Rebalancing Resource Availability and Difficulty Model

[codyh]

First off I love this game, great work especially on the environment and ambiance, it makes me feel so lonely I usually have to listen to a podcast or something to feel people around. I love interloper and after a bunch of playthroughs myself and also watching Twitch streamers I have ideas I'd like to share.

I'm mainly wanting to address what I see as an issue with the difficulty model (particularly in interloper) and the way resource constraints are managed. One or two of these I can already see have been impacted by item changes in the recent release but these ideas largely are separate to those changes.

The game issues I see are:

• Food is excessively available and becomes a non-constraint past the very early game (1-3 days in most modes, 10-14 in interloper) and allows unlimited stockpiling
• Item and tool constraints mean interloper early and mid game is formulaic, late game lacks meaningful objectives beyond what a player RPs. Replays lack variability.
• Constraints designed to push players outside create immersion-breaking and non-intuitive meta gameplay
• Due to lack of other options to create risk, excessive weight placed on warmth in interloper for creating challenge.

When looking at solutions, I'm trying to work towards a few principles that I think work toward a fun and highly replayable game:

• Control difficulty through resource pressure not by limiting player choice options
• Avoid using punishment as a way of promoting desired outcomes (instead use rewards as positive pressure)
• Provide variability in replays, try to ensure different playthroughs can be as different as possible
• Provide a rhythm to the game intensity. Allow for intense moments, periods of relaxation and periods of purposeful preparation in between (think a sine wave of pressure)

With that in mind here's my ideas:

1. Make Calories Scarce

There are several ways I suggest to increase calorie scarcity.

• With increased difficulty, increase the respawn time of game (excluding rabbits?). By interloper, either they do not respawn at all or better they have a random respawn time between 1 week and 1 year. Or maybe an additional fixed chance of never respawning.

This is the primary change, that will drastically influence the way people play. With low/no game respawns, players will be forced to migrate far for food. The players will feel the pressure of hunger and need to go out increasingly further afield for calories, making them take risks. With this we can also start to take the constraints off of indoor play since people will have a limited ability to stay in one place.

For higher difficulties, predators are easily manageable anyway. I think having a long but random respawn is more likely to catch an experience player unaware, or at least force them to exercise caution since they really don't know when the bear/wolf/cougar will come back. Or, with a no-respawn model we would really get to see how far people could survive as a challenge.

• Make meat lose caloric value as condition falls. Starting at 50% condition make it drop in caloric density linearly.

This will prevent infinite stockpiling of meat. We want to see players living with limited resources, killing more or less when they need food and with a very limited stockpile. This is another way to keep people moving and always having some level of resource risk.

• Make starvation cost maximum fatigue. When players use the starvation strategy, this should build up a negative modifier that saps maximum fatigue. After several weeks of starvation this should drop max fatigue to zero, effectively killing the player slowly. The recovery rate should be such that 18 hours without starvation compensates for 6 hours of starvation, and having the "well fed bonus" multiples the recovery rate while active (2-3x).

This change will eliminate the ability of players to long-term starve themselves to conserve calories, while still using it as a short-term strategy. Players will then have three food strategies:

• Keep yourself fully fed to get the carry bonus
• Starve yourself to conserve energy (max a few weeks), saving 75% in short term
• Manage starvation to about 6h/day to keep fatigue drop within 0-10%, saving you up to 25% in total calories and a small fatigue loss but is long term maintainable

This new third strategy provides a difficult to manage but useful meta strategy to complement the greatly reduced food availability. I prefer this model to just increasing the condition loss of starvation because it preserves temporary starvation as a player strategy (more options are better).

2. Provide more playstyle options in early/mid interloper

This set of suggestions particularly relate to interloper, where the lack of tools and high end equipment means overall gameplay lacks variability. Each replay is very similar and the player is pushed into a set of specific decisions especially in the early game. These changes are aimed at providing more options and variability to each playthrough.

• Allow all items, including high end items to be spawned in interloper at extremely low chance (1-2%)

A low spawn rate for high end equipment will mean that on a particular playthrough there may be for example 0-2 rifles anywhere in the world. This will have a few impacts, but most importantly it will give the player a reason to go looking. They may not find what they are looking for, but there's a good chance they'll find at least 1-2 pieces of high end equipment by careful searching and this will help make their playthrough unique. They could even get lucky and find a rifle in their first region which will dramatically shape their game and make each play feel different.

