Quick fix best fix — Swap positions of the repair and harvest options

[Hadrian]

Greetings everyone,

The title of this one pretty much speaks for itself.

It's happened to all of us, at all stages of gameplay and experience; that dread-inducing moment of realizing you've just shredded your Expedition Parka instead of repairing it as you intended. Or any other clothing item, for that matter.

A big part of why this mistake happens, in my experience, is that the "Harvest" option is the top / default option when dealing with clothing actions. You have to actually switch to "Repair," which is of course the more innocuous (at least) or helpful (at most) option, rather than having to consciously switch to the more dangerous choice, which would be more intuitive.

So, why not switch their positions? Have "Repair" be option #1 and the default, and "Harvest" be option #2 that you have to consciously choose.

Thoughts?

-H

 

[Thurman Merman]

Agreed.  It's a totally unnecessary extra click as it is now - an odd choice.  

[Wastelander]

This hasn't happened to me yet, but I do see your point, and yeah, I agree with it. Destroying things should always be the option you have to go out of your way to click on.

[Pillock]

I destructed my only hatchet on Timberwolf Mountain once, instead of sharpening. I froze to death that very same night.

I'm pretty careful with that nowadays.

[Ruruwawa]

I did this to my rifle once.  And then immediately quit out of the game without saving.  I lost a little progress but got my rifle back.  /phew

[cekivi]

A frequent forum request

 

[Hiemalis]

From a inteface design point of view, the @Hadrian's point makes absolute sense: the more dangerous the option, the less accessible it should be. Also, who IRL accidentally harvests his own tools?

[Hadrian]

It is decided. I shall henceforth be known now and forevermore as the Hadrian.

-H

[Hiemalis]

9 hours ago, Hadrian said:

It is decided. I shall henceforth be known now and forevermore as the Hadrian.

-H

Hahaha! I won't even correct that mistake, for history's sake.

[Wastelander]

9 hours ago, Hadrian said:

It is decided. I shall henceforth be known now and forevermore as the Hadrian.

-H

Duly noted, the @Hadrian (seriously, I will do this. ) 

[Hadrian]

Next time I post in the YT forum, I expect to be referred to in this exact manner. :-P

-H

[Nijiru]

I have lost a couple items due to this issue before. Out of the fixes I can see for the problem, this fix, swapping the buttons, would be the easiest to implement.

[dchild59]

100% agree with this one!!

[nicko]

yep agreed, mentioned this with knives as well.

 

[Felli]

Throwing my two cents into this one as well. It makes more sense for it to be swapped, as right now, especially if you use a controller, it's far to easy to hit the wrong one and destroy something instead of repairing it.

 

Edit: Heh, The Hadrian. I'll keep that one in mind

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Nijiru!

[TWM]

Yep, I've accidentally harvested many pieces of clothing and items this way.

At some point, when you're harvesting and/or repairing a number of clothing items, it can become rote, and then the mind wanders. You click, you harvest. Ooops...

Or one is otherwise distracted, and instead of cleaning/sharpening one's rifle/knife/blade, it is now demolished. Wow, that's like really not frustrating.. at all!

So I agree with Hadrian that destroying an item should not be the default choice. It's counter-intuitive as well. Shouldn't shredding an item be the last option?

That said (and let me play devil's advocate here for a moment): from the standpoint of convenience, it makes a lot of chores easier, since you'll harvest far more items in the game than you'll repair. You'll harvest cloth (and leather) to keep your weight down; you'll harvest multiple pieces of cloth to repair the clothing items that are really good; sometimes you need to shred a number of clothing items to get all of your clothing up to the point where it's decent.

Still, precisely because shredding items is so common in TLD, a mistake is easily made; which makes for frustrating gameplay. Now I don't mind the game being frustrating because it has a steep learning curve - it's pretty darn challenging and that's half the fun: you jump back in the fray and try again.

But frustration because of a small design flaw with serious ramifications for when you accidentally click the wrong button, where it shouldn't take much programming or imagination to reverse the order of options?

That's just kind of annoying.