Rifle Weight

[nicko]

The rifle weight is 4.0 KG yes? why does it change when you clean it? The rifle gets heavier? what?  when the condition of it is higher, that just doesn't or have ever made sense to me from day one. if anything the cleaner the rifle it would weigh less?

[Doc Feral]

Have you tried removing bullets?

[Mixxut]

As @Doc Feral said it's the bullets making your rifle heavier

[deathbydanish]

Not sure if this point has been brought up before, I noticed this is my game and now in the screenshot, but it seems that the rifle rounds are always at 100% (Correct me if I am wrong). I've found them all over the place and I figure finding them loose in the snow after a storm should degrade their condition. Effects like a failure to fire to a lower stopping power (I'm trying to use non-firearms parlance) should be the result for rounds that are being treated roughshod because they were outside.

IRL sheer age and improper storage/handling will often cause reliability problems or underwhelming performance.

[BareSkin]

3 hours ago, deathbydanish said:

should degrade their condition

You'd have the Oil lamp problem (we complain different condition do not stack), and that would also ask an interface to chose which order you want the bullets loaded. Do you want to get rid of the decayed ones first, or keep them as last resort? We would then complain that the auto-reload doesn't charge the bullets we'd like, whatever the default order...

Well, good remark, but a real hell to implement. And I'm not even a coder...

[Guest jeffpeng]

I think making bullets degrade and perform according to condition is that tiny little bit of "too much simulation/micro management" TLD avoids really well. I agree, and you are totally right from a IRL standpoint, but I don't really think that this would add a lot to the game. Plus .... most of the people that would actually care for this type of masichistic realism are probably 'lopering anyways, and you just don't get that many bullets / rifles in Interloper .... 

[hozz1235]

IF  HL were to implement this (which I don't think is necessary) - there are MANY more items in which performance is affected by degradation - ammunition should be last on the list...

[BareSkin]

3 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

IF  HL were to implement this (which I don't think is necessary) - there are MANY more items in which performance is affected by degradation - ammunition should be last on the list...

Like the bow/arrows that performs exactly the same if they are even both nearly broken ?

They did that "decay performance" things on clothes, and I think it was necessary and sufficient.

[Cr41g]

a 25% condition lantern using 40% condition fuel .... for example

[deathbydanish]

12 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

I think making bullets degrade and perform according to condition is that tiny little bit of "too much simulation/micro management" TLD avoids really well. I agree, and you are totally right from a IRL standpoint, but I don't really think that this would add a lot to the game. Plus .... most of the people that would actually care for this type of masichistic realism are probably 'lopering anyways, and you just don't get that many bullets / rifles in Interloper .... 

If you find them indoors I don't think you should have a problem its not unbelievable to have them at 100% , but it does break immersion to believe that loose rifle rounds being left out at the mercy of a snow storm are 100% fine. Physical damage to the casing and long term tarnish leading to pitting should definitely make a rifle round suspect or even dangerous to fire. I'd propose that for ammo that is not safe to fire that you should be able to break it down and use the gunpowder to help start fires.

One reason I bring up ammo degradation is because anytime there is talk of firearms in the game, someone invariably says they will break the game. If every round of ammo you find has a chance of not being 100% then I think that mitigates the game breaking effect.

[BareSkin]

Just now, deathbydanish said:

but it does break immersion to believe that loose rifle rounds being left out at the mercy of a snow storm are 100% fine

What breaks immersion to me, is the mere fact that you can find a rifle. Of course in such catastrophe, everyone takes their rifle. Finding rounds is even more suspect. The first thing people do in such case, after a couple of days, is unloading the guns upon each other.

[Guest jeffpeng]

@deathbydanishWhat you describe can lead to a misfire that potentially even blows out the rifle and might even hurt or kill the shooter. Just go and figure how many people would use 50% condition ammunition if there would be a 5% percent chance of reading "You got killed by a shrapnel resulting from a castastrophic misfire". I really get your point, but I'm pretty sure this just wouldn't work in the game's interest and most certainly the amount of people being seriously annoyed by this would outweigh the people that would applaud it by at least a factor of 10:1, if not worse.

[deathbydanish]

1 minute ago, BareSkin said:

What breaks immersion to me, is the mere fact that you can find a rifle. Of course in such catastrophe, everyone takes their rifle. Finding rounds is even more suspect. The first thing people do in such case, after a couple of days, is unloading the guns upon each other.

In a lot of the cases I do find rifles/rifle rounds I do see them in plausible locations, like next to a dead hunter that's propped up in a hunting blind. Since they're all frozen to death I can imagine that towards the end, their hands were so numb that they couldn't load the rounds in properly and dropped them in the snow right before succumbing to exposure.