Most importantly, the player will always have a new objective to go out into the world - to find another high end piece if it exists.

• Make the makeshift knife and hatchet, makeshift. Allow the player to build the knife with scrap metal and cloth (1h) and the hatchet with stones and sticks and cloth (2h). These should take double condition damage from use, cannot be repaired and are slower than the real knife and hatchet. The forge variants should be the real knife and hatchet.

This change will allow the early-mid game interloper to avoid having to run to a forge immediately. The current model is just too restrictive, it makes every playthrough look identical in the early game. This will allow players to spend a little more time in their early regions before eventually going and constructing proper tools. Ultimately we want to help each playthrough feel different, and to do that we need to allow the player to make different decisions.

• Provide 3(?) matches for the interloper start and remove the guaranteed spawns

I'm not sure on the right number here, but I think not providing matches is a mistake. It makes every interloper starting run a direct sprint to the nearest guaranteed matches. This requires the game to guarantee matches in each interloper starting region (which is against the playthrough variability principle).

Three would be wild, because there's a small chance a player could fail all three on their first fire. Players could choose to find a book before lighting to reduce the chance, they could take their chances in the wild with sticks. They'd have the option of making their own risk choice. Depending on where they start, this could result in very different decisions and impacts on early game.

3. Improve indoor and general QOL

Many of the indoor mechanics are geared around encouraging players to spend more time outside. I believe this is a result of the excessive reliance on the warmth resource and the fact that food has been excessively available. With the food changes, this will no longer be a problem. People will have great difficulty spending extended periods indoors due to food scarcity and will eventually need to go far afield to eat.

• Remove cabin fever and replace with a "hardiness" bonus for consistently being outside. Instead of punishing people for being inside, give them a minor air temp bonus for consistently living outside (as in your body has adapted to the colder environment by consistently being outside). This bonus can build up as a player spends more than a certain number outdoors average over 7 days period. Maybe bonus maxes out at 24h and is zero at 18h average?
• Make covered and indoor fires last longer in embers mode. Once a fire burns out its primary fuel source it should stay in embers mode, reducing in temperature by 1 degree/minute until reaching zero, at which point it goes out completely. This rate should be impacted positively or negatively by whether it is enclosed (longer), the ambient temperature (higher ambient longer embers) and wind (more wind faster drop). This will make indoor fires overall last longer in useful cooking time, and give outdoor very hot fires a short bonus to lifetime.
• Make meat condition drop depend on being in containers, not inside/outside. This mainly resolves the weird meta of people cooking and leaving meat of the house and lying around on the ground, which is immersion breaking. It also greatly increases usefulness of stone caches, which should have the stone requirement halved. In the future I think open meat on the ground should attract predators so this is a good leading change.
• Remove condition drop of long term processed food goods. As a limited resource, I think it is better for gameplay balance to allow these to stay at full condition. It allows stacking and preservation as an emergency supply, and they already last long a long time. Or, maybe just eliminate it while in containers.
• Increase ambient light indoors, especially in morning/dusk. We don't need to be punishing people for being inside anymore, just fix it.

Particularly the first two changes will minimise the weird meta behaviour of setting up open fires directly outside a house for cooking. Let people cook inside if they want! It is extremely odd, and with the food resource crunch we no longer have to worry about people spending too much time indoors.

4. Make weather more volatile with increased difficulty

This one is fairly straightforward. I think in interloper especially there is a little too much reliance on horrible ambient temperatures. To my mind this is has happened because of the lack of other avenues to present player risk, but again with the proposed food changes this will no longer be the case.

I think instead of relying on ambient, we should be creating more variability in weather. For example, I think pleasant valley should be *actually pleasant* while sunny and without wind, even on interloper. Make it one of the warmest regions during a sunny day! A good equipped interloper should have positive warmth during the good times even in late game and this should encourage them to go out hunting.

Then a blizzard hits. And pleasant valley gets decidedly unpleasant. I want to see random length blizzards that can last multiple days, stretching a players limited food stocks to the breaking point. The twin changes of reducing food stocks and creating weather volatility that can suddenly root a player on the spot for multiple days will create moments of risk. Since players will be more often migrating between regions and with very low food stocks, there will be more opportunities for this kind of situation.

The flip being, when the pressure is over the player gets a beautiful day and we give them the chance for the adrenalin to drop before we hit them again. We want players to take risks and go out into the world, we want them to think about preparing for bad times (like collecting cedar/fir) and create climaxes in the game around a confluence of resource pressures.

