Just a couple of little annoyances

[Malcot]

Firstly, just started playing again and an loving Timberwolf Mountain. It's by far the most fun map for survival.

Just two small things that I think need addressing:

Sprains - How many times do we have to sprain a wrist or ankle? I walked out the front of the cabin and literally took two steps and sprained my ankle and wrist just walking over a twig! It definitely needs balancing. I'm currently spraining something most in game days when I'm exploring.

UI - This might just be a personal thing but when my crafting or fire lighting skill increases the message displays in red. I start thinking something has gone wrong until I read the text. Red should be bad stuff (those sprains etc) and white or maybe green text for the good stuff.

I'm on Xbox One by the way. Keep up the great work!

[Vhalkyrie]

Yeah, I agree.  I love the Timberwolf map, but there's something weird about the 'sprain' mechanics there.  I've walked on rather steep slopes on every other map, and only get an occasional sprain. However, on Timberwolf, even on gentle slopes, I get sprained with great frequency.

[selfless]

Sprains are related not only to the slope of the land you walk on but also to the ammount of time you spend walking on sloped ground.  Obviously for those who have been there, Timberwolf Mountain has lots of sloped ground so you can spend a lot of time consecutively walking on slopes, increasing the delivery of sprains.

Solution: Stop doing that-- Follow the less sloped paths.  Take breaks to look around.  Enjoy lower risk.

[Vhalkyrie]

1) OP said he walked out of the cabin and got a sprain.  That means, not extended time.

2) I said I was walking on gentle slope.  Gentle slope = "less sloped".  I might have chalked it up to extremely bad luck, except it happened twice relatively around the Lake.  Which along the banks is not very steep.  I also have been sprained walking up the path to the cabin.

[selfless]

 lowered risk is never zero risk

[cekivi]

Not to mention red on black is rather hard to read...

I'd be fine with changing the "skill increase" text to white. It would also be nice to have somewhere you can look to see what levels your skills are at (the logbook maybe?) but that may risk breaking immersion

[Patrick Carlson]

7 hours ago, Malcot said:

Firstly, just started playing again and an loving Timberwolf Mountain. It's by far the most fun map for survival.

Just two small things that I think need addressing:

Sprains - How many times do we have to sprain a wrist or ankle? I walked out the front of the cabin and literally took two steps and sprained my ankle and wrist just walking over a twig! It definitely needs balancing. I'm currently spraining something most in game days when I'm exploring.

UI - This might just be a personal thing but when my crafting or fire lighting skill increases the message displays in red. I start thinking something has gone wrong until I read the text. Red should be bad stuff (those sprains etc) and white or maybe green text for the good stuff.

I'm on Xbox One by the way. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for the feedback Malcot. Just so it's clear to me what you are seeing, you get a sprain almost every day in situations where you wouldn't expect them? Flat land or gentle slopes? (Falling or traversing/descending steep hills gives you a higher chance of injury, for example)

[Vhalkyrie]

37 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Thanks for the feedback Malcot. Just so it's clear to me what you are seeing, you get a sprain almost every day in situations where you wouldn't expect them? Flat land or gentle slopes? (Falling or traversing/descending steep hills gives you a higher chance of injury, for example)

In my case, it was not a steep slope.  I was picking up sticks and came down the bank to the Lake over on the eastside (right of the cabin).  Happened twice.

[Malcot]

On 1 April 2016 at 9:58 PM, Patrick Carlson said:

Thanks for the feedback Malcot. Just so it's clear to me what you are seeing, you get a sprain almost every day in situations where you wouldn't expect them? Flat land or gentle slopes? (Falling or traversing/descending steep hills gives you a higher chance of injury, for example)

Hi Patrick, thanks for replying. In game I'd say I get s sprain roughly every other day. Some I can see why (running down a slope or dropping off a small drop) but some are just walking down very slight inclines that shouldn't really cause sprains. It sounds like Valkyrie has the same problem, it's just to the right of the cabin. I was fully rested, warm, fed and hydrated with not much in my rucksack just walking out and next thing I know sprained wrist, ankle and torn clothing.

[Patrick Carlson]

6 hours ago, Malcot said:

Hi Patrick, thanks for replying. In game I'd say I get s sprain roughly every other day. Some I can see why (running down a slope or dropping off a small drop) but some are just walking down very slight inclines that shouldn't really cause sprains. It sounds like Valkyrie has the same problem, it's just to the right of the cabin. I was fully rested, warm, fed and hydrated with not much in my rucksack just walking out and next thing I know sprained wrist, ankle and torn clothing.

As it stands, uneven terrain gives you a higher chance of getting a sprain. I know it's a system where we're looking for new ways to tell players why they might have acquired the injury. Thanks for your feedback on this.

[Vhalkyrie]

I reported this in the support area.  They said working as intended.  I am not terribly happy about that as many have happened in the walkway to the hut.  I also got sprained stepping out of the fishing hut. The torn clothing is the most irritating thing about it.

I'll wait to see what comes out of the overhaul, but this currently feels arbitrary. I have more sprains on TWM than all maps combined.

[cekivi]

I still find that odd @Vhalkyrie since I haven't noticed an increase in injury while wandering around Timberwolf Mountain.

