Observations on health/survival mechanics and balance

[Pillock]

Obviously the game doesn't want to feel too mechanical in terms of the player's experience. We don't want to feel like we are playing with a spreadsheet and the more natural and intuitive our actions and options feel to us, the better. But having spent about 450 hours on it now, I've come up with some thoughts about the way the mechanics bounce off each other, and how that affects the decisions we make when trying to survive in TLD's world. What I'm going to say probably isn't going to be big news to most players - I'm just pointing out some things I've noticed, and drawn some of my own conclusions.

Basically, we all know that we have to satisfy four requirements in order to stay alive (excluding sudden shocks like animal attacks or falls):

• warmth
• rest
• food
• hydration

If our character's 'body' runs out of one or more of these things, we start to die - ie. our overall Condition % starts reducing. As long as we keep these four requirements in the positive, though, we stay alive and can regain any previously-lost Condition (diseases and other afflictions notwithstanding). Fine: that's a nice simple system, it's easy to understand and it works well for the most part.

However, I think there are some problems or imbalances in the way the game provides us with the means to satisfy these four requirements, and the way it punishes us (or not) for failing to satisfy them. If we are to assume that the 'intended' use of these mechanics is for players to strive to maintain all four health statuses in the positive at all times, and too keep their Condition level as high as possible at all times, then I think there are some flaws in the way they are set up in relation to each other.

This is going to be long - apologies for that. I have separated the post into sections inside spoiler tags to break up the massive wall of text!

First, here is a quick TL;DR:

Spoiler

 

• Gameplay difficulty is massively skewed towards food acquisition at the expense of other survival requirements, leading to imbalance and some unintuitive mechanics (and even exploits).
• Indoor shelters are way overpowered, especially if they contain a bed (because they don't require you to do anything to gain the rewards).
• Gameplay elements that promote difficulty and challenge - the need for exploration, exposure to hazards, item degradation, decision-making on prioritising long-term vs short-term survival needs - are not applied equally across the four health status requirements. Again this leads to imbalance in players' prioritisation of those requirements.
• Afflictions don't punish you equally across the board for neglecting survival requirements; players are also not discouraged enough from taking liberties with condition loss and regain.
• This all results in the most efficient survival strategy being very sedentary and repetitive in nature - the most interesting, exciting and fun aspects of playing TLD (of which there are many, I must add) are in fact actively discouraged by the way the game mechanics balance against each other at present.

 

 

So, the lengthy detail: firstly a rundown of the four survival requirements

Spoiler

 

 - In order to satisfy the rest requirement, we need somewhere to sleep - the game gives us this at the very start in the form of a bedroll, but that degrades over time and use, so we have to interact with the world in order maintain it: sounds great! However, if we find a permanent bed, we effectively have completed 1/4 of the game already.

 - Next, warmth: fire, clothes and shelter provide these. To an extent we have to combine them, because no single one is enough without at least a small aspect of one or both of the others. Fire requires us to explore to find and collect the necessary materials (or the tools to harvest them, which in turn must be maintained); clothes require us to explore to find and upgrade them, and acquire the materials needed to maintain them, as well as tools and crafting time; shelter requires us to... find it...once. Not only is shelter by far the easiest to acquire, but there's no maintenance costs or additional requirements, and it's also by far the most effective warmth provider on its own. If you find a shelter with a bed in it, you don't even have to worry about fire or clothes to stay warm (with the exception of a very few locations). So: you have 50% of the survival requirements covered without doing anything at all.

Hydration: water is very easy to acquire. You don't need to go anywhere to find it, but you do need fire, which requires ignition and fuel (which do require a degree of exploration). You don't need much fire time, though, compared to heating yourself outdoors or to cooking food, so getting potable water is really no more difficult than monitoring your supply and remembering to top it up when needed. There's no real difficulty or effort in this and there's no limit to the amount you can store, so I can't imagine how anybody could die of dehydration alone in TLD unless they had run of matches or were supremely incompetent.

Food: now, this is the one that gets you out there into the world, forcing you to expose yourself to the elements and the game's other hazards. You have to find it, hunt it or catch it; this requires exploration, outdoor warmth, equipment that degrades, and time. Therefore, the less of it you can get away with consuming, the easier it is to survive. This is where the survival challenge of TLD really comes from: this is why you need warm clothes, and why maintaining them is important; this is why you need most of your tools; this is why you need the bulk of your fuel. The other three survival requirements are only a problem while you're out looking for food.

Afflictions also play their part 

Spoiler

 

1. The only affliction which actually punishes you for prolonged total depletion of a basic survival requirement is hypothermia; exhaustion, starvation and dehydration have no such equivalent afflictions. And while dehydration does seem to me to cause fairly rapid Condition loss - so is best avoided - exhaustion and starvation carry little real disincentive against being ignored for extended periods.
2. Food Poisoning, Parasites and Dysentry [sic] are not directly a result of the four health requirements; rather, they are caused by consuming 'risky' foodstuffs. This risk contributes to an extent to the difficulty of food acquisition, and they work pretty well (except that Dysentery is so easy to avoid that it's barely worth its inclusion).
3. Cabin Fever prevents you from surviving indoors indefinitely, which forces you to expose your character to more hazards: a very important new addition to the game, I think.
4. The other afflictions are injury-based, and therefore accidental and avoidable. You generally acquire them while looking for resources, which again might be seen as a contributing factor towards the difficulty of food acquisition. I think the cures and recovery for these ought to be a bit more taxing on the player, though.

