Game too harsh - even for realism purposes

[mulderfox]

I took some time off TLD, because there is an inherent flaw in the game - as in - your survival is very haphazard. I understand it has to be challenging, but seriously. I'm wearing 5 layers, filled my belly, and going to sleep - but the fire wood only lasts 2 hours at best and I die of starvation or cold in my sleep anyways.

The caloric depletion is way too fast, and you don't really get to hunker down for any real amount of time.

Am I the only one who feels that way?

[elloco999]

No, many people feel this way, and many many more did feel this way, myself included. The difficulty isn't really with how hard it is to survive, but with how hard it is to learn how to survive in this game. There is no tutorial or manual telling you how to survive. You need to learn it the hard way, by dying quite a few times. Or you could read a lot on the forums here, watch video's of other people play or read the guide on steam.

Some pointers on how to survive:

[spoil]Press F1 for an overview off all keys.

Don't sleep outside unless you absolutely have to.

Don't spend too much time outside, especially at night/ early morning/ late night. The hours between 12 and 18 are best for venturing outside.

Don't go outside in bad weather (snow, heavy winds, blizzards). Keep an eye on the temperature using the survival screen (TAB).

Don't waste fuel trying to stay warm. Use it only to cook meat and to melt snow/ boil water.

Do as much cooking/ melting/ boiling at the same time as possible (keep track of the amount of wood on the fire, don't let it go out). This way you can save on firestarters, tinderplugs and accelerants.

Use cedar logs to start a fire, they are the easiest to light.

Once the fire is started use reclaimed wood first to fuel the fire.

Make sure you keep a few fir logs for repairing your knife, hatchet and rifle.

Use containers for storing your useful items. Clothes and tools etc in indoors containers, meat (raw and cooked) in outside containers (corpses and backpack) This way they don't degrade as fast.

Don't wear more clothing than you need, you'll run out of clothes in the long run.

Drink before you go to sleep.

Don't sleep for more than 4-8 hours at a time (especially outside!) (I drink and then go to bed when it gets dark, sleep for 5-6 hours, drink again, sleep until 5am)

Make sure you always wear enough clothes to give you a +2C warmth bonus. Combined with the -1C temperature you will never freeze while inside a building.

Learn how to use the starving mechanism to your favor: let yourself starve until you reach about 30%/ 35% condition then eat at least 3000 calories and drink plenty of water and sleep for 4 hours, drink sleep for 4 hours, and so on until you are either at 100% condition or your calories have dropped below 0 again. You can last 3 days on 3000 calories this way.[/spoil]

There's plenty more, but can't think of them right now. And finding out is part of the fun.

[Burning Bridges]

What did you die from? You have to be more specific and I am sure we can tell you how you can avoid it.

I have seen many videos where people let their condition run down to 20%, -1500 calories, carry 40kg of food, without paying attention to the temperature, and still compulsively go into activities like harvesting leather. This is not too harsh by the game - this is just stupid

Without wanting to step on your toes. I am sure you are overlooking something, have the wrong priorities etc. You cannot die from cold if you are inside. And you also can't die from stavation in a few hours sleep either, unless you are already close to death when you go to sleep. Like "Starving", and 10% condition.

In that case eat something! This is to say the game always gives you enough information what you have to do. Your character is freezing? Go warm yourself up. Food poisoning? Take antibiotica and sleep. Fatigued? Go to sleep. Etc. You cannot play it by ear and rely on your instincts when to eat, take medicine etc. It may not be possible to do what you have to do, because you have slowly run out of resources, but death does not come suddenly, rather a as result of several mishaps.

[elloco999]

You cannot die from cold if you are inside.

No to nitpick, but that's not quite true. If you're clothes don't provide you with at least +1C (and the interface doesn't tell you if your clothes give you +0.9C but that is too little) you will start to freeze even while inside. This even happens when you are in a bed, but that's a bug if you ask me. A bed should also provide warmth.

