Extensive "Tireless Menace" Feedback

[Scyzara]

After having the opportunity to test the new "Tireless Menace" Update quite thoroughly during the last few days, I just wanted to provide my feedback about it.

Sorry for the wall of text - for reasons of clarity I've subdivided it into different topics (as usual).

Let's get started with the "cosmetic" changes as I like to call them.

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Graphics & Animations

 

The game already looked unique and awesome before and I'm always astonished how you still find ways to further improve it again and again with every update! I particularly like the new cracked ice skin, the 3D footprints and the blood splashes in the snow after a predator attack.

The new wolf curiosity animation looks very natural and the advanced wolf running animation is a great improvement as well (happy to see you worked on it, the foreleg movement looks just right now!) Taken together, the new wolf animations definitely look extremely realistic and are very immersive.

The same is true for the new bear skin and animations. You really get a sense for how heavy the bear seems to be when it moves.  Especially the "turn around" animation is awesome in this regard. The old bear's skin from the Hunted challenge is also great. Reminds me a lot of the great scar bear in Far Cry Primal!

The new campfire smoke animation and the graphical representation of the remaining burning duration of torches, flares and brands are also very immersive. I think it's a really nice improvement that you don't have to check the burning duration of flares & Co in your inventory any longer, thank you for that! 

 

Nocturnal lighting

The new lighting patterns at night definitely look  beautiful and resemble moonlight reflections on snow very well. However, the increased darkness (back to the roots, hu? ;p) makes it really difficult to navigate at night, especially if the sky is cloudy. Even carrying a torch or lantern doesn't improve your sight much in these situations.  And walking around during nocturnal blizzards leaves you almost completely blind and may easily cause you to get lost even if you know the maps by heart.

Please don't interpret this as a complaint (I personally don't mind the decreased visibility at all and welcome everything that makes the game harder). I just wanted to mention it as I'm not completely sure if it was your intention to strongly discourage nocturnal outdoor movement in general.

 Well, I guess maybe the aurora will increase visibility at night again and things are just a bit out of balance because the aurora is still missing.^^

 

New radial UI

In my opinion, the new UI definitely looks good and is well-structured. I also got used to it very fast.  Can't really say much more about the new UI as I didn't find the previous UI bad either. (And I'm  generally rather indifferent regarding the UI anyway^^).

Well, maybe there's one more UI-related thing I'd like to suggest: Having a Stimpak Hotkey would be extremely nice. I for one consider Stimpaks to be items reserved for extreme emergency situations and I would thus like them to be usable without any delay if I need them.

 

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Allright, so much about the cosmetic stuff. Let's move on to the content-related changes now.

 

Challenge mode

First of all: Thank you so much for adding challenges to the game! I always loved to play the challenges posted by users here on the forums and was thus anticipating the new ingame challenge mode very much.  In my opinion, challenges really keep things interesting for veteran players like me as each of them usually favors a very particular playstyle and determining (and perfectioning) these playstyles is always great fun for me.

After playing both of the new ingame challenges I really have to pay you a whole bundle of compliments. The "Hunted" challenge is both extremely exciting, immersive and innovative. Being Stalked by the old bear can be a really scary experience - especially when you hear him running towards you right in the middle of a pitch-black night and don't see anything! My relief when I finally clicked the trapper's homestead door was thus more or less indescribable!

The  "Hopeless Rescue" challenge is very different in character (less action, more strategy), but equally immersive. It definitely requires some thorough route planing, careful monitoring of your cold meter and reminded me a lot of the wonderful Sea to summit challenge overall.

To sum things up: I had a great time playing both challenges and can't wait to finally experience "The Hunted, Part 2" and possible other future challenges! 

As I assume challenge mode to be mainly intended to be played by experienced players, I found both challenges to be adequate in difficulty - neither to easy, nor too hard. The time limit for Hopeless Rescue is a bit generous in my opinion, but that's not a problem of course.

My only real complaint is thus the current lack of challenge mode leaderboards. It would be really great if you could consider to add these!

 

New item: Stimpak

I have to admit I have somehow mixed feelings about the addition of stimpaks.

Don't get me wrong, they're an awesome addition from a gameplay point of view without any question. They offer the player an interesting tradeoff between a massive short-term-advantage and a long-term-disadvantage and I'm a huge fan of such tradeoffs in general.