 

In summary, then:

Spoiler

 

• food requirement is relatively difficult to fulfil, but not greatly punished for neglecting;
• warmth requirement is severely punished for neglecting, more difficult to fulfil while outdoors, but very easy to fulfil by staying indoors;
• rest requirement is relatively easy to fulfil and not punished for neglecting;
• hydration requirement is suitably punished for neglect, but fairly easy to fulfil.

My main issue with all this is that by focussing all of the game's difficulty on to food acquisition, the player's priorities are completely unbalanced and, resultingly, certain things are left open to exploits. Some aspects feel unrealistically easy (staying warm inside a shelter; storing infinite water in magically-appearing containers), while others feel unrealistically difficult (having to eat hilarious volumes of food every day; starting to die of dehydration just because you overslept a little). I think the game could maintain its overall difficulty level, while balancing out the way players are compelled to prioritise the 4 basic health requirements, and making it feel more intuitive and realistic at the same time.

Solutions?

Spoiler

 

• Starvation and exhaustion could do with an associated affliction for when you neglect it for too long (like hypothermia does for warmth).
• Shelters could be toned down in their warmth bonus, compelling players to use fire more often - if fuel requirements and acquisition need to be tweaked to accommodate this, fine.
• Shelters could require maintenance so that players need to use exploration and tools in order to prolong their usefulness - like you do for other the survival needs.
• Water could require finding containers - jerry cans, bottles, etc - to cap maximum storage and promote exploration; perhaps manual collection of snow as well.
• Condition recovery from sleep could be reduced in order to give more value to maintaining general health and to punish neglect.

By making those things significantly more difficult, perhaps it would allow other things to be toned down a little while maintaining the overall difficulty of the game - things that feel intuitively unrealistic, like:

• the speed at which our characters consume food and water, and the daily volumes required;
• the speed at which fires consume fuel, and the inability to dampen fires and rekindle unburned fuel that has gone out;
• the speed at which tools degrade and become unusable and unrepairable.

 

 

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trashing the game too much! The reason I bothered to write this stuff down and post it here is because I enjoy playing it so much and want it to be a great as possible. I don't think you can look at changing one aspect in isolation without looking at the effect that has on the whole. I'd be really interested to know what other people think.

[SteelFire]

Oh boy, do I agree with the vast majority of what you have here. The game is totally spreadsheet management. Once I understood how hunger, thirst, and stamina worked (how ridiculously they worked) the game went from being super frustrating to super simple, because it became about managing those stats.

I think some of your points will be, or will have to be, addressed with the introduction of seasons and NPCs. Both of those could change the game significantly (or not, which would be bad). I'm not sure some are worth addressing, like shelter repair, as a well built structure can go for years without needing any maintenance, so it's probably not worth building a mechanic around.

The question is, where is the balance point between realism and fun? Sure, in reality, I should be able to maintain a single knife and hatchet with a single whetstone for years. The balance for that would be to make those items much more rare, but then there are flaws with that. Would that require a dynamic spawn system where you're more likely to find those items in your starting zone and less likely/not at all in other zones? Would it make sense for those items to be so rare in any of these zones, probably not since they'd be common items in such areas. Flip side, once NPCs are introduced, do those items become more rare because they are in NPC hands instead of just sitting around for you to scavenge, so will that mandate a change to tool wear?

The updates and roadmap already mention a lot of things that are going to swing the game from a straight survival game more toward an RPG, so I think that is going to mandate a massive swing in how those stats work and really change the face of the game.

[Pillock]

43 minutes ago, SteelFire said:

I'm not sure some are worth addressing, like shelter repair, as a well built structure can go for years without needing any maintenance, so it's probably not worth building a mechanic around.

The question is, where is the balance point between realism and fun?

The reason I pointed to shelters as one of the main culprits is that once you've found it, you're done. If you have an indoor shelter with a bed, you've completed half the game: you have warmth and rest for as long as you need without doing anything else ever again.

I think something needs to be done about that. Whether or not it involves the need to repair shelters, or the need to keep fires burning indoors, or if there are other solutions - that is a different question. In this case, it's not about making that part of the game more realistic, it's about giving the player some necessary task to do in order to fulfil one of the game's objectives.

Cabin Fever is one solution, based on punishment for taking too much advantage of this imbalance. But I don't think it works on its own - it would be better if the imbalance itself was fixed as well.

[Ruruwawa]

@Pillock and @SteelFire - excellent posts.  Again I'm reminded how creating a game like this is hard (hats off to Hinterland).  

Not a fan of gathering snow manually (tedium!), nor maintaining shelters (why not just make beds to lose warmth on use until repaired like a beroll?) but I wholeheartedly agree with the overall analysis.  

I personally tend to look at balance from the risk/reward perspective because risks that generate rewards make for fun gameplay.  It's why the first few days of a sandbox game and the challenges are so memorable.  

