Animal companion discussion

[Vareta]

This will probably trigger some old players, but I want to talk about the possibility of some sort of animal companion. This as already been discussed quite a few times and opinions mostly divide into three ideas:

1- wolf/dog pups- basically you find a wolf or dog pup and you help it grow to become an adult.

2- Wolf taming- You try to befriend a wolf by giving it food and other means.

3- Finding a fully grown dog- You find an already grown dog and befriend it.

The first two ideas are completely impractical. Either because of realism, gameplay or lore problems.

Idea 3 on the other hand, still holds a little potential. It could probably be implemented, albeit with effort.

Before discussing how such a system would work, we have to ask ourselves if this would be good for the game in the first place. The main argument against such an implementation is that it conflicts with the atmosphere of isolation and that it goes against the game principals set by the devs. I disagree, I believe the addition of something other than yourself, would enhance not only the TLD experience but also the isolation that is so characteristic of this game.

But how would something that supposedly would be your friend, make you even more lonely ? Well think of it this way, in the same way that the survivor you play as will inevitably die, the same would go for your loyal companion. Imagine you are the survivor, you find yourself a dog, you befriend it, you have experiences with it and suddenly one day you wake up and it’s dead silent body is laying near your bed. Can you imagine what that would feel like ? True loneliness and isolation cannot be experienced if you do not taste companionship first.

Well this is only my opinion, I do not actually expect anything related to a “dog” be added to the game. That is why I did not post this in the wish list... although it is kind of a wish of mine😀.

What I want to hear is YOUR and the community’s opinion on this. So please if you have anything to say, bad or good, share it. 
 

Thank you

 

[UpUpAway95]

Befriend a dog only to watch it get torn to pieces by wolves or a bear?  Definitely not my cup of tea.  Also, this shouldn't be a Fallout 4 clone where one's companion would be impervious to dying and any domestic dog really cannot hope to effectively fight a wolf.  I'd definitely want an option at least to disable the dog companion feature (again, without the penalty of losing access to feats as is currently the case when the custom menu is used for any reason).

 

[Vareta]

9 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Befriend a dog only to watch it get torn to pieces by wolves or a bear?  Definitely not my cup of tea.  Also, this shouldn't be a Fallout 4 clone where one's companion would be impervious to dying and any domestic dog really cannot hope to effectively fight a wolf.  I'd definitely want an option at least to disable the dog companion feature (again, without the penalty of losing access to feats as is currently the case when the custom menu is used for any reason).

 

A setting is probably not even necessary. If you want you could even kill it. Your choice.

About a dog being weaker than a wolf, that is without a doubt correct. And if they were stronger, it would probably be “OP” no ?

Edited December 25, 2020 by Vareta

[UpUpAway95]

41 minutes ago, Vareta said:

A setting is probably not even necessary. If you want you could even kill it. Your choice.

About a dog being weaker than a wolf, that is without a doubt correct. And if they were stronger, it would probably be “OP” no ?

If I can't bear to watch it get ripped apart by a predator, I'm certainly not going to want to kill it myself just to eliminate it from my game world.  Have a heart.

Edited December 25, 2020 by UpUpAway95

[Vareta]

1 hour ago, UpUpAway95 said:

If I can't bear to watch it get ripped apart by a predator, I'm certainly not going to want to kill it myself just to eliminate it from my game world.  Have a heart.

Extra meat, hell maybe you could even make a hat with the pelt.😂😂

[djanico]

I suggested this awhile back ago.. see topic:

 

 

[Vareta]

2 hours ago, djanico said:

I suggested this awhile back ago.. see topic:

 

 

I see this discussion goes waaaay back.

