Some fixes i would apreciate

[oplli]

I would like the whole wolf encounter\fight to be improved. if i encouter a wolf right now it is too easy to just avoid the fight. i can just light a torch, drop it on the floor and aim at the wolf with a rock or a rifle and the wolf will flee. i think that as long as we have wolves that fears small torches and a way to avoif fight at 100% chances the wolves will be broken.

The next thing is timberwolves. i find em verry buggy. you cannot really scare em if you dont have a weapon and without wasting 2\3 of you ammo.  i would like ideas for the wolves to be better

[oplli]

I thaught about something like that for the regular wolves:

if you encounter a wolf it will growl at you and stop. Then you have more chances than usual for the wolf to flee and the wolf will no longer rush at you if you aim with something to him. but if he decide to attack you you will not be able to stop him with a torch (only) even if you shoot at him he will continue to attack you unless you kill him or you shot him a few seconds before the fight starts. if hes already running at you when shooting him it will provide you a benefit during the fight but he will still be attack you. that solve the torch+stone problem where you can make every wolf flee for the cost of one match and a stone.

For Timberwolves:

i think that the timberwolves would need to be less active. they are always running far and comming back to bite you. thats is just annoying. they should track you and sometimes stop and if you dont st

I suggest to ajust the pack morale and make a random pack morale when encountering one so the challenge is not always the same. I would like to be able to yell. it will be useful when doing the fight with the alpha wolf if you dont have anything in your inventory to scare him.

There could be another kind of fight too, if you loose the fight with the wolf. so the wolf runns at you and then you can choose a weapon. once you selected you have to click at the right time beacause it is not like an usual fight where the wolf stays on you. he just tries to byte you. so you will have to click at the right time and if you achieve so you will hurt the wolf and at the same time lowering the morale. i love this idea beacause it would make the encounter more interactive and interesting with multiple possibilities.

thoughts?

Edited October 20, 2020 by oplli

[DrZ]

I second that.

Some behaviour with wolfes seems confusing to me and should become more consistent. I did not know the torch/stone mechanic (which I can accept from the resources involved but also do not see the logic that much) but for me it is

1. attract wolf
2. drop bait
3. wove away from wolf and bait until wolf klicks on bait
4. crouch
5. wolf turns around and continues patrol

The results in easy arrow shots from behind. Which I don't mind that much. But the behaviour feels very strange.

Agreed that Timberwolves are a complete different topic. I can see that they are supposed to be a challenge but those puppies on coffein have so many glitches in the cannary. They deserve a tweak here and there. And they should not respawn every night in interloper. That is just abusrd for the "Quiet Apocalypse".

[oplli]

2 hours ago, DrZ said:

I did not know the torch/stone mechanic

basically it uses two features of the wolves. one they are afraid of fire (100% chance if you dont hold the torch) and two they run at you when you aim a them. You drop the lit torch on the ground and aim with the stone. this will make the wolf run at you and once they are enough close to the torch it scares em and they flee. it works all the time and makes absolutely no sense. i hope this will be fixed at least but even with this fix wolves would need some tweaks. 

personally wolves never get attracted by my decoys i dont know if it is a bug but they NEVER do and ive tried multiple times ...

[odizzido]

Dogs(they're not wolves) really do need some work. The decoy thing I played with a little after reading it wasn't working and it seems to trick is to be far enough away. A reliable way I found of doing it is to wait until the wolf has just finished a catch up cycle and begins moving slow again. Then you sprint ahead, drop the goods, and run. Seemed to work every time for me.

But yeah more on topic I would love it if the dogs became more unpredictable. Right now it's the same thing every time. Find dog, find good area to kill dog, aim for a moment to frenzy it, shoot it in the face when it comes charging in. The dogs don't even need to see you aim the weapon they just know. How they know and how they understand is baffling.

There is never any difference in how they act. They follow you predictably every time, frenzy exactly the same way, and die exactly the same as the last 200 dogs. They're so predictable that they become tools. Agro a dog, run it to a deer, get in a car(or whatever), it goes after the deer, kill or scare off the dog. This is made even easier that there is a dog for every snowflake in the game, and if you load up on guts they come from far and wide to give you meat.

[ManicManiac]

Personally, I like the wolves and timber wolves as they are.

As for the wolves...
I think part of the whole point is that we can learn to evade and avoid (or in another sense - live peacefully with) the wolves.  Naturally, for those who take the time to get to know the wildlife in the game, those aspects will feel easier (the player adapts and gets better).

