A few ideas for the wolves issue

[The_Hawk35]

Hmmm it would change my play style a bit as I don't pick up items that deteriorate, primarily fire starting items, until I need to. So if this went into effect I'd need to make sure I gathered them before moving on.

[coryduran]

Yeah I mean I can definitely see it being interpreted that way.. I'm just hoping it isn't the case for sure. Even if I don't feel like it would be a huge impact on me personally, I think it would be a poor move for the game overall, but I would ultimately try to refrain from passing judgement until I played it.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how they changed the wolves... I personally love the wolves as antagonists, but I agree with like 90% of the people playing in that I want them to be better (now if only we could all agree about better means ).

Yeah I know what you mean hawk, I tend to do that same thing, the only time it isn't really true is on my first map (which is typically ML). At the start of my run I typically just pick up everything, once I move to the second map (Which is usually CH for me) is when I start keeping track of what's where and not picking up everything. I know a lot of people take your approach from the get go though, and that's definitely part of why I think the decision to make it a one way travel thing would be bad for the game overall.

[KeldorKatarn]

I played the game for a while now and I can honestly say now that I also think the wolves are basically broken. I'm not complaining about them, I read up on how to beat them, I still think they suck as they are right now.

Here's my reasons:

Any danger in this game is basically slow acting. The player gets feedback for a long time, usually has more than enough time to act to counteract the effects. Be it treating a disease, food poisoning, being hungry or thirsty or cold.

They player has enough time to figure out how the game mechanics and the UI work to keep alive.

Then comes the first wolf attack:

The player has zero idea how combat works at this moment. Reading the tutorial display about what buttons to press takes too long. By the time the player has understood what he's supposed to do, he's already dead or, if lucky, nearly dead.

Wolf attacks compltely breaks with the reast of the game mechanics in several ways:

1st: they come without much of a warning. The player has no idea what's attacking him sometimes (especially the wolf in the dam is a joke. First time that happened to me was at night, I couldn't even see anything)

2nd: The player, being used to having enough time to read up on the controls and trying out the UI, suddenly is faced with a challenge where he has to understand complicated controls (and yes, these combat controls are awkward and complicated on the first few tries) within only a couple of seconds.

3rd: Every action in this game is performed by the left mouse button. Defending against a wolf suddenly requires a combination of buttons and even worse, the actual action (the attack) is done by the RIGHT mouse button. So the instincive panic reaction "MASH THE MOUSE BUTTON" won't do anything. The player will die.

It's the combination of the speed of the attack, the inability to avoid it as an inexperienced player, and the awkwardness of the controls without any time to explain these controls, that are the most frustrating and, so I fear, will scare players off this game. It's WAY too frustrating to die to a wolf attack that you didn't see coming and didn't know how to defend against when you finally started to make some progress in the game.

My suggestions:

1st: make the combat a LOT easier. Remove this left-right-mashing nonsense. making it a simple LMB-attack mashing. Simple hack and slash, that's fine. They player will end up wounded anyway already, it shouldn't be such a huge challenge to even stay alive. Being killed by a lone wolf that has to bite through 5 layers of clothing in the first place is just ridiculous and completely unfair to the player. For most new players being wounded is bad enough already since they need to figure out how the healing mechanics work before bleeding to death.

2nd: Make it LEFT mouse button = attack. It's incredibly unintuitive to attack with RMB when every other relevant action in the game is being performed with LMB.

3rd: In life threatening situations = first combat, first bleeding wound, etc. pause the game while showing the player the necessary keyboard control information or tool tips for a certain screen (e.g. medical inventory). Having a countdown timer tick while you're trying to read something is no fun whatsoever. Give the player time to understand what he's supposed to do on the first try. It's no fun to die because you didn't read fast enough or missunderstood something.

4th: Make the wolves not insta-attack. Every other threat in the games gives you a warning. You get the "freezing" "hungry" "thirsty" "dehydrated" etc warnings. You have no idea when a wolf is closeby or on first playthrough that he's even a danger. Addiditonal to the "trigger radius" add a second radius. Like an "aware" or "danger" radius. Once the player enters that radius tell him "Wolf close by" or something like that. So the player actually has some idea he's in danger. Otherwise it's inconsistent with the rest of the game and incredibly frustrating. Yes it may be less realistic but in a real scenario a wolf wouldn't attack you in the first place. This is about fair and fun gameplay and in my opinion the wolves are breaking with the established conventions that the player learns by playing. That is immersion breaking, frustrating and not fun, because the player has learned some rules and one single game mechanic doesn't follow these rules. The player feels cheated and betrayed.

Just my 2 cents.

[Scyzara]

I played the game for a while now and I can honestly say now that I also think the wolves are basically broken. I'm not complaining about them, I read up on how to beat them, I still think they suck as they are right now.

Here's my reasons:

Any danger in this game is basically slow acting. The player gets feedback for a long time, usually has more than enough time to act to counteract the effects. Be it treating a disease, food poisoning, being hungry or thirsty or cold.

They player has enough time to figure out how the game mechanics and the UI work to keep alive.

Then comes the first wolf attack:

The player has zero idea how combat works at this moment. Reading the tutorial display about what buttons to press takes too long. By the time the player has understood what he's supposed to do, he's already dead or, if lucky, nearly dead.

Wolf attacks compltely breaks with the reast of the game mechanics in several ways:

1st: they come without much of a warning. The player has no idea what's attacking him sometimes (especially the wolf in the dam is a joke. First time that happened to me was at night, I couldn't even see anything)

2nd: The player, being used to having enough time to read up on the controls and trying out the UI, suddenly is faced with a challenge where he has to understand complicated controls (and yes, these combat controls are awkward and complicated on the first few tries) within only a couple of seconds.