This is actually how I died once. I went to sleep having eaten and having drunk plenty of water. I had only a few % condition left and my cold meter was almost full, but I wasn't freezing yet. I died in my sleep from freezing even though I should have been healing... My clothes had deteriorated to the point they didn't provide the +1C needed to keep you from freezing...

I always try to keep my clothes at +2C so they will slowly warm me when I'm inside.

Another tip:

[spoil]Make sure all four (cold, tiredness, hunger, thirst) bars are as low as possible before you go to sleep when you are trying to heal yourself. This will maximize the healing effect. It's well worth the extra few percent condition you spend before eating/ drinking your fill and sleeping if you can get your exhaustion and temperature in the green.[/spoil]

[Burning Bridges]

But nitpicking you are. Of course you freeze when you completely undress. Don't do it! And yes, if you carry your spare clothes around all the time, or leave them on the floor, they will not last more than 30 days. But you and I know there are ways to keep clothes stored for longer, much longer in fact. I am at 60 days and my clothes should last for at least another 60. For the first month I didn't even know about the storing containers and left some of them lying on the floor! So one could probably easily have clothes for 200 days. Of course there is always an upper limit for everything, but that's certainly not what the OP meant. At least for me the point is not to criticize the game when I am playing it wrong, but to learn how to play it right. Just by following the tips in your spoilers a player can survive in the game for 100, 200 or more days.

[TarjaS]

Be prepared for the starvation system to change. Maybe in this upcoming update, maybe later. Hinterland Studio responded to my tweet about it: "Enjoy it while it lasts."

[CoureurDeBois]

I just read the patch notes for the new update.

It's getting even harder.

[oversoul]

I like the dev team is now calling it the "starvation exploit," never mind the fact that humans take three weeks to die of starvation lol.

Much respect TLD, the only game whose game mechanics (difficulty and weather) prevent you from immediately exploring new content. Slept out a blizzard, entered new area to see blinding fog. I know, fsck me, right?

[Ruhroe]

No, many people feel this way, and many many more did feel this way, myself included. The difficulty isn't really with how hard it is to survive, but with how hard it is to learn how to survive in this game. There is no tutorial or manual telling you how to survive. You need to learn it the hard way, by dying quite a few times. Or you could read a lot on the forums here, watch video's of other people play or read the guide on steam.

Some pointers on how to survive:

[spoil]Press F1 for an overview off all keys.

Don't sleep outside unless you absolutely have to.

Don't spend too much time outside, especially at night/ early morning/ late night. The hours between 12 and 18 are best for venturing outside.

Don't go outside in bad weather (snow, heavy winds, blizzards). Keep an eye on the temperature using the survival screen (TAB).

Don't waste fuel trying to stay warm. Use it only to cook meat and to melt snow/ boil water.

Do as much cooking/ melting/ boiling at the same time as possible (keep track of the amount of wood on the fire, don't let it go out). This way you can save on firestarters, tinderplugs and accelerants.

Use cedar logs to start a fire, they are the easiest to light.

Once the fire is started use reclaimed wood first to fuel the fire.

Make sure you keep a few fir logs for repairing your knife, hatchet and rifle.

Use containers for storing your useful items. Clothes and tools etc in indoors containers, meat (raw and cooked) in outside containers (corpses and backpack) This way they don't degrade as fast.

Don't wear more clothing than you need, you'll run out of clothes in the long run.

Drink before you go to sleep.

Don't sleep for more than 4-8 hours at a time (especially outside!) (I drink and then go to bed when it gets dark, sleep for 5-6 hours, drink again, sleep until 5am)

Make sure you always wear enough clothes to give you a +2C warmth bonus. Combined with the -1C temperature you will never freeze while inside a building.

Learn how to use the starving mechanism to your favor: let yourself starve until you reach about 30%/ 35% condition then eat at least 3000 calories and drink plenty of water and sleep for 4 hours, drink sleep for 4 hours, and so on until you are either at 100% condition or your calories have dropped below 0 again. You can last 3 days on 3000 calories this way.[/spoil]

There's plenty more, but can't think of them right now. And finding out is part of the fun.

