Disasters

[UTC-10]

Once a player becomes familiar with the game mechanics and has their routine in what they do, the act of surviving becomes much easier.    One has tools, weapons, clothing, and other supplies.  For some this leads to wanting more of the desperate early days of scrambling for survival so that leads to suggesting more dangers to enliven the day-to-day survival process.

How about disasters?  Nothing like that (the aurora) which presumably put the character into the current survival situation but "darn the jerry can of lamp oil spilled and the spill caught fire and the base is burning down, GET OUT RIGHT NOW with only what can be hastily grabbed or was in character inventory (with a matter of seconds to get out or suffer serious injury)".   After the fire then looking at a location that is now no longer accessible (Class 1 disaster) or, if accessible (Class 2 disaster), maybe all internal contents of use to the character are now gone - all the gear the player had stored, the beds, cabinets, lockers, etc. - functionally an empty shell of a place, nothing useful remains at all, good for shelter from the weather but not much else.  A Class 3 disaster condition would allow for this to occur repeatedly over time as opposed to a one-of-a-kind event. 

Under Class 1 or Class 2 disaster conditions, the character has a short grace period to grab stuff then flee out the door.  If the grace period of "indeterminate" length is exceeded the character will start to get burn injuries with increasingly severe condition loss as well as damage to equipped clothing items and, perhaps, eventually start to lose random items out of their carried inventory.  Once they exit the location, they cannot re-enter.  Also under Class 1 and 2, the player's worst lowest condition would be limited to no lower than 10% though the ability to die due to the fire should be incorporated as an option.  If already under 10% when the event occurs the character dies. 

This could have severe impact to game play.  For instance, a disaster in a base set up at one end of the Cinder Hills mine would mean that the mine is no longer accessible from that end or alternately that the mine is completely inaccessible.  Similarly, a disaster in the Riken or the Old Spence forge site would render the forge unavailable for forgings. 

Given the current game structure, the disaster would tend to be more all or nothing though that could eventually change.  As to what constitutes a base, well, I don't know.  That would be a problem to be worked out in the implementation. 

This would be a custom setting as I know that *I* would not want to be subject to this occurrence in any vanilla game mode.  It should be a positive act on the part of the player to enable such an occurrence.  Alternately, the devs might incorporate this as "at the start of the run" kind of setting, though I think they would put it under Custom Mode.  That would be easier. 

[UpUpAway95]

Programming the changes to the game world setting (i.e. background uninteractible artwork as viewed from near and far) would be a challenge though.  There would have to be an animation for the base burning and triggering a permanent change to the setting showing the area after being burned.  The whole thing would have to trigger while the player is there.  For other disasters, they would have to trigger after the player has already been there and given the open sandbox that the world is, there is no telling when or even whether or not the player will be in a location or for how long.  You're only scratching the surface with the "what constitutes a base?" question.

Also, players seem to abhor "RNG accidents" - i.e. the game telling you that the lamp oil spilled when the player isn't at that moment interacting with that jerry can... or what if, at that base, the player doesn't actually have a jerry can stored there?  I'm pretty sure my Xbox One would not have the power to account for all the variables that would have to be built into the programming to accommodate this with any sort of realism.

An easier "solution" for the custom gamer would be to add options to have any and all ruined items (including meat) despawn from the game world and add an additional settings to current menu items that further increases the decline in respawn rates and how much the world gets colder over time.

Edited May 2, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Stinky socks]

An easier solution would be to have a circle loading bar with a message, " your cabin is in the process of burning down". Then, the cabin is being replaced by a burned down building😁👍

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Stinky socks said:

An easier solution would be to have a circle loading bar with a message, " your cabin is in the process of burning down". Then, the cabin is being replaced by a burned down building😁👍

In other words... an RNG event... not caused by the player and not avoidable in any way by the player... which players generally seem to abhor in games.

[Stinky socks]

Roll the dice. The latter option is difficult to make happen I will assume.

[UTC-10]

Not that I want the devs to actually implement such an event, I would expect that there would be other parameters associated with the possibility of "disaster" to soften or harden the disaster.  Why I made this a discussion rather than a suggestion. 

As part of a customized game, the player would choose to subject his character to the problem.   The possibility of a disaster could even form the basis for a new challenge or maybe even a new event. 

[UpUpAway95]

9 hours ago, UTC-10 said:

Not that I want the devs to actually implement such an event, I would expect that there would be other parameters associated with the possibility of "disaster" to soften or harden the disaster.  Why I made this a discussion rather than a suggestion. 

As part of a customized game, the player would choose to subject his character to the problem.   The possibility of a disaster could even form the basis for a new challenge or maybe even a new event. 

It's worth a discussion, but I honestly don't see it happening for the same reasons I don't see them giving us the ability to build our own houses or to chop down trees.  I also recall having a similar discussion over a year ago and people were largely against adding scripted events into the sandbox game; preferring to keep them as separate challenges.  If implemented, it think it would wind up being a very expensive feature (i.e. cost in time to HL) that the majority of people would do as you say you would... and turn it off.

That said, I understand where you're coming from.  The mid-term "boredom" factor is certainly an issue with runs and adding new zones has generally resulted in "average" runs getting longer overall (at least in my experience and from what I'm seeing on Youtube and Twitch).  Personally, I feel there are simpler ways... e.g. allow the player to increase the difficulty of their runs as they proceed through the world (i.e. move the custom sliders ever further towards increasing difficulty, but still not allow them to reduce them along the way).  Combine this with adding more "top end" to the sliders themselves.. making their most difficult settings even more difficult.  In my mind, all of that would be far easier for HL to implement than adding in points for natural disasters to occur... that is, making enough points in time when disasters could occur and enough places where they could occur to make them meaningful.  A one-off fire at the Camp Office in ML has no meaning for a player who has already looted that zone and doesn't make a "base" there or ever intends to return.  It would take savvy players really just one run to figure out to not make a base at any location subject to that disaster.  Once they know where and when they would trigger, they'd just avoid them.

[UTC-10]

The proposition for a "disaster" event was predicated on it occurring where the player was and not at some random location. 

Part of the discussion would be what path would be preferable to those who might want a significant event to occur that could materially affect their survival process.  Random disasters wherever and whenever they happen or one focused on where the player is when it occurs or something in-between?

 

[UpUpAway95]

26 minutes ago, UTC-10 said:

The proposition for a "disaster" event was predicated on it occurring where the player was and not at some random location. 

Part of the discussion would be what path would be preferable to those who might want a significant event to occur that could materially affect their survival process.  Random disasters wherever and whenever they happen or one focused on where the player is when it occurs or something in-between?

 

Still, disasters would not potentially occur at every location the player could be, unless HL undertakes to program potential disasters for each and every location the player could potentially set up a base (for the fire event described).  That means that, if HL just sets up the potential event at a couple of locations in the game world, players would soon learn where they potential locations were and simply avoid using them as a base.  A fire that happens at, say, the Camp Office, at some point the player is there but after looting it of everything is meaningless (i.e. it does not "damage" the player's collection of things).  There is also the question of programming when (i.e. on what visit to the site) the event occurs.  2nd? 3rd? 4th? 50th?  If you want it to impact the player, it would have to occur only after multiple visits since ti takes several visits to transport stuff to a truly "base" location in this game.  At any rate, there is likely to be a pattern that, eventually, players would become cognizant... and simply avoid triggering.