As for the Timber Wolves...
I think it's a little strange when people want the wolves to be more difficult... but then, when the timber wolves are exactly that; they often get described as broken or buggy...

I mean, I think this is kind of working at cross purposes.

We can (if we are willing to get clever) almost entirely avoid them.  The exception being the triggered events that happen when going though the obstetrical course for the first time (even then it's possible to backtrack and slip out of the complex undetected - I'm living in Bleak Inlet right now and doing this very thing).  Sure towards the end of the course it's much harder to avoid "aggro'ing" the pack... but I think that's kind of the point behind the challenge of the obstetrical course. 

As for using up all one's ammo... I can confirm it's possible to achieve a one-shot/one-kill ratio for those Timber Wolves.  So, I don't think it's all that wasteful.  Sure, if we panic and take bad shots... then that can waste our ammo (I think that one's on the player), but if we are patient - it's really not hard to take them down without them sounding the alarm.

It's also possible it's also possible to use the terrain and a pocket full of rocks to break a pack's morale (though again, it does require the player to be a bit clever and wily).

Sure, when a pack is "aggro'ed" that can get really wild... but again I think that was kind of the point.  If we don't want to go toe-to-toe with a pack, then we can learn how to take them out more stealthily.  It does work.

 

I just don't think there is anything that Hinterland needs to fix.

Edited October 23, 2020 by ManicManiac

[UTC-10]

I knew about starting a fire to stop a wolf's approach as I learned the hard way in Winter's Embrace (Pilgrim builds up so many bad habits).  I have seen playthroughs where the player will always start a fire if confronted by a wolf threat (other than as a need for warmth in Interloper).  In one, the player was harvesting a deer and had three wolves roughly as a group growling at him for a very long time.   

The potency of a lit torch as described implies a near return to the old torch trick back in early access where dropping a torch in front of you would absolutely cause the wolf to halt within easy bow shot.  I mention near return because now, with current wolf AI, "aiming" anything at a wolf will cause it to quickly react in one way or another instead of staying stock still.  

Be interesting if the devs reverted wolves back to something like the torch trick with modifications so things are  not exactly the same, and a campfire is no longer an absolute requirement to block a wolf. 

[oplli]

3 hours ago, UTC-10 said:

Be interesting if the devs reverted wolves back to something like the torch trick with modifications so things are  not exactly the same, and a campfire is no longer an absolute requirement to block a wolf. 

This would only be a plaster i think, a temporary solution. once we will be able to know em again that will be the same problem that is why i think wolves are not done right at the moment. They need fear more the humans but once you encounter a tough one he will be even more dangerous that all the other kitty kitty wolves you would have encoutered that feared you. with that mechanic you will always need to be prepaired agains the most dangerous wolves that you may encounter.

 

9 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

As for the Timber Wolves...
I think it's a little strange when people want the wolves to be more difficult... but then, when the timber wolves are exactly that; they often get described as broken or buggy...

They are truly difficult... but difficult in a way that i dont appreciate. They aggro you then they get away and thay come back quickly to get away again and again and again. and everytime one come back he takes 10% of you health bar and get away without letting you hit him a couple of time . i never went to bleak inlet beacause first i dont see the point in interlopper and second, i had the worst gameplay experience i have ever had in this game in episode three with the timberwolves. (the episode 3 was nice in its globality but timberwolves nahh). It is sad beacause timberwolves could be a real challenge and a fun one. it just needs to be more interactive and immersive. what breaks the immersion with current timbewolves is that they always run away and come back to take a piece of you leg... wich make you waste ammo beacause you end up shooting fast after missing the first 3 shots + 30% health. second is that you absolutely have to have a ranged weapon to lower the morale (and stones apparently). it is not like regular wolves where you can use pretty much every tool in the game to defend yourself. this means that you rely on tools that you dont usualy have early game or that you dont take with you beacause they are heavy, to defeat the timberwolves. i think that the new fight system that i talked about would make the wolves more interactive, fun, and a bigger challenge. it makes you feel that you have a little bit the controll. wich is 100% the case with the regular wolves, who fears em? and the opposite for the timberwolves...

[UTC-10]

FWIW I do not think that wolves per se are broken but I concede that I lack the experience to be personally sure as I really don't have to deal with them.  I stopped playing Voyager a long time ago because, in an update, the torch trick no longer worked.  I could see why that was done though it ultimately drove me to Pilgrim.   

[ManicManiac]

9 hours ago, oplli said:

They are truly difficult... but difficult in a way that I don't appreciate.

Fair enough.
 

