Long term difficulty

[continuity]

Some suggestions to enhance long term difficulty:

• Have the conditions get progressively worse, gradually lower ambient temperatures and more/longer blizzards.
• Slowly increase predator aggression as time progresses (perhaps because they're starving and getting more desperate)
• reduce wildlife over time, less rabbits, less deer, maybe even freeze some lakes solid or make the ice too thick to break, so no fish.
• This is a tricky one in terms of work to implement, but have snow levels rise maybe even burying your cabin in a snow drift after a blizzard so you have to dig your way out.

All justifiable in an apocalyptic scenario that triggers a new ice age, and adding some much needed challenge to the longer game I think.

[Scyzara]

I for one would definitely love an increasing difficulty level during the course of a game, at least in Stalker mode. It's a bit arguable if it makes much sense for Pilgrim, but I totally support the idea for Stalker (and possibly to a more moderate degree for Voyageur mode).

An increased mid- and late-game difficulty especially makes sense in the light of the new skill level system (which is likely to be extended in the future) in my opinion.

As much as I like said system in general, it definitely has the unfortunate side-effect to aggravate TLDs everlasting problem that each single game is most difficult during the first few days and becomes easier and easier over time until at some point the risk of death has pretty much vanished (unless you really screw up somehow). Hence, routine and boredom settle in very fast and most players either start a new game or stop playing at this point.

I would absolutely love it if the struggle for survival persisted throughout the whole game and not just for a few days. To be honest, I don't care particularly much by which means exactly this might be achieved. Decreasing animal numbers, generally less items, gradually worsening weather conditions, falling temperatures, more aggressive predators, new long-term health afflictions or other features.. I'm in for pretty much everything as long as it keeps the game thrilling in the 20day+ range. 

[strigon]

I'm not sure how much that would help.
Sure, it would make the game more difficult, but the issue isn't that it becomes too easy as it is that it becomes too dull because it's too easy.

The issue is, eventually you get stuck in a place where you have no reason to leave your home except on short day trips to gather more food or firewood for hundreds of days. If you made it colder, with less animals, and more dangerous animals, then that's hardly encouraging people to go out and adventure more. That's even more reason to sit by your house and just snipe at wolves and bears that happen across your home base, whereas this game would benefit from something that would encourage you to go outside of your house on a multi-day journey. This is sort of what the forge does, but quite heavy-handedly.

What we need are specific challenges that require tough choices and clever tactics to survive.
For example, maybe there's a multi-day chill that lowers the temperature so much that you're at risk of freezing even indoors? Suddenly that cabin with no fireplace isn't so comforting, and you've got to head to, say, the coal mines where it's both warm and you can light a fire. Or maybe wolves can eventually break in, waking you from your sleep (because I'd wake up if that happened, and it would be awfully cheap otherwise), and forcing you to defend yourself. These are just a couple ideas thrown out there, but the gist of what I'm saying is:
Don't make things arbitrarily, forcibly harder - make new challenges to be overcome, as opposed to making the same old boring challenges tougher.

[continuity]

24 minutes ago, strigon said:

The issue is, eventually you get stuck in a place where you have no reason to leave your home except on short day trips to gather more food or firewood for hundreds of days. If you made it colder, with less animals, and more dangerous animals, then that's hardly encouraging people to go out and adventure more.

I'm talking about a gradual process but you're right, this alone isn't enough, the whole survival scenario needs a change of balance. Picture a region in Canada after an apocalyptic event, where a gradual slide into an ice age results in your inevitable death, its just a question of how long you can survive and how you die.  Everyone else in the region has already died, lootable food is virtually non existent (why would each house be stuffed with food with people lying dead all around?), bullets are like gold dust, you start with zero crafting skills and have to learn everything from reverse engineering or books (I have no idea how to create a snare, but i'm pretty sure if I found one intact I could make more).