[deathbydanish]

Just now, jeffpeng said:

@deathbydanishWhat you describe can lead to a misfire that potentially even blows out the rifle and might even hurt or kill the shooter. Just go and figure how many people would use 50% condition ammunition if there would be a 5% percent chance of reading "You got killed by a shrapnel resulting from a castastrophic misfire". I really get your point, but I'm pretty sure this just wouldn't work in the game's interest and most certainly the amount of people being seriously annoyed by this would outweigh the people that would applaud it by at least a factor of 10:1, if not worse.

If you do it just for the rounds you find outside I think that would be reasonable, if you find it inside there should be no problem with condition.

I will say that I think keeping the game too high level or generalized can be a form of "technical debt", right here and right now the player base might say, its ok to keep ammo at 100% no matter where you find it. Later on the game's player base may become more nuanced and focused, something like this may cause a lot of pushback with them. I remember when collecting wood was just a place holder screen, you chose how long you wanted to be outside gathering wood and it would generate wood and a commensurate decrease in temperature. When the developers actually made me go out and gather it or chop it up myself, I did not find it annoying at all, I actually expected it to be like that in the first place.

[Guest jeffpeng]

@deathbydanishTo that I refute that, while I personally really like the new cooking system, it came with a lot of blow back. For multiple reasons, but one of them was that now "already scarce" resources were stretched even thinner (longer cooking) and that it induced a mode of failure (burning stuff). It did basically the same as what you are proposing: adding a layer of simulation depth plus a factor of risk. However it did so by actually also adding value, and also enhancing a terribly dull task, so there was both a trade off and actual gameplay enhancement.

Now if you just go and say "All bullets you find outside may blow up in your face, deal with it" people will be upset, for a reason. I'm not sure technical debt really applies here since it would be a piece of cake code-wise to make the rifle remember individual bullets and rolling the dice depending on condition.

Plus even with a more detail and immersion focused community I cannot for the the love of Fluffy imagine ever seeing a post on the forum that says "Got killed on my 250 day Stalker run by a faulty bullet. What a great experience!" One thing TLD does fairly well is avoiding fatal randomness. There is food poisoning, yes, but as long as not other detrimental factors are present, it is trivial to treat. There are "random" predators, there is "random" weather, but what dying to those factors actually really means is that you skipped steps and didn't prepare accordingly. Basically every single case of being struck by RNG was made only possible because you did something stupid and rolled the dice. However making a bullet misfire, results in random death you can only avoid by not using the bullet - in which case you can just remove all bullets lying around outside and achieve basically the same effect. The only feasible instance in which you would use such a bullet would be in a desperate situation like starving to death and the ONLY WAY to acquire food is to fire your suicide bullet.

There is always a fine line in game designing where adding realism turns from amazing to annoying or even detrimental, and I strongly believe this would be a prime example.

[deathbydanish]

18 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

@deathbydanishTo that I refute that, while I personally really like the new cooking system, it came with a lot of blow back. For multiple reasons, but one of them was that now "already scarce" resources were stretched even thinner (longer cooking) and that it induced a mode of failure (burning stuff). It did basically the same as what you are proposing: adding a layer of simulation depth plus a factor of risk. However it did so by actually also adding value, and also enhancing a terribly dull task, so there was both a trade off and actual gameplay enhancement.

Now if you just go and say "All bullets you find outside may blow up in your face, deal with it" people will be upset, for a reason. I'm not sure technical debt really applies here since it would be a piece of cake code-wise to make the rifle remember individual bullets and rolling the dice depending on condition.

Plus even with a more detail and immersion focused community I cannot for the the love of Fluffy imagine ever seeing a post on the forum that says "Got killed on my 250 day Stalker run by a faulty bullet. What a great experience!" One thing TLD does fairly well is avoiding fatal randomness. There is food poisoning, yes, but as long as not other detrimental factors are present, it is trivial to treat. There are "random" predators, there is "random" weather, but what dying to those factors actually really means is that you skipped steps and didn't prepare accordingly. Basically every single case of being struck by RNG was made only possible because you did something stupid and rolled the dice. However making a bullet misfire, results in random death you can only avoid by not using the bullet - in which case you can just remove all bullets lying around outside and achieve basically the same effect. The only feasible instance in which you would use such a bullet would be in a desperate situation like starving to death and the ONLY WAY to acquire food is to fire your suicide bullet.

There is always a fine line in game designing where adding realism turns from amazing to annoying or even detrimental, and I strongly believe this would be a prime example.