More periods of amenable weather will also open more game mechanics to interlopers that are often closed, like mapping, collecting heavy wood, exploration and just relaxing in between times of intensity.

There's a lot here and I'm sure I forgot some things. I've tried to stick to ideas that sit either completely within existing mechanics or are relatively minor (adding random chances to respawn time for e.g.).

Edited December 7, 2022 by codyh
Realised I can use colours

[Admin]

Thank you for providing such thoughtful, in-depth feedback. While we can't promise to implement these changes, we appreciate the opportunity to review your suggestions. Please don't hesitate to post again in the future if you have additional ideas. 

[codyh]

Hi thanks for responding! Of course I wouldn't expect a promise or these specific changes. The main outcome I'm hoping for is to focus attention on what I see are the main areas for improvement of game balance, that being food availability (and the overpowered starvation workaround), playthrough variability and to a lesser extent indoor QOL.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas and perspectives, this is my gentle pressure.

Thanks again for putting your time and love into this game, it has been a real treat. As an engineer myself I appreciate all the work that goes into these long term iterative projects.

Edited December 7, 2022 by codyh

[codyh]

I was just thinking of a really simple way to limit the overeffectiveness of starvation.

If calorie use over the last few days is below a certain amount,  then apply a "malnourished" condition, which drops maximum fatigue by 25% and reduces carry weight by 5kg.

To clear the condition you would need three days without starvation (same as well fed).

This would provide an opposing condition to the well fed bonus and be a starting point to overall making food more important.

Ultimately, I don't think there's any way to balance the calorie resource without addressing the overpowered starvation strategy. Being able to cut food intake by ~75% without any significant costs makes any attempt to balance food impossible.

[Fuarian]

I like meta changes like these.

[Pimprle]

Carefully minded. But knife would be too easy. I would leave that stone hatchet as worse version of crafted hatchet. It can help you, but it should not be too good.

Crafting makeshift instead real hatchet and knife in forge is better for atmosphere. It looks its made by hand.

 

Removing condition would be nice, like matches and some of processed food, to easy stack same items.

 

Magnifying glass condition would affect start fire success. (result probability of succes with 100 % glass x cond of glass). Maybe little bit sensitive for lighting, like requiring direct sight to the sun and clean weather.

 

Rifle for interloper is not fauvorite choice, unless you mean broken rifle with like 3 casings, which you can repair and reload 3 cartridges in total.

 

 

[codyh]

Quote

Rifle for interloper is not fauvorite choice, unless you mean broken rifle with like 3 casings, which you can repair and reload 3 cartridges in total.

If we had rifles with low, random spawn chance, and very low lootable ammo (no packs, just single bullets rarely and a good amount of spent casings in various places), it would provide some incentive to craft ammo. This would provide interlopers with a meaningful objective.

Ammunition crafting is currently underutilised as a mechanic due to the amount of work required and risk involved. In most playstyles world ammo is sufficient to last a long time so players don't often craft unless they really want to.

People spend most of their time in a game working toward a series of objectives - initially just survive, but then get your base set up, find the best equipment, etc. It's what motivates people to keep playing. Finding a weapon and going through the significant work of crafting ammo for it would be one more way to give a meaningful objective to interlopers.

It wouldn't imbalance the game, since the work of actually finding one and getting a meaningful amount of ammo would make it strictly a mid-late game option. We already have the flare gun which has fixed locations but limited ammo, and the bow which is extremely available and has highly available ammo but must be crafted. The firearms would sit between these, being randomly available, with very limited ammo, but (with lots of work) able to craft more.

In general I think the principle we should follow is to create challenge through resource constraints rather than removing player options, in this case by limiting ammunition availability and making players invest time for the reward of a firearm.

[codyh]

I imagine if you could find 6-12 rounds lootable (average 9 std dev 3), plus another 12-24 casings that would give you total 18-36 rounds craftable at a time. We could also add in a 5% loss chance (casing damaged after firing).

Due to the difficulty of crafting new ammunition it would limit its use, maybe players reserve it for bear or moose hunting. 

There's got to be a balance in there between investment vs reward. Suffering a 4kg weight debuff + ammo crafting providing a benefit of easier large game hunting

[Pimprle]

5% loss is nice, but key thing is to make spawning ejected cartridge after its animation (it ejects to right side), not directly under your foot, like now.

