v154too easy for experienced players-suggestions for hunting

[Christoph]

So after having survived 100 days before the october update I waited eagerly to play a new round on coastal highway and I must say the devs did a great job again. They actually seem to read carefully what people in the forum suggest, since others and some of my own issues with the previous version have been adressed and the devs found creative solutions.

However, after having played the new version for two days I must say that the game has become far too easy for experienced players. After having looted most of mystery lake I headed over to coastal highway (I explored the terrain in a first trial run) and set up camp in one of the houses at the lake. I had two guns with 25 bullets, 2 knifes, 2 axes, tons of food and so on. If you figured out how to hunt by scaring deer into wolves you could easily survive 150-200 days, maybe more, without even making use of the snares to catch rabbits (which is a great idea by the way). As usual you just need to find a deer and wolves (which in coastal highway are both right in front of your door in the little village at the lake), run around a deer, scare it into a wolf, which is then concentrated on eating so you can simply approach him and shoot him or scare him off with a flare. As someone else pointed out in a post, you can even lure the wolves away and run around until you lose them, since their behaviour is really predictable. After 27 days, still having all of my bullets and haven't even looted most of the houses on coastal highway, I got bored and started playing with two wolves running around my front portch (they can't access it, which is a bug by the way). Then I found out that it's not a good idea to approach two wolves at the same time

However, it would have been no problem to avoid them, so again: right now the game has become way too easy for experienced players.

I know, I know, most players aren't as experienced and they still want to have fun. However, I think it would work quite well if less experienced players would have to focus on looting houses and catching rabbits, and more experienced players would advance to hunting big game. So in my opinion hunting deer and wolves should be more challenging. A couple of suggestions for that:

1) Make deer and wolf behaviour unpredictable:

- If deer wouldn't run away from you just in the direction where you point them but run in random directions just as rabbits do, it would be a lot harder to scare them into wolves. You would actually have to observe deer for a while, hoping they run into wolves by themselves. Well, real hunting takes a lot of observing and waiting, so this change could add these elements into TDL gameplay.

- Generally, as experienced player you know exactly how close you can come to a deer before it runs away. Make this distance vary at well, so sometimes they'll let you come really close (only when you are sneaking), sometimes they run away when they see you from a long distance.

- The same goes for wolves: for experienced players they aren't a real thread, because you know exactly how they will behave. They always start stalking you when you come closer than a specific distance and they approach you with almost the same speed, etc. If you would vary that and some wolves would approach you from a distance while others let you come close, or some wolves would attack you really fast immediately while others would just stare at you for a while, this would add a lot of exciting moments to hunting.

- It is still fun that you can scare away a wolf with a flare. However, it shouldn't work every time. It would be really exciting trying to scare off a wolf with a flare, not knowing if he'll actually run away or if he'd just turn around and attack you.

2) Make them run away after you shot them

As most of you will know, in real life it is actually pretty hard to kill a deer or a wolf with one shot. If you miss the heart or the brain by just an inch, they will live quite a while. So why not make them run away after you shot them, forcing you to either shoot them a second time really quick (risking to waste a bullet) or to track them down. You already implemented a better tracking system – tracks now dissappear faster in bad weather, I think. Maybe you could add that wounded game loses some blood on the way if shot. This change would force hunters to actually plan their hunting quite well, making sure they have some food, water, good clothes and a couple hours of sunlight left to track their prey down after they shot it.

3) Make the outcome of you hunting unpredictable

Not every wolf and deer has the same amount of meat in reality, and the same factor would work as a gameplay enhancement. Right now experienced hunters can simply do the math to know how long they can survive with the ressources (rifle, bullets, ammo, flares) they have, which is quite boring. Having some variation in the amount of food you get from hunting would add some more and less lucky moments to the game and make the experience of hunting more exciting again.

Anyway, I really like the way in which the game is heading and I am eager to play forthcoming updates.

[Burning Bridges]

some very good ideas here!

weather

occasional blizzards that reach -50C and last for 24-48 hours

so the player is pinned down wherever he is

hunting

deer should be much more frightful ( The Hunter is a great hunting game that can show you how you need to stalk animals - one mistake and they are gone )

animals occasionally disappear for some time (without it appearing like deus ex machina, they could just be somewhere else)

shot placement

add a feature that only shots into heart / lungs kill animals instantly and otherwise they will run over half the map

reduce amount and nutrition of wolf meat, there should be incentives to hunt deer

rabbit hunting is fun by the way. Well done!

[xnoybis]

One thing I would like to see in the hunting department - scarcity - i.e. increasing spawn intervals. Make it so any animal you see is a must kill, essential to your survival, not something you would just ignore and not give another look.

