Detach mountain climbing ropes

[Cyclone35]

Something interesting happened during a normal playthrough of mine, I took the mountain climbing path in Ash Canyon to acquire the backpack expansion. However, the rope climb down towards the mine was missing a rope. Sometimes its close by, other times I'd have to travel farther to find one. But I had no luck finding that rope. I felt upset, dissatisfied that I came all this way and can't continue further. If I was a hardcore player, I would journey far to obtain a spare rope from another region (spoiler: I'm not). But then it hit me, in a realistic scenario, wouldn't it be possible to detach a rope that you tied to a rock and reuse it somewhere else. Some survivalists would bring there own rope with them and reuse it when necessary. So wouldn't make sense if you can detach the rope and put it on a different rock? That way players don't have to walk a long distance just to find 1 rope hidden somewhere on the map.

Let me tell you about the 40 second rule used in every (good) open world game. Study has shown that a player can stay immerse in a videogame, as long as they don't spend over 40 seconds traveling between points of interest. If the player discovers something of interest along the way, that timer gets reset. If they can see their destination  But if all their doing is walking to their destination, it will suck the life out of them. It makes you lose your immersion as it feels more like a chore to get from point A to point B. This is what I felt looking for that stupid red rope on a mountain side. 

[Leeanda]

You can detach other ropes and move them elsewhere... . In most cases it's best to put them back though after you've finished with them.

[Dan_]

We come to a stage of the game development where there's so many features it preemptively fulfills any wishlist item. 

Kudos to the dev team. 

[Leeanda]

1 minute ago, Dan_ said:

We come to a stage of the game development where there's so many features it preemptively fulfills any wishlist item. 

Kudos to the dev team. 

They haven't finished yet lol...

[ManicManiac]

1 hour ago, Cyclone35 said:

Let me tell you about the 40 second rule used in every (good) open world game. Study has shown that a player can stay immerse in a videogame, as long as they don't spend over 40 seconds traveling between points of interest. If the player discovers something of interest along the way, that timer gets reset. If they can see their destination  But if all their doing is walking to their destination, it will suck the life out of them. It makes you lose your immersion as it feels more like a chore to get from point A to point B. This is what I felt looking for that stupid red rope on a mountain side. 

This is all just very subjective, really... also the study you allude to seems dubious (especially without citation), or at the very least way too "generalized" to fit the niche that TLD fills.

It seems to me, that folks who love this game are probably not bothered by lengthy journeys... and I think it's fair to say that a lot of the survival sandbox experience of TLD is lengthy, difficult journeys.   

And I think that for those folks who are bothered by it, there are plenty of games with fast-travel systems or trivial overworld traveling out there... just not this game.

Frankly, I for one, love the long (sometimes brutal) treks that come inherent with making our way across Great Bear Island.

Edited December 15, 2023 by ManicManiac
Edited for clarity

[xanna]

Yeah, TLD is a hiking simulator, and plenty of people like hiking for its own sake. I will spend way more than 40 seconds hiking to my destination. The game will usually do something beautiful or challenging on the way, though not quite every 40 seconds.

[odizzido]

I am always a fan of being able to do things that most people can do, though I understand that it takes work each time you add something to the game.

One potential problem I can see is that if you detach a rope, use it somewhere, then go down a hill you cannot go back up you could make parts of the game inaccessible. Considering how many hills you cannot get up this could be a problem.

[Leeanda]

11 hours ago, odizzido said:

I am always a fan of being able to do things that most people can do, though I understand that it takes work each time you add something to the game.

One potential problem I can see is that if you detach a rope, use it somewhere, then go down a hill you cannot go back up you could make parts of the game inaccessible. Considering how many hills you cannot get up this could be a problem.

That's true..I've done that before... I suppose it's just