Feedback on fire, wolf attacks and others

[yoli]

Hi,

I love The Long Dark but a few things are frustrating/unrealistic and could be easily improved:

- when a fire just ran out into a stove, if we start a new one in the same stove, the latter is supposed to be warm and dry, so the chances of success should be higher. But today they are the same as if the stove was cold and unused for days.

- when I see a wolf running at me and I have a hatchet with me, I would like to take if out and prepare for the fight, but no way apparently, I have to wait for the wolf to half-kill me before I can use the hatchet. 

- lantern: when picking up the lantern it stays on my hand, how can I just put it into the backpack? So annoying the lantern showing up when I don't need it

- tiredness: if happened once (a bug?) tiredness was going low very quickly, even doing nothing (like waiting on a bed without sleeping). Probably a bug I guess, but I had to abandon the game as it was unplayable.

- activities can kill you, like if you schedule 4 hours fishing and if you are too thirsty/hungry/cold before the time runs out, you die. I know there is a button to cancel the current activity, but really this behavior is obviously highly unrealistic... please fix this, like automatically consuming food/drinks or stopping the activity before dying so we have a chance to remedy the situation. The game is hard enough like this without having erratic UX behaviors getting in the way.

- the activities are mono-task, i.e. when boiling water you cannot do anything in the meantime. This is very annoying, unrealistic and consume lots of time. Using a single campfire, we could well cook a fish and melt snow, and go out getting wood in the meantime. Ark, another survival game, is making that possible and this is a much better use of the time. I know this one would be kind of a redesign for you guys, but currently the usage of time is not properly designed, or you'd need to make days of 72 hours

 

[Patrick Carlson]

Welcome yoli!

Thanks for your feedback. A bit to consider here, but a couple initial thoughts:

In terms of activities during cooking/water boiling, I can say this is something we are interested in as well. It's an experience in the game we'll be working to improve in the future. 

For wolf struggles, we don't have any plans right now to make these encounters more "offensive" in nature (if I understand your feedback correctly). If the hatchet is your best tool for defense, it is equipped automatically when you are taken down by a wolf.

Your comment on warm versus cold stoves is really interesting. Although we are always looking to balance "realism" with compelling gameplay, this could be an area where we could reflect that more clearly. As you say, a higher percentage change for a warm stove with embers from the previous fire. Will for sure forward this to the design team.  

[Muk_Pile]

Hello and welcome to the forums, @yoli! 

First off, let me recommend to you that if you have any questions about The Long Dark, go into the "How To Play Questions" section of the forums (it's on the main menu page, but here's the link anyways) and take a good look around; you might just find a thread about your question already started and probably some answers, too!

So, let me do my best to resolve some of your concerns:

13 minutes ago, yoli said:

- when I see a wolf running at me and I have a hatchet with me, I would like to take if out and prepare for the fight, but no way apparently, I have to wait for the wolf to half-kill me before I can use the hatchet. 

This has been discussed before in previous threads (try typing in "Wolf Melee" into the Search Bar at the top of the forum page), with mix opinions in general.  Still, I find it's better to avoid encountering wolves before you acquire any ranged weapons, since it requires a fast mouse-clicker and a little bit of luck to beat off a wolf attack before he can really chew down your health.  Also, as a helpful tip: as long as the wolf is only stalking you (i.e. not sprinting at you), just keep your eyes on him and back away until you're out of his line-of-sight (e.g. behind a big rock, over a small hill top) or your near a building/car/hunting blind, in which case you should then turn around and bolt it!

28 minutes ago, yoli said:

- lantern: when picking up the lantern it stays on my hand, how can I just put it into the backpack? So annoying the lantern showing up when I don't need it

You can put away your lantern (or any other light source/ranged weapon that you are holding) by simply pressing the "H"-key, which is otherwise know as "Holstering" in the Key Binding section of your Options Menu.

32 minutes ago, yoli said:

- tiredness: if happened once (a bug?) tiredness was going low very quickly, even doing nothing (like waiting on a bed without sleeping). Probably a bug I guess, but I had to abandon the game as it was unplayable.

There are certain types of ailments in the game that will affect the speed at which you fatigue.  Regardless of which one you contracted, if there was a small red cross in the bottom left corner of your monitor screen, then you ill and need to recover.  Here are some of those ailments:

• Hypothermia
  • You catch this when you've been out in the cold too long and your core temperature has plummeted. 
  • General contracted after 1 hour spent enduring freezing temperatures with an empty Heat status bar (click Tabs to view your body status bars; Heat status bar is the first one, followed by Fatigue, Thirst, & Hunger) or if you fall through thin ice.
  • Requires that you keep your Heat status bar filled-up and stay indoors where the temperature is above freezing.  While your body is recovering, you are weakened and will fatigue very quickly.
• Food Poisoning
  • You catch this when you've consume either raw, uncooked meat or food-items in poor condition.
  • Requires you to open the Radial Menu (default key is Space Bar, I think), select the First Aid Menu (look for a red cross), and treat you illness with Antibiotics.  IMMEDIATELY FIND A BED AND SLEEP; while you are not sleeping you will quickly lose health!
  • Takes 10 hours of sleep to recover.

If none of these ailments were present while your fatigue was draining abnormally fast, then it might be a bug, which you can report in the "Bug Reports & Tech Issues" section of the forums.

54 minutes ago, yoli said:

- activities can kill you, like if you schedule 4 hours fishing and if you are too thirsty/hungry/cold before the time runs out, you die. I know there is a button to cancel the current activity, but really this behavior is obviously highly unrealistic... please fix this, like automatically consuming food/drinks or stopping the activity before dying so we have a chance to remedy the situation.

Yes, if you don't pay attention to your surroundings nor figure out a plan to address your needs (e.g. warmth, water, food), many activities your perform in The Long Dark will kill you.  For example, fishing for 4 hours straight will only kill you if the air temperature remains below freezing and you don't have a fire burning in the fish hut stove to keep you warm.  Hunger and thirst take days to drain your health down to 0% condition, will the cold can easily freeze you to death in a matter of hours!

And as for the your suggestion of an automatic activity stopping game mechanic, in my humble opinion seems to not really fit the theme of The Long Dark, which I think I can sum up in one sentence: You must make the right decisions at the right time if you wish to survive.  And if you don't, then you die, which is actual not a bad thing.  Each death in the game is a lesson one must learn and use to improve upon their strategy when beginning another game. This seems to be what keeps so many players interested and invested in The Long Dark; the drive to of success by planning better, surviving longer, and overcoming any challenge we come up against.

Anyways, hope this advice helps you in your adventures, and on behalf of the community, welcome again to The Long Dark. 

[togg]

The real/not accellerated time about activities is one of the thing that I wait a lot on the roadmap!

[MarrowStone]

As long as you can see your status bars while in accelerated time and are conscious, you should rely on your own judgement on whether to quit an activity. Its part of the unforgiving essence of the long dark with risk/reward, you may have caught a fish and saved yourself if your character didnt quit.

I also seemed to get the mysterious fatigue plague while in pleasant valley farmhouse, my fatigue bar halved while breaking down a curtain in interloper, and i had no afflictions

[yoli]

Thanks all for you replies and kind welcome.

As MarrowStone I didn't have any affliction and was not freezing (was into a house) when the tiredness dropped dramatically by just resting, so I do not think this is normal, especially as this happened only once. And I was in the Mystery Lake area (maybe that's what the mystery is about? )

[MarrowStone]

Maybe the Farmhouse Just has really strong curtains haha.