Polar Bears!

[SammyDaBoi]

So basically, I want a polar bear to be added to the game. As a new predator, it functions differently from previous animals, by stalking the player. Similar to how wolves can sneak up on players after smelling them, this would function a bit differently as, after starting a new save file up, one, two, or potentially three polar bears spawn (in the whole game.) This would basically entail adding certain features, like skeletons, to previously empty caves, and then having a polar bear roam that area. After a player enters a polar bear's territory, perhaps just by entering that particular zone, it begins following them from a distance. I'd make it difficult to see, especially against the snowy background, but rather slow. Maybe a bit slower than the player, and it sleeps for a few hours each night, but otherwise it is always tracking them. After you get a polar bear on your tail, you can't attract a second one, and it could theoretically scare away wolves once it gets too close. Once it comes within a certain range (similar to the current range for the bear) it charges you, and if successful in getting to the player, it begins to maul them for 30/50/75/85% condition, depending on the difficulty. It also deals damage to clothes in a similar manner to the bear, and will then proceed to move a certain distance away after a bear "fight" scene where the player struggles in a manner similar to the bear spear fights, in trying to scare the bear away. It then gives the player a "grace" period before it begins stalking them again, and will proceed to kill them if the condition is below the point where a player would survive the attack. 
Now, killing the bear would have to be a difficult feat, not just something you can get lucky on and 1-shot. I propose it acting in a similar manner to the moose, where it won't bleed out, but you have to deal a certain amount of damage to it. This time, however, without crits. So for instance, the bear could survive 2-3 rifle shots, 3-5 bow shots, 12-14 revolver shots, and 6-8 flare shots (depending, of course, on where you hit it.) As a reward for hunting this creature, you could harvest a single polar bear hide (taking 2 hours ingame) which could be used for multiple new clothing additions, potentially requiring multiple hides per piece of clothing (I.E, with one hide you could make a hat, with two you could make a coat and pants, etc.) which would all have a significant buff to the current warmth level, but at a higher weight (for instance, they would be 0.5-1.5 kilos more heavy than the current crafted clothing). It would also grant about 14 guts, 55-75 kilos of meat, and 20 kilos of fat, a new resource we could potentially refine into fuel, or eat (in limited amounts) to restore calories. This would require a lot of fine tuning to keep balanced, but I think it would work out. As far as spawn points for the bears go, you could have one in TWM, (the cave near the moose spawn ?) PV, CH, DP, BI, FM. I would also implement a sort of timer where you don't get polar bears in a set amount of time after the game starts, depending on the difficulty, etc. As far as respawn times go,  I think that should depend on the number of bears that exist per save (150 day respawn for 3 bears, 75 day respawn for 2 bears, 50 day respawn for one bear). I also think you shouldn't have a polar bear in every zone, since that would cause a lot of problems with other wildlife. 
All in all, it wouldn't be game breaking, and it would coincide with real life wildlife (polar bears are in fact found in the northern parts of Canada.) I also think that they would work well with a new glacier-themed zone, but I'll save that for another post.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long post, I hope you have a great day! ^^

[sonics01]

Interesting, I was writing a suggestion of Canadian big cats (Lynx or Puma) as a stalker type predator, and a polar bear as an "upgraded black bear" with much wider patrol range (cover entire map) and more toughness.

But it seems that the idea of big cats and polar bear has been suggested from long ago. I'm sure Hinterland should have their own plan about new wildlife (if they still has "road map"). As far as I know, they've been (and maybe they are still) busy with performance & optimization issue of the game with Unity engine. Hope they fix this issue and add more maps and more wildlife and more contents soon... 

[stratvox]

Polar bears do not live on BC's Pacific coast. Total non-starter. There native range is along the Arctic coast of Nunavut, and the Hudson and James Bay coasts of Manitoba and Ontario. It's a LONG way from TLD to those places.

It would completely destroy the immersion to see a polar bear there. Brown bears, yeah, and a spirit bear as a very rare easter egg would be super cool, but polar bears? Nope.

For reference, spirit bears are also known as Kermode Bears and are a distinct subspecies of black bears: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear Spirit bears are the white Kermode bears in particular; in BC the total population of spirit bears is generally estimated as ranging from one to five hundred in total.

Mountain Lions would also be an awesome addition, and a very dangerous one that, and would fit right in with the wildlife native to the region. Balance would be hard because if a mountain lion gets the jump on you from behind your chances of survival are slim to none

btw- if they were to add brown bears, after a mauling the player should have maybe 4% condition left and multiple bleeding wounds with a better than even chance that even a sufficient supply of bandages might not be enough to guarantee survival before bleed out. They are significantly larger and more dangerous than black bears.

