Bad Dreams

[Derek0311]

I’ve seen the mini-game idea.  This is a little different.  Let’s say you are attacked by a wolf in the day.  That night when you sleep there is a chance to get hit with a random affliction.  The affliction is insomnia where you can’t sleep to rest past 50% or something.  Your sleep is interrupted by a wolf howl and flashbacks of the attack.  Then you awake, in the dark and can’t sleep past 50%.  Insomnia gets better over time so the sleep cap gets higher over time until it’s gone.  
While I’m on it.  How about a toggle where you can’t sleep indoors during aurora; the lights are too bright?

[dbmurph22]

Good suggestions, but with psychological effects you have to figure out what mechanic is going to be impaired.  And what is that?  You've seemed to target sleeping which does make sense, but I think from a game strategy POV, there would be overlap with Cabin Fever and Intestinal Parasites.  I'm not sure we need a third element in the bucket.  

I do like the idea of adding some sort of psychological element and they have blurring of the frame with pain, which is ok-ay.....a valiant effort and pretty cool, though not exceedingly gameplay compelling.  I've yet to find something really satisfactory.

I tend to think the best way to implement such a thing would be to find some other interesting wishlist element in the game to add for other reasons (see other things on the wishlist) and maybe the psychological elements (ptsd, insomnia, other suggestions people have had about prolonged loneliness and trauma) affect that.

Oddly enough, though, there's some element of psychological effect that breaks the wall and lifts up on a meta level to affect the actual user.  For instance, people are extra jump at locations where previous wolf attacks ended their runs and sometimes make inefficient decisions due to that.  So in some way we already have it in the game.  

[UpUpAway95]

This would be a real annoyance in Ash Canyon, where getting almost anywhere relies on being rested enough to climb a rope.  I'm also concerned about how many nights you're thinking about when you say it gets better  "over time."

ETA:  On the subject of waking during the aurora... I would really like an optional setting to be awoken when an aurora arrives, but I think I'd like to be able to get back to sleep if I choose to ignore it.  I think it's realistic to be able to get back to sleep since I fall asleep all the time with the lights on and the TV running.  Basically, I'd like the opportunity to read all the various computer messages in a single run and sleeping through an aurora is a missed opportunity.

Edited December 30, 2020 by UpUpAway95

[Derek0311]

@UpUpAway95 So, what I was thinking is to have it have be random.  I don’t want it to happen every time.  Maybe it becomes more likely if the event was a “near death” experience.  What I’d want to see is you don’t know you have it until you try and sleep the first time.  Surprise!  Now you got this crap to deal with.  By night two maybe you can rest to 75% or maybe it will wake you every so often after that for 14ish days, but you can easily get back to sleep.  Maybe it could be helped along by some tea before bed.  Maybe keep it an early game problem.  Maybe as the character is attacked more they just accept the new normal and sleep like a baby.  Hinterland can figure out the details if they want it implement something like it.  But I want to stress random again.  Just a thing to add to the overall story in sandbox. 
 

On the other thing.  I can’t sleep with the lights on.  I sleep late in the winter and am up early in the summer, even with curtains.  If the suns up, I’m up, which is why I thought of it.  I’m not in love with it either, just a thought.

[UpUpAway95]

7 minutes ago, Derek0311 said:

@UpUpAway95 So, what I was thinking is to have it have be random.  I don’t want it to happen every time.  Maybe it becomes more likely if the event was a “near death” experience.  What I’d want to see is you don’t know you have it until you try and sleep the first time.  Surprise!  Now you got this crap to deal with.  By night two maybe you can rest to 75% or maybe it will wake you every so often after that for 14ish days, but you can easily get back to sleep.  Maybe it could be helped along by some tea before bed.  Maybe keep it an early game problem.  Maybe as the character is attacked more they just accept the new normal and sleep like a baby.  Hinterland can figure out the details if they want it implement something like it.  But I want to stress random again.  Just a thing to add to the overall story in sandbox. 
 

On the other thing.  I can’t sleep with the lights on.  I sleep late in the winter and am up early in the summer, even with curtains.  If the suns up, I’m up, which is why I thought of it.  I’m not in love with it either, just a thought.

It's an idea... but it does require a lot more thought put into the implementation of it before I'll say I support it.  I will say though that, when compared with other "mental health" ideas I've seen here, I like the basic idea of this much, much better.  It's way better than the several  "addiction" and "depression" proposals.