You say why would you leave your house? because of the 100% certainty that you would starve or freeze to death within a week if you don't, food stockpiling is almost impossible, because there simply isn't enough to stockpile, if you're lucky once a week you might take down a deer. If you don't go out and hunt/forage almost every day you will die. of course it starts out more forgiving, but gradually in more or less in line with how your gear and skills improve things get worse.

[Tbone555]

from my understanding, your term of this event triggering "another ice age" is untrue. this is just how winter is in this part of the world, and come spring, the snow and ice begins melting. (this is a feature that will be added later, according to the roadmap) the weather is totally average for this part of the world.

however i do agree that there needs to be adjustment to long-term survival. once you master the various dangers of this world, survival is easy. in fact, there comes a point that you can't even call it "survival." being fully stocked on food, water, firewood and supplies to live out the quiet apocalypse is not survival as much as just, living. there definitely needs to be adjustments to make long term survival more challenging. it's a great suggestion! and welcome to the forums, continuity

[cekivi]

And since seasons are on the roadmap a perpetual ice age also wouldn't work. Neat in concept but it's not going to happen...

I would like to see depopulation of areas if you stay in them too long. Or just more realistic hunting in general. More meat on deer but fewer of them. Fewer wolves but more deadly. Axing cabin fever and bringing back multi-day weather systems. It'd be cool to find a barometer in the camp office or homestead and use it for weather prediction. If the bottom falls out of it... you'd better hope you are prepared!

An earlier forum post suggested events. Challenging events in the game, semi-predictable harsh weather with food harder to get would balance the mid to late game nicely in my opinion

[continuity]

Yeah, i'm getting mixed messages about what is supposed to be going on in this game.  The impression i'm getting is that the premise for the game is this (taken directly from the front page of this website, emphasis mine):

Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity’s technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches… Welcome to The Long Dark —an immersive survival simulation set in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster.

Add to this that virtually everyone in the region is dead, corpses litter the place like discarded drinks cans.... I'm thinking this is not "this is just how winter is in this part of the world ", to me this has to be at the very least severe weather disruption causing massive drops in temperature and constant blizzards, if not a full-blown ice age trigger. Or is it normal for everyone to die in Canada each winter? Is no one there able to hunt or chop wood? or maybe they were just too stupid to eat the stockpiles of food in each house? I don't get it.

It just doesn't add up.

[Scyzara]

It's all going to make more sense once NPCs have been implemented. I guess.

TLD's storyline isn't that every other human being except our character has died, the survivors are just still missing in the current game version. It's a work in progress and we will only know the survivor/dead ratio for sure once story mode has launched. 

As for why people have died.. well, it's mere speculation ofc, but at least some of the corpses might have been killed by other people (indoor corpses) or wildlife/the cold (outdoor corpses).

It's a great difference whether you only need to survive a "normal" winter in a rural region (electricity, heating, telephones and cars are working) or if almost everything stopped functioning, communication is shut down and you need to travel all distances by foot. The latter is probably especially dangerous if the weather patterns have changed and blizzards occur more often (or are less predictable) than in a normal winter.

I could very well imagine some people losing their nerves and leaving their relatively save houses in an attempt to make contact with their neighbors (or to reach the next bigger settlement) just to freeze in a sudden blizzard a few hours later.

We also shouldn't forget that the current corpse model is most likely just a placeholder. So some corpses might actually be children (or old or possibly wounded people) unable to survive on their own.

[Resethel]

We often forgot the game still is in alpha mode (which is really early in the game's development). Hence some informations and stuff missing.

 

For my part, I'm of those who think TLD need new events triggered (or not) at certain point in the game.