Also like in Road to Vostok, manual cycling would be nice detail (tap R after shot will cycle action of rifle, double tap will reload the rifle).

[Ghurcb]

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• With increased difficulty, increase the respawn time of game (excluding rabbits?)

I'm not sure about this one. Being able to clear an area from the wolves for a long period of time (or permanently) will only make the game easier. As to the deer, the long dark doesn't seem to encourage hunting them before you reach the late game. And if we had a set number of deer in each region, they would all be killed by wolves before you even get interested in hunting them, so at least some amount of respawning should remain.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Make meat lose caloric value as condition falls

Okay, if that was implemented, hunting moose for meat would be completely off the table. Even now, when you harvest those 40kg, most of it goes bad before you eat all of it. And if as the condition deteriorated, calories decreased... It would be even worse. Not to mention that the caloric value of meat is unrealistically low already, further decreasing it is not something my suspension of disbelief could deal with.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Make starvation cost maximum fatigue

Actually, this thing is already in the game. If you starve for 24 hours, you would start losing 2% of your max. fatigue per hour. The lowest it would go, though, is 50%, and once you're not hungry it would start recovering at the rate of 5% per hour. But I think it would be neat if this was more of an issue on higher difficulties. Personally, the well fed bonus is more than enough to keep me from starving my survivor.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Allow all items, including high end items to be spawned in interloper at extremely low chance (1-2%)

100% for it. I think it's a shame that Interloper is so lacking in content, compared to stalker. You have no guns, and thus gunsmithing skill is useless. If it weren't for noisemakers, gunpowder and ammunition workbench would be useless too. Allowing the "prohibited" items, but limiting them to 1-2 per world would massively enrich the experience. But if you get carried away and get your rifle to 0% condition, it's gone for good.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Make the makeshift knife and hatchet, makeshift

Sure, why not? Right now, on every difficulty other then interloper there's no need to craft knives and hatchets in the forge. The only thing you use it for is arrowheads, and even those you can recycle either from your broken arrows or those you find in the world. Having the forged items be equal to those you find, would make forges a little more useful. And having a way to craft improvised tools on workbenches would make interloper experience more diverse.

On the other hand, if Hinterland don't add more recipes for forges, the only unique use they would have would be making arrowheads, and with the new fire-hardened arrows even those would become unnecessary. Now that I think about it, forges are only useful when you play on interloper...

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Provide 3(?) matches for the interloper start and remove the guaranteed spawns

Again, 100% for it.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Remove cabin fever and replace with a "hardiness" bonus for consistently being outside

Yeah, I believe that cabin fever is a very crude solution to the situation where players "hibernate" inside their base for weeks. Positive reinforcement would be much more well-recieved. As I said, I don't starve my survivor just because of some fatigue decrease, I want to keep my well-fed bonus. I think a better reward for spending time outside would be a bonus to your max. stamina. Something like +20% for spending more than 6 hours outdoors for 7 days in a row. Also, I wouldn't discard cabin fever completely, because I believe it can be improved. I'd go with more of a horror-route, where cabin fever would cause creepy music to play and you'd hear things like footsteps or knocking. The Long Dark can be a scary game. As to what cabin fever should do to the character, rather than player, instead of not letting you do anything, I'd go with the good old max. fatigue reduction. That would still force people out of their hiding holes, but they would have the time to make this choice on their own.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Make covered and indoor fires last longer in embers mode

Sure, why not? I'd also remove the bonus to the burning time when outside, as it's rather confusing.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Make meat condition drop depend on being in containers, not inside/outside

I think the idea here is that meat would last longer in a colder environment, but every environment in TLD is comparable to a refrigerator, be it inside or outside. But yeah, being left on the floor can't be sanitary.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Remove condition drop of long term processed food goods

Yes, it doesn't make much sense how the food that's supposed to last for years suddenly goes bad shortly after you find it. But if that were the case, the poisoning affliction would be even less of an issue. And personally, I'd like for it to be MORE of an issue, not something you can sleep off.

I think it would be best if the food (other than meat and fish) didn't decrease in condition, BUT the condition would still range from 0% to 100%.

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

• Increase ambient light indoors, especially in morning/dusk

Personally, I just use a lantern to find my way outside in the morning. If it's still dark outside, it should be dark indoors too, and in TLD sky doesn't get bright right as you see the top rays of the sun on your sundial. What I do find weird are the objects that are lit by nothing, like the moose head in the community center that you can see even in the middle of the night. WHERE'S THE LIGHT SOURCE?!

