearing sewing kit, I think you managed to catch that bit where the game was establishing each object spawn point, going through the motions of whether to place something, and then making its final decision. It's possible the sewing kit is the placeholder for that.  I wouldn't feel like you got cheated, though.  If anything, maybe rewarded. You just walked into a room that was still being built, but then got knocked out for time to get it finished.

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