The animal should also be able to move on to another area and not just hang around, which would possibly require stalking and tracking on your part. The next respawn cycle could be days away, so if you see a wolf or a deer you better go for it, as you may not see another for a long time. Hunting becomes necessity and not just a hassle.

I wouldn't mind spending almost a full day tracking a buck, then being forced to spend the night in the wild, then tracking some more in the morning and finally getting it, provided the rewards are worth more than what a two days long trek would cost (so probably 20kg of food instead of 10 and other rare loot - required for other activities in the game, bones/hide/gut/antlers).

[Burning Bridges]

^what he said

I actually think you should send this to the devs. If as you say, animals would become rare oportunities that the player normally can't afford to miss, and we had to track them for long periods, that would finally give a reason to go on on this game. The game is currently always fun to play as long as I have an aim. Like: get back to Trappers Homestead, get your rifle, and bring it to the new Lakefront base. when you are done, learn to hunt rabbits on Jackrabbit Island.

Explore the inland. Etc.

Only when there are no aims left (as was the case in the first map) there is no point to go on. So the main challenge is to create new sources of motivation. Real hunting, following tracks etc, would be great!

[Burning Bridges]

Here is a random video from The Hunter, so you see how much fun it can be just looking for animals.

[bBvideo 560,340:1js5xh1y]

[/bBvideo]

[Christoph]

I absolutely agree with you guys. The idea of a more challenging tracking system would greatly enhance the gaming experience. I wouldn't mind hunting for several days, I imagine it would be a lot of fun actually. Let's hope the devs will consider it.

[Incariuz]

Yah, the game does get easy quick when you learn how it works, so changing certain things to create more challenge would be fun. The ideas I agree with the most are...

Hunting/Tracking

Deer shouldn't always drop in one shot, instead flee and bleed out slowly forcing us to track them, and even run into more situations where we have to fight of wolves for our meal.

Blizzards

Would really put players in a tight spot if they haven't stocked up on provisions.

Other things I would suggest would include...

Colder House Temperatures (this one doesn't pertain to hunting, but would be nice)

Being a Canadian who has lived in a country house mountain side with no electricity and only having a woodstove as a means of heat, I find it a bit strange I never need to have a fire going in game unless it's to cook. We should be required to run a woodstove I'd say about 3 hours to ensure a safe temperature for say 8 hours, meaning we'd require starting a fire right away when getting back from hunting, or needing to get one going before we sleep. Would add to the fear of freezing to death.

To be a bit helpful with a new feature like this, portable kerosene heaters would be a nice little rare item to throw into the game. Below is a link to a picture of one I actually own, perfectly safe indoors, and filling it up would provide hours of use.

http://images.lowes.com/product/convert ... 5963lg.jpg

Gun Jams

Maybe if you let the condition of your rifle get to low you may suffer jamming, forcing you to have to repair before using again? Not really a feature I'd die for, but could be interesting in certain situations.

[Christoph]

I think the idea about colder house temperatures is great! Especially with the new functions to easily get wood within a short timespan it should be possible to maintain the right temperature quite easily. Also, it would keep you from just sleeping through days after days while eating twice a day without doing anything else. Even better might be, if the "soft wood" ressources in specific areas drop continuously just as they do inside houses now. This would mean, if you don't have an axe, you had to change your home base after a while if you don't want to carry wood across the whole map. It also seems realistic to me, that there isn't an unlimited supply of burnable wood just lying around in the snow

Combined with variation to the hunting/tracking system this would strongly enhance the gaming experience, I think.

[azuratte]

If you were to do colder house temps, I would say have fires adjustable. Roughly speaking, say, 5 options on how high to keep your fire. This would be how fast it is to burn, 1 may or may not keep off the chill but last for 4 hours, option 5, blazing hot, warm you up fast but gone in 10 minutes.

Only other thing I could comment on is the lack of "deer hunter" I felt when I went "hunting". I was actually shocked at deer dropping at a shot, first, I actually hit it, which blew me away as I was in very poor condition, rather far away. Then the fact the deer hit the floor and that was the end of it was rather a piss off. Since foot prints are already implemented, I'd say slam in a blood trail of whatever quality you can and have the deer run for it.

Az

[Incariuz]

If you were to do colder house temps, I would say have fires adjustable.

If going for a realistic aspect, this would work well for woodstoves, however I'm not sure with a fireplace. Not sure what kind of measures a fireplace has in place to work this, however I guess a person could try and control the intensity based on how much wood (also whether soft or hard) is in the fire.