On 12/7/2022 at 11:03 PM, codyh said:

For example, I think pleasant valley should be *actually pleasant* while sunny and without wind, even on interloper. Make it one of the warmest regions during a sunny day! A good equipped interloper should have positive warmth during the good times even in late game and this should encourage them to go out hunting.

Then a blizzard hits. And pleasant valley gets decidedly unpleasant.

THAT sounds like an amazing idea. Hinterland, please, write this down. This is a great way to give a region a better sense of identity.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Ghurcb

[codyh]

23 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

I'm not sure about this one. Being able to clear an area from the wolves for a long period of time (or permanently) will only make the game easier. As to the deer, the long dark doesn't seem to encourage hunting them before you reach the late game. And if we had a set number of deer in each region, they would all be killed by wolves before you even get interested in hunting them, so at least some amount of respawning should remain

it’s going to be a difficult area to balance since predators are both a threat and food source.

the problem is frequent respawns plus unlimited meat stockpiling together eliminate food scarcity especially later in the game. I’ve had, and I’ve seen others have months of food stockpiled. Add to this a 75% reduction in consumption through starvation and it becomes a non-issue as soon as you have a bow.  
 

I think ultimately all three of those need to be addressed to solve food scarcity. 
 

I wouldn’t suggest making all the changes at once. I think a good starting point would be to make food inedible when ruined, then start tweaking condition drop and respawn times in higher difficulty and see the results on gameplay. these are tiny changes with potentially significant impacts. I also think some starvation debuff would be prudent 
 

a good solution for the moose/bear problem would be to add salting. If salt is a limited resource it would allow longer preservation on a limited basis. 
 

On the issue of predators reducing over time, I think most interlopers aren’t even slightly threatened by wolves. I wonder if random length respawns (extending over time but random) would be more likely to catch an experienced interloper unaware.

killing an interloper should come to pressures working together - food scarcity forcing them to travel, bad weather catching them when they do, and predators being the surprise

but in general I would prefer interloper wolves just to randomly roam the map, I’m really not a fan of fixed locations and routes

edit: I have no idea why parasites only exist in predators but salting should make meat safe

Edited December 15, 2022 by codyh

[codyh]

23 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

Actually, this thing is already in the game. If you starve for 24 hours, you would start losing 2% of your max. fatigue per hour. The lowest it would go, though, is 50%, and once you're not hungry it would start recovering at the rate of 5% per hour. But I think it would be neat if this was more of an issue on higher difficulties. Personally, the well fed bonus is more than enough to keep me from starving my survivor.

This model doesn’t work with starvation strategy since you don’t actually starve for 24h, just eat the min calories to sleep.

Maybe something even simpler would be sufficient? Like a small max walk speed debuff while starving and higher fatigue drain rate?

Anyway a starvation debuff would only ever be important outside the first two weeks if food availability is significantly lowered

[epower]

Thank you @codyh for taking the time to start this most interesting discussion.  Many good points.  I'll address three that immediately jumped out at me as potential game-changers.

1. All gear present on lower availability levels , albeit at 1-2%.  Even now the joy of that second thin wool sweater, or pair of wool sock is profound.  I can only imagine the thrill of finding a real knife or wool long johns.

2. A highly degradable, makeshift knife or hatchet craft able at a workbench.  Makes good sense and would allow crafting a wolf coat without visiting the forge.

3. Low wildlife respawn rate.   Predators being both foe and food.

Coincidentally, I've been playing with custom settings (modified interloper-ish) for some time now.  In an effort to make hunting more challenging, I've set 'Time to Wildlife Respawn' to Very High and 'Wildlife Detection Range' to Far.  Also, I have a House Rule that rabbits must be shot or snared.  None of this rock throwing nonsense 😉  Full disclosure:  I do have Rifle and Revolver available, and on that subject I think Great Bear Island should be nicknamed Golden Gun Nut Island.  Waaaay too much Ammo strewn everywhere!   

But I digress...

No data yet on how the low respawn rate will play out long term (100 days plus) as my last two characters caught the proverbial 'wolf in the face,' crossing over a hill around day 60-75.  Perhaps others using this setting in a longer run can chime in here.