Currently, once you've geared up, the near term rewards for leaving your comfortable burrow are food and fuel.  There's not much risk to staying put (just cabin fever) whereas most of the risks in the game are concentrated outside: hypothermia, clothing damage, animal attack, getting lost, falling, etc.  Rewards are fixed no matter how you play (enough food and fuel) so it's pretty clear that the risk/reward balance currently favors minimizing risk -- spending as little time outside as possible.

Certainly tweaking the immediate risks and rewards is part of the solution.  But I keep wondering if Days Survived, as the only measurable goal of a sandbox game, is a big reason the game is balanced as it is.  Things might be different with a different measurable goal.

Not sure what that alternate goal could be, and most of my thoughts probably overlap with story mode.  Forming a tribe with NPC survivors, creating technology to summon a rescue, whatever.  I'm sure others (esp Hinterland) have better ideas.  Hopefully something that makes taking more risks throughout your sandbox rewarding in the end.

[SteelFire]

Oh, I understand, but the thing the devs have to ask themselves is if they want that to be a focus? Does it add interest or fun to the game to make us worry about hypothermia inside a decent building? Does shelter maintenance then just add a whole bunch of other suggestions around making weather effects affect the indoor environment? Does a hole/crack in a wall in the wrong place allow wind or water in that makes it impossible for a fire/light source to be usable? Does it make it impossible to cure hides in the only open floor space you have in the building, because a puddle forms there now? How would we access a roof to make repairs? What materials would we need, because none we currently have would do the job. Would these things add to the game or just make it cumbersome and tedious?

Then we're back to NPCs and how they could change the game massively. Do you think that prime shelter space wouldn't be the first things taken over by other survivors? What are you going to do then? Kill the occupant and take over; resulting in anyone else nearby suddenly becoming hostile or otherwise very wary of you? What if it's a group of people living there, someplace like Camp Office or PV farm that could easily house 3 or 4 people. You're certainly not going to kill them off easily or early on, in fact, you might not even want to approach them being at such a disadvantage.

All I'm saying is that while I agree with a lot of your points, there's still a lot in development that we don't yet understand and that I don't really agree that finding and keeping a good shelter is one of them, as 'fixing' that could actually make it worse. It becomes tedious, it could make it disadvantageous to explore too much because you feel the need to maintain your home base, or you decide to say screw it and just live in a mine shaft or transition cave, or heck, a regular old cave if you have to maintain a constant fire in a house anyway. I think future additions and changes to the game content are going to completely change how we, and the devs, have to look at shelter and gear and I'm just tossing in my consideration of those aspects rather than simply looking at the current state of the game.

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, SteelFire said:

Oh, I understand, but the thing the devs have to ask themselves is if they want that to be a focus? Does it add interest or fun to the game to make us worry about hypothermia inside a decent building? Does shelter maintenance then just add a whole bunch of other suggestions around making weather effects affect the indoor environment? Does a hole/crack in a wall in the wrong place allow wind or water in that makes it impossible for a fire/light source to be usable? Does it make it impossible to cure hides in the only open floor space you have in the building, because a puddle forms there now? How would we access a roof to make repairs? What materials would we need, because none we currently have would do the job. Would these things add to the game or just make it cumbersome and tedious?

Then we're back to NPCs and how they could change the game massively. Do you think that prime shelter space wouldn't be the first things taken over by other survivors? What are you going to do then? Kill the occupant and take over; resulting in anyone else nearby suddenly becoming hostile or otherwise very wary of you? What if it's a group of people living there, someplace like Camp Office or PV farm that could easily house 3 or 4 people. You're certainly not going to kill them off easily or early on, in fact, you might not even want to approach them being at such a disadvantage.

All I'm saying is that while I agree with a lot of your points, there's still a lot in development that we don't yet understand and that I don't really agree that finding and keeping a good shelter is one of them, as 'fixing' that could actually make it worse. It becomes tedious, it could make it disadvantageous to explore too much because you feel the need to maintain your home base, or you decide to say screw it and just live in a mine shaft or transition cave, or heck, a regular old cave if you have to maintain a constant fire in a house anyway. I think future additions and changes to the game content are going to completely change how we, and the devs, have to look at shelter and gear and I'm just tossing in my consideration of those aspects rather than simply looking at the current state of the game.

I think you might be overestimating the impact of NPCs, but that's just my opinion - I freely admit that we don't really know what Hinterland has in mind for them in the sandbox game. I would be surprised, though, if there were significant enough numbers on each map to really affect where you chose to put your base (if having a fixed base is how you choose to play).

I also take your point about the further changes which are outlined in the roadmap affecting the overall balance over time, and that the current state of the game is not final. However, the game is coming fairly close to emerging out of the Early Access development phase and into the final release phase - and I think that the core elements of how the most basic survival systems play off against each other probably ought to be fairly fixed by that point. Maybe they are already.

