Various Events/Elements to Drastically Improve Sandbox Gameplay

[Fuarian]

Minor:

-Cold Front; weather gets worse, temperatures drop slightly, slightly less small wildlife like rabbits. 

-Warm Front; weather gets better, more fog, temperature slightly increases, more small game, sign that worse weather will come

-Super Blizzard; large blizzard lasting days with intermittent periods, ridiculously cold temperatures, lots of snowfall potentially blocking off locations (see below), other?

-Looted Buildings; some buildings you come across should be completely looted already, even main buildings like the Gas Station, rare

-Dynamic Interior Temp; temperature indoors depends on the outdoor temperature, the type of building it is, the weather, if there's a fire inside or was recently, damage to building, cold front/warm front, etc... now you need a fire all night to survive, real tough challenge here

Medium; 

-Finite Fishing; in places like ML, Pensive Pond and Crystal Lake fish are not infinite. Over time fish will deplete if you continue to fish until there are none left. Making fish a resource to ration for when the weather gets bad etc...

-Overhunting; similar to fishing where if you hunt all the deer in one area (defined by chunks of a region, chunks depend on region size) then they won't repopulate until 20 days have passed. If you continue to hunt them then they won't repopulate for longer periods of time. This will also cause a decrease in wolf population however. This forces players to not be greedy with deer, rabbits etc... and will force them to move regions/ areas of a region to survive. 

-Snowed In; after a large snowfall, snow should accumulate dynamically (don't know how hard this will be to implement) in front of doorsteps and cars. If you don't regularly shovel the snow away from the doors of your shelter then you may get stuck inside forcing you to a) break a window or b) break the door. This can be extremely deadly especially during super blizzards. It may seem too OP but it shouldn't be a regular occurance. And it's quite realistic. (broken doors are irreparable)

-Shelter Management; If you do happen to break a window, repairing it with wood planks is required unless you want the temperature in your shelter to be equivalent to that of outside.... It won't be as warm as previously inside but it's better than freezing. The Mountaineer's hut can do for some repairs too with reclaimed wood and scrap metal. If a bear decides to get at your shelter then the door can be repaired also, but not if you break down the door in the event of being snowed in. (more?)

-Bears; If you have food in your shelter a bear may decide to go at it, they won't get in but can break the door. Or if the bear is aggro'd on you and it runs after you to your shelter. As mentioned above, the door will break but you'll be able to fix it. This won't be hard to add as they've already done something similar in the Hunted Part 2. 

-Shelter Customization; we should have the ability to move around/interact with every single bit of clutter. Every single piece of paper, note or whatever, every laptop, every loose drawer, every broken cabinet door, everything! And it doesn't stop there. We should also have the ability to move furniture. I'm talking chairs, benches, tables, shelves (loose ones), beds and even lockers (like in Trapper's Cabin). This way we can clean up without needing to break stuff down and organize more. However moving certain things around will penalize your speed. It will work like the item placement system. 

-More Interactivity; this partners up w/ the previous one. We should be able to interact with the furniture we move around. Sitting on chairs, benches etc... and we should also be able to not only move around containers but also put them in our pack for transportation and move them outside or elsewhere. 

-Breaking Down Items; we should be able to break down more things. Like carpets, bulletin boards, scraps of paper on the ground, beds and even cabinets and drawers. 

-Better Item Placement; Some mods have done this, where you can place items on top of each other w/o constraints. This way stacking items can be possible. For better organization. But we should also have more things like the Rifle Rack. Where we can let's say hang a Bow & Arrow, Clothing, Tools etc... instead of just placing them on tables or whatnot. And we should be able to place things straight from our inventory rather than dropping them on the ground. Less time consuming that way.

-Improve Food Poisoning: How is it that you can eat moldy food and not get sick? I mean for one it makes no sense (don't even get me started about the cooking skill) and secondly it's too easy to have all that food. If food below 40% would make you sick 100% of the time it would be much harder since we'd have to throw away all that food. (this shouldn't apply to Interloper however for the sake of it being Interloper). 

-Bait; we should be able to throw bait for wolves (this would be tough since the game physics aren't spectacular and it requires first person presence). They can use the same functionality as throwing stones. But we should also be able to craft bait out of a portion of meat, cooked or raw. Or food below 50% condition. Not 0% though. Bait like this should also be used for fishing to make it more likely to get a catch. 

Major; 

-Blocked Transition Zones; Certain transition areas should be blocked off. Ex; the tree in the ravine has fallen but broken/hasn't fallen yet. But the Dam is still accessible. This allows for more diverse and varied gameplay. Over time certain areas can either be closed off for good or will open. Ex; the Dam collapses due to seismic activity, the tree in the Ravine falls over after a storm or cracks and fall into the Ravine. The Ravine wouldn't be crossable at that point. Or the CH Mine can be collapsed forcing you to take the other way to PV. 

Obviously this would need to be tuned so that in some way it's possible to get to PV somehow. But I also like the idea of certain region being ENTIRELY blocked off. Right now I feel as if the game gives us way too much freedom in Sandbox whereas Story doesn't give us enough in the right sense. It would be amazing to have finally travelled to the transition area to find it inaccessible and have to trek all the way back or be forced to camp out the night. These little moments in the game make it great, but as an experienced player I never get them anymore. A random event like this could potentially bring it back.

