suggestion Small but necessary changes

[Ghurcb]

Okay, maybe "necessary" is not the best word here. Basically, those are the changes that have no reason not to be made. The game would only benefit from them.

And opening the list...

 

CONSERVATION OF MASS

Weight of many different items in TLD makes no sence.

For example, lichen wound dressing is crafted using 3 pieces of beard lichen. Each one of them weighs 0.01kg. That means, the dressing weighs... 0.1kg. You see, I'm a math student and my instincts tell me that something's wrong here. I just can't put my finger on it...

Jokes aside, either the mass of lichen should be increased to 0.04kg, or it should take more lichen to craft the dressing.

 

Here's the rest of stuff the weight of which should be changed (tell me if I missed something)

Newsprint roll - 0.1kg -> 0.2kg

Coffee and all the teas - 0.1kg -> 0.25kg

Improvised knife - 0.75kg -> 0.7kg

Improvised hatchet - the weight should stay the same, but it would require more metal. 5 -> 9 (sorry, interloper players)

 

Here's another weight-related problem. Canned food! As you eat it, its mass goes down to zero. But it should only reach 0.15kg, as this is the weight of the can. In my opinion, it should work similarly to spray paint.

And while we're on the topic of cans, you should recieve one when you use up all the coffee in a tin. A full tin of coffee would have to weigh 0.2kg instead of 0.05kg and coffee in it would have to be inseparable. I think, this change makes a lot of sence.

 

 

INVENTORY

There are 6 tabs in your inventory. All of the items you find or craft fall into one or two of these categories: fire starting, first aid, clothing, food and drinks, tools, materials.

Unfortunately, some of the items are not stored in the right section of your inventory. A good example is the bandage. Ever since the release of "Faithful cartographer", there's nothing you can craft using it. Still, to this day you can find it among the crafting materials.

The rest of these items are...

 

Water purification tablets - it's a tool (maybe it could also fit into the food and drinks section)

Reclaimed wood - yes, it's a fuel, but it's also a material, used for crafting snares

Hook and line - crafting materials, but not tools (not yet)

Arrow tip and arrow shaft - the same idea. It's a material.

Can of gunpowder - not a tool, a material

Revolver/rifle shell casing - a crafting material

Charcoal - a tool, but also a material

Rose hip/Reishi/Birch  bark tea - first aid, but also drinks

Go! Energy drink - I really don't know if it should count as fist aid. Leave your opinion in replies.

Recycled can - a tool, but also a crafting material.

 

 

CONDITION

Many items have different condition meters. Not all of them should.

Matches, painkillers, antibiotics, antiseptic, money, coffee tins, herbal tea, flare shells, lantern fuel, jerry cans, and water purification tablets should have their condition at 100% all the time. Some of them don't lose their condition at all, others lose it so slowly that it doesn't have any affect on the gameplay. All of them clutter your inventory.

This should be fixed.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS

Read and unread books should look differently.

When you put an empty spray paint can into a container it should disappear.

0% condition food, on the other hand, shouldn't. (I can still eat it when I'm desperate)

Toilet water shouldn't be potable (If I have to boil snow from Timberwolf Mountain, I should have no choice but to boil this water too. Actually, this change would make purification tablets way more useful)

If one of those DLC's Hinterland keep teasing will allow us to eat more than one cat tail stalk at a time, we all are going to buy it.

Seriously, all of us want to be able to eat more cat tails. PLEASE! I BEG YOU!

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY YEARS OF MY LIFE I SPENT EATING CAT TAIL STALKS?!

At least, make eating them faster.

 

That's it! Leave your own ideas in the replies section. If you have any questions or (constructive) criticisms let me know!

Edited March 6, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Dogelsagod]

Sound like a good idea but the reason coffee gets heavier I because of the water.

[Leeanda]

I have to agree about the cat tails ,but wouldn't it be difficult to implement it into the game without affecting the rest of the items.?if you know what I mean? Sorry not good at putting thought into print! 

[Ghurcb]

1 hour ago, Dogelsagod said:

Sound like a good idea but the reason coffee gets heavier I because of the water.

Well, you use 0.25L of water (0.25kg) to make a cup of coffee that only weighs 0.1kg. Where did 60% of water go?

Still, this 0.1kg of coffee restores as much hydration as 0.25kg (0.25L) of water. Somehow, in the world of TLD coffee is more hydrating then the water itself.

Exactly the same thing applies to herbal/rose hip/birch bark/reishi tea.

[Dogelsagod]

You make a good point.

[Razum]

This is a solid list, great!

[Ghurcb]

A couple corrections here

1) Turns out, reclaimed wood already counts as "material". My bad.

2) Now that I think about it, newsprint roll is just a newsprint, but... Rolled. It would be weird for it to weigh twice as much. Instead, I think, it should switch places with "Stack of papers". That way, stack of papers would weigh 0.2kg and could be turned into 4 pieces of tinder. "Newsprint roll" would be completely analogous to "newsprint" (because they are the same thing)

[peteloud]

I agree with most of of the points tht you are making.  Well done for checking them out and listing them.

But I'd rather have HTL spend their time and resources finishing of Episode 5 and getting on with their next project.

[Ghurcb]

6 hours ago, peteloud said:

I agree with most of of the points tht you are making.  Well done for checking them out and listing them.

But I'd rather have HTL spend their time and resources finishing of Episode 5 and getting on with their next project.

Making a whole episode is A LOT of work. Adding most of these changes would probably only take a week.

They are more like bug-fixes, really.

[Bearimpaler101]

On 3/6/2022 at 8:57 AM, Ghurcb said:

Okay, maybe "necessary" is not the best word here. Basically, those are the changes that have no reason not to be made. The game would only benefit from them.

And opening the list...

 

CONSERVATION OF MASS

Weight of many different items in TLD makes no sence.

For example, lichen wound dressing is crafted using 3 pieces of beard lichen. Each one of them weighs 0.01kg. That means, the dressing weighs... 0.1kg. You see, I'm a math student and my instincts tell me that something's wrong here. I just can't put my finger on it...

Jokes aside, either the mass of lichen should be increased to 0.04kg, or it should take more lichen to craft the dressing.

 

Here's the rest of stuff the weight of which should be changed (tell me if I missed something)

Newsprint roll - 0.1kg -> 0.2kg

Coffee and all the teas - 0.1kg -> 0.25kg

Improvised knife - 0.75kg -> 0.7kg

Improvised hatchet - the weight should stay the same, but it would require more metal. 5 -> 9 (sorry, interloper players)

 

Here's another weight-related problem. Canned food! As you eat it, its mass goes down to zero. But it should only reach 0.15kg, as this is the weight of the can. In my opinion, it should work similarly to spray paint.

And while we're on the topic of cans, you should recieve one when you use up all the coffee in a tin. A full tin of coffee would have to weigh 0.2kg instead of 0.05kg and coffee in it would have to be inseparable. I think, this change makes a lot of sence.

 

 

INVENTORY

There are 6 tabs in your inventory. All of the items you find or craft fall into one or two of these categories: fire starting, first aid, clothing, food and drinks, tools, materials.

Unfortunately, some of the items are not stored in the right section of your inventory. A good example is the bandage. Ever since the release of "Faithful cartographer", there's nothing you can craft using it. Still, to this day you can find it among the crafting materials.

The rest of these items are...

 

Water purification tablets - it's a tool (maybe it could also fit into the food and drinks section)

Reclaimed wood - yes, it's a fuel, but it's also a material, used for crafting snares

Hook and line - crafting materials, but not tools (not yet)

Arrow tip and arrow shaft - the same idea. It's a material.

Can of gunpowder - not a tool, a material

Revolver/rifle shell casing - a crafting material

Charcoal - a tool, but also a material

Rose hip/Reishi/Birch  bark tea - first aid, but also drinks

Go! Energy drink - I really don't know if it should count as fist aid. Leave your opinion in replies.

Recycled can - a tool, but also a crafting material.

 

 

CONDITION

Many items have different condition meters. Not all of them should.

Matches, painkillers, antibiotics, antiseptic, money, coffee tins, herbal tea, flare shells, lantern fuel, jerry cans, and water purification tablets should have their condition at 100% all the time. Some of them don't lose their condition at all, others lose it so slowly that it doesn't have any affect on the gameplay. All of them clutter your inventory.

This should be fixed.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS

Read and unread books should look differently.

When you put an empty spray paint can into a container it should disappear.

0% condition food, on the other hand, shouldn't. (I can still eat it when I'm desperate)

Toilet water shouldn't be potable (If I have to boil snow from Timberwolf Mountain, I should have no choice but to boil this water too. Actually, this change would make purification tablets way more useful)

If one of those DLC's Hinterland keep teasing will allow us to eat more than one cat tail stalk at a time, we all are going to buy it.

Seriously, all of us want to be able to eat more cat tails. PLEASE! I BEG YOU!

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY YEARS OF MY LIFE I SPENT EATING CAT TAIL STALKS?!

At least, make eating them faster.

 

That's it! Leave your own ideas in the replies section. If you have any questions or (constructive) criticisms let me know!

But toilet water is potable in real life

[Ghurcb]

1 hour ago, Bearimpaler101 said:

But toilet water is potable in real life

The water in the pipes might be potable, but there's no guarantee that the tank itself is clean. Not to mention the amount of bacteria that would grow during the years of this water staying still (temperature indoors is usually barely below 0).

[Bearimpaler101]

True very true

[UpUpAway95]

On 3/10/2022 at 9:48 PM, Ghurcb said:

The water in the pipes might be potable, but there's no guarantee that the tank itself is clean. Not to mention the amount of bacteria that would grow during the years of this water staying still (temperature indoors is usually barely below 0).

Cleanliness isn't the issue - the pipes to the toilet tank would have frozen long before Will/Astrid gets there.  Simplest solution would be to have no unfrozen water available in the game.

Easy solution to the medicinal tea issue... reskin the containers to be vials of "concentrated" dosages of tea, each still weighing only 0.10 kg... but the process of making them involves most of the water being boiled away to make the concentrated dosage.  Drinking them no longer provides calories or hydration... just the medicine for which they are intended.  Rebalance by increasing drops of herbal tea bags and coffee tins, but each of those "cups" weighs 0.25 kg once made.  Reskin those to show a mini (1-cup) thermos for each instead of a ceramic cup.  Of course, the player would no longer have the convenience of being able to make "warming teas" from the plant-based medicinal ingredients.  In some areas, interloper would get much tougher... much tougher staying warm without some early plant-baed teas while climbing ropes after starting in Ash Canyon.

Honestly, I find all of this discussion about "realistic" weights rather nitpicky... and changing it would not really do anything positive regarding how the game flows.  As someone else mentioned above... I'd rather HL spend their time finishing story mode.  As unrealistic as it may be... it works in game.

[Ghurcb]

17 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Honestly, I find all of this discussion about "realistic" weights rather nitpicky... and changing it would not really do anything positive regarding how the game flows.  As someone else mentioned above... I'd rather HL spend their time finishing story mode.  As unrealistic as it may be... it works in game.

Well, it's not about them being "realistic", I just want them to make sence. Like, you can't get five when adding two and two together.

Yeah... It is a bit nitpicky. But most of this stuff can be fixed by changing a single line of game's code. Barely a distraction from making episode 5.

22 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Easy solution to the medicinal tea issue... reskin the containers to be vials of "concentrated" dosages of tea, each still weighing only 0.10 kg... but the process of making them involves most of the water being boiled away to make the concentrated dosage.  Drinking them no longer provides calories or hydration... just the medicine for which they are intended.  Rebalance by increasing drops of herbal tea bags and coffee tins, but each of those "cups" weighs 0.25 kg once made.  Reskin those to show a mini (1-cup) thermos for each instead of a ceramic cup.

THIS, on the other hand, is a lot of work. And a change big enough for people to hate it. "Less is more", y'know?

[UpUpAway95]

4 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

Well, it's not about them being "realistic", I just want them to make sence. Like, you can't get five when adding two and two together.

Yeah... It is a bit nitpicky. But most of this stuff can be fixed by changing a single line of game's code. Barely a distraction from making episode 5.

THIS, on the other hand, is a lot of work. And a change big enough for people to hate it. "Less is more", y'know?

However, a reskin to a vial that assumes most of the water is boiled away makes more sense than carrying around a ceramic cup with 0.25 kg of tea in it... and it has a meaningful impact on the gameplay... as opposed to just nitpicking at the carry weight of it.  In this case... my preference was stated... that they don't bother to change any of it at this point and focus on completing the story.  It still takes time to change all those single lines of code to adjust the weights... and, again, it has almost no meaningful positive impact on how the gameplay flows.  Time wasted is still wasted... even if it's less work.

Any player can make a meaningful adjustment in how they play if carrying around teas in open cups that weigh less than the equivalent water makes no sense to them... just carry them around in only their dried prepared form and make them 1 at a time as needed (which is entirely realistic).  It will, of course, require the starting of many more fires and make staying warm from teas less convenient... slowing down and making the gameplay more tedious, but it still can be done if the player so desires.