My concern is that if these are indeed the final (or close to final) implementations of those core systems, then they will inevitably encourage sedentary, repetitive behaviour as the most efficient way of surviving, no matter what other features are added later. For example, if you find an indoor shelter with a bed that is close to firewood spawns, rabbit runs and a fishing hut (I have done exactly this in my current game), then you are almost completely set up to stay there forever. The only reason to explore the rest of the game is because it would get boring otherwise. I know in the back of my mind that when I travel the longer distances to find new experiences and enjoy the game to the full, I am actually taking an unnecessary risk - one that I wouldn't take if my real objective was to survive.

I think it would be vastly more preferable if the game kept you on your toes the whole time, compelling you to go out and experience all aspects of the game in order to achieve survival, and not despite it or in addition to it. There are many, many great gameplay features and experiences to be had in The Long Dark. But the overall objective is survival, and if the most efficient way of surviving is to ignore most of the best parts of the game, then I think there's probably something wrong. I think the solution lies in balancing the core survival mechanics first, rather than in adding new stuff over a long period of time. Those new features - stuff like NPCs, new tools and crafting, more animals, seasonal weather, and so on - will add a lot richness and variety to the game, but the core balance should already be there, provided by the basic survival mechanisms.

[Drifter Man]

There are a lot of really good ideas and I don't know how to address them other than one by one - so I apologize, too, for a lot of text. I agree that the four requirements (I like to add security as the fifth one) are not treated equally - incidentally, I drew up a graph yesterday to see how different tools and resources depend on each other and what requirements they fulfill, and almost everything pointed to "FOOD". On the other hand, I don't think they necessarily have to be treated equally. My opinion is that the game is fairly well balanced and fun, although a room for improvement certainly exists.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

In order to satisfy the rest requirement, we need somewhere to sleep - the game gives us this at the very start in the form of a bedroll, but that degrades over time and use, so we have to interact with the world in order maintain it: sounds great! However, if we find a permanent bed, we effectively have completed 1/4 of the game already.

This is exactly one example where the game shouldn't get too complicated. Rest is a very passive undertaking, by definition. When you are tired, you find a place - at least remotely comfortable - and sleep. In fact, I'd suggest having more options to rest (on a bench, on the floor) that could differ in the rate at which you recover from fatigue and condition loss.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

rest requirement is relatively easy to fulfil and not punished for neglecting

Not by rapid condition loss, but by reduced carrying capacity. There is not a whole lot you can do when you can "only" carry 15 kg without penalty. I actually quite like the way rest and fatigue are treated overall.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

shelter requires us to... find it...once. Not only is shelter by far the easiest to acquire, but there's no maintenance costs or additional requirements, and it's also by far the most effective warmth provider on its own.

Shelter is indeed "too easy". Changing this can be tricky, because a new survivor without equipment needs to find a warm place - hypothermia is punishing and everybody would play "Timberwolf mountain" if warm shelters become harder to find from the start. Shelter maintenance would work in this respect - the houses offering good shelter initially but deteriorating over time - but this would work against the other suggestion to force the player to move out and take risks: once you have invested heavily in a shelter, it would need a bigger incentive to leave. My suggestion is towards shelters not being the perfect source of warmth they are now. You would have to warm them up first - with body heat, with fire - and then they would stay warm for some time. I have some ideas how this could work that I plan to post separately... it has to be easy enough so that new survivor has a chance on Day 1.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

warmth requirement is severely punished for neglecting, more difficult to fulfil while outdoors, but very easy to fulfil by staying indoors;

Agree 100%.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

Hydration: water is very easy to acquire. (...) There's no real difficulty or effort in this and there's no limit to the amount you can store, so I can't imagine how anybody could die of dehydration alone in TLD unless they had run of matches or were supremely incompetent.

Agree again. Without making it too complicated, hydration could be made more challenging by introducing containers and freezing. This could address storage unlimited both in quantity and duration. Again, I plan to post it separately in the wish list...

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

Food: now, this is the one that gets you out there into the world, forcing you to expose yourself to the elements and the game's other hazards. You have to find it, hunt it or catch it; this requires exploration, outdoor warmth, equipment that degrades, and time. Therefore, the less of it you can get away with consuming, the easier it is to survive. This is where the survival challenge of TLD really comes from: this is why you need warm clothes, and why maintaining them is important; this is why you need most of your tools; this is why you need the bulk of your fuel. The other three survival requirements are only a problem while you're out looking for food.

I agree, but I as I indicated, I don't see it necessarily as a problem that food is the main requirement and the most difficult one to fulfill. However, putting more emphasis on the need to keep shelter warm and water liquid could be compensated here by reducing the caloric intake needed each day.

21 hours ago, Pillock said:

food requirement is relatively difficult to fulfil, but not greatly punished for neglecting

Absolutely. In the Dam, I am effectively shortening my survival prospect by refusing to starve.

17 hours ago, Pillock said:

My concern is that if these are indeed the final (or close to final) implementations of those core systems, then they will inevitably encourage sedentary, repetitive behaviour as the most efficient way of surviving, no matter what other features are added later. For example, if you find an indoor shelter with a bed that is close to firewood spawns, rabbit runs and a fishing hut (I have done exactly this in my current game), then you are almost completely set up to stay there forever.

I think this is a map design problem. Ideally, the maps should not include any such places from where you can fulfill all requirements without effort and the need to explore and gather more resources farther away from the shelter. Again in the Dam, I'm mostly safe but I totally need to get moving and explore the world from time to time. However, v.321 and v.332 changed the system so that I'm not forced to do this every 200 days, but every 400-500 days, which is too long a period for most players.

