Fun Factor

[alone sniper]

9 hours ago, Wastelander said:

Well, there are radios present in the game, but like all electrical equipment, they're dead unfortunately - and I think while some fitting music (we've got a thread going in the off-topic forum about that) would be nice, it would also take away from the experience.

I do agree on darts though, maybe because I'm an active (but not good :D) player myself. As for music, maybe a pan flute or a guitar as a rare find! Loved the guitar in This War of Mine

if we can use black bear head for dart !!!! 

[Crimson Foxx]

A nice idea about playing cards or some form of collectables is that the cards or collected items could be randomly hidden around the Hinterland world, in clothes drawers, containers, corpses, vehicle glove compartments etc etc, even under those sunblinds above you inside the cars! i always flip them down to find them all empty. LOL!

 Maybe you need to find those 52 cards of a playing deck. Maybe they could also have some really nice designs on them which compliments the game, artistic images on each card. I love the cards in The WitchHunter, Gwent, simply due to the amazing images. However the simple art style of The Long Dark might now allow for such detail on a card. 

In Fallout 4 there are the bobble-heads, collectable little figures to find, each unique. I am not saying we need bobble-heads in The Long Dark but maybe some kind of wooden carved figures or puzzle pieces.

This would then i feel create more to find and search for, a purpose to rummage through every container or lootable area we can. I always worry i will get bored finding the same things over and over and sometimes even the same things spawned in exactly the same places. i dont want to start not bothering to search a car or cabin due to knowing whats in it.

[Baukster77]

On 29-6-2016 at 3:11 AM, Wastelander said:

IRL, I spend a lot of time alone, so I know a few ways to entertain myself even without electricity. Good food is one of them, same as alcohol. Solitaires are entertaining for a few days as well, as are other card games you can play alone. Arts and crafts tend to entertain you for longer, but they require skill or else result in frustration (I wasted 5 years of my life trying to become a manga artist, roast me). Books are incredibly valuable if the only other option is to get lost in your own mind, and trust me, this is not what you want to happen in such a situation. Realistically, recreational drugs would also be helpful, but they'd ruin the rating (and the PCs body. Don't do drugs, kids.). Having some house plants would also help, but in the current indoor temperatures they'd just die.

It truly is a Long Dark out there.

Great post!

But other than that... I would like to see more books in the game, recreational and for skills.

[EternityTide]

I would actually like the research books to have an actual text you can read on screen, similar to how Skyrim did skill books. It adds to the immersion. Journals and photo guides would be fantastic as well.

As for chess, if anyone wanted to go down a weird spooky route, you could have a shack in the middle of nowhere that had a chess board in it, and everytime you made a move and then looked away, sleep, cooked, open something, look in your inventory, or whatever, then the other colour will move.
Like a game of chess against some weird entity, but you cannot directly observe it making a move.
 

[Wastelander]

9 hours ago, EternityTide said:

As for chess, if anyone wanted to go down a weird spooky route, you could have a shack in the middle of nowhere that had a chess board in it, and everytime you made a move and then looked away, sleep, cooked, open something, look in your inventory, or whatever, then the other colour will move.
Like a game of chess against some weird entity, but you cannot directly observe it making a move.

I like this idea, but I'd much prefer it the move happened whenever you left the cabin for 3+ hours - this could still imply that it's still a human who's messing with you. Hinterland have sworn not to include zombies into the game, and I guess that extends to the rest of the undead. Could be a rare easteregg maybe!

I think seasons will bring a lot of fun things to do with them though - just imagine canoeing down a stream, planting stuff, watching animals mate (well, not really I guess..)...

[iSUGGESTthings]

1 hour ago, Wastelander said:

I think seasons will bring a lot of fun things to do with them though - just imagine canoeing down a stream, planting stuff, watching animals mate (well, not really I guess..)...