[glowing ice]

i'm down with 1. here's how it plays out.
new map added by timberwolf mountain, you find a timberwolf cave that looks like the mother of all bears ripped it asunder. inside you find a timberwolf cub, at this point it needs nourished and kept warm like you. everyday it will grow. it should take at least 50 days min to become an adult.  and every day you can play with it and train it.  if you don't  it will become feral and might even attack you. playing with him stops this. training with him you teach him whistle commands. stay, go here, fallow, track (using an item for scent). attack.   before the 50 days he will loosely follow commands, or outright ignore you.  after adulthood he will kill rabbits and deer himself while roaming, feeding him will no longer be a factor.  telling him to attack a bear/moose, if you let him do it by himself he will die, you will have to still shoot the bear/moose to kill it. and you'll have to make sure your aim is true or else you'll kill your friend. telling him to attack just prevents them from charging you. 

[Vareta]

31 minutes ago, glowing ice said:

i'm down with 1. here's how it plays out.
new map added by timberwolf mountain, you find a timberwolf cave that looks like the mother of all bears ripped it asunder. inside you find a timberwolf cub, at this point it needs nourished and kept warm like you. everyday it will grow. it should take at least 50 days min to become an adult.  and every day you can play with it and train it.  if you don't  it will become feral and might even attack you. playing with him stops this. training with him you teach him whistle commands. stay, go here, fallow, track (using an item for scent). attack.   before the 50 days he will loosely follow commands, or outright ignore you.  after adulthood he will kill rabbits and deer himself while roaming, feeding him will no longer be a factor.  telling him to attack a bear/moose, if you let him do it by himself he will die, you will have to still shoot the bear/moose to kill it. and you'll have to make sure your aim is true or else you'll kill your friend. telling him to attack just prevents them from charging you. 

I consider the pup idea impractical because it would just be too much of a pain to play with, and too implement. A 50 day growth time is just too unrealistic, and even if we are being realistic, it would take at least a year for a pup to grow to adulthood. Can you imagine having to babysit something for an entire in game year ? It would be boring as hell. And then the wolf problem, lorewise, I guess you could push it and say that because you’ve trained it won’t attack you, that sounds a little sketchy tho. Another problem is balancing, following in game logic, if you had a wolf friend, hunting rabbits and deer would be completely free, as for wolves they would probably become either a non-threat or a very small one. These two outcomes are unacceptable. I can understand that the thought of nurturing and training a wolf sounds cool, but it just doesn’t work, not with this game.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Vareta

[glowing ice]

im thinking cause of the location to get him. you'll already be crazy stacked in gear that rabbits and deer are already free. by 30 days bears are free for me on Voyageur. and with that the game is free and i just start a new run with harder settings. with the wolf cub it gives an endgame challenge to survival.  

[UpUpAway95]

Here's another thing you've not thought through with this idea... Ropes... Dogs can't climb them.  So what's going to happen to your companion in almost any zone in the game... He/she gets stranded at the bottom of a rope for days while you go looting and hunting?... Then starves to death or freeze to death sitting there like a good puppy?

[glowing ice]

4 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Here's another thing you've not thought through with this idea... Ropes... Dogs can't climb them.  So what's going to happen to your companion in almost any zone in the game... He/she gets stranded at the bottom of a rope for days while you go looting and hunting?... Then starves to death or freeze to death sitting there like a good puppy?

i agree. this straight up kills any chance of having a companion 

[glowing ice]

so cause of that. add a challenge mode for the companion.  and just keep it out of survival.  

[Dr. S.]

18 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Here's another thing you've not thought through with this idea... Ropes... Dogs can't climb them.  So what's going to happen to your companion in almost any zone in the game... He/she gets stranded at the bottom of a rope for days while you go looting and hunting?... Then starves to death or freeze to death sitting there like a good puppy?

The dog could be wearing a harness that could be tied to the rope and ferried up and down. 

[Vareta]

25 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Here's another thing you've not thought through with this idea... Ropes... Dogs can't climb them.  So what's going to happen to your companion in almost any zone in the game... He/she gets stranded at the bottom of a rope for days while you go looting and hunting?... Then starves to death or freeze to death sitting there like a good puppy?