[Ruruwawa]

I agree that the sandbox is strongly tilted, balance wise, toward food acquisition and staying indoors.  But I'm still trying to understand the direction of these suggestions.  Exactly where do you want to see the game go?  

The thing is, the real life people who play games have a wide range of different tastes, different things they enjoy.  Stuff like,

• appetite for risk
• appetite for challenge
• appetite for violence
• appetite for routine
• interest in game mechanics nitty gritty
• interest in planning
• desire to act 
• desire for immersion
• desire to faithfully simulate reality
• love of nature, beauty
• etc

I bet if we polled folks on these forums on each of these we'd find quite a large spread of tastes.  A lot of this is hard-wired into who we are as individuals.  Who is right?

A game like The Long Dark has to decide how broad or narrow to make it's appeal.  Currently it's a very good fit for folks who like to stay in a single base and minimize their effort to survive.  That's not me, I'm the nomad who spends a lot of time outside (3500 kcal/day typically).  Still, I'd prefer not to change the game at the expense of other people's preferences.  

That's why my previous post in this thread focused on adding rewards to the sandbox for playstyles other than minimum-effort.  Additional / alternative rewards, so the minimum-effort folks can keep on doing their thing, and folks who prefer a more active playstyle can also feel rewarded.  There is a lot of risk to being outdoors in this game, and I'd like to see some more reward for being outside to balance the risk.  Win-win.  More carrot, less stick.

[Pillock]

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

This is exactly one example where the game shouldn't get too complicated. Rest is a very passive undertaking, by definition. When you are tired, you find a place - at least remotely comfortable - and sleep. In fact, I'd suggest having more options to rest (on a bench, on the floor) that could differ in the rate at which you recover from fatigue and condition loss.

Not [punished] by rapid condition loss, but by reduced carrying capacity. There is not a whole lot you can do when you can "only" carry 15 kg without penalty. I actually quite like the way rest and fatigue are treated overall.

I agree with that. Some sort of "comfort" measure would work really well in that way. Rest shouldn't be too complicated, sure, but I do think beds are a little too strong in their warmth provision, as well as in the fact that you don't have to maintain them at all. Perhaps if they degraded a little (more slowly than bedrolls), and forced you to repair the blankets with cloth in order to keep the maximum heat and comfort level - at least that would give you something else to think about, and it wouldn't be at all out-of-step with the rest of the game.

On carrying capacity, I don't think the penalty is severe enough to seriously affect your behaviour. Being overloaded increases your fatigue rate, but if you're already exhausted that doesn't matter. It slows you down a bit, but probably not enough - it would be more interesting for gameplay if you really had to ditch a bunch of kit in order to make it to your destination. Then you could rest, recover, and go and collect it the next day, but it would be a serious enough inconvenience to act as a deterrent. At the moment when my fatigue bottoms out, I generally just carry on regardless and then sleep it off.

 

4 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Shelter is indeed "too easy". Changing this can be tricky, because a new survivor without equipment needs to find a warm place - hypothermia is punishing and everybody would play "Timberwolf mountain" if warm shelters become harder to find from the start. Shelter maintenance would work in this respect - the houses offering good shelter initially but deteriorating over time - but this would work against the other suggestion to force the player to move out and take risks: once you have invested heavily in a shelter, it would need a bigger incentive to leave. My suggestion is towards shelters not being the perfect source of warmth they are now. You would have to warm them up first - with body heat, with fire - and then they would stay warm for some time. I have some ideas how this could work that I plan to post separately... it has to be easy enough so that new survivor has a chance on Day 1.

I'm not sure I agree that investing heavily in the upkeep of a shelter would be a deterrent to leaving. The whole point would be that you have to leave in order to collect the necessary materials and tools to make the repairs that would give you the warmth bonus you need - that gives you a task to do and gets you out into the world, exposing you to the other aspects of the game. Over time, you might have used up all the material in the immediate area, and then it would actually become more efficient for your survival to move to a new base. The problem with it, intuitively, is that all buildings (except the big industrial ones, or the lighthouse) would presumably degrade at the same time, whether or not you're living in them! But the need to search for materials to achieve a survival goal is the main point - just like you have to do with bedrolls, clothes, tools, weapons, fuel, food and every other aspect of the game.

The other obvious option (possibly in addition rather than alternatively?) would be, as you say, to have indoor spaces start cold when you first enter them or after a certain amount of time unheated. That would force you to make fires when you first come home (after a day out hunting, fishing, exploring, whatever) or first thing in the morning. As you say, the building could retain some of the heat of the fire after it'd gone out for a certain amount of time. I don't think this would be particularly punishing for new players - it's perfectly rational to want to build a fire and get warm when you arrive at a shelter having been freezing outside. In fact, I remember when I was first playing TLD being quite surprised that I didn't have to do this!

 

4 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I agree, but I as I indicated, I don't see it necessarily as a problem that food is the main requirement and the most difficult one to fulfill. However, putting more emphasis on the need to keep shelter warm and water liquid could be compensated here by reducing the caloric intake needed each day.