With regards to cooking, I am suspicious of anyone getting mad over the burnt food, because if you've cooked your own food before, that is something you have to account for, from a safety perspective you never just leave any heat source unattended for a long period of time. I suspect the blowback is coming from people who have never cooked their own food before

To be honest I feel like you are misrepresenting my intent by boiling it down to all bullets can randomly blow up regardless of condition. If it was found in rough shape outside with severe damage to the round itself, then yeah it will be a 50/50 chance for it to blow up in your face, at that point I would treat it like I treat spoiled/rotten meat. If it was found say in a prepper cache where it was most likely stored properly, then it should be 100% and work fine. I used technical debt not in the strictest sense of the word to apply to the game code, I am using it loosely to describe the player base. Over time the attitudes of the player base could change to the point they would say why didn't they implement ammo degradation from the start? I'm not sure when you started playing the game, but when I did a few years ago, the game was far too easy, granularity added challenge and made it so that I couldn't essentially stay up all day/night gathering wood or fishing without suffering consequence.

[Guest jeffpeng]

@deathbydanishI sadly only started shortly before Wintermute came out.

And I very well understood that you very much mean that only a bullet sub 50% (or so) should have a increasing chance of failure. Like 50% has 5%, 25% would have like 30%, and 10% would be basically firing the rifle backwards 90% of the time. Maybe if the risk involved would not be fatal, but like some condition damage and potentially a bleeding wound plus a heavily damaged rifle I "could" get behind this - but that wouldn't really represent reality very well, would it?

I feel like we're both approaching this from two equally valid but inherently different points of view, so I very much respect your stance. Sorry if you felt like I was intentionally misrepresenting it. Your focus is on delivering an immersive and realistic experience, while I probably think more in terms "What would work in a game for a big part of the audience". I really do advocate immersion as one of the key factors of good game design, and for that reason I was and still am a big fan of the cooking system.

In any case: I find it unlikely that something like this would align very well with HL's design philosophy. And even if it did - at the pace the game is moving as of late, I wouldn't see it likely to be implemented this decade ;-)

[deathbydanish]

1 hour ago, jeffpeng said:

@deathbydanishI sadly only started shortly before Wintermute came out.

And I very well understood that you very much mean that only a bullet sub 50% (or so) should have a increasing chance of failure. Like 50% has 5%, 25% would have like 30%, and 10% would be basically firing the rifle backwards 90% of the time. Maybe if the risk involved would not be fatal, but like some condition damage and potentially a bleeding wound plus a heavily damaged rifle I "could" get behind this - but that wouldn't really represent reality very well, would it?

I feel like we're both approaching this from two equally valid but inherently different points of view, so I very much respect your stance. Sorry if you felt like I was intentionally misrepresenting it. Your focus is on delivering an immersive and realistic experience, while I probably think more in terms "What would work in a game for a big part of the audience". I really do advocate immersion as one of the key factors of good game design, and for that reason I was and still am a big fan of the cooking system.

In any case: I find it unlikely that something like this would align very well with HL's design philosophy. And even if it did - at the pace the game is moving as of late, I wouldn't see it likely to be implemented this decade ;-)

I think where our discussion went awry was when discussing the results of firing low condition ammo. A severely injuring or lethal incident with bad ammo tends to happen when someone did something crazy like load the wrong kind of gunpowder or putting too much into a round. Doing that will cause an excess amount (in terms of the gun's design) of pressure when firing the round, which can cause catastrophic damage to the rifle and severe injury to the shooter. This type of situation usually only happens when a person messes up at the factory or reloading bench during the manufacture of the ammo.

What I think could be more plausible is a case failure, if the low condition rounds were found outside and were severely tarnished/pitted, I could see a case failure happen. I experienced that recently firing an old bolt action rifle (like the one in the game), all of the gas that should've been contained within the chamber instead escaped out any opening that faced me. I chalked it up to cheap foreign ammo that was probably made with haste and little care for quality. I had my glasses on and that prevented any of the gases/unburnt gunpowder from damaging my eyes but I did a good little cut on my forehead. I tried to get the bolt open, but I had to have my friend muscle it open for me to eject the case. Afterward the rifle worked fine, but I will never shoot that cheap stuff again.

I think for the game, since there are no provisions for glasses currently, you could experience temporary vision occlusion from the gases/unburnt gunpowder hitting you in the face and maybe a minor laceration/burn. The rifle could be unusable until you get to a workbench and use a heavy hammer to force open the bolt again.

The reason I am strongly for adding this detail is because I want to make it harder to use the rifle/ammo. Throughout my time playing and even posting here, I keep running into people that say they don't want firearms at all and as the discussion progresses it becomes obvious that either they have a strange personal bias against firearms as opposed to a game related reason. Or because they have conflated the idea of having any firearm as being the same as having a 100% chance of getting animal meat. IRL just because I have 5 rounds of ammo in a bolt action rifle, that is not the same as me having 5 dead deer.

