My suggestions/wishlist


Hyenaz

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1) Open ended "you will die anyway at some point" sandbox is ok, but I think a lot of people would enjoy some sort of possible way out. Make it hard, btu possible. Example: "Reach Dam, fix radio equipment there requiring parts from all over the map, then wait 30 days for a rescue party to arrive at the dam".

2) The can opener. If you want to make the game more difficult, limit the munt of can openers in the game, while add some "rusty decrepit" can openers in exposed locations like the crumbled cottage etc. Same with most other tools tbh.

3) Calories are well... weird. They come down too fast, the player needs to eat far more that what is reasonable. Limit this down and balance perhaps by limiting food amounts to be found. Instead of more "ready to eat" food, have more "troublesome" food available. Examples:

- flour or cornmeal, that needs to be cooked into pancakes/johnnycakes to be really edible.

- salted preserved foods like salted pork, that increase thirst.

- enforce a scurvy meter, requiring players to find rare vegetable or fruit foodstuffs (pickesl maybe? pickled cabbage etc) to avoid dangerous long term scurvy issues.

- mould/spoiled/rotten food in far larger numbers than canned/preserved food.

- game meat being a larger part of the player's diet than it is now. Have the player set rabbit traps. Or have him/her hunt for rats inside buildings.

4) Fuel. Quite a few players complained not being able to chop wooden chairs or trees into fuel etc. I would second these. To balance it out:

- Have fuel be divided into "dry", "moist" and "wet" variants of each object ("wet branches" vs "dry branches" etc). Everything outside should be wet, requiring to be dried at a fire or suffer huge fire starting penalties (try to start a fire with wet paper in RL and you'll see how easy it is)

- Have more furniture inside be made of plastic, less of wood. Also make many of them "moist" (this really is an issue if you have a simple building in winter with noheatng for long periods of time).

- Harvesting branches or cattails for fuel. Again, all start out "wet".

5) Have clothes not just deteriorate, but also get "wet" outside when its snowing. Down coats and similar stuff should be relatively resistant to this, but going out with just a sweater into snowing weather would at once make it wet. Wet clothes should provide MUCH less protection and require drying them by the fire.

6) Falling through thin ice into lakes/rivers. VERY dangeouns in freezing weather, all clothes become wet instantly, shock, hypothermia etc. If we want to make the gmae more difficult without making it less realistic, than this is the way to go.

7) Improvised weapons. At leats basic ones - broomsticks, metal bars etc.

8) Wolves, especially lones ones or in small groups are skittish creatures. I know the game needs an opponent, but wolves now seem to be taken out of a B-movie horror. At least give players an option to play with "realistic" or "B-movie" wolves. Current wolves and their behaviour ar as realistic as zombies if you ask me.

For balance:

- I'd say make agressive wolfpacks more rare, but also larger (8+ individuals)

- Even then, make wolves not attack the players, unless his general condition falls to 20% or lower. Wolves generlaly do not attack healthy large animals (adult humans are large animals in this definition), but ill or weak ones that's something different.

- If it wasn't for the winter theme, I'd say add black bears as potential danger to players.

- Really, other agressive survivors should be much more dangerous threats than wolves.

9) Cannibalism. It was brought up, its controversial but I think with a subtitle "how far will you go to survive" it makes sense. To balance it out:

- Cannibalism only possible when hunger is in the extreme red zone.

- Possibility to throw up, with the usual dehydration issue.

- Possibility of stress causing fatigue, thirst, less resistant to disease etc. Stress can make a lot of stuff go bad with your organism.

10) You can already build a fire almost anywhere, so placing objects isn't taht big of an issue. Then perhaps building a lean-to would also be possible? There seems to eb a LOt of coniferous trees around and in such conditions a leanto is an obvious solution for a survivalist if no other shelter can be found. I imagine this may be difficult to script, so I'm leaving this as just an idea.

11) Using found blankets or rugs as makeshift ponchos. No-nonsese simple idea.

12) If the player is feeling very cold, then this should make all actions (ligthing a fire, harvesting etc) take longer. Trust me, been there, done that.

Some of these have been mentioned by others, in this case I'd like to second these.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Update one month later - I got my own version of this game as a gift now, so I can comment from much more personale xperience instead of just watching other peple play it.

1) I'm very happy that my rabbit catching idea caught on (no pun intended)

2) My biggest gripe remains the wolf ingame aggression and their lack of fear of fire (I got attacked holding a lit flare in my hand, that's just absurd). Well at least the game now has a disclaimer admitting that wolves behave crazy, so i'm happy with that at least ;)

3) I still think that troublesome food (flour taht needs to be cooked into pancakes, hardtack taht needs to be softened with hot water etc) would be a good idea.

4) I retreat from my cannibalism notion. Having looked at it again, i think it wouldn't add that much actual gameplay impact, while potentially raising the game's rating too high. Not worth it imho.

Overall the game is going in a good direction :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

3) I agree with a lot of this. It feels like the protagonist in this game has the metabolism of a mouse. Real people don't need to eat that often! Also eating all those candy/energy/granola bars and drinking all that soda cannot be good for him/her!

4) Agree. I think the current wood foraging system is weak sauce

5) Yes! Anyone who has ever been camping/hiking/biking etc. knows this!

6) I was actually expecting to encounter thin ice in the game already. Another strange omission.

8) Agree 100% The wolves in TLD do not behave like real wolves.

12) Yup. Been there!

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1) The sandbox doesn't have an end other than you dying. It's about how long you can survive and about just playing/ testing things out. For an ending, wait for the story mode.

3) The calorie burn rate has been a topic of discussion since people are playing the alpha. But it's really not that far off. A grown man of 80kg needs about 2000 calories a day when getting little exercise. Physical exertion would increase that number as would living in very cold conditions as you burn calories to stay warm. In TLD if you do nothing at all you will need 1800 calories a day.

I do think the food mechanism could use a little work but the amount of calories you need is not wrong if you ask me.

Also, using the mechanisms the game provides, it's quite possible to survive on about 500 calories a day.

5) Clothes should get wet when it snows. Different clothes should provide more resistance to moisture. A mariner's pea coat should be very moisture resistant, a down jacket less so and a vest even less. Wool clothes should have less of a penalty than cotton/ fleece clothes for being wet.

12) I agree, being cold or tired should impact all actions. Starving and being dehydrated could also have an effect to a lesser extend.

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