It's not a problem in itself that food is the more difficult to get than the other things, but it does become a problem when the balance is skewed as much as it is. Warmth, rest and hydration are so easy to acquire independently of food, that you barely have to think about them, really. It's only when you're out looking for food that they even come into play - and they do come into play at that point, it's true.

But if you've got food stocked, or if you have a reliable, renewable foodsource close your shelter (or you starve yourself!), then suddenly they don't come into play any more. It is down to map design to an extent, but that basic balance is wrong as far as I see it.

I think it's good that the maps can support players staying put for short periods, especially at the beginning of the game. But sooner rather than later you should run out of local resources and have to make longer excursions to bring back supplies, or move bases altogether. 

[Pillock]

On 5/7/2016 at 6:20 PM, Ruruwawa said:

But I keep wondering if Days Survived, as the only measurable goal of a sandbox game, is a big reason the game is balanced as it is.  Things might be different with a different measurable goal.

3 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

I agree that the sandbox is strongly tilted, balance wise, toward food acquisition and staying indoors.  But I'm still trying to understand the direction of these suggestions.  Exactly where do you want to see the game go?  

3 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

I'd prefer not to change the game at the expense of other people's preferences.  

Sorry to chop your posts up like this - I hope I haven't misrepresented what you said in doing so.

Firstly, 'Days Survived' is the only measure of success we have. I've never looked at any leaderboards, and nor do I care one iota about being competitive over my own achievements in the game, but I do get the idea that these leaderboards are officially sanctioned by Hinterland? It must matter to some people, but that's not really the point. It is a survival game, and the goal of a survival sandbox is to survive as long as possible - what other goals can there be?

To that end, the current gameplay balance doesn't make much sense to me at all, from a completely objective point of view. The way it's set up means that the most effective way of playing is to completely ignore most of the game's most interesting features - that can't be right, however you look at it.

Whatever people's preference for their playstyle, they shouldn't be allowed to do that - it should kill their character. Different playstyle preferences can be accommodated, while still ensuring players have to perform certain actions that force them to expose themselves to more of the game's content. Otherwise it's a waste of time including that content.

I like to explore, I like the feeling of danger and the risk taking, and the feeling of immersion in a believable scenario. I also like the planning aspect that the game offers, and it's therefore very important to feel as though the exploration, the risks and the danger have some purpose. My problem is that, the way the mechanics are set up now, by exploring and risking the encounters with wolves, bears, cold, tiredness, hunger, by playing the game to the full, I am actually doing it wrong if my overall goal is to survive! I can't reconcile that. That collision of priorities is quite simply a flaw, as far as I see it. I can't see another way of looking at it.

[Ruruwawa]

2 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Sorry to chop your posts up like this - I hope I haven't misrepresented what you said in doing so.

 what other goals can there be?

One idea that rewards taking risks and exploring more than hiding: 

• Rare items tucked away in unlikely corners.  Rewards you really have to search for, get past predators to reach, and /or do tricky paths to get to--maybe jump down cliffs.  Stuff like: Tools that wear out at a fraction of the rate.  Better weapons.  Barter items like alcohol or cigarettes (for when NPCs are in the sandbox).   Stuff like this could improve your quality of life, maybe even give you a better chance of survival than that risk-adverse guy who rarely leaves his hole.

This would change that way many people play the sandbox.  Add appropriate rewards for risky gameplay, and people will flock to it.

12 minutes ago, Pillock said:

the current gameplay balance doesn't make much sense to me at all, from a completely objective point of view. The way it's set up means that the most effective way of playing is to completely ignore most of the game's most interesting features - that can't be right, however you look at it.

Whatever people's preference for their playstyle, they shouldn't be allowed to do that - it should kill their character.

Are you talking specifically about calorie restriction?  I agree starving to save effort is too easy/unrealistic and should be adjusted.  But let's be real here.  Lots of folks will just find the next best min-effort strategy, because that's human nature.  In fact min-effort is the survival strategy employed by practically every species on the planet.  You'll never move people away from that without a carrot.

20 minutes ago, Pillock said:

I like to explore, I like the feeling of danger and the risk taking, and the feeling of immersion in a believable scenario. I also like the planning aspect that the game offers, and it's therefore very important to feel as though the exploration, the risks and the danger have some purpose.

Reward risk-taking, and the rest all shakes out for folks like us.  I honestly don't mind that some guy is spends his game time staring at a bed in TLD for hours.  To each their own.

[Pillock]

3 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

One idea that rewards taking risks and exploring more than hiding: 

• Rare items tucked away in unlikely corners.  Rewards you really have to search for, get past predators to reach, and /or do tricky paths to get to--maybe jump down cliffs.  Stuff like: Tools that wear out at a fraction of the rate.  Better weapons.  Barter items like alcohol or cigarettes (for when NPCs are in the sandbox).   Stuff like this could improve your quality of life, maybe even give you a better chance of survival than that risk-adverse guy who rarely leaves his hole.

This would change that way many people play the sandbox.  Add appropriate rewards for risky gameplay, and people will flock to it.