Wow, I really didn’t think about that. Well , I guess in the situations that you don’t spend a lot of time in the climb zone, leaving him temporarily could be done effectively, with some risk involved. In the cases of TWM, for example, the only solution I can think of is Dr. S.’s proposal:

 

21 minutes ago, Dr. S. said:

The dog could be wearing a harness that could be tied to the rope and ferried up and down. 

Though that would obviously come with yet another fatigue inducing action, which is...not very nice.
 

You’ve found quite the loop hole in my dream of having dogs in TLD with goddamn climbing ropes.
Gee thanks😂.

[UpUpAway95]

3 minutes ago, Vareta said:

Wow, I really didn’t think about that. Well , I guess in the situations that you don’t spend a lot of time in the climb zone, leaving him temporarily could be done effectively, with some risk involved. In the cases of TWM, for example, the only solution I can think of is Dr. S.’s proposal:

 

Though that would obviously come with yet another fatigue inducing action, which is...not very nice.
 

You’ve found quite the loop hole in my dream of having dogs in TLD with goddamn climbing ropes.
Gee thanks😂.

Sorry, it's just that I've been spending a lot of time in Ash Canyon lately.  My thought to get around it would be to have a dog given to Will and Astrid right at the end of storymode... when they're setting up there forever retirement home on Great Bear in a final zone that only unlocks at the very end of story mode.  That zone could be free of ropes.  It would be available to play on indefinitely after the story was completed... and perhaps unlocked for survival mode games only after the 500-day mark is reached.  It's not perfect, but maybe a compromise. 

[Vareta]

4 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Sorry, it's just that I've been spending a lot of time in Ash Canyon lately.  My thought to get around it would be to have a dog given to Will and Astrid right at the end of storymode... when they're setting up there forever retirement home on Great Bear in a final zone that only unlocks at the very end of story mode.  That zone could be free of ropes.  It would be available to play on indefinitely after the story was completed... and perhaps unlocked for survival mode games only after the 500-day mark is reached.  It's not perfect, but maybe a compromise. 

Well no matter, I‘m sure that if the devs ever intend too add any sort of animal companion, which they probably don’t, they’ll think of this and find a way to get over it.

[Sammida]

As cool as it would be to have a dog to help find sticks, act as defence and generally be a nice companion, it would take away from the solo aspect too much. You are on your own with naught—not even a pet—to help. Other games would do the pet-thing better.

[Vareta]

9 hours ago, Sammida said:

As cool as it would be to have a dog to help find sticks, act as defence and generally be a nice companion, it would take away from the solo aspect too much. You are on your own with naught—not even a pet—to help. Other games would do the pet-thing better.

I do not agree with this destroying the solo aspect of the game, in the end it’s just a dog, no matter how much time you spend with it, it just doesn’t compare to the company of another person. Though I do admit that I’ve started to doubt the viability of such an implementation.

[Schrodingers Box]

the implementation is ridiculous honestly.  what do you do with the dog when you climb? Leave it at the base of your climb to freeze to death?  Return him to a shelter and start your trek back to the climb all over again?

   this is a survival game. You don’t bring pets along in survival. unless the dog is your sled dog or your backup food it’s a liability. survivalists eliminate liability. 

[ManicManiac]

This gets discussed quite a bit, and I recommend to other folks reading this to also use the search function in addition to reading this thread.  I say that only because there has been a large amount of good discussion about this very topic.  Including many more ideas on how other folks would implement such a thing.

As for me, I really don't want NPCs or animal companions (wolf, dog, or otherwise) in the survival sandbox.

I think this could work fine in the Story Mode or as a dedicated Challenge... but I would not like it if this were incorporated into Survival Mode.  I think it would undermine the lonely isolation and personal struggle that I enjoy so much in survival mode.

Another reason, is that I think that if we had an animal companion... then we might have a hunting partner, or even to a limited extent a protector.
I don't like that idea because it makes life easier for the player... and I'm rarely in favor of things that would make life easier for the player.

Let me clarify that I'm not against the idea  of an animal companion... I just really don't want it in my Survival Sandbox. 