Yes really.   Wow, that would be hilarious. I would laugh. That would be fun for me.  xD Yes, I've been thinking of recreational swimming in the summertime, when all that ice is water again. Such fun to explore the landscape when a whole new variety of wildlife is making noise, insects and flowers and all kinds of new things to see.  More harvestable/edible plants! I can't wait to see this implemented.

[Dirmagnos]

I think that adding some weird supernatural crap in the game would ruin it.

[iSUGGESTthings]

Is it stated anywhere more specifically whereabouts TLD is taking place? Elaborating beyond 'the Northern wilderness'? How far north? I'd be interested to get an idea, since I'm reading about the seasonal climates in Canada. If it's warm enough in summer that a plunge into a lake wouldn't drastically shorten your lifespan, I am in favor of explore-able stuff beneath the surface. I bet the shipwreck dropped all kinds of good stuff.

[cekivi]

Well, it's the Canadian Pacific coast so the absolute farthest north the game can take place is at the BC/Alaska border. I'm sure summers there aren't super warm but I bet you can still go swimming provided you were smart about it. The farthest North I've personally been was Jasper Alberta in August and it was definitely hot enough that even swimming in a glacial lake (with ice floating in it!) was very, very tempting!

[danicusrex]

What about puzzle books? finding a pencil and a word search/ crossword/ jumble etc puzzle book could be neat. 

[Pillock]

To be quite honest, I'm not going to be wasting my time in TLD playing solitaire or doing sodoku!

But I am interested in what's in store for the character's 'well-being' system that has been mentioned on the development roadmap. Reading books for recreation, crafting ornaments, doing puzzles, etc. would all be reasonable components of this mechanic, to give our character some escapism for the brutal reality of survival; if they are performed in time-lapse mode for gameplay purposes, that's fine, but I wouldn't want the game to actually force me to do them manually. It would be boring as shit! 

[cekivi]

On 2016-07-26 at 6:40 AM, Pillock said:

To be quite honest, I'm not going to be wasting my time in TLD playing solitaire or doing sodoku!

But I am interested in what's in store for the character's 'well-being' system that has been mentioned on the development roadmap. Reading books for recreation, crafting ornaments, doing puzzles, etc. would all be reasonable components of this mechanic, to give our character some escapism for the brutal reality of survival; if they are performed in time-lapse mode for gameplay purposes, that's fine, but I wouldn't want the game to actually force me to do them manually. It would be boring as shit! 

Perhaps the option to do them manually? Depending on my mood a morale boosting mini-game would either be fun or super boring to the point where it's worse than the blank screen you get while resting

[Raf109]

8 minutes ago, cekivi said:

Depending on my mood a morale boosting mini-game would either be fun or super boring to the point where it's worse than the blank screen you get while resting

1

Maybe playing or completing the mini-games would improve some ability or a short boost to the character in-game?

Then you would be more interested in actually playing with darts, puzzles, cards, etc...

[iSUGGESTthings]

I'm not sure how they would actually address any pros/cons, if at all. I wouldn't say that any potential mini-games themselves should be tied into morale specifically. Though I'm not sure what they have in store for that 'morale system'.  But I agree that having the option for those of us who would waste our time doing stuff like that would be good. Until or unless they fill out all the downtime with something more interesting. 

[Wastelander]

On 28.7.2016 at 5:31 PM, Raf109 said:

Maybe playing or completing the mini-games would improve some ability or a short boost to the character in-game?

 

In the game Rimworld, you can build fun activities for your colonists to do when they aren't rampaging, eating each other or fightin off ridiculously huge armies with broken guns and steel walls. These give veeeeeeeery low XP-boosts to some skills, maybe this could be a 'hidden' bonus - playing darts slooooooowly raises your bow skill since you learn to predict archs, mixing cocktails for your chemical amusement raises your cooking skill every so slightly and so on.... should be barely noticeable, but still there.

[iSUGGESTthings]

It might be cute if you had the option to play with the echo in caves and mines etc.