Exhaustion; Rethought

[Fuarian]

One thing that annoys me about TLD on a constant basis is exhaustion. How is it that we slowly die of being so tired instead of just falling asleep?

Your character even hints at this. "I'm so tired I'm gonna faint."

Fainting. Or passing out. After being exhausted for a certain amount of time your character will start to squint and close their eyes. This will look exactly like it does when you are below 10% condition. When the screen goes in and out of blackness. Except it will be gradual as you get more and more tired. After a certain time you will simply pass out for a certain amount of time until you wake up. This can be extremely deadly as you can simply faint in the middle of the snow. There will be a risk shown to let players know it's coming.

Once you wake up you will be rested to a certain extent but may suffer some afflictions or condition loss. On top of this a new affliction; "Poor Sleep". You will get tired quicker and actions will take more time.

This will encourage players to set up camp in places to rest up or to stay indoors when you have hypothermia as you get tired really fast.

This will be restricted in some ways however. If you are right outside a building in a certain radius this will not take affect as it would be cheap to walk right up to a building and faint right in front of the door.

 

Not only does this add realism and immersion but it adds an aspect to survival in the game which I feel is greatly needed.

 

That's all.

[Joelle Emmily]

You are entirely correct @Fuarian. While dying from lack of sleep is certainly possible, it is also exceptionally rare. No matter how hungry, how cold, or how terrified one is, the human brain will put you to sleep if it's tired enough.

That being said, I fully acknowledge that this is a simplified mechanic for the game. If one were to pass out in the middle of winter IRL, one might probably die, the game's just skipping a step. But, micro-sleeps when suffering from exhaustion might be cool. The screen goes black for a few seconds, and you find yourself failing whatever you were doing, or falling down in your tracks, or my personal favourite, you keep walking in whatever direction you were originally, but seem to have travelled farther than expected, all while losing some random number of minutes.

[Fuarian]

3 minutes ago, Joelle Emmily said:

You are entirely correct @Fuarian. While dying from lack of sleep is certainly possible, it is also exceptionally rare. No matter how hungry, how cold, or how terrified one is, the human brain will put you to sleep if it's tired enough.

That being said, I fully acknowledge that this is a simplified mechanic for the game. If one were to pass out in the middle of winter IRL, one might probably die, the game's just skipping a step. But, micro-sleeps when suffering from exhaustion might be cool. The screen goes black for a few seconds, and you find yourself failing whatever you were doing, or falling down in your tracks, or my personal favourite, you keep walking in whatever direction you were originally, but seem to have travelled farther than expected, all while losing some random number of minutes.

I know. The realism is toned down for some gameplay purposes to make the game not boring. But this feature. Fainting. Seems like something that could be added and will benefit the game. Obviously it would be tuned for each experience mode and I think it should give you a risk of fainting before it happens.

[ArcherAC3]

I'd love to have the "micro-sleeps" as Emmily said. It would be awesome to have some blackouts, stumbles and loss of sight for a few seconds.

[Wormer]

I agree that loosing health from exhaustion doesn't look realistic. But then having a health bar isn't realistic at first place, because in reality we don't have a single health meter that shows how close we're to death so to say. The human organism has several major systems working concurrently, when a system fails or becomes weak it can be partially compensated by the other systems that are working properly. Health meter doesn't represent a single parameter like the amount of blood but instead is a summarized rating of all subsystems' "scores". For instance, you can have 25% health due to hypothermia or due to the fact that you lost blood in a fight with wolves or due to the fact of dehydration etc. With exhaustion it's not so simple because it does not represent primary subsystem and like correctly stated above you can't directly die from it. On the other side from gameplay perspective you have to somehow penalize players for being low on that parameter. I would say loosing health from exhausted condition seems alright, but probably this alone shouldn't drop health below certain level (let's say 30%), where other needs kick in. Then like others mentioned an added feature of reduced vision, faintings, black outs, irregular movement, taking more time to accomplish things when you're low on health will benefit the game. There is one more thing to add: an exhaustion might cause an increase in chance to sprain ankle (with even more chance to sprain at higher <max weight>/<current load> ratio).

[Fuarian]

12 hours ago, Wormer said:

I agree that loosing health from exhaustion doesn't look realistic. But then having a health bar isn't realistic at first place, because in reality we don't have a single health meter that shows how close we're to death so to say. The human organism has several major systems working concurrently, when a system fails or becomes weak it can be partially compensated by the other systems that are working properly. Health meter doesn't represent a single parameter like the amount of blood but instead is a summarized rating of all subsystems' "scores". For instance, you can have 25% health due to hypothermia or due to the fact that you lost blood in a fight with wolves or due to the fact of dehydration etc. With exhaustion it's not so simple because it does not represent primary subsystem and like correctly stated above you can't directly die from it. On the other side from gameplay perspective you have to somehow penalize players for being low on that parameter. I would say loosing health from exhausted condition seems alright, but probably this alone shouldn't drop health below certain level (let's say 30%), where other needs kick in. Then like others mentioned an added feature of reduced vision, faintings, black outs, irregular movement, taking more time to accomplish things when you're low on health will benefit the game. There is one more thing to add: an exhaustion might cause an increase in chance to sprain ankle (with even more chance to sprain at higher <max weight>/<current load> ratio).

I'm saying that alongside showing signs of exhaustion there should be more than just a small condition loss for being exhausted and fainting would be the most realistic option and it can be tuned respecticively to how the devs want while keeping it within realistic limits.

[Mikhail_Reign]

12 hours ago, Wormer said:

There is one more thing to add: an exhaustion might cause an increase in chance to sprain ankle (with even more chance to sprain at higher <max weight>/<current load> ratio).

Doesn't it already?

[Mikeyd0577]

On 10/7/2016 at 8:48 PM, Mikhail_Reign said:

Doesn't it already?

yes it does.

 

I also think there should be an adrenaline rush of some sort if your within reach of the door to a cabin.  Kind of like a "there it is, I can make it" or the will to live part of the human spirit.  I know if I'm really tired driving/running whatever it is, if I'm in reach of my house I wake up a little more because I know I'm almost home.

[togg]

But when you wake up from microsleep you wouldn't get any sleep back or a little? I don't know if it can work in a world that it's so aggressive. I think that at the moment the mechanic works quite well, when you're tired a lot of things happen already don't you think?

[LucidFugue]

Just an idea,  what if exhaustion added a small input lag, a bit like how drunkenness is simulated in other games. That would represent the general clumsiness and poor reactions of exhaustion, making hunting much harder while not punishing players who are just trudging their way back to a safe place to rest.