Fighting boredom in mid/late-game with unexpected events

[StrayCat]

Hello all,

Many players get at this point sooner or later : you have a well-established solid base, with plenty of resources (or even way more), enough food and water to last a few weeks without even needing to put a foot outside. Because going outside would be so much sub-optimal for your survival strategy. You start to think about just passing time to use up all that stock you have, so you can finally have a real and logical reason to wander outside again, and get back the original thrill of TLD. You remember the start of your play, when every wolf howl gave you a boost of adrenalin, when you carried rocks 'just in case', when you were so happy to finally find that old can of dog food and a flare in a cozy cabin... You've fallen prey to BOREDOM, the hardest enemy big boss of the whole game.

So I would like to suggest and compile a few ideas to get long-term survival more lively. My whole point is that unexpected events can renew the interest, and can trigger after some time has passed. This may also be linked to the condition system : when you've stayed 'too long' in good health (over 80-90% ?), a event occurs to burden you. This would prevent over-burden.

1) Meat stored outside attracts predators : when a pack of meat is set outside, predators (especially wolves) may wander closer and around of the meat stock. That way we will think twice before putting our stock conveniently just in front of the door... and will nerf a little the 'base strategy'.

2) Meat stored outside stolen by predators : when meat is stored outside and we are inside or away for a certain time, meat can be stolen. When half of the stock suddenly disappears, that makes a good twist of events. When another half disappears 2 days later, the situation becomes more uncertain and we have to venture outside. This has been discussed already in other topics.

3) Long lasting blizzards : being trapped in a house for several days forces us to use/empty our stock. It may be counter-intuitive to force us to sit on our stock and wait while I'm trying to defend the opposite, but that prevents us from quietly replenishing the stock that we're using. The best fun is when that giant blizzard triggers especially when we're outside.

4) Sneaky wolves attacks : wolves may follow and approach quietly by the rear, with no barking before the attack. This would make us use a bit of our 300 kg stock of medicine and clothes... while being avoidable if we put extra caution, knowing this may happen.

5) Destroyable houses : this has been debated in another topic too, I won't come back on this one.

6) Unpredictable illness : didn't you boil enough your water and got disentery ? Or didn't you see that meat you ate was a little rotten on the side ? Anyway, nobody's perfect, but one way or another, you've arbitrarly caught a random illness...

7) Unlucky hunter/fisherman : preys have become scarce, whatever the reason. For some days (7-10 ?), rabbits & deers are rarer and/or fishes disdain your fishing tackles. You'll catch only small skinny fries, if at all.

8) Opportunities to end the sandbox game : this one is both my favorite and the most subject to caution, as it changes completely the whole sandbox system. After some time has passed, a chance to be rescued may happen from time to time. Be it a message on radios heard during aurora nights (giving a point and time of rendez-vous for the rescue), or a flare you suddenly see in the distance lighting up the sky from another region (will you find where it came from fast enough ? Your map will prove usefull)... This can suddenly give you a boost of adrenalin, so you quickly grab your backpack with minimal supplies and venture in hazardous conditions in hope to be rescued. If you succeed, end of the game, you've won, good for you. If not (most probable), congratulations, you're now lost in the wild with minimal resources. Cf point 3 (long lasting blizzards) for even more fun (*insert diabolic smile here*).

Do you guys have other ideas ?

[Seshins]

I like 1, 2. 3 and 4. The rest i'm a bit meh on.

 

With regard to Prey and long term survival, i think an interesting way to mitigate boredom would be having the deer migrate around the regions in herds. This way you would have to plan for the migration, while keeping an eye on the herds movements day to day.

 

To mitigate living solely off rabbit/wolf/beer/fish/deer you could add a system similar to Cabin fever where you get food fatigue - so if you eat too much of the same meat over the course of a week or whatever arbitrary amount of time would be deemed acceptable, you would get sick of the food type and need to switch to something else.

 

I've also been a big fan of long duration storms or blizzards which would require a stockpile to be prepared (and used).