 

 

 

[Morrick]

This thread has evolved into a fascinating discussion. I'm just a regular, average player, who happens to find the current level of rifle realism 'good enough'. I've played other first-person shooters, where you have all kinds of aids when firing a weapon and the most realistic detail is basically just manual reloading. By contrast, I found the way you handle the rifle in The Long Dark to be, uh, refreshingly frustrating. I found it cumbersome and awkward to use — as it should be, considering that the character I'm playing in the game is a pilot and not a soldier or a seasoned hunter. I think that for most players like me, having to deal with rifle degradation is enough.

In one of my runs, I actually died thanks to an uncleaned rifle. If I remember correctly, it went like this: I was in Coastal Highway, reaching Commuter's Lament. I search the car there and find a rifle inside, with a few rounds already loaded, at 28% condition. I exit the car and start making my way back when a bear approaches. (I think the bear must have spotted me even before I entered the car, because it was already preparing to charge). I quickly equip the rifle, aim, shoot. But I don't hear the expected 'blam!' — I hear 'click'. At that point, it was too late to do anything... So no, I for one don't think that having a firearm means having the certainty of getting animal meat.

I think that having to deal with the additional variable of ammo degradation would be surely more realistic, but also more frustrating overall. But these are just my two cents...

–Rick 

[deathbydanish]

1 hour ago, Morrick said:

This thread has evolved into a fascinating discussion. I'm just a regular, average player, who happens to find the current level of rifle realism 'good enough'. I've played other first-person shooters, where you have all kinds of aids when firing a weapon and the most realistic detail is basically just manual reloading. By contrast, I found the way you handle the rifle in The Long Dark to be, uh, refreshingly frustrating. I found it cumbersome and awkward to use — as it should be, considering that the character I'm playing in the game is a pilot and not a soldier or a seasoned hunter. I think that for most players like me, having to deal with rifle degradation is enough.

In one of my runs, I actually died thanks to an uncleaned rifle. If I remember correctly, it went like this: I was in Coastal Highway, reaching Commuter's Lament. I search the car there and find a rifle inside, with a few rounds already loaded, at 28% condition. I exit the car and start making my way back when a bear approaches. (I think the bear must have spotted me even before I entered the car, because it was already preparing to charge). I quickly equip the rifle, aim, shoot. But I don't hear the expected 'blam!' — I hear 'click'. At that point, it was too late to do anything... So no, I for one don't think that having a firearm means having the certainty of getting animal meat.

I think that having to deal with the additional variable of ammo degradation would be surely more realistic, but also more frustrating overall. But these are just my two cents...

–Rick 

Correction, ammo degradation when you leave it exposed to the elements. Not to get on anyone's case but people seem to not consider the whole context of what I was proposing. Like IRL I don't buy rifle ammo and worry that it will blow up in my face, I only worry if I see something obviously wrong, like a protruding primer or severe damage to the case. I really only worry when I have surplus ammo, I have to look them over carefully so I don't have a repeat of the story I posted above.

So for the record my official proposal is to have ammo degrade based on if it remains outdoors and only if it exposed to snow storms, if you find it indoors it will be fine. I would use the degradation model proposed by @jeffpeng with the effects for a case failure that I proposed earlier.

[nicko]

few off topic posts here, anyway just tested this again.

See my screen shot below. My rifle was at 98% with 3 bullets loaded just now. I cleaned it and it now weighs more. Why? It has same amount of bullets still. What got heavier? To me that says your better off not cleaning your rifle because it just adds more weight factor to it.  Therefore an unconditioned gun will weigh a lot less for some reason? strange if you ask me. If anything an unconditioned guy would weigh more! It's not like its missing parts, prb just has more dirt/grime on it.

[hozz1235]

Agreed, I can't come up with a reason why it would weigh more the cleaner it is.  Perhaps @Patrick Carlson could answer this riddle for us?

[deathbydanish]

7 hours ago, nicko said:

few off topic posts here, anyway just tested this again.

See my screen shot below. My rifle was at 98% with 3 bullets loaded just now. I cleaned it and it now weighs more. Why? It has same amount of bullets still. What got heavier? To me that says your better off not cleaning your rifle because it just adds more weight factor to it.  Therefore an unconditioned gun will weigh a lot less for some reason? strange if you ask me. If anything an unconditioned guy would weigh more! It's not like its missing parts, prb just has more dirt/grime on it.

Sorry for going off topic, it just occurred to me as I looked at your screenshot.

This does seem like a minor glitch, I can't think of any legit reason as to why cleaning a rifle should make it heavier.