General balance and UI tweak possibilities

[DEZXTER]

I first want to say how much I have been enjoying this game. I like survival games and this one is a real survival game instead of some zombie shooter with a few survival elements. I have logged about a day's worth of play time over about a week and a half, I wanted to be sure that I got a good idea of the game before I gave any suggestions. I will admit that I have mostly played on the Mystery lake map and I have never even gotten to the Pleasant Valley map so far, so any suggestions I have are more for general play than for any one map. If I see something that pertains to a certain map I will of course mention it.

There were several things I considered while playing the game which I thought might make it more realistic without IMO changing the game's vision, although the devs will obviously decide that for themselves.

1. I noticed there are several skills in the game such as fire-starting and repair. I think that those skills should actually be increased a small amount for failing in a task. Obviously not a full point and the player might not even notice that they could go up that way, but in real life we learn from our mistakes just as we can learn from our successes. We might learn more from success, especially in the case of repairing things, but we will still learn from something that doesn't work.

2. I also considered the fact that if people carry a lot of things around every day then their conditioning will get better over time. It would be cool if that could be implemented in the game. Obviously, it could already be without me knowing it. It could make fatigue go down slower and/or enable the player to carry more things over time. Obviously this increase would be small and very gradual, but it could definitely add more realism to the game. Possibly it could even increase your running speed or at least lessen the speed hit you take from carrying a significant load.

3. The meat you can gain from hunting seems to be quite underpowered comparatively speaking. Cooked venison gives about 900 calories per pound if I remember correctly. I haven't had enough rabbit to remember how many calories they give per pound but I do remember that it is not very high. IRL venison is much more nutritious, it gives about 850 calories per pound, and rabbit meat gives almost 800 calories per pound. I would guess that they have been nerfed a bit possibly to maintain a harder gameplay and more of a survival experience or something. But I have noticed that a lot of other things in the game are much more realistic and as it seems to be going for a more realistic experience I thought that I would bring it up.

4. For the UI there were a couple of things I thought of. A couple of them might be a bit easier to implement than others but nothing too major hopefully. The UI fro transferring things could be improved a bit with a couple of additions. A scroll bar for the containers so that you can quickly scroll down to the bottom and possibly making the boxes that show what items are there a bit taller. Also when one transfers an item that is stacked and has to choose how many to move from the stack the game automatically starts from the top of the container again after they have chosen. This isn't a big deal but it would smooth the transfer process a lot if the game could remember where it was in the list after choosing how many of an item to move over.

5. A very small thing but when going up the steps to the Camp Office by Mystery Lake from the direction of the lake the steps could be fixed a little bit. It is easy to get stuck on them.

6. Is there a compass in the game? This is a very common survival tool and should be reasonably easy to find, especially at the camp office or forestry tower as they might carry survival type things. It would make navigation much easier, especially in a blizzard.

I thought of a couple more things while I was paying or saw similar things on the forums but don't remember what they were now. Anyway, great game and I am really enjoying it. Looking forward to seeing what changes are made as well as the story mode and the other things that are coming down the pipeline.

[Ryan CM]

Hello! Thank you for your feedback and welcome to the forums!

[DEZXTER]

Hey, Ryan and thanks. Just wondering does the dev team have any thoughts on my suggestions?

[toebar]

I like the step fix suggestion for camp office -- I've often wondered when that was going to get be ravaged by a wolf..

Regarding compasses, my understanding is that they are rendered useless because of the geomagnetic storm that has led to the survival scenario. (This has been mentioned in other threads)

[Hyssch]

2. I also considered the fact that if people carry a lot of things around every day then their conditioning will get better over time. It would be cool if that could be implemented in the game. Obviously, it could already be without me knowing it. It could make fatigue go down slower and/or enable the player to carry more things over time. Obviously this increase would be small and very gradual, but it could definitely add more realism to the game. Possibly it could even increase your running speed or at least lessen the speed hit you take from carrying a significant load.

6. Is there a compass in the game? This is a very common survival tool and should be reasonably easy to find, especially at the camp office or forestry tower as they might carry survival type things. It would make navigation much easier, especially in a blizzard.

+1 for both of these suggestions and since most compasses come with magnifyin glasses attached to them, one could use it to light up fire on sunny days...

Welcome to TLD forums, DEZXTER

[Ryan CM]

Hey, Ryan and thanks. Just wondering does the dev team have any thoughts on my suggestions?

I can't speak to all of the items, but regarding the compass, that is something that would not work after a geomagnetic storm and so I know will not be in.

The steps in Mystery Lake we are working on as well. The other items I have passed on to the development team

[Willbonney]

Compass isn't needed. Several ways to figure out true north without one. Examples: http://www.wikihow.com/Find-True-North- ... -a-Compass

Obviously I haven't tried the analog watch method in game, since there isn't one, but I'll give a go at the shadow method today, see if it works right in the game or not, and post my findings here.

[Willbonney]

Utilizing the shadow at Camp Office:

The in game time was just after 1pm, with the sun and cabin entrance to my west and the lake to my east, and my character facing north. Seems to work well enough. Took about 30 minutes of in game time to watch the shadow and drop a couple cat tail heads to "draw the line."

Hmm, image postings not working for some reason:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =413242981 and

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =413243026