[CaveDweller]

Nice effort on compiling the list  Part of the question is why we play the game. A lot of people seem to have ego tied up in playing Interloper and believing lower modes are not worthy. I can play interloper to the point of each run being boring, necessitating an appropriately creative end to my character. However, my true love is Voyager as I come home from work and just want to chill without being under Interloper's oppressive weather structures. Keeping this in mind...

IMO 1 and 2 are moot as who stores meat outside? I throw it all in a corner of my shack. At level 5 cooking you can eat it even at 0% so why bother leaving it outside? For 1/2 to be feasible lvl 5 cooking would have to be nerfed. I'm not opposed to the idea, at least not when I'm playing a non-interloper run  We all recognise that stockpiling is an issue, heck by day 100 on my last run I had over 1000kg of bear/wolf/moose/dear meat sitting in piles at bases.

Another way around this would be greater penalties for starvation. I never, unless in early stages of interloper, keep calories above 0 during the day. It would be great if a penalty system, akin to cabin fever, were implemented. The current fatigue mechanic is ok, but needs to be severely ramped-up to make long-term starvation a no-go just like cabin fever did to shack-camping.

3/ Yes, but only if weather in between was conducive to exploration and resource gathering.

4/ Meh, maybe if there was a 'White Fang' in each zone re., an alpha male/pack leader. Actually, I'd like to see an alpha male for each pack, takes 2-3 arrows to take down etc. so more strategy is required for taking down whole packs. Either that or when you pull one wolf from a pack the others have an increased detection radius (e.g. in response to the barking/growling of their pack mate).

5/ Yes, I grew up in the bush with many people having hand-build shanty style homes (no electricity). Candles were an ever present danger and many people at some stage had serious fires. The issue is that you work the land all day and accidentally fall asleep with the candle still going at night, it burns down, starts a fire etc. I think that having a chance to burn down your home if you go to sleep with a fire/light source burning would be great. Maybe as per 1/2 if you are fatigued/starvation-mad there is a greater chance of triggering the event.

6/ Yes

7/ Yes, absolutely.

8/ Meh, I'll often strip naked and sit next to the corpse in the tail section and wait for the inevitable...help is never coming, mainlander.

[Aagje]

19 minutes ago, CaveDweller said:

[W]ho stores meat outside? ... At level 5 cooking you can eat it even at 0% so why bother leaving it outside?

I still store meat outside even once I've reached level 5 cooking. Why? Um... Habit, I guess? Same reason I always make sure to store all the soda cans inside -- because they decay more slowly! Even though you can never get food poisoning from soda.¹

Look, if we were rational human beings, making rational choices about how we approached our lives, we wouldn't be playing this game, now would we? 

¹Actually, you can. IRL, that is, not in-game. I have done so. Not fun. But still better than being eaten by wolves.

[CaveDweller]

27 minutes ago, Aagje said:

Look, if we were rational human beings, making rational choices about how we approached our lives, we wouldn't be playing this game, now would we? 

Pay that  

[StrayCat]

5 hours ago, Aagje said:

Look, if we were rational human beings, making rational choices about how we approached our lives, we wouldn't be playing this game, now would we?

Good point.
Personnaly I play custom settings, set to be as realistic as possible (from my point of view - low resources, low wildfile, low calorie/hydration consumption). For the same reason, I try to play just like I would do irl. Never using the starving/condition mecanism, always prioritizing to stay in good condition, well fed and hydrated. @CaveDweller's idea to put a starvation penalty goes in the same way, I 100% agree.

I really like @Seshins's idea of migration. That would be so logical, that animals migrate to find food in this harsh environment. This idea is totally spot-on, congrats. This might even be the only thing needed to nerf the whole stockpiling strategy !! That way we can make stock for a few days, then wildlife goes elsewhere and we have to follow, just like our nomadic ancestors. Even if it is just within one region (or better, within several regions).

 

[Blankshield]

I have no particular qualms with any of the suggestions made, but personally, I kind of *like* that, just as in real life, the long term danger is just boredom and your own mistakes.

 

[Cr41g]

agreed boredom breeds carelessness

[Fuarian]

YES YES YES!!!!!! Finally somebody else with a viewpoint similar to mine.

