Blood Trails v 0.364

[selfless]

Am I the only one who noticed the changes?  Tracking is a lot harder now.

Maybe its a different experience if you have footsteps turned on?

[cekivi]

Tracking has always been bad for me. Are you on a PC @selfless? I've noticed that most of the people having problems with blood trails are on the PC. X-Box users seem fine.

[selfless]

PC.  Try it now @cekivi.  It's even worse.  Blood drops fast at the beginning but quickly slows to a trickle.  Let a bear run around for 8 hours and it might as well not be bleeding at all.  Still dies on time.  So it either just plain confusing or, if you realize what is going on, useless.  If either is the intention, why?  Just "Why?".

[cekivi]

Darn... that's not good. If you wounded an animal enough to kill it it should keep bleeding. Otherwise wouldn't it survive if the would was superficial enough to clot? I'm fine if there's less blood as the animal bleeds out but the fact that blood drops and tracks disappeared so quickly pre-v0.364 has been a continual annoyance. If you're saying it's gotten worse...

 

[aurora]

I always found it extremly difficult to follow a blood trail. Most of the times i tried so it seemed to be that the trail just suddenly ends somewhere but no dead animal anywhere in sight. I thought, that i probably be just bad in tracking ...

[selfless]

Disappearing has not gotten worse.  They don't even appear.  Or rather, fewer drops are being placed on the ground and farther apart as the wound gets older, til you cant see the next one while standing on any.  Becomes a guessing game even with full sun and no wind.

[LucidFugue]

I also thought I was just bad at this. I remember discussions about bleed timers being disturbed if you kept chasing etc. I began leaving wounded animals to run away, then coming back the next day and searching  in the direction they ran. Pretty reliably found the carcass unless they were steered in another direction by other predators. 

[akodo1]

It is very annoying when you are trailing an animal and get close enough that you spook it and it takes off running.  Sometimes just standing up, bandaging, and spinning around to make sure I didn't lose any gear can spook the wolf into running.

Also, bleed seems to be related to time vs distance covered, you'd think a wounded animal running would succumb to blood loss sooner than one walking slowly.

I generally track by sight, because as others have mentioned blood can disappear so easily.  Nothing is more frustrating than quickly patching up and starting to follow a trail and following it for a long ways only to have it disappear because wind kicks up or sometimes it just seems to disappear with no good explanation. 

Finally, the amount of blood drops formed as time passes lessens.  I get it that as an animal bleeds out it bleeds less BUT they also tend to go slower and slower, which makes it a wash.

[akodo1]

p.s.  Someday I'd like to see a tracking skill, where as it increases the blood drops that appear now appear bigger, and smaller ones appear inbetween.  You get better at noticing things you'd overlook before.

Exactly how to measure what you are doing as tracking, that's a bit harder to figure out.  Right now this game gives you skill when you succeed, so points when you actually find a dead animal you killed? (even if you just stumbled upon it by accident?)  Maybe points for simply seeing blood droplets.  It would have to be like 20 = 1 increment or something (and by increment I mean the + you see after you successfully start a fire etc, not a new level)

[norup]

It feels inconsistent that in "The hunted, part 2", tracking is easy due to blood and footprints, but at least on my current 0.365 stalker run, I could not find any blood or footprints after visibly wounding a bear. Only by looking in the stats could I see that it had died later - never found it.

[Muk_Pile]

14 hours ago, akodo1 said:

p.s.  Someday I'd like to see a tracking skill, where as it increases the blood drops that appear now appear bigger, and smaller ones appear inbetween.  You get better at noticing things you'd overlook before.

I think rather than there be a skill devoted to tracking that it should be more a skill level that is only increased by advancing in one or several skills that are already in the game.  Here's what I'm thinking:

• Your base tracking skill level is what it's current form:
  • Blood drops have the same size, occur at the same frequency, and fade away within the same period of time
• Your tracking skill level increases every time you level up with one of the following skills:
  • Rifle Shooting, Archery, and Carcass Harvesting
• For every time your track skill level is increased the following occurs:
  • Blood drops size, frequency, and duration increase by 8%
  • Obtaining Level 5 for any of the previously mention skills will include a bonus 3% increase to your tracking skill
  • Maximum track skill level =  99% (excluding Interloper) or 67% (Interloper, once rifle skill books are removed)
  • This means that blood drops will, at the most, effectively double in size, frequency, and duration once you've maxed out your Rifle Shooting, Archery, and Carcass Harvesting Skills

So, do what do you guys think?  Would it feel more like a welcomed improvement or ineffective solution?

[cekivi]

@Muk_Pile: Likely a little too complex. Again, I think it's a platform issue. I've never seen on the forums any x-box users with this problem. I should test this when I go home for the Thanksgiving holiday actually...

[MarrowStone]

I think another issue is that you cant see the blood until you're standing on top of it. Its render distance seems short