Harvesting or Crafting by mistake

[Foxtrot]

I would like to first say that after picking this game up yesterday 10/27/14 that I have been already sucked in. I've played a few sandbox lives so far dying more or less in all different ways and have thus really enjoyed learning the game mode / map / mechanics / etc. Great work so far, I cannot wait to see what awaits in the future.

Next I would also like clarify that if this topic is a re-post I am sorry, I did a preliminary search of terms like 'crafting mistake' and did not really find my exact issue mentioned but if it turns out I wasn't looking hard enough I apologize.

Basically I hope you guys look at adding a way to back out of a crafting or harvesting action which may have resulted from a player mistake. When harvesting; the menu screen (which are all done in a very clean and appealing style, :mrgreen: ) does have a back button in the bottom right if I'm not mistaken. I have to admit too mistakenly harvesting a can opener, realized my mistake, clicked the button, and watched as the can opener was harvested anyway. This mistake made my sandbox play-through an order of magnitude harder.

From my perspective as a player I find it fair to loose calories and time, gain fatigue and thirst, while mistakenly harvesting or crafting an item. Yet I find it unfair that on top of this loss the whole action could not be canceled and a result would be a still more dire loss of a valued item. The repercussion of which might vastly change priorities in any given play-through.

I think thematically this change makes the game a little more forgiving, but not excessively so as at a minimum time, calories, thirst, fatigue will still continue to be accounted for until the back button is /was pressed.

TL;DR Harvested a can opener by accident, realized mistake and clicked back button before the action was completed, watched as my slight of hand resulted in vain failure.

[elloco999]

Welcome to The Long Dark and the forum! Glad you're enjoying it.

I guess it would not be very funny to loose some important item because you selected it by mistake, which is indeed easy to do if you don't pay close attention. And since time moves fast, you don't want to waste time in menu's and that leads to maybe not always paying enough attention. Like when you start to boil 5L of water only to realize that you don't have enough wood on the fire so the fire dies out on you without boiling the water. A lot of time and resources wasted because you were trying to be quick about it.

So yeah, a way to interrupt actions might be very useful.

[Trandor]

+1 Sounds like a good addition to the game.

[RJIII]

No hand holding in The Long Dark, if you made a mistake you made a mistake and it's your fault.

[elloco999]

IRL there's no hand holding either. You make a mistake, you live with it. But IRL you can interrupt your actions. And IRL I don't accidentally "harvest" my brand new 100% premium winter coat when I actually meant to harvest my scarf that's so far gone it's starting to fall apart. In TLD you can do exactly that by accidentally clicking the next item in the list. So being able to interrupt that action is not hand holding, it's compensation for a faulty interface that enables me to make mistakes I would never make IRL.

Same thing with boiling water and having the fire die on you just 5 minutes short. IRL if you put the pot on the stove and then notice your fire will not last long enough to boil that much water, you can take some water out so you can boil the rest. Giving me that option in the game is not hand holding, it's giving me an interface that allows me to fix a mistake like I would IRL. Or if you have enough firewood you could put some more wood on the fire, so you can boil all the water. Again, not hand holding, just common sense.