• Huge Mega Storms (like in Whiteout challenge, they force you too stockpile)
• Over-aggressive animals (like in Hunted challenge for example). Imagine that a pack of wolves targets you, because you left a lot of deers/rabbits corpse around your base), and circle around your shelter, with reasonable distance so you have rooms to act. Two solutions, waiting, if you stockpiled enough it's ok (but it will greatly affect your stocks nonetheless), or acting: scaring them away, feeding them (dangerous) or getting rid of every last of them.
• Npcs to, if they come in form of events. Either good, bad, neutral. (Ex: You pass by a cliff and hear someone which is hanged, ready to fall, and calling for help, you try to help him and ultimately fail, fall with him or success  (this is an example from another thread))
• Long-term afflictions: like a broken-arm, some severe wounds, some disease, frostbites (on roadmap).
• Aurora hazards (on the roadmap)
• Weather generally getting worse and unstable (like during spring times)
• Animal spawn rates dropping and rising (due to seasons, amount of killing per regions, etc)

They've all already been stated, but its sure that there are plenty not explored ideas

[continuity]

3 hours ago, Scyzara said:

As for why people have died.. well, it's mere speculation ofc, but at least some of the corpses might have been killed by other people (indoor corpses) or wildlife/the cold (outdoor corpses).

The narrative i'm going with in my head whilst playing, is that once their smartphones stopped working they couldn't handle the prospect of life without facebook, so offed themselves. 

[Baukster77]

On 10-7-2016 at 3:32 PM, Resethel said:

We often forgot the game still is in alpha mode (which is really early in the game's development). Hence some informations and stuff missing.

 

For my part, I'm of those who think TLD need new events triggered (or not) at certain point in the game.

• Huge Mega Storms (like in Whiteout challenge, they force you too stockpile)
• Over-aggressive animals (like in Hunted challenge for example). Imagine that a pack of wolves targets you, because you left a lot of deers/rabbits corpse around your base), and circle around your shelter, with reasonable distance so you have rooms to act. Two solutions, waiting, if you stockpiled enough it's ok (but it will greatly affect your stocks nonetheless), or acting: scaring them away, feeding them (dangerous) or getting rid of every last of them.
• Npcs to, if they come in form of events. Either good, bad, neutral. (Ex: You pass by a cliff and hear someone which is hanged, ready to fall, and calling for help, you try to help him and ultimately fail, fall with him or success  (this is an example from another thread))
• Long-term afflictions: like a broken-arm, some severe wounds, some disease, frostbites (on roadmap).
• Aurora hazards (on the roadmap)
• Weather generally getting worse and unstable (like during spring times)
• Animal spawn rates dropping and rising (due to seasons, amount of killing per regions, etc)

They've all already been stated, but its sure that there are plenty not explored ideas

Like the ideas a lot! But I wander what the effects of the 'aurora hazards' are going to be like .The lights in the sky are obvious but will it also affect ourselves,animals and maybe other things?

[continuity]

On 7/9/2016 at 10:07 PM, cekivi said:

And since seasons are on the roadmap a perpetual ice age also wouldn't work. Neat in concept but it's not going to happen...

 

My since hope, is that its summer right now.... 

[Resethel]

On 22 juillet 2016 at 1:05 AM, Baukster77 said:

Like the ideas a lot! But I wander what the effects of the 'aurora hazards' are going to be like .The lights in the sky are obvious but will it also affect ourselves,animals and maybe other things?

From a purely scientific side... Auroras are visual effects of solar particles passing through the magnetic field, ending up in the athmosphere. My explanation for events occuring in the game, is that solar flares powerful enough strikes Earth's magnetic field so hard that it's repelled close to the surface ( at least below our athmosphere ), to the point that induction phenomenon is so great that everything that can conduct (easily enough, since everything can in some measures) electricity with very High intensity, ruinning every electric installation (too much power passing through them, destroying the components, even the toughest ones).

 

All this to said that if a "realistic" concept about the aurora is followed, maybe Aurora-related events are limited once the first one occurs. So we could things like metals heating up, maybe animals, which for some are sensitives to that, adopting a strange behavior, maybe huge storms, strange weather, and things of this kind.

But if the aurora is based on a "non-realistic" concept, then it can really be anything.

 

So it's up to the devs ^^