-Destroyed Structures; Imagine trekking through the woods to get to Trapper's Cabin to find it burned down? The sense of dread you get as the sun is getting and you're forced to stay out the night. That same feeling we all had when we found the Forestry Lookout destroyed? It was great. Right now my problem in the game is that I ABSOLUTELY know that a specific shelter WILL be there no matter what and I know there WILL be stuff there.

But what if key shelters could be burned down? Like Trapper's Cabin, Camp Office, Farmstead etc...? They will either be burned down at the start of the game or it can happen over time. The only way a building can burn down over time is if you haven't entered it yet as to not piss off players that settled down there and left. (that wouldn't be fair as cool as it sounds for a feature). The best part about this feature is that you wouldn't know until you see it. It would force players to get that same experience I mentioned previously. The ones that vet players never experience anymore. It would be completely random. 

To balance it out, major buildings that are burned down/destroyed will have amount of supplies surrounding it as to not make it completely wasteful. 

-Pitch Black Nights; ever go out at night in-game and wonder why it's SO FREAKING BRIGHT? It's because of the lighting in the game. And it makes no sense. IRL even on the most full moonlit nights it's still godly dark. Yet somehow in game it has this bright, blue tint unless there's clouds in the sky. Well the lighting of a cloudy night in-game should be the lighting of a moonlit night in game. Very dark. This way getting lost at night can be extremely deadly. But make sunsets AWESOME! (it used to be like this...  ) 

 

That's all for now. I want opinions and I desperately want Hinterland to add these features. I've contacted some mod creators and some of them could potentially add some of these in the form of mods. So it's no excuse that Hinterland themselves can't do these. Thoughts?

-Fuarian

[StrayCat]

That is a HUGE compilation of ideas, most of them are really great. Some of them require a lot of work (dynamic interior temps, repairing buildings...) but would improve the game dramatically.

Only thing I disagree with :

16 hours ago, Fuarian said:

Pitch Black Nights; ever go out at night in-game and wonder why it's SO FREAKING BRIGHT? It's because of the lighting in the game.

No, it's because of the snow. When I went to Lapland, even at midnight you don't even need a flashlight because there is so much snow that even the tiniest light reflects everywhere, and you can see clearly even in a dense forest. So that part is perfectly normal and realistic.

[Fuarian]

Yeah, but I've been out in the country in the middle of winter in a moonlit night and it wasn't as bright as it is in game. It reflects this blue colour which just looks weird. Either way, maybe not make it pitch black but at least make it less bright than it is now.

[Mixxut]

I actually like most of these ideas but I'm gonna bring up few of the things I don't really undestand.

Super blizzards sound crazy. They should be very rare and only happen somewhere around TMW and PV. And they should not happen in first 10-20 days of a game or surviving those would be impossible. But otherwise I like this.

I don't like the idea of arriving in a gas station only to see that it's empty. Or burned down. It's just doesn't make sense that you should always fear that a good base in the map is empty/burned.

And the idea of Blocked Transition Zones is also a thing I wouldn't like to see. It would really suck to go trough ravine only to find out that it's blocked... It also would make the new players confused. And blocking an entire zone would just suck. And now that we have aurora I would not mind darker nights, but pitch black nights are just unneccesary. And as said, unrealistic.

But there are really good ideas. And I would like to see a super strom that makes surviving extra hard.

[Patrick Carlson]

Interesting synthesis of suggestions and ideas! A lot to think about there. 

One thing I will note: "Overhunting" is currently in the game, and has been for a long while. You can overharvest wildlife and deplete their populations for a time. 

In terms of something like a "superblizzard," would these show up at any time, or rather deep into games and after substantial world decay?

[Salty Crackers]

A lot of this stuff is interesting. Personally, I'd like for structures to have a chance of being burned out or looted. If a structure was looted, there should still be some stuff in hard to find spots.

[MarrowStone]

The superblizzards should be late-game to simulate world decay but there should be certain signs up to a week in advance to help players stock up and prepare, like maybe unique bird behavior.

On 10/17/2017 at 11:38 AM, Fuarian said:

Pitch Black Nights; ever go out at night in-game and wonder why it's SO FREAKING BRIGHT? It's because of the lighting in the game. And it makes no sense. IRL even on the most full moonlit nights it's still godly dark. Yet somehow in game it has this bright, blue tint unless there's clouds in the sky. Well the lighting of a cloudy night in-game should be the lighting of a moonlit night in game. Very dark. This way getting lost at night can be extremely deadly. But make sunsets AWESOME! (it used to be like th

I remember when it used to be super dark, it made daylight a vital resource. It was great, and sunsets were beautiful and also dreadful due to being a sign of what's to come. Aurora nights should be bright though.

[Riotintheair]

4 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Interesting synthesis of suggestions and ideas! A lot to think about there. 

One thing I will note: "Overhunting" is currently in the game, and has been for a long while. You can overharvest wildlife and deplete their populations for a time. 