Are you talking specifically about calorie restriction?  I agree starving to save effort is too easy/unrealistic and should be adjusted.  But let's be real here.  Lots of folks will just find the next best min-effort strategy, because that's human nature.  In fact min-effort is the survival strategy employed by practically every species on the planet.  You'll never move people away from that without a carrot.

Reward risk-taking, and the rest all shakes out for folks like us.  I honestly don't mind that some guy is spends his game time staring at a bed in TLD for hours.  To each their own.

I'm not talking specifically about calorie restriction (deliberate starvation?), because I've never done that - I don't even know how it works in practice! And I don't care how other people play the game - but I don't want to have to make the choice between succeeding at the game's main objective and experiencing the fun content. I don't want one or the other, I want to be able to do both at the same time!

I try to play the game 'normally' by doing my best to keep the health bars and Condition as high as possible at all times - this intuitively seems like the most sensible thing to do. But even then, I'm landed with that choice. I can suspend the desire to achieve the main objective, in order to have fun with the game - and I do have a lot of fun with the game, or else I wouldn't be here. But it still bugs me that I have to.

Perhaps things like finding rare items in difficult-to-reach places would help, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem. Besides, Preppers Caches already serve this purpose, and I played the game for about 8 months without even knowing they existed, so I disagree that people would flock to them - they wouldn't know they were there!

Risk versus reward is fundamental to balancing any game - I totally agree with you about that. This is the whole point, in fact - the player is currently rewarded with warmth, rest and hydration for next to no risk (or effort) whatsoever. That's 3/4 of the game, and I think this is where the underlying cause of the problem is.

[lupineways]

Interesting discussion. I agree that comfort and security is too easily obtained and maintained and I hope the developers have more in mind to balance that out. I am of the thought that there should be more risk associated with deliberate starvation to pad survival time. There should also be some more general risk associated with "staying put". I know similar things have been noted before but short term respawning depletion of food (wildlife) and wood resources in a general region is one solution. Don't let me gather wood right out side my cabin every single day. Slow the respawning and add more value to needing the axe to chop the larger logs if you need immediate wood near by. Maybe make the near by wild life spawns more rare when you've killed in the same area several times in the recent weeks of game time.

I have hopes that new features and tweaks of the well being systems will continue to balance the need to explore more as well.

[Ruruwawa]

@Pillock  I play a lot like you do, and I can't say I disagree with your feelings.  Certainly, balance the min-effort tactics -- especially starvation.  But I don't think sweeping changes to current sandbox gameplay is the best solution.  Lots of folks who bought the game like to loot, hoard, and make a single base, and it's not necessary to shut them out in order to also make a playstyle like ours a viable option.  A larger playerbase for Hinterland is a good thing for all of us, so finding a way to make both playstyles work seems like a good thing.

If my hopes for the barter system come true, it will enable long-run survival strategies where taking risks can (with skill, knowledge and luck) actually surpass min-effort.

Example: say there's an NPC would will trade you 1 bullet for 10 sodas.  A hoarder could round up sodas for a few bullets pretty safely, but there are only so many sodas in the world.  It won't affect his long-term survival by much.  But say that same NPC will give you 100 bullets if you can bring him some particular rare and valuable thing.  Lots more risk to go find it but a lot more upside if you pull it off.  Using those bullets as currency, you'll be able to acquire more of whatever you need to survive long term than the cautious guy.

Two different playstyles, two paths leading to long term survival.  More is more.

 

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, Ruruwawa said:

I play a lot like you do, and I can't say I disagree with your feelings.  Certainly, balance the min-effort tactics -- especially starvation.  But I don't think sweeping changes to current sandbox gameplay is the best solution.  Lots of folks who bought the game like to loot, hoard, and make a single base, and it's not necessary to shut them out in order to also make a playstyle like ours a viable option.  A larger playerbase for Hinterland is a good thing for all of us, so finding a way to make both playstyles work seems like a good thing.

I can't disagree with any of what you've said there. 

I'm not advocating sweeping changes, really. And I certainly would never want people who like to loot, hoard and build up a single base to be shut out of the game - I like doing that as well, some of the time. I just feel that "staying put" currently seems to be a vastly more efficient way of surviving than travelling around is; this is a shame, because it reduces the player's exposure to some of the more interesting and memorable experiences that the game offers. Ideally, I would like to see both playstyles be of equal worth in terms of their effectiveness, and I don't think they are right now.

By looking closely at the relative difficulty of achieving the 4 basic health/survival requirements the game gives us to work with, I've come to the conclusion that the main reason for it is that indoor spaces and beds automatically provide infinite warmth and rest without any input from the player at all (except for finding them in the first place). Maybe I'm wrong; maybe I've overlooked something, and I need to experiment more with the game. But that's certainly how it looks on the face of it. It doesn't need sweeping changes to fix this; it just needs a bit of tweaking to make those things that encourage more sedentary tactics be slightly more difficult to achieve, and slightly less repetitive in nature - if you have to do more to achieve sedentary survival, it makes playing that way more challenging, more varied and more fun, not less!