I for one probably won't use them primarily for their 15% condition healing properties, but more in situations when I need to get away from angry predators as fast as possible because they would certainly kill me otherwise. I'm convinced stimpaks should be saved for extraordinary emergency situations only (like suddenly hearing a wolf behind you while you're exhausted and at 10% condition). They also seem to be scarce enough to limit their use to said emergency situations, which is an aspect particularly important to me personally. 

However, I honestly have to admit I found it a little immersion-breaking to see stimpaks added. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I somehow connect stimpaks with "less realistic" videogames like the Fallout series. Probably because I've never heard of anyone using them in real life.

I think I'll get used to them eventually, though. New things often take some time to get used to.

And as mentioned above: A stimpak hotkey would be very nice.

 

Flare, torch and campfire changes

I'm really happy about almost all changes regarding fire. Most of all, thank you very much for fixing bear-hunting through campfires. You really got me on this one! I certainly didn't expect the bear to charge right through the fire when I shot him and got mauled as I had deserved it! xD

I also love the change that wolves and bears can't be shackled in place by dropped torches, flares and campfires any more. Some further testing I did on the topic of campfires seems to indicate that wolves are afraid of campfires and run away from them whereas bears completely ignore fires. I think I somehow understand why you programmed their AIs this way, but watching a bear walk right through my (test) campfire was a bit immersion-breaking nevertheless. So the bear AI might possibly need some further tweaking, e.g. to  walk around (and not through) campfires in general and only charge through them when wounded.

One thing I'm a bit astonished about is why you changed the flare throwing mechanics. I always liked it a lot that flares and torches worked a bit differently and don't see much of an advantage to make them pretty much the same now (mechanically I mean - I'm aware that flares are windproof and thus a little safer than torches and brands^^).

Apropos safety: I really love that carrying a torch, flare or brand isn't a perfectly safe anti-wolf-forcefield any more but has a certain probability to fail now. I still need to figure out what exactly increases the chance for failure (low condition/exhaustion/weight/ailments/etc.), but I definitely like the feeling of insecurity that comes along with it!

 

Sleeping and passing time

Thank you so incredibly much for finally addressing the hibernation exploit! I really like the new differentiation between sleeping and passing time as it's obviously part of this long-anticipated fix.

I found it a bit irritating not to be able to sleep through the night at first to be honest, but I got used to it pretty fast and found it quite easy to adept my playstyle accordingly. At least in Stalker mode (and with a playstyle as active as mine), it's no problem at all to always go to bed exhausted in the evening and thus be able to sleep for about 10h in a row afterwards. I also started to use the late night/early morning hours for tasks like repairing clothes or sharpening my tools in case I wake up earlier than anticipated.

Unfortunately, I can't comment on the new cabin fever debuff because I never got it so far. Well, I guess that's at least an indication that an active playstyle (about 50:50 indoor and outdoor time each day) successfully prevents you from getting it. ^^

 

New affliction: Trichinosis

First of all, I'd like to emphasize that I really love the prolonged trichinosis healing mechanics which require several doses of medication over the course of several days! Not only is this very realistic and immersive, I also like it from a gameplay point of view.

However, there are numerous threads here on the Forums about the current trichinosis mechanics and - after finally contracting one on purpose myself for reasons of testing - I tend to agree that the current mechanics definitely need some tweaking.

I've already expressed my support for @hauteecolerider idea of birch bark tea as a cure in Patrick's trichinosis thread. I'll simply copy  my post over here as it got a lot of positive feedback from other players.

 

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I really like the idea of birch bark tea as a cure for trichinosis. Not only because it's realistic (antibiotics against worms is really immersion-breaking for me..), but also with regard to the gameplay.

I have the strong feeling the current parasite mechanics don't have the intended effect on players (= to make them eat a well-balanced diet of all animals and fish), but rather cause people to avoid carnivore meat completely if possible. Most likely because the treatment of parasites (at least in stalker) requires tremendous amounts of antibiotics/reishi tea which are both finite ressources. And people are always horribly afraid to run out of these (no matter how great this danger may be in reality).

If the parasite treatment required birch bark tea instead, people wouldn't be that afraid of parasites any more imo as birch bark is infinite. But they would still need to prepare for the emergency and make trips to places where birches grow in order to collect the bark. I for one would certainly like that! And to make parasite infections non-trivial, cooking one birch tea could e.g. require 6 birch barks. For a 12 day treatment you would thus need more than 70 pieces of birch bark. I guess that's incentive enough to make regular bark collection trips to PV, TWM or the Ravine.