Learning how to survive is one of the main attractions with survival games (Don't Starve, for example, is similar). Once you figure it out, most of the attraction and novelty is gone. Literally, there's nothing left to do after that point other than go through the motions.

As for survival/learning how to surive being hard, I think, it's not that bad. My wife after about three deaths, managed to go over 20 days. She got progressively better each time. Once she hit that point, just like everyone else, it's basically monitoring the menu screen. The addition of rabbits and inside foraging caps with this update should add more things to actively do though.

[elloco999]

Learning how to survive is one of the main attractions with survival games (Don't Starve, for example, is similar). Once you figure it out, most of the attraction and novelty is gone. Literally, there's nothing left to do after that point other than go through the motions.

Quite true, for many people anyways. But for many other people not so much. Some people take longer to learn the mechanics and get frustrated by it. Some people just want to play the game and not learn how to first. You could say this game is not for them (and you would probably be right), but if you've just died within 2 days for the 20th time and don't seem to be able to get any further you just may want a bit of help. Considering the amount of posts on this topic, there's more than a few people who feel like this.

Everybody who wants to figure it out by themselves should probably not open the spoiler in my post. That's why I put it there... But for everyone who does want some help, it's there for them. It's up to them whether they want to read my tips or not.

As for survival/learning how to surive being hard, I think, it's not that bad. My wife after about three deaths, managed to go over 20 days. She got progressively better each time. Once she hit that point, just like everyone else, it's basically monitoring the menu screen. The addition of rabbits and inside foraging caps with this update should add more things to actively do though.

I don't think it was too bad in v1.38, not sure about how it's now (haven't played v1.52 yet) but what I gather from posts here on the forum is that it's gotten quite a bit harder. For experienced players that's probably just fine, more of a challenge. For new players it's probably not so much fun. It's probably a good idea to add a difficulty setting at some point so new players can learn in a more forgiving environment if they want to.

Maybe your wife is very good at games, or at survival, I don't know. But many people die a bit more often before making it to 20 days. It took me 10 tries or so. My experience is that once you survived for a week you're over the learning curve and after 10 days you usually only die after making a mistake or simply having bad luck.

And yes, after 20 days there was not much to do but lather, rinse and repeat. Hopefully it will be different now with a larger game area, and the addition of trapping. Also the wolves seem more dangerous again so we'll probably need more time moving around so that will take some of the repetitiveness away as well.

[Ruhroe]

No matter how easy you make a game, someone will always say it's too hard. Always. Where they draw the line is something game developers with a lot of experience and inside numbers make their judgement call. One thing to keep in mind, exploring, if it were easy, would not really provide that much content. The zones really aren't that big and it would only take an few hours to gather up most things.

Beyond that, it would help if there was a wiki or something similar where people could go for outside information. There are tons of games, single player and MMO's, with this type of information people find helpful.

It's been brought up a lot, but there could also be a potential sight seeing mode, an easy setting if you will, for people who just want to run around and see stuff.

[raphil]

I think it would be good if they could incorporate levels. Easy - for those who want to learn to survive, but not devilishly so; Hard - for those who want the challenge; Nightmare - as the name says.

Some may start on easy, and then progress to Hard etc - I think it would add to play-throughs as people want to see how well they would have done on the harder levels.

[Burning Bridges]

I'm personally in favor of the challenge the game offers, and in the long term it even has to get harder.

But since many people are finding it frustrating, the game needs to offer difficulty modes. Too high difficulty is detrimental to sales. Too easy and people will lose interest, which will also marginalize your game. So you need at least easy, normal, hard.

hard should mean hard! , and normal should be the current difficulty (hard), not normal := easy as in so many games these games

I am just unsure what kind of reward the game could offer for playing hard mode. For example the difficulty level could be tied to a different avatar? One is kind of a wimp, with glasses etc, one is Will McKenzie (normal difficulty) and one is some kind Reinhold Messner character??

