Make Fires Craftable Rather Than Probable

[selfless]

IDEA:

Rather than have players suffer through the progress bar of fire building hoping for success and seeing repeat failures, make starting a fire only possible when players assemble enough materials to equal a full 100%.  So, a poorly skilled fireman would have to keep adding multiple matches and/or tinders until 100% is achieved before he could start a fire.  And then starting a fire would be guaranteed success, but material usage would be the concern.

Obliviously there would have to be some reworking of the UI to allow multiple matches and/or tinders to be used at once.  And each additional item would have to add its own percent chance to the sum toward 100%.  No more disappointment, only success and a rewarding feeling when one's skills or items-found makes one more efficient at the task.

Hooray!

 

P.S: And I suppose you could still leave the probable in there too, for those who like to gamble, or who have limited resources but still want to have a chance.  So really the suggestion is just to allow multiple matches and tinders to be used in one attempt to increase likelihood of one-time success when one has access to lots of tinder and matches but low skill.  I know in real-life if I have 10 newspapers and only one match that all 10 of them are going into that last firestarting attempt if need be 

[Patrick Carlson]

22 minutes ago, selfless said:

IDEA:

Rather than have players suffer through the progress bar of fire building hoping for success and seeing repeat failures, make starting a fire only possible when players assemble enough materials to equal a full 100%.  So, a poorly skilled fireman would have to keep adding multiple matches and/or tinders until 100% is achieved before he could start a fire.  And then starting a fire would be guaranteed success, but material usage would be the concern.

Obliviously there would have to be some reworking of the UI to allow multiple matches and/or tinders to be used at once.  And each additional item would have to add its own percent chance to the sum toward 100%.  No more disappointment, only success and a rewarding feeling when one's skills or items-found makes one more efficient at the task.

Hooray!

 

P.S: And I suppose you could still leave the probable in there too, for those who like to gamble, or who have limited resources but still want to have a chance.  So really the suggestion is just to allow multiple matches and tinders to be used in one attempt to increase likelihood of one-time success when one has access to lots of tinder and matches but low skill.  I know in real-life if I have 10 newspapers and only one match that all 10 of them are going into that last firestarting attempt if need be 

It's an interesting way to look at the resources (lots of tinder versus low skill). I'm curious if other players feel this "suffering" as you describe it. One layer of (material) complexity that already exists apart from the firemaking skill level is your ability to change the "chance of fire" percentage based on the resources you have at hand. (What kind of firestarter, sticks versus reclaimed wood, accellerant, ect.) 

How would this current system fit with what you are proposing?

[cekivi]

I prefer the gambling personally. I've had many a fire go out when lighting even though I thought I was above 100% chance to light. For instance, a log shifts and smoothers your embers.

That being said, having more options to improve the fire starting chance would be nice. For instance "cured" wood (i.e. dried indoors) having a +5% chance, two tinder plugs, an entire pack of matches, etc. all of which would fit in the current system.

[selfless]

My current observations of the firemaking system suggest that tinder is irrelevant to the chance-of-success equation, its only function is that fire cannot be started without it.  

And there are many different tinders available in the game but they are all equal when firestarting.  The only difference at all is some weigh slightly more than others and can be broken down further into multiple units of again tinder.

I guess my suggestion really becomes make tinders relevant and to allow them to be used in quantity when starting fires.  Say an additional 1% chance for each unit of tinder.  

Further, and maybe to make things easier, make all possible tinders into one item (tinder).  And (unless you intend them to degrade in the future) this resource could even become a fluid like water is currently.  Conversely, different tinders could offer different bonuses to success.  But I see this later option having UI difficulties if multiples are also to be allowed.

Just thoughts.  Implementation is yours.  Enjoy.

 

[vancopower]

Just now, selfless said:

My current observations of the firemaking system suggest that tinder is irrelevant to the chance-of-success equation, its only function is that fire cannot be started without it.  

And there are many different tinders available in the game but they are all equal when firestarting.  The only difference at all is some weigh slightly more than others and can be broken down further into multiple units of again tinder.

I guess my suggestion really becomes make tinders relevant and to allow them to be used in quantity when starting fires.  Say an additional 1% chance for each unit of tinder.  

Further, and maybe to make things easier, make all possible tinders into one item (tinder).  And (unless you intend them to degrade in the future) this resource could even become a fluid like water is currently.  Conversely, different tinders could offer different bonuses to success.  But I see this later option having UI difficulties if multiples are also to be allowed.

Just thoughts.  Implementation is yours.  Enjoy.

 

I guess tinder can be a factor to successful fire starting, good work we could select a number from 1 tinder to 10 and that much percentage will be added to successful fire starting off course you have to posses the tinder in the first place in your inventory. I hope that your idea makes it to the game again Good Work !!!!!

We are all still hoping for Birch bark tea so at least they should be separate from tinder, cattail heads are redundant unless they too could have  a purpose  maybe turning them into a fire starter together with bow and drill.

[Resethel]

It makes quite some sense, I remember lighting my first fire this way  poor techniques but a lot of tinder and sticks did the trick!

 

2 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

It's an interesting way to look at the resources (lots of tinder versus low skill). I'm curious if other players feel this "suffering" as you describe it. One layer of (material) complexity that already exists apart from the firemaking skill level is your ability to change the "chance of fire" percentage based on the resources you have at hand. (What kind of firestarter, sticks versus reclaimed wood, accellerant, ect.) 

How would this current system fit with what you are proposing?

To be honest, I didn't really felt any suffering, maybe because I was lucky . I always thought it should be harder, or offer more dilemmas to face.

Imo, the layer of material complexity already existing will fit perfectly with what @selfless proposed, since it's in a way a way to get over the lack of skill and offer some challenging situations: Should I take the strict minimum of fire-related-good to reach point B easily but risking to freeze at night because I couldn't start a fire, or going overweight in order to be sure to light this fire but risking to get more bruises or not being able to reach point B before night or not being able to avoid those damn wolves.

 

Sounds great to me!

[Claysmiff1702]

7 hours ago, selfless said:

My current observations of the firemaking system suggest that tinder is irrelevant to the chance-of-success equation, its only function is that fire cannot be started without it.  

And there are many different tinders available in the game but they are all equal when firestarting.  The only difference at all is some weigh slightly more than others and can be broken down further into multiple units of again tinder.

I guess my suggestion really becomes make tinders relevant and to allow them to be used in quantity when starting fires.  Say an additional 1% chance for each unit of tinder.  

Further, and maybe to make things easier, make all possible tinders into one item (tinder).  And (unless you intend them to degrade in the future) this resource could even become a fluid like water is currently.  Conversely, different tinders could offer different bonuses to success.  But I see this later option having UI difficulties if multiples are also to be allowed.

Just thoughts.  Implementation is yours.  Enjoy.

 

I like the idea of using multiple tinder sources or matches to increase fire starting chance, +1 for sure. However I feel like having multiple different sources for tinder definitely adds extra flavor to the game. Maybe just make some tinders better than others if you're looking for even more diversity?