Would be a nice new activity to help combat cabin fever a bit, I guess.

 

I'm aware that creating birch bark tea as a new item would certainly mean more work for you than e.g. just reducing the dose of antibiotics required, but I'm convinced it would be an effort absolutely worth it due to its positive gameplay-benefits (e.g. more incentive for outdoor movement due to bark collection trips). 

 

Overall (subjective) predator difficulty

In my opinion, TLD's predators have definitely become more dangerous again which is something I'm extremely happy about.  A lot of immersion-breaking animal AI exploits got disabled with this Update and now need to be replaced with thorough planing, well-wrought hunting strategies and general vigilance.

Animal behavior has become a little less predictable in general and the lack of absolute security when carrying a torch or dropping a decoy really adds to my personal gaming experience.

I'm finally beginning to see wolves as a threat (and not as a mere annoyance) again and spend much more time and effort to evade them now than prior to the update. I also love that bear hunting finally requires some thorough planing again. Being a big game hunter should be really exciting and hard and the Tireless Menace Update is definitely a huge step into the right direction in this regard.

 

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Well, that was it. I hope my feedback is somehow helpful to you and congratulations to everyone patient enough to read everything! 

[hauteecolerider]

59 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

I found it a bit irritating not to be able to sleep through the night at first to be honest, but I got used to it pretty fast and found it quite easy to adept my playstyle accordingly. At least in Stalker mode (and with a playstyle as active as mine), it's no problem at all to always go to bed exhausted in the evening and thus be able to sleep for about 10h in a row afterwards. I also started to use the late night/early morning hours for tasks like repairing clothes or sharpening my tools in case I wake up earlier than anticipated.

I think I am moving in the same direction regarding sleeping.

Just this afternoon while playing I found the two climbing ropes in ML (whoa! Great view!) and climbed myself into Drained. I made my way to the Camp Office where, for the purpose of research, I waited until the red was gone from my fatigue bar (Drained/Exhausted), then set 8 hours to sleep. Sure enough, I slept 8 hours and woke feeling rested. When I made it back to Trappers Cabin and tried again, this time at 50% fatigue, I slept approximately 4 hours. So that seems about right. But I have to ask, are certain activities no longer so exhausting? I spent the day climbing the upper slopes above the Unnamed Pond, Murder Cabin and Clearcut (and hey, I finally found a prepper's cache on the ML map - of course when I'm not looking for one!), and fighting strong winds the whole time. I became over encumbered from clearing out the cache and fought head winds all the way back with my pack close to 40 kg (almost 80 lbs). That should have left my player character exhausted, but she was down only 50%.

At this time I'll keep playing with the sleep mechanism and figure out a way to adapt my play style to this. Just seems weird to spend so much time awake in the dark. 

Thanks, @Scyzara for the detailed feedback regarding not only the challenges, but some of the gameplay elements that have been changed/added. I guess I won't likely get Cabin Fever, either, even though I don't play as actively as you. But I do like to spend as much of my daylight hours outside as I can. I'm always thinking of what to do today . . . 

[cowboymrh]

I'm extremely happy with the new updates!! With the addition of trichonosis and the fact now that wolf are much more unpredictable and aggressive, it's put the "fear factor" back in the game again (at least in stalker mode for sure).

Tactics that worked before are meaningless now. Trying out new characters, I've been attacked 3 straight times now while brandishing a flare and the attacks have been much more brutal than before!!

What this means now is that wolves should now be avoided as much as possible!!!  Which means a lot more patience, backtracking, and detours around them.

Back country travel will be much more dangerous now with the possibility several wolves seeing you first and ending your run in a heartbeat!!

With the introduction of trichinosis, wolves and bears are no longer on my menu, except in a dire starvation situation!

All these changes in the update make for a much more thoughtful, immersive, and cautious approach in your game play.

I feel sorry for any old player who's been gone awhile, fires up his old character (without reading the forums) and attempts to carry on as usual!!

What a surprise they are going to be in for!

As for me, all I can say is WOW .....The story mode is not even released yet, and I feel like I'm playing a brand new game again!!

[KD7BCH]

Wolves are definitely better placed, have superior AI, and no cheap defenses against them! Much improved. I also think the addition of the firebrand, and increase in other wildlife is a plus.