Personally, I don't think an animal companion really works from a lore perspective anyway.  I think even if we did find a wolf or dog... it would probably immediately try to eat our faces off due to the effects the aurora (in that carnivorous animals are preternaturally aggressive and blood thirsty).  Considering they would most likely just turn hyper-aggressive, I think it puts this particular type of animal companion somewhere in between "extremely dangerous" and "just not really possible under the circumstances."

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by ManicManiac

[UpUpAway95]

16 hours ago, Vareta said:

Well no matter, I‘m sure that if the devs ever intend too add any sort of animal companion, which they probably don’t, they’ll think of this and find a way to get over it.

I agree... the devs probably will not add this.  I'm just suggesting that, as an optional earned reward for a long-time run, the solo aspect of the better part of a survival run would not be affected at all by this.  Opening a special "endzone" map for retirement would merely provide an optional way for a player to choose to end a run aside from causing the character's death (e.g. jumping off TWM) or just deleting the file when they get bored with it.  People not wanting to "retire" their character could simple choose to never enter that zone after they manage to unlock it... or perhaps a toggle could be set up at the start that enables/disables that "end zone" as an option.

Edited December 27, 2020 by UpUpAway95

[Vareta]

1 hour ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I agree... the devs probably will not add this.  I'm just suggesting that, as an optional earned reward for a long-time run, the solo aspect of the better part of a survival run would not be affected at all by this.  Opening a special "endzone" map for retirement would merely provide an optional way for a player to choose to end a run aside from causing the character's death (e.g. jumping off TWM) or just deleting the file when they get bored with it.  People not wanting to "retire" their character could simple choose to never enter that zone after they manage to unlock it... or perhaps a toggle could be set up at the start that enables/disables that "end zone" as an option.

I guess that would give a “fitting” end to survival mode. Although I’m not sure that would be very appropriate since I think the idea of survival is that there is no end to it.

[Vareta]

2 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

This gets discussed quite a bit, and I recommend to other folks reading this to also use the search function in addition to reading this thread.  I say that only because there has been a large amount of good discussion about this very topic.  Including many more ideas on how other folks would implement such a thing.

As for me, I really don't want NPCs or animal companions (wolf, dog, or otherwise) in the survival sandbox.

I think this could work fine in the Story Mode or as a dedicated Challenge... but I would not like it if this were incorporated into Survival Mode.  I think it would undermine the lonely isolation and personal struggle that I enjoy so much in survival mode.

Another reason, is that I think that if we had an animal companion... then we might have a hunting partner, or even to a limited extent a protector.
I don't like that idea because it makes life easier for the player... and I'm rarely in favor of things that would make life easier for the player.

Let me clarify that I'm not against the idea  of an animal companion... I just really don't want it in my Survival Sandbox. 

Personally, I don't think an animal companion really works from a lore perspective anyway.  I think even if we did find a wolf or dog... it would probably immediately try to eat our faces off due to the effects the aurora (in that carnivorous animals are preternaturally aggressive and blood thirsty).  Considering they would most likely just turn hyper-aggressive, I think it puts this particular type of animal companion somewhere in between "extremely dangerous" and "just not really possible under the circumstances."

 

All your points are justified, and so are mine, it’s really just a matter of opinion to be honest. 

I made sure to not expressly state my ideas on how such a system would work, as I believe that is useless to a discussion. Though I do feel like saying that dog probably wouldn’t try to attack the survivor instantly, because they are not as wild as wolves...it would be a problem during an aurora though, which I think that would create an interesting dynamic.

[Vareta]

2 hours ago, Schrodingers Box said:

the implementation is ridiculous honestly.  what do you do with the dog when you climb? Leave it at the base of your climb to freeze to death?  Return him to a shelter and start your trek back to the climb all over again?

   this is a survival game. You don’t bring pets along in survival. unless the dog is your sled dog or your backup food it’s a liability. survivalists eliminate liability. 

Why is it ridiculous ? Dogs have been used by humans for millennia for a variety of reasons including ones that help in survival situations.