But there are ways we can avoid alerting the pack, while still taking them down.
If players are a bit stealthier and patient, we can avoid the frenzy and reduce that threat.

[odizzido]

I personally like the timberwolves better than the dogs we find everywhere else. Timerwolves actually do those nipping attacks out in the wild too so bonus points for that. I of course take some points off for their hyper aggression. Maybe it's just my lack of experience with them that makes me like them more though, I can't be sure.

 

edit-------------

Also I am not a fan of quicktime events so I wouldn't be a fan of adding in timing stuff, especially if they randomise the key you need to press.

One possible change I would probably do would be to remove the wolf sense of aim. The moment you aim a weapon they know and I just see it as stupid. It's extra stupid because you can point the pistol at them and even shoot them and they don't react, but press that aim button and there they go. What?

Edited October 24, 2020 by odizzido

[ManicManiac]

12 minutes ago, odizzido said:

Also I am not a fan of quicktime events so I wouldn't be a fan

Agreed, I absolutely hate "quicktime events"... I think they're by and large a lazy cop out (a horrible substitute for actual gameplay), and I think they really ruin most games they are incorporated into.

[odizzido]

25 minutes ago, ManicManiac said:

Agreed, I absolutely hate "quicktime events"... I think they're by and large a lazy cop out (a horrible substitute for actual gameplay), and I think they really ruin most games they are incorporated into.

I strongly agree with this. There are multiple games I watched a little gameplay of and lost interest in immediately upon seeing QTEs. Others I just stopped playing when I encountered them.

[oplli]

2 hours ago, odizzido said:

Also I am not a fan of quicktime events so I wouldn't be a fan of adding in timing stuff, especially if they randomise the key you need to press

The regular wolves struggles are quicktime events. you have to click the faster you can in order to survive. the idea in the timberwolves is not to make you press a random key on you keyboard. Once they rush at you you have a time to pick your weapon and like regular wolves you could click the faster you can in order to hit the wolf, it will only lower the morale but not make him flee. or something like clicking at the right time and you have one chance. but absolutely not a random key that would be horrible i agree.

[ManicManiac]

Personally, I think simply spamming the left mouse button may share some of those traits...  but I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare it to the kind mess we got in things like The Force Unleashed (just to name one example).

In the case of wolf struggles in The Long Dark...  I'd say it was a good way to convey the idea of the player literally wrestling the wolf (trying frantically to get away).

That aside, it's also just one small aspect in a much bigger span of gameplay mechanics.

This is in contrast to those other games who use it to essentially force players to play "Simon Says" rather than provide a meaningful gameplay mechanic.

Do the wolf struggles technically fall into the category/family of quicktime?  Perhaps, but again I don't think it's quite the same as what we had to deal with in games like: The Force Unleashed (where a large quantity needlessly elaborate quicktime events were shoehorned in), Guitar Hero (where it's literally the entire "game"), or Shenmue...  (the list could go on and on).

Edited October 25, 2020 by ManicManiac

[UTC-10]

In Winter's Embrace, nominal Voyager level game, I found that firing an unaimed revolver shot while the wolf was reasonably close caused it to become "frightened" and then if you can aim the gun on it you can fire, maybe scoring a hit, though it would be often a moving target.  While it was in a "frightened" mode it would not attack at all.  Because WE was a short-term (to me) game, I had no issue with firing a couple shots - one to frighten, one to kill or wound - as the ability to reload ammo mitigated the extra ammo usage. 

I am still perplexed why in the few wolf struggles I did get into in WE why I was unable to get the melee bar to rise at all.  I chalked that up to something related to my computer but I had no idea what. 

[odizzido]

On 10/24/2020 at 3:21 PM, oplli said:

The regular wolves struggles are quicktime events. you have to click the faster you can in order to survive. the idea in the timberwolves is not to make you press a random key on you keyboard. Once they rush at you you have a time to pick your weapon and like regular wolves you could click the faster you can in order to hit the wolf, it will only lower the morale but not make him flee. or something like clicking at the right time and you have one chance. but absolutely not a random key that would be horrible i agree.

I don't click a bunch of times for wolf struggles. I don't need carpel tunnel. There are options to turn it into a hold the button down thing.

[oplli]

2 minutes ago, odizzido said:

I don't click a bunch of times for wolf struggles. I don't need carpel tunnel. There are options to turn it into a hold the button down thing.

Those are for the ones who cannnot click quickly. You get more effectiveness by clicking fast in a struggle. i dont see where is the fun in just holding the button if you can click fast. What do you mean by i dont need carpel tunnel?