Easy

Normal

Hard / Ironman

[Survive757]

I dont think the game is too harsh at all, my only complaint can really be I dont have enough time to explore, it seems by the time I go down the road the sun is setting and I have to run back to base or I get exhausted too quickly.

[xnoybis]

I wouldn't say it's too hard, most issues are in balancing and it has to be reiterated - it's an alpha, so a bit of trial and error is inevitable. Even the frustration with hordes of wolves in the newest update, it's just a question of balancing. Looking at the twitter "voting" on the issue of wolves it seems majority of people find it a bit frustrating, but thankfully it's easily fixable.

I think it's on the right path, taking 10 steps forward and an occasional single step back most of the time. Survival is meant to be hard, but I agree on the introduction of difficulty settings, not just for the sake of difficulty.

It's a sandbox so I believe it's expected you should eventually be able to tinker with its setup, from the amount of game to temperatures/wind, item scarcity and so on, crafting your own sandbox and thus making unique playthroughs more likely, which in turn increases engagement and extends the lifetime of the game. I get that there won't be randomly generated maps (still mourning this quietly, but I have hope that there will be Long Dark 2 in the future, so maybe then), but sandbox settings (including difficulty) at some point down the road are a must in my humble opinion. It may not be as easy as adding sliders or checkboxes for some booleans and integers, but it would add a lot of replayability.

[furq]

It's turned from an exploration game, into a race to find a bed, it will not encourage exploration, because if your outside and you hit the cold threshold and your not close to a cabin, the shift into freezing happens so fast your going to be seriously damaged by the time you do find shelter. Add to that the fatigue and reduced carry weight and it just totally messes up the entire rhythm of the game.

[xnoybis]

It's turned from an exploration game, into a race to find a bed, it will not encourage exploration, because if your outside and you hit the cold threshold and your not close to a cabin, the shift into freezing happens so fast your going to be seriously damaged by the time you do find shelter.

I think that's the idea - at least the shelter part. The freezing damage may be a bit on the unrealistic side - I have spent a number of cold winter days (in the -10C to -20C range) running around town in sneakers and just a winter coat and a t-shirt underneath (in my careless younger days) and I maybe got a bit cold at times, but was far from dying. Granted, -35C is a different story. Either way, though a bit unrealistic it's very manageable: going far from shelter? -> bring wood, make fire -> get to shelter.

[Burning Bridges]

Exactly what I was writing in a thread and why I will be putting the game aside for a while.

Someone seems to mix up numbers, Fahrenheit / Celsius or Canadians are just not as tough as I believed Everything up to -15C is not a reason to stay inside. Real cold begins at ca -15C. Up to -25C it is still bearable. When you go outside, you will be hit by the cold air, you will wrap your scarf higher so that it covers your mouth and nostrils etc. Then when you move you will warm up from inside your clothes and if you got good clothes you can stay outside for many hours. I can attest that somewhere -25C and -35C it becomes really bad. Walking in such temperatures is painful wherever your skin is exposed, but it can be done, especially for someone accustomed to it. I have no experience below -40C windchill (that't the highest we experienced afaik) but I think it is very dangerous.

Another thing that seems wrong in that respect is that people get accustomed to temperatures. I can attest that when you are used to -20C for a while, -5C suddenly feels warm. And therefore, McKenzie should be able to walk in -10C just as if it is normal.

[elloco999]

It's a sandbox so I believe it's expected you should eventually be able to tinker with its setup, from the amount of game to temperatures/wind, item scarcity and so on, crafting your own sandbox and thus making unique playthroughs more likely, which in turn increases engagement and extends the lifetime of the game. I get that there won't be randomly generated maps (still mourning this quietly, but I have hope that there will be Long Dark 2 in the future, so maybe then), but sandbox settings (including difficulty) at some point down the road are a must in my humble opinion. It may not be as easy as adding sliders or checkboxes for some booleans and integers, but it would add a lot of replayability.

I think this is a great idea and would love to see this implemented!