New survivor - Feedback

[Ohbal]

Hi there TLD community!

(sorry, long post)

Purchased the game during the Xmas in Steam and started playing it around a month ago. 

The first thing I want to take out of my chest is: Thanks Hinterland for an incredibly immersing experience! I've expended a delightful amount of hours (89 when writing this, but will add more as soon as I'm done :)) hiking the wilderness and it was a blast. Took me 4 attempts to really get a "successful survivor". I'm at 150+ days on voyager, but switched to Stalker so the 200+ achievement would feel as awesome as the 50 days one did when I got it. 

Anyway.. I'd like to give you some fresh feedback, despite knowing that you have tons of it... but hey, can't help myself, need to share my thoughts .

 

The awesomeness:

Graphic and Sound wise = masterpiece. I wouldn’t express any complaints. I'm sure you guys have a ton of ideas to further improve it, but what you are doing is brilliant imo. 

Gameplay = absolutely marvelous at first. Controls are great, systems are intuitive, difficulty gives a punch but this is what we are all looking for in survival games so KUDOS!

 

But this is the awesome stuff, and while I'm sure devs never get tired of it, I think the most productive feedback is often the not so good one. 

The (my POV ofc) not so awesome:

Lack of motivations to keep going: I know, I know, not only is it a sandbox game, but its in alpha state! And I'm also aware of the story mode (looking forward to it!) but I think there are more things that could be added to the sandbox mode. A few thoughts:

- small quests, maybe to find note telling you how to find a hatch, a good loot stash, or just a diary found in some dead guy, adding some life (like the letter that can be found in TWM). 

- hidden "End of Game" date. I don't know if you guys know "This war of Mine", but in any case in that game, depending on the settings the war that the player needs to survive to last for a certain amount of time. That is, when starting a game, the engine would set a random day for the end of the apocalypse? I'm referring to a very long term goal: several years into the game. 

 

Some things I'd also like to see:

- Seasons: even in the apocalypse, summer and winter should be still be noticeable, if only by the amount of daylight hours! It would be awesome (linked to the End of Game scenario) to get to see some of the places in the game covered by grass and flowers... if only for a few weeks! 

- Trapping: lacking something so basic as digging feels a bit odd

- Jumping: c'mon, seriously... everybody can jump! 

- Less loot (specially in voyager, but stalker al well) but reduce the decay of canned food and matches please. The rest is fine, I'd even say that the meet last for way too long. 

- Wolf packs: make them rare, but these would be deadly cool. Exactly the kind of things you were saving you ammo for. 

- Improved AI: right now torches are just a I-win button against wolfs or bears if you have the bow (i'm a relatively newbie and got my bow in stalker in about 10 days) or the riffle (usually you can find it within a few days if you know where to look). Make them flee, make them circle us, but please do not allow them to just "freeze" in front of us. 

- super storms: something that would really change your style of play for a time. Storms lasting a week, or several weeks, making it almost pitch black if you are outside. I'd make them predictable, like two days before the sky gets really dark so you have some time to prepare. 

- Collectable potable water in waterfalls

- Change in the water mechanics: no more free bottles and tee cups. You can carry or store as much water as you can store in the bottles, barrels, cups, buckets (... you name it) that you have previously found in game. 

- Some short of morale system, where we feel the character living the consequences: getting bored, depressed, confident, enthusiast...

- Fishing mechanic than involves some skill? Mini-game of some short?

 

And finally, some touches, stylistic:

- emotes: scream in frustration or to challenge a wolf (doesn't have to work, just for the looks. I like it when it happens randomly when using the torch, but would be cool to be able to trigger it), histerical laugh, mumbling, things like this. 

- Sitting: would be so cool to sit down in chairs, or even the ground or a rock

 

Oh! I almost forgot, haven't tried them yet but... challenges! The community ones I've seen on this forum (Sea to Summit and the 7 screenshots) are amazing. It would be absolutely awesome if the game ultimately allowed players to create events and share them through the workshop or something similar. 

And that's about it.   

Thanks again for the experience!

PS: sorry for typos and weird English, it’s not my first language

 

[cowboymrh]

Excellent post Ohbal.... very thoughtful and insightful ...... and I agree with virtually everything you said!

[Striker]

Good stuff, I agree.

[Ohbal]

Thanks for the answers guys!

One thing that I forgot to mention: structure decay and repairs. It would be great to see storms causing damage on structures, and having some way to repair them: building a ladder to access the roof (that you coulnd't obviously store in your backback, but carry with both hands), making nails at the forge, finding and using tarps... etc. As much as I like seeing the stars from the bed in TWM's mountaineer's hut, I'd also like to repair the freaking hole!  I almost died of hypotermia one night, even in full crafted clothes (I reckon it was cool as well... now I sleep in my fresh bear sleeping bag just to be on the safe side).