[oplli]

22 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

Do the wolf struggles technically fall into the category/family of quicktime?

 

If they do not then it would be the same for the system i am suggesting, there is no difference. I am suggesting a specific interaction but i am open to any ideas to how ot make the wolves more interesting. I think we got off the main subject in that discussion.

[odizzido]

12 minutes ago, oplli said:

Those are for the ones who cannnot click quickly. You get more effectiveness by clicking fast in a struggle. i dont see where is the fun in just holding the button if you can click fast. What do you mean by i dont need carpel tunnel?

Pressing buttons fast like that makes my fingers hurt. I don't want to do permanent damage to my hands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome

 

Also I don't find pressing buttons quickly to be fun. Honestly I am surprised you do, I didn't think anyone did.

[Mroz4k]

I like the idea that you can avoid wolves entirely, and even if you do attract them, that you can lead them around without triggering a fight. The fact that they charge you when you start aiming with a stone is a bit strange, then again you can throw stones without aiming, so you can in theory hit them with stones till they run away (although that rarely ever works).

Since the days of early Alpha, we players have been looking for a way to cheese wolves. I mean, think a way back - for the longest time, you would handle wolves by dropping a single piece of bait and then aiming your bow into their path. This was entirely risk free in the past because the wolf that was baited paid no attention to you, using your weapon, if you were at least a bit away. They fixed this, now the wolf charges you if you attempt this. 

So players found a new meta, the one you described (and frankly, i didnt know about ) but that just shows testament to how creative players can be in the way of the cheesing. I am pretty sure this will get fixed in time. 

And players will probably find a new way to cheese wolves. Such is the circle of life.

Im quite sure it is not intentional for wolves to run away from a dropped torch - timberwolves in my experience dont act this way. They will run over a lit torch like it doesnt matter. However, they will not charge you if you are standing close to a campfire. Instead, they circle you and charge you once you come close enough. I would create a campfire and throw a bunch of torches around to expand my vision during night encounters with timberwolves, so I can take a better shot at them.

I like Timberwolves so far but I dont really have that much experience with them just yet to form a valid opinion on them.

I do miss the Brandishing mechanic. If there were a way to brandish torches instead of throwing them (while having a spacebar be used to throw them instead) and the brandishing in itself could scare the lone wolf or decrease the morale of a pack, that would be great.

The idea with "attacking a timberwolf when its close" is a bit difficult - how would you select a weapon with which to do that? Or would that be like a generic "kick" maybe?

Could be interesting but not sure how it would be implemented.

15 hours ago, oplli said:

Those are for the ones who cannnot click quickly. You get more effectiveness by clicking fast in a struggle. i dont see where is the fun in just holding the button if you can click fast. What do you mean by i dont need carpel tunnel?

There is no point to cause yourself an injury like carpal tunnel over a video game. You might get more effectiveness by clicking but frankly, as someone who is developing carpal due to my extensive use of PC, Im also soon switching over to those mechanics, and Im very glad that they are in the game.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a serious injury of your hand, most commonly caused by extensive use of PC for work or gaming.  Its, like you said, "for those who cant click fast" because their motor functions in hands are limited and often very painful.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Mroz4k

[oplli]

10 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

The idea with "attacking a timberwolf when its close" is a bit difficult - how would you select a weapon with which to do that? Or would that be like a generic "kick" maybe?

Could be interesting but not sure how it would be implemented.

the idea is once a timbewolf charge you (exactly like the regular wolves) you get an option of the tools you have, hands, axe, hammer, hatchet (for example) then you select lets say the knife you will have a bar in the middle (like the regular wolves again) and there will be a green zone in it, wich will be randomly big. A cursor will move fast on that bar and youl have a couple of seconds to click at the time the cursor is in the green zone. if you achieve the wolf will be injuried and the morale will go down a bit. you can aslo take the revolver during that fight. this mechanic would help those who dont have any guns (like in interlopper) you could say that we still have bows and arrows but with the timbewolves we always have to move fast so if you miss you shot you'll eventually be too far to recover the arrow and there are a lot of chances you will not miss but you will not kill the wolf too and the wolves are going to flee (even if you kill the wolf he will have the time to flee and you will be bothered during that time by the other wolves so wou wont be able to recover your arrows too.). giving you almost no options to recover your arrows that is not a winner sutuation. I want to be able to fight the timberwolves with tools the solution i sugested may not be the best one but i will be for any other ideas as long as it makes the Timberwolves less unpleasant.