3rd: Every action in this game is performed by the left mouse button. Defending against a wolf suddenly requires a combination of buttons and even worse, the actual action (the attack) is done by the RIGHT mouse button. So the instincive panic reaction "MASH THE MOUSE BUTTON" won't do anything. The player will die.

It's the combination of the speed of the attack, the inability to avoid it as an inexperienced player, and the awkwardness of the controls without any time to explain these controls, that are the most frustrating and, so I fear, will scare players off this game. It's WAY too frustrating to die to a wolf attack that you didn't see coming and didn't know how to defend against when you finally started to make some progress in the game.

I agree to most of your points (especially 2 &3) even though I'm a veteran player. However, I don't think that more warnings are really necessary - wolves already bark, snarl, approach you slowly and don't attack instantly (unless you disturb them while eating a deer ofc). The devs worked a lot on the wolf behavior during the last few updates to make hand-fights easier to avoid.

Adding the option to enable a fighting mechanism tutorial screen for new players might be worth a thought.

(As there are probably also players who want to figure out the fighting mechanics themselves, you should be asked whether you want enable the tutorial screens if you start a sandbox game ofc. Those who want to play without any form of hand-holding should be given this choice, but those who want help should imho receive it.)

I agree that the current hand-fighting system is probably not easy to understand for new players. The same is true for options to avoid hand-fighting at all (dropping decoys and using flares/torches). At the moment, new players simply aren't told that dropping decoys is even possible unless they open the keybinding menu and happen to see it by chance. Which is quite a pitty because dropping decoys is both a nice game mechanism AND a great possibility to avoid hand-fights 80% of the time.

I thus think it might be a nice idea to have the option to have some kind of tutorial screen popping up during your first TLD game as soon as a wolf catches your scent and approaches you. The screen might tell you about the default key bindings to drop a decoy and equip a flare. If you get attacked nevertheless, a second tutorial might pop up and explain the hand-fighting mechanics.

Both tutorials should ofc. freeze time and only occur once (the first time you start a TLD game and get noticed by a wolf). Adding such tutorials would of course be some kind of hand-holding and probably break immersion a bit, but that's imho BY FAR the lesser of two evils when compared to losing players because they don't understand the fighting mechanics.

Plus, those who don't want any help can simply choose to disable the tutorials before they start a game.

2nd: Make it LEFT mouse button = attack. It's incredibly unintuitive to attack with RMB when every other relevant action in the game is being performed with LMB.

Changing the fighting system to LMB only would probably make it impossible to kill wolves on the spot, I personally wouldn't be particularly happy about that. I'd rather prefer to keep the current "complicated" system and add a way to explain it to new players. (Or rework the hand-fighting system completely of course.)

[KeldorKatarn]

In my opinion there's two ways to solve this:

What should wolves be? Something that can be either avoided or fought, while fighting them is more risky?

Fine. Then introduce more intuitive fighting mechanics that are explained to the player. This can be done by pausing the game on the first cpl of encounters, giving the player time to read the control explanation screen and also by scaling down the power of the first cpl of wolves so they player gets a chance to train these controls. (No dying and starting over is not training. They player should always have a fair chance to survive, even on first playthrough)

Or should they be a huge danger which insta-kills you and should be avoided?

Also fine, but then get rid of the stupid fights that can't be won most of the time anyway, but instead let me die in a cutscene. Instead introduce proper stealth mechanics which are explained and give proper user feedback (snarling is not feedback. There's tons of sounds in the game, unless it is explained to the player what's dangerous and what isn't, he won't get the message. Snarling might scare me a bit but it tells me by no mean how dangerous wolves really are in this game.)

In short: Either give me proper combat, or give me proper stealth. Currently it's neither. Its an unexplained, awkward, non-functional mess that is obviously irritating a large percentage of the player base.

There's tons of good combat mechanics from RPGs out there and there's also tons of great stealth games out there. Why it is necessary here to reinvent a broken wheel instead of just using intutive mechanics that are proven to work and are familiar to players I don't understand.

[AmericanSteel]

Why not just have a mini game open up the first time you play. You are in a mini zone with more resources and the downed plane. The avatar makes a lot of verbal cues and the player has to jump through some motions.

"Man, my clothing is trashed after that landing. But any landing you can walk away from..."

Player has to search plane for extra clothing. Maybe a dead body too.

"Ok this is better. My pants are barely holding together, maybe..."

Players gets a weak sewing kit and has to repair clothing.

"It is going to get dark soon. I better try to get a fire going..."

There are about 10 to 20 units of wood scattered about from the crashed aircraft. The player finds some matches. They are told to forage for softer wood and a tinder bundle. Player starts a fire.

The next day a wolf comes up to the camp and the player has to fight them off. The wolf is very weak from malnutrition and was draw to the camp by the smell of blood from the dead person. Player goes through a fighting tutorial. Afterwards, the avatar makes some statements about using flares, torches and they wonder how good bait would work. Player has to throw a flare and drop some meat, practicing the operations a few times.

Once they are comfortable the walk out of the "Wreckage Zone" and the game cut scenes to their random drop point. All of the extra gear they looted from the mini zone is gone, assume consumed in the cut scene (which could be days, weeks or even months later).

Next time the player starts the game it asks asks them if they want to proceed through the tutorial or load straight into the game.

[toebar]

Why not just have a mini game open up the first time you play....

I wouldn't be surprised if something similar to this occurs in story mode; I could see it fitting well

Once story mode is released, I think it would be reasonable to expect that most players would do the story mode first (and gain the 'training'), before playing the sandbox.

Nice job on the dialogue btw, I can almost hear it

[AmericanSteel]

Why not just have a mini game open up the first time you play....

...

Nice job on the dialogue btw, I can almost hear it

The real question is did you hear it in the man or woman's voice?? :roll: