Factors for loot randomness

[Razum]

A while ago someone started this thread https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/39694-more-loot-randomness/ about a thing which would in my opinion greatly increase replayability of the game. The more I play TLD the more I know how items are distributed. And the more boring I find it. Typically you have a semi fixed route depending on your spawn. You directly know the best route for travel so you can loot everything. You know where the Flare gun spawns. You know when you go into a house how much loot it's about to have (in terms of food, clothing, water, etc.). The normal things are just distributed pretty evenly over all locations and you're about to find the same stuff in one house then in the other.

I don't just wanna rant again over the advantage of more loot randomness (just read the old thread), I just had an idea, that really excited me.
We see many dead corpses over Great Bear. They obviously did something before they died. Some of them maybe traveled around just like we as a player do. So they must have looted some places like we do and then freezed somewhere (or died by any other circumstance). So it would be logical, that the places where they went would be (almost) empty and they would have the loot they found on themselves. So when you find them you have much loot, but before it's really scarce. So if you find a normal distribution of things, there was nobody to loot, but if you find nothing, there might be someone in the area (in any cave or car or just on the street) who got all the stuff. Of course they are all dead, I don't wanna question the loneliness part of TLD.

I think, factors like this (loot of an area combined in a corpse) would freshen things up greatly. I also think, you could autogenerate text for notes to give hints where you can find loot. I'm thinking of texts like the ones in the 'Milton supply caches' side story. Just take a standard text and replace some words, like in one game the person put a revolver somewhere in another one it's just some food or a hatchet. Such a system would allow to put rare stuff anywhere and give hints about it. The maps are big, but you don't have to search at every point, since you know where stuff is. With such a system, you wouldn't need to search every last corner, just look at places described by notes. But maybe someone else found it, too, like described above and took it, so you won't find anything there. Then you have to search the corpse.

What ideas do you have guys? And what do you think of mine?

[Razum]

Ok, I got something more. I would argue, it would be beneficial (again for replayability) that you don't at all get the same overall loot between two runs. What I mean is, there are currently things, that you don't know where to get, but you know, you probably get it eventually. Like wool longjohns. You get them at the start or the end, but you know, having looted most of the world, you're gonna have two and you'll never give them away. I would want stuff like this to vary between runs, so you have runs, where you can't find them at all and have to live with 2°C less temperature.
Another example: in the other thread https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/42150-fishing-rod-lures-and-sinkers/
there was this idea of finding fishing rods in the world. My take on distribution would be: You may find it in any house near the water or in fishing huts. But sometimes (and with sometimes I mean in like one of three runs) you can find many of them in one spot. Maybe in the house of someone who repaired/manufactured them, maybe someone who gathered them (then, like I described above, you would find none of them in the area).

This kind of distribution would require, that you don't necessarily need these things in the game (just like fishing rods, since you can craft fishing tackles yourself).

The additional fun beneath needing to adapt on each run is (I hope), that it describes a different 'world' each time. You can think of the things that happened there, that lead to the outcome, the things you find.

[Sito]

Thanks for the call out. I didn't get any notice of it until today.

Anything that makes for more randomness is good for replayability. The locations for saplings is good because they are not always in the same place. But Deer carcasses are always in the same place so on a new run you always know where to go to get them for some food and guts and pelts. It seems to take some of the panic away because I know I can get deer pants or boots relatively quick instead of running and freezing and mostly being almost dead.

With the above said... Maybe HL has already changed this because a deer carcass location in TWM has no carcass anymore.

[Razum]

I'm just gonna keep going. This now isn't about loot randomness but about randomness and I don't wanna start a new thread.

I think, it would be fun, if the player character's abilities would change randomly per run. Traits like strength, speed, weight, size, energy consumption and consumption of the other needs could change in a pretty small frame, so that every run you have to play slightly different, because your abilities are different. In one run, you can fight off wolves pretty well due to more strength, in other runs, you really shouldn't let it come that far, because you would loose almost certainly. I'm not sure, how much of this should be communicated (as a stat or something) or just let to be experienced.

Similarly you could change the traits of animals randomly, like that one wolf will notice you earlier than another or one wolf will follow you farther than the other, be more aggressive, has more fear of fire and so on. In the same sense, different moose could be more or less aggressive, deer react faster or slower and run faster or slower. That would shake up the pretty static hunting experience.

[Sgt Socks]

@Razum

Great ideas Razum.

I do agree it would be more interesting, especially for those of us play consistently again and again, for there to be more randomness in loot and where it appears. Personally I do loot every nook and cranny every time but I'm a ridiculous hoarder. Even so, it would make it much more interesting if I didn't always know what I was going to find and where. Or if I didn't know I would always find the wool longjohns at all, using your example.

I do think the corpses around the map are a wasted opportunity for a more interesting game mechanic, the vast majority of them are empty in my experience. How they could be better utilised I'm not sure, but I do agree with you that their part in our adventures could be more exciting. Other than being simply another empty receptacle, or a receptacle with minor loot, there must be something better to do with them.

I'm not sure about variable character attributes on each run, unless there was an ability to turn it on or off. On the whole I like consistency in my character, but it would be interesting to have the opportunity to roll the dice every now and then.