I'm not hung up on particular solutions - I just suggested a few of the more obvious things that came to my mind. This is also a very good point:

2 hours ago, lupineways said:

Interesting discussion. I agree that comfort and security is too easily obtained and maintained and I hope the developers have more in mind to balance that out. I am of the thought that there should be more risk associated with deliberate starvation to pad survival time. There should also be some more general risk associated with "staying put". I know similar things have been noted before but short term respawning depletion of food (wildlife) and wood resources in a general region is one solution. Don't let me gather wood right out side my cabin every single day. Slow the respawning and add more value to needing the axe to chop the larger logs if you need immediate wood near by. Maybe make the near by wild life spawns more rare when you've killed in the same area several times in the recent weeks of game time.

I have hopes that new features and tweaks of the well being systems will continue to balance the need to explore more as well.

Perhaps that would fix it - depletion of local resources for long enough to compel players to move on, or at least to make regular, longer-distance excursions (which require preparation) to bring back supplies. To give an example from my current game:

 I have a maximum of 4 rabbit snares set up right outside my base, and I regularly catch 2 or 3 rabbits every day. This, combined with a fishing hut also on my doorstep, huge quantities of firewood spawns and even the occasional passing deer, means that I don't feel the need to leave - ever. I only have to make short trips to a workbench (about 1 game-hour's walk) to repair snares and make new fishing hooks/line from time to time. Because warmth, rest and hydration are covered by the fact that they are so incredibly easy to fulfil, this abundance of food suddenly removes all the challenge the game previously offered. I don't need to go anywhere near any wolves or bears, or expose myself to cold by taking long trips. I am in a cycle of the same repetitive tasks for probably hundreds of days, unless I deliberately create difficulty for myself - but that would feel artificial, because I do want to try and survive as long as I can. Eventually, matches and scrap metal will run out, but that's going to take a hell of a long time! Too long to stay in one place for gameplay's sake, I think: it's getting boring!

Slower replenishment of local resources is definitely something that would help relieve this; but I also think that having some necessary task to fulfil and resources to gather in order to maintain the warmth and rest guarantee you get from permanent shelters is a big factor as well. It doesn't mean tearing up the game and starting again, it's just a bit of balancing.

[lupineways]

1 hour ago, Pillock said:

current game:

 I have a maximum of 4 rabbit snares set up right outside my base, and I regularly catch 2 or 3 rabbits every day. This, combined with a fishing hut also on my doorstep, huge quantities of firewood spawns and even the occasional passing deer, means that I don't feel the need to leave - ever. I only have to make short trips to a workbench (about 1 game-hour's walk) to repair snares and make new fishing hooks/line from time to time. Because warmth, rest and hydration are covered by the fact that they are so incredibly easy to fulfil, this abundance of food suddenly removes all the challenge the game previously offered. I don't need to go anywhere near any wolves or bears, or expose myself to cold by taking long trips. I am in a cycle of the same repetitive tasks for probably hundreds of days, unless I deliberately create difficulty for myself - but that would feel artificial, because I do want to try and survive as long as I can. Eventually, matches and scrap metal will run out, but that's going to take a hell of a long time! Too long to stay in one place for gameplay's sake, I think: it's getting boring!

Slower replenishment of local resources is definitely something that would help relieve this; but I also think that having some necessary task to fulfil and resources to gather in order to maintain the warmth and rest guarantee you get from permanent shelters is a big factor as well. It doesn't mean tearing up the game and starting again, it's just a bit of balancing.

Funny you should mention creating difficulty for yourself. I actually ended a 100 plus day run by making a mistake and getting greedy while doing just that. I would have never made that mistake if I just sat there at my base and continued my routine. At the rate I was using resources, I could have lasted hundreds of days without leaving Mystery Lake (assuming I didn't lose too many arrows and even still, I had other ways of keeping fed). 

My original game plan was to see how long I could thrive using only resources I found in ML. It was getting boring and my game had a "bug" that prevented a bear from spawning. So I decided to change plans, and go loot all of the other maps and use up that canned food that would go to waste eventually. I also wanted to go kill a few bears to make a bed roll.

 

I killed my first bear in CH and continued looting CH. While I was looting CH and I was attacked by a wolf, no biggy..a sprained ankle and a limp. Then I sprained my wrist looking for shelter. I got cocky and kept going without using my painkillers....Then I ran into a bear around a bend who charged me immediately. I didn't even hear the fellow! So, at this point, after a series of bad decisions, I make my worst decision, try to survive without using the stim. I was patching up and getting ready to seek somewhere to rest when the big fellow charged me a second time. 

 

Obviously, the above tale is full of mistakes. I got greedy with resources and decided to be a tough guy. But, the point is, I wouldn't have made those mistakes if I just sat there in the comfort of routine. And furthermore, even if I didn't make any mistakes, I would have been out valuable resources. My hope is that the game play systems evolve to make it much more difficult to survive/thrive in the longer run unless you break routine and get out there and explore/loot from time to time. I find a routine gets boring in my games so I eventually change it up but if my goal was just to survive more days (leader board) I probably wouldn't take many risks I don't need to. It would be nice to see the game encourage that as a natural part of the game systems. As the systems stand now I think the leader board runners only have one major challenge. Patience

 

I am also not opposed to some new basic maintenance tasks to keep home bases warm and safe in the long term.