In terms of something like a "superblizzard," would these show up at any time, or rather deep into games and after substantial world decay?

I'd love to get some additional late game challenges like super blizzards. I don't think I'd like to see them before getting pretty far into the world decay as I think the early game experience is really well balanced.

[stratvox]

10 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Interesting synthesis of suggestions and ideas! A lot to think about there. 

One thing I will note: "Overhunting" is currently in the game, and has been for a long while. You can overharvest wildlife and deplete their populations for a time. 

In terms of something like a "superblizzard," would these show up at any time, or rather deep into games and after substantial world decay?

Re: overhunting: Good to know.

Re: super blizzards: I'd suggest deep into the games, personally. C.F. my headcanon being that a supervolcanic eruption has occurred and that's why winter never ends. Super blizzards would fit right in.

Another aspect of world decay in a world of endless winter is snow accumulation. You could slowly flush out shelters by having them slowly get buried in snow as snow pack accumulates over time. Maybe set up a system where the player can "dig out" the shelters to help keep the doors accessible or something, and include (decayable!) shovels as an item in key shelters (Camp Office, Trapper's Cabin, Hunting Lodge, Lonely Lighthouse, PV Farmstead, Spence Family Homestead, and Mountaineer's Cabin are the obvious candidates, but maybe allow one or two per region with a greater likelihood of them showing up at those locations and maybe lower likelihoods at others). Set 'em up to be repairable with a set of basic tools and a scrap metal, with a bonus if done on a workbench with basic tools in inventory or something.

It'd be a LOT of work to set up, but I could totally see that being extremely cool. Could maybe use something like a plasma fractal function to create maps of snow drifts that would get updated after each blizzard and esp super blizzard. This could also make travel harder over time (where calories and speed while moving are affected by the depth of snow), would allow for a new craftable item to help manage that (snowshoes), and just generally mess with the players as they get deeper and deeper into the coming ice age brought about by the quiet apocalypse.

[Fuarian]

16 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

The superblizzards should be late-game to simulate world decay but there should be certain signs up to a week in advance to help players stock up and prepare, like maybe unique bird behavior.

I remember when it used to be super dark, it made daylight a vital resource. It was great, and sunsets were beautiful and also dreadful due to being a sign of what's to come. Aurora nights should be bright though.

Yeah, now it's always bright at night unless it's cloudy or foggy. Aurora should be the only thing that lights up the night if it's bright enough.

[stratvox]

1 hour ago, Fuarian said:

Yeah, now it's always bright at night unless it's cloudy or foggy. Aurora should be the only thing that lights up the night if it's bright enough.

Well, the moon can do that. I'd love for the night sky to be more accurate... be able to find constellations, have the days precess through the seasons (even if there's perpetual winter the earth's tilt relative to the sun will mean that days will shorten and lengthen as it orbits the sun), have seasonal constellations move through as they do in the real world, have the moon move across the sky in the same way, have the sun's path through the sky precess along with the seasons, and so on. Then there'd be nights where the full moon would lead to a lot of illumination and a new moon would make for a very dark night, and so on.

[Fuarian]

2 hours ago, stratvox said:

Well, the moon can do that. I'd love for the night sky to be more accurate... be able to find constellations, have the days precess through the seasons (even if there's perpetual winter the earth's tilt relative to the sun will mean that days will shorten and lengthen as it orbits the sun), have seasonal constellations move through as they do in the real world, have the moon move across the sky in the same way, have the sun's path through the sky precess along with the seasons, and so on. Then there'd be nights where the full moon would lead to a lot of illumination and a new moon would make for a very dark night, and so on.

Yeah, there's actually no New Moon in the game. But I feel like night time should be more dark in general. 

[StrangerFromTheInternet]

On 18.10.2017 at 8:57 PM, Patrick Carlson said:

One thing I will note: "Overhunting" is currently in the game, and has been for a long while. You can overharvest wildlife and deplete their populations for a time. 

Yeah, for between 3 and 5 days at a time. One can completely eradicate every single wolf and deer near Quonset gas station, but within a matter of a few days, most wildlife will have respawned. I wouldn't exactly call that "Overhunting".

[Riotintheair]

Not sure about other difficulties, but certainly in Interloper if you keep doing that a few more times they don't come back for a long while (I had 25 days between wolf spawns in the BR Lodge and I've now, after much work been wolf free on the Farmhouse/Barn grounds for more than 2 weeks).

[JAFO]

On 10/21/2017 at 9:24 AM, StrangerFromTheInternet said:

Yeah, for between 3 and 5 days at a time. One can completely eradicate every single wolf and deer near Quonset gas station, but within a matter of a few days, most wildlife will have respawned. I wouldn't exactly call that "Overhunting".

In addition to what @Riotintheair said above, that's certainly not the case with rabbits and fish. They're fairly easy to overhunt.

[Fuarian]

On 10/20/2017 at 6:24 PM, StrangerFromTheInternet said:

Yeah, for between 3 and 5 days at a time. One can completely eradicate every single wolf and deer near Quonset gas station, but within a matter of a few days, most wildlife will have respawned. I wouldn't exactly call that "Overhunting".

Make it something like 20-30 days. That would be challenging.