Edited March 12, 2022 by UpUpAway95

[Ghurcb]

Addition:

Bandage 0.1kg -> 0.05kg (you can make two of them out of 0.1kg cloth)

Also those lines of text like "that treatment did nothing", "can smashed open, 94% was lost" etc. should appear above the inventory UI, if whatever caused them happened in the inventory.

[Kranium]

Regarding cattails, because it's a big deal for me since I've used them IRL for many things: they are a much bigger source of food & crafting material than this game allows.

[Ghurcb]

On 3/15/2022 at 2:05 AM, Kranium said:

Regarding cattails, because it's a big deal for me since I've used them IRL for many things: they are a much bigger source of food & crafting material than this game allows.

That's interesting, how do you think they should be used as a crafting material?

[Kranium]

Simplest would be using the actual "tails" as stuffing/insulation. Natives used them in this way to keep them warmer in winter, also to stuff blankets, pillows & bedrolls.

Soak a cattail in fat/oil (fish oil in game) and you get a torch that can burn for hours, as well as being very windproof (skip to 9:40 to see how windproof it is):

 

 

...and let's not forget the ability to weave the long leaves of the plant. Perfect for making everything from a rain hat to a fish trap all the way up to a waterproof lean-to. And cordage.

 

Cattails are basically a survivalists supermarket. There's more to it than what I listed here.

 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by Kranium

[Bimbobjoejr.]

Personally, the only nitpick I have regarding item weight is why an animal quarter weighs twice as much as the meat that is inside. That is the only thing that doesn't make sense to me. If there is bone in there, it would make sense if there was a little more weight, but not doubling it.

[Ghurcb]

15 hours ago, Bimbobjoejr. said:

Personally, the only nitpick I have regarding item weight is why an animal quarter weighs twice as much as the meat that is inside. That is the only thing that doesn't make sense to me. If there is bone in there, it would make sense if there was a little more weight, but not doubling it.

Well, it seems like when quartering an animal in TLD you take everything but head and legs. So it would make sence for a quarter to weigh a lot.

It is strange, though, how little meat those animals have on them. It would make a lot more sence if this amount of meat would increase with your carcass harvesting skill (implying that initially the survivor isn't skilled enough to harvest all of it).

BTW, I think quartering should destroy the animal's hide (unless you harvested it before). In real life, if you just chop a moose into pieces, its hide wouldn't be exactly... Intact.

[Ghurcb]

And so continues my crusade in the name of Law of Conservation of Mass...

Turns out, I completely overlooked the clothing items. Bearskin Coat, for example, is crafted from 2 Bear Hides (1kg each) and 4 Cured Guts (0.1kg each), but instead of 2.4kg, it weighs 5kg. The solution is simple

Change the recipe to require 5 bear hides

Change the weight of a bear hide.

Actually, a lot of clothing items have this issue, so here's my list of possible changes.

 

Rabbit Pelt - 0.1kg -> 0.25kg

Deer Hide - 0.5kg -> 1kg

Wolf Hide - 0.75kg -> 1kg

Bear Hide - 1kg -> 3kg

Moose Hide - 5kg -> 4kg

 

I think, changing the weights of the pelts is the best option, as increasing the number of pelts needed to craft a clothing item would make the game too hard, while changing the weights of clothes would ruin the balance (keep dreaming of 2.4kg Bearskin Coat). This would also make the weights more realistic. I mean, seriously, right now a bear hide weighs as much as 2 cans of peaches. And then suddenly, a moose hide has 5 times that weight.

But even with these changes the moose-hide satchel weighs too little (0.25kg). You're using less than 5% of moose hide to craft it. How wasteful!

 

Moose-hide Satchel - 0.25kg -> 2kg (but becomes weightless when equipped)

Edited May 5, 2022 by Ghurcb

[Leeanda]

Everything weighs less when equipped anyway but I kinda get your point.

[Bearimpaler101]

It wouldn't make sense to make bear hide  3kg make it 2/2.5 because 3kg would mean your wasting 1kg of the hides that's wrong see it on to the side 

[Ghurcb]

9 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Everything weighs less when equipped anyway but I kinda get your point.

Yeah, but I think the satchel should be weightless when equipped. Otherwise, it would give you 5kg carry capacity bonus, but itself weigh 1.5kg. Right now it weighs 175g when equipped, which makes no difference. But if the mass of the satchel is going to be increased, that might become a problem.