[sonics01]

5 hours ago, stratvox said:

Polar bears do not live on BC's Pacific coast. Total non-starter. There native range is along the Arctic coast of Nunavut, and the Hudson and James Bay coasts of Manitoba and Ontario. It's a LONG way from TLD to those places.

It would completely destroy the immersion to see a polar bear there. Brown bears, yeah, and a spirit bear as a very rare easter egg would be super cool, but polar bears? Nope.

I know that Raph was "influenced by" Vancouver Island when he designs TLD and GBI. However, "influenced by" or "motivated from" never means "it actually is"... so I increased the range of my imagination. While playing so many interloper games, considering these crazy cold temperatures (One morning of 100+ days of interloper, I saw around -80 ~ -90 degree C of total wind + air temperature in Bleak Inlet, without Blizzard... That was crazy temperature), I was convinced that the region inside TLD should be far north, inside or very near the 60 degrees north, so I (and probably others) brought the idea of the polar bear. Well, but I don't know. I never been to Canada... Is the BC pacific coast region could reach such low temperature during winter? The closest place I've lived was Seattle (not that long, only for a Master's degree) but I never felt such brutal coldness so... Or, maybe the "the Flare" event decreased the average temperature of the planet and BC pacific coast become frozen like that... 
But anyway, it wouldn't matter. If the polar bear is not a good choice, the Grizzly bear would be fine too. 

5 hours ago, stratvox said:

Mountain Lions would also be an awesome addition, and a very dangerous one that, and would fit right in with the wildlife native to the region. Balance would be hard because if a mountain lion gets the jump on you from behind your chances of survival are slim to none. 

btw- if they were to add brown bears, after a mauling the player should have maybe 4% condition left and multiple bleeding wounds with a better than even chance that even a sufficient supply of bandages might not be enough to guarantee survival before bleed out. They are significantly larger and more dangerous than black bears.

I guess the both big cat and bigger bear should be very rare in game, yet challenging/dangerous opponent. There have been very good suggestions about big cats and bigger bears in Wishlist forum. I'm also thinking about some ideas, but my lack of knowledge about wildlife limits my imagination... 

Edited August 7, 2020 by sonics01

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 8/7/2020 at 4:09 AM, sonics01 said:

I guess the both big cat and bigger bear should be very rare in game, yet challenging/dangerous opponent. There have been very good suggestions about big cats and bigger bears in Wishlist forum. I'm also thinking about some ideas, but my lack of knowledge about wildlife limits my imagination... 

I feel like there are enough uncalculable risks that can ruin your perfectly fine run already. I'm not sure adding assassin cats or "surprise you ded" bears to the game would make it really that much better.

[sonics01]

12 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

I feel like there are enough uncalculable risks that can ruin your perfectly fine run already. I'm not sure adding assassin cats or "surprise you ded" bears to the game would make it really that much better.

Hmmm, I'm not sure if I can agree with your opinion. I don't think there is a totally-unexpected-RNG-screwing risk, once you reached big enough snowball. In this sense, I'm approaching these 'new animals' as 'late-game contents'. I wish them to begins to appear after, let's say, 1 year of the play in survival mode (Or 200days, or 300 days...) with a no-regen or very long regen time (150+ days of regen).

I think devs should have their own big data gathered from survival mode plays. They should know at which point people quit playing survival mode games. I guess there should be good timing to initiate new content as "late game" content. To me, I think "the point of boredom" starts somewhere between 100~200 days but this can be differed by playstyles.

Or, it might be good to distinguish "late-stage" by item preparation level. Let's say, if the player finished the equipment of full 1 tier cloths + enough weapons (with a specific amount of ammo) and reached a total N number of skill levels (N = sum of all skill level numbers) then we can assume this is mid-point. Then, it might be good to assume 150 days + mid-point date should be the beginning point of "late game" stage...

In the late game, players are supposed to be ready against tougher risks including new animals. TLD already introduced many types of animals in this game which is not fully realistic, so I guess the behavior of these new animals can be adjusted for gaming fun and the balance. I still think they should be very dangerous enough so that players should feel the "horrifying experience", but the reward should be good enough.  

Edited August 9, 2020 by sonics01

[Zaknafein]

In my opinion, seeing a rare polar bear would not break the immersion for me. You could argue that the polarity reversal that caused (?) the silent apocalypse may have messed up their navigation, hunting grounds, or some other excuse. It should be rare - rarer than moose.

[Bigfatcat999]

Oh hell, no!