[Ragwort]

Being woken up randomly is actually an affliction in itself, without putting any other penalty on sleep. For example if you select 8 hours sleep in a bed (other than on Interloper) you'll recover 44% condition, but if you get woken up half-way you'll recover only 28% (14% from each 4-hour sleep period).

IMO this is enough of a gameplay penalty given that a struggle already has many negative effects on the player. I do like the idea!

[Derek0311]

@Ragwort  Good point.  Yeah, that would be enough.

[Lexilogo]

I like this idea more than others when it comes to mental health affliction ideas. Maybe it would be better served as a Cabin Fever styled affliction, where it keeps track of recent animal attacks, and if you've been in a REALLY large amount of fights, you get a nightmares debuff that helps put a damper on potentially abusing Condition regen from sleep to brawl with wolves all day.

As for the aurora influencing sleep, I think it giving a caffeine-esque buff, so you recover Fatigue faster from sleeping and lose it slower from all sources, is extremely reasonable, and would effectively result in some "wake up, it's the aurora" scenarios. It'd make sense IMO that the aurora influences you too, and I prefer the idea of it being a genuinely exciting event than something I sleep through 90% of the time.

This might screw with ingame sleep schedules, but IMO making Pass Time pause Fatigue consumption (we can say the player is napping or something) would be a reasonable way to patch this up if players just want to skip through nighttime.

[Derek0311]

@Lexilogo I like the idea of mental health issues in the game but I still want to be “me” playing.  I don’t want to be a psychiatrist managing a character and yelling at the screen for them to stop being a baby.  I like your ideas, good suggestions.

[ManicManiac]

I'm not in favor of this idea.

Mainly because I simply would not want to see something like this crammed into Survival Mode.  Perhaps for Story Mode, or a dedicated Challenge Mode?  Sure... that would be fine with me.  I just really wouldn't want it in my Survival Sandbox.  I'm just not a fan of things that would create a discontinuity or otherwise interrupt my Survival Mode run.

I don't like the idea for much the same reason as I don't like the ideas about "Sanity Meters" or "Mental Health Mechanics."

I don't think that kind of thing would fit into this game very well.  I mean, for a Lovecraftian / Cosmic Horror type game a "Sanity Meter" works fine and makes sense as a core gameplay mechanic... but I just don't think TLD is that kind of game.

I think that something like a "mental health" or "morale" mechanic would take a lot of nuance to keep it from feeling like a negative consequence rather than just a part of the human condition that it truly is...

[Slow_wandering1]

2 hours ago, Derek0311 said:

@Lexilogo I like the idea of mental health issues in the game but I still want to be “me” playing.  I don’t want to be a psychiatrist managing a character and yelling at the screen for them to stop being a baby.  I like your ideas, good suggestions.

Lol isn't that what we already do?? At least I do.... "RUN YA LITTLE BITCH" "warm up you little girl scout".   "WHY ARE YOU SUCH A PATHETIC WASTE OF EXISTENCE" 😂😂 Seriously WHY IS HE SO PATHETIC 🤣

[Slow_wandering1]

On 12/30/2020 at 10:36 AM, Derek0311 said:

I’ve seen the mini-game idea.  This is a little different.  Let’s say you are attacked by a wolf in the day.  That night when you sleep there is a chance to get hit with a random affliction.  The affliction is insomnia where you can’t sleep to rest past 50% or something.  Your sleep is interrupted by a wolf howl and flashbacks of the attack.  Then you awake, in the dark and can’t sleep past 50%.  Insomnia gets better over time so the sleep cap gets higher over time until it’s gone.  
While I’m on it.  How about a toggle where you can’t sleep indoors during aurora; the lights are too bright?

Not a bad idea if they had designed the playable character better but as is he is already so pathetic it irritates me, no one is really that weak, can't handle the slightest cold temps, has no strength whatsoever, can barely fight back, can't sew, can't start fires, he's literally not worth a damn so adding in more mechanics to make him even more pathetic, I think I'd start hating the game.

[Derek0311]

2 hours ago, Slow_wandering1 said:

Lol isn't that what we already do?? At least I do.... "RUN YA LITTLE BITCH" "warm up you little girl scout".   "WHY ARE YOU SUCH A PATHETIC WASTE OF EXISTENCE" 😂😂 Seriously WHY IS HE SO PATHETIC 🤣

🤣 LOL!!! 👍
 

Edited January 4, 2021 by Derek0311
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