Finally, to your major balance issue, energy and condition, there is a potential solution:  Sleepwalking.  See thread HERE

Waking recovery = low.  No at rest recovery allowed.  If you really want to get nasty, set Birch Bark Tea to "No."

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by epower

[codyh]

On 12/17/2022 at 2:25 PM, epower said:

Waking recovery = low.  No at rest recovery allowed.  If you really want to get nasty, set Birch Bark Tea to "No."

Yep this is a variant on the idea of reducing overall recovery rate, which in principle I think is an awesome idea. Having 5%/day recovery base + modifiers with birch and herbal tea would really make condition that much more valuable and make it more likely players are forced to be out in low condition, plus increase the value of those teas, instead of being just heat-sources.

Adjusting condition rates is a challenge though since it has flow-on impacts to other things - condition loss rates across the board would need some examination, and secondary modifiers like warmth loss rate in interloper.

I think the warmth loss rate in interloper is a good example of excessive reliance on the warmth resource to create challenge, to the point where it forces player into specific choices. The high warmth drop rate in turn creates reliance on condition as a resource, which then makes condition recovery harder to adjust.

What we don't want to create is the kind of gameplay seen in NOGOA and other extreme challenges  - the community term is "technical" gameplay. It's fine for a player challenge but it really is quite constrictive for general play. Requiring a player to have perfect knowledge of the "right" choices tends to create formulaic and highly meta gameplay.

My proposals are about expanding both the range of player pressures and player choices, I think constraining condition recovery fits in really well with that. It does have some more challenge to balance but perhaps hinterland could set up a system of beta-testing balance changes through custom game codes and calling for feedback?

 

[conanjaguar]

On 12/14/2022 at 11:38 AM, Ghurcb said:

I'd go with more of a horror-route, where cabin fever would cause creepy music to play and you'd hear things like footsteps or knocking.

I would certainly pay for a horror DLC “event” triggered in this fashion.

[mfuegemann]

Thank You for Your well prepared and thought through suggestions. Most of them (in a way) crossed my mind playing TLD or seem to be a push towards a more satisfying interloper play. I am trying out the changes with the new survival mode but Your suggestions would indeed make a change toward a better gaming experience.
 

Edited December 20, 2022 by mfuegemann
typo

[Admin]

We appreciate the ongoing discussion here -- thank you for participating! 

[Lexilogo]

It's a big thread, so I'm just going to narrow in on chatting about Cabin Fever.

I like the idea of replacing it with a positive buff for the inverse conditions, it's a classic game design trick, and I definitely don't like how heavy handed Cabin Fever is at shoving you outside, nor how it encourages strategies to counter it that require meta knowledge on what is and isn't "indoors".

But what should the positive buff be?

On 12/7/2022 at 5:03 PM, codyh said:

give them a minor air temp bonus for consistently living outside (as in your body has adapted to the colder environment by consistently being outside). This bonus can build up as a player spends more than a certain number outdoors average over 7 days period.

The issue with air temp bonuses, while they are great, they are essentially based on breakpoints. If you're above 0, you're golden, and a higher bonus makes little meaningful difference. It's only if it's below 0 that incremental differences begin to matter, and depending on the situation those increments may also be essentially irrelevant.

What I'm trying to say is that, compared to Well Fed, this requires jumping through much more complex hoops for a bonus, that I would say isn't as useful in comparison. Still very good, but situational, and not tempting at all for getting a hibernator to emerge from their hole.

On 12/14/2022 at 4:38 PM, Ghurcb said:

I think a better reward for spending time outside would be a bonus to your max. stamina. Something like +20% for spending more than 6 hours outdoors for 7 days in a row.

Max stamina is also in the same boat. Neat for a sprint or a rope climb, but the bar goes unused much of the time.

 

This idea is a bit radical, but maybe the bonus should be lower calorie consumption from sources that aren't base hunger? By staying outside you're "living healthy" or something, your body is using calories more effectively, you're getting your vitamin D or something. That would compensate for the increased calorie consumption travelling has compared to hibernation, and obviously be a universally desirable bonus.

This way, hibernation styles don't feel forced to cheese gaining the buff, if they sleep in all day there's no difference. But if they want to do literally anything else with their time, then they should touch grass.

 

Also, re. the idea of redeeming Cabin Fever, the max fatigue suggestion alongside fun paranoid noises as flavor sounds like it'd work to me. I think maybe also having it having a chance to cause bursts of Insomnia could help make it threatening, as well.