[Support]

Hi Vhalkyrie - I'd like to clarify. While what you're experiencing is expected with the current sprain system, we are looking into improving sprains in general.   

[illanthropist]

Does overall condition play a part in the likelihood of a sprain?  Obviously just stepping out of a cabin I presume tiredness or thirst etc. wasn't the cause.

One thing I have been doing when tackling gradients is to zig zag a few clicks at a time rather than continuous movement, sort of how I would IRL descending a scree so my momentum doesn't carry me.

It may well just be my imagination but I could swear sprain injuries are far less of an occurrence compared to previous straight ascent/descents or traversing on uneven terrain

[Vhalkyrie]

5 hours ago, illanthropist said:

One thing I have been doing when tackling gradients is to zig zag a few clicks at a time rather than continuous movement, sort of how I would IRL descending a scree so my momentum doesn't carry me.

That's a good idea. I'll try that.

However, not much I can do stepping out of the cabin or fishing hut!

[SteveP]

I wonder if the random event probability function is broken? If it's not factored out by function, it should be and a good code rip should spot any problem. For example, starting a fire, the results don't correspond to the stated probability of success.

I can't feature why stepping out of a fishing hut should cause a sprain especially if well rested and not encumbered by excess weight. Perhaps stepping sideways? Makes no sense since one might want to quickly peak out to check for predators in the area. Perhaps crawling out is a better way but I suspect a bug in there.

"Instrumenting" the cause of sprain is a good idea.

[illanthropist]

2 hours ago, Vhalkyrie said:

However, not much I can do stepping out of the cabin or fishing hut!

 

1 hour ago, SteveP said:

I can't feature why stepping out of a fishing hut should cause a sprain

Perhaps there's just RNG where it can happen anywhere in an outside environment.  Reminds me of the time I got attacked by a wolf outside my cabin with zero warning, when I reported on here was told it can't happen, couldn't be bothered arguing back saying well it did so dropped the matter.

[Vhalkyrie]

26 minutes ago, illanthropist said:

 

Perhaps there's just RNG where it can happen anywhere in an outside environment.  Reminds me of the time I got attacked by a wolf outside my cabin with zero warning, when I reported on here was told it can't happen, couldn't be bothered arguing back saying well it did so dropped the matter.

I know what you mean.  I wasn't going to say anything until OP mentioned it.  Just throwing in that I have experienced something similar.  I've reported it, they are in progress in changing the system, so there isn't anything left for me to say on it.  I'll reserve further comment until the new system is in place.

[Scyzara]

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

For example, starting a fire, the results don't correspond to the stated probability of success.

How do you know that?

I once considered testing the success rates of lighting fires myself and abondoned the idea almost immediately afterwards when I realized how much work and time such a test would require. Let me tell you a test setup that might be able to illuminate the topic and you can tell me afterwards if you actually did something along these lines.

First of all, you need to start 5 different games, collect some fuel and place your characters in front of a stove. Make sure that you will always use the same type of fuel (e.g. reclaimed wood) and the same type of matches (e.g. cardboard) for all tests you will ever perform. This is of great importance and doing otherwise will screw your results.

You then need to try to light a fire once in every game at skill 50. Make notes for every game whether it worked or not. If you use reclaimed wood and cardboard matches your displayed rate of success at skill 50 will be 45% (see picture below). Delete all five games, create 5 new games, make 5 new fires @skill 50 and again make notes. Rinse repeat until you have at least 50 (better would be 100 or more) initial fire making attempts at skill 50.

Repeat the whole process for skill levels 55, 75 and 95 (yes, this is a horrible amount of work indeed). For each skill level you need to make at least 50 (better 100+) attempts to light a fire, otherwise your pool of data will be too small to get significant results. Remember always to use reclaimed wood and cardboard matches for each and every single test!

Once you've collected all your data, you can throw your notes into a statistics program of your choice (even excel is sufficient), compare the median success rates for each skill level and check how much they vary from the expected values (which should be 45%@50, 50%@55, 70% @75 and 90% @95 if I'm not mistaken). If you find considerable variations (like only 20% instead of 45% median success probability at skill 50), then there might really be a problem with the success rates.

As said, I haven't done that myself so I can't tell if such problems may exist.

But what I can tell for sure is that having a fire lighting attempt fail 4 times in a row at skill 50 during one (or 4 or even 10!) consecutive games does in no way mean that something has to be wrong with the success rates.

It's impossible to judge about these things "just by intuition", humans are horrible at that. We always get the feeling something has to be wrong whenever a few bad things happen to us in a row even though it's perfectly possible (and not even unlikely) that these "unlucky rows" occasionally happen. 

Things get even worse (regarding the correctness of our subjective assumptions, I mean) because if you simply play a "normal" TLD game, you will change between different types of fuel and lighters and these two factors also have an influence on the fire lighting success rates.

It's always easy to tell an anecdote like "And once my attempts to light some sticks failed 6 times in a row even though my skill level was already 65, something just HAS to be wrong here!", but such singular events aren't suitable to judge whether something is working correct or not. Only thorough and extensive testing (with dozens of trials for every skill level) is.

 

[FINDarkside]

8 hours ago, SteveP said:

I wonder if the random event probability function is broken?

It's most likely not broken. It uses 

Random.Range(0, 99.9) <= probability 

to roll the success.