Please refer my post here

[StrayCat]

16 hours ago, Cr41g said:

agreed boredom breeds carelessness

For me, boredom -> delete save -> new game... I even find it hard to go back to a save with everything secured for weeks. I'm playing less TLD now, and I think that is related to this mid/late-game boredom. I miss some thrills that would stress me out. You can't imagine how much I'm happy when I venture a bit too far and get caught in an unexpected blizzard. I purposely get careless, to have a little fun, if not days would just be the same : [gather resources for more than 1 day + stockpile + pass time + sleep].

@Fuarian : Yeap, sorry I forgot your topic and created a new one. I forgot the purpose and the title mislead me thinking it was about snow shelters...

My point is not about having extraordinary events, or changing the way TLD is meant to be played. I only want to have new challenges added, when everything goes just too well. When bad luck strikes in the ordinary routine of survival. In this topic, I would like to gather simple ideas that hinterland could realistically implement without too much work, and that would stay within their (our ) vision of the game.

[Fuarian]

12 hours ago, StrayCat said:

For me, boredom -> delete save -> new game... I even find it hard to go back to a save with everything secured for weeks. I'm playing less TLD now, and I think that is related to this mid/late-game boredom. I miss some thrills that would stress me out. You can't imagine how much I'm happy when I venture a bit too far and get caught in an unexpected blizzard. I purposely get careless, to have a little fun, if not days would just be the same : [gather resources for more than 1 day + stockpile + pass time + sleep].

@Fuarian : Yeap, sorry I forgot your topic and created a new one. I forgot the purpose and the title mislead me thinking it was about snow shelters...

My point is not about having extraordinary events, or changing the way TLD is meant to be played. I only want to have new challenges added, when everything goes just too well. When bad luck strikes in the ordinary routine of survival. In this topic, I would like to gather simple ideas that hinterland could realistically implement without too much work, and that would stay within their (our ) vision of the game.

Yes, I concur. But I fear that our vision for the game is not the same as their vision for the game.

[reginaphalange]

On 2/12/2018 at 11:17 PM, Aagje said:

Even though you can never get food poisoning from soda.¹

¹Actually, you can. IRL, that is, not in-game. I have done so. Not fun. But still better than being eaten by wolves.

I got FP from soda in the game, it was ~45%. Can't remember if Wintermute or SB.

[reginaphalange]

I've often thought about my base (house) burning down, like if I leave the fire going when I'm away/asleep. It's not an impossible thing, for a game to do.

[romerabr]

The definitive solution to  this issue will come when seasons be implemented. 

 

[ChillPlayer]

On 12.2.2018 at 9:58 PM, Seshins said:

I like 1, 2. 3 and 4. The rest i'm a bit meh on.

I like 1,2,3 and am somewhat ambiguous towards 8. My problem with 8 is that, while I like the general idea, I know that within a week there will be tutorials on how to end TLD the quickest and focus will shift towards that - which is completely against the original promise of the game, which is: who will survive the longest.

Generally speaking: yes some tweaks here and there might be still needed but the overall idea of TLD is solid as a rock, I don't see the need to change fundamental things we've experienced for the past 3-5 years.

[StrayCat]

On 12/03/2018 at 3:07 PM, romerabr said:

The definitive solution to  this issue will come when seasons be implemented. 

That's why I put the precision afterward : "I would like to gather simple ideas that hinterland could realistically implement without too much work" 

On 12/03/2018 at 7:10 PM, ChillPlayer said:

I like 1,2,3 and am somewhat ambiguous towards 8. My problem with 8 is that, while I like the general idea, I know that within a week there will be tutorials on how to end TLD the quickest and focus will shift towards that - which is completely against the original promise of the game, which is: who will survive the longest.

I agree with your point. In order to balance it all, being rescued should be really hard and hazardous. And something like 50% of the chances to be rescued should fail, whatever the player does (nobody at the rendez-vous point, etc). There should always be a very high risk in trying to be rescued (bad weather, etc). In doing so, it may require bold actions and perseverance, with a bit of luck. This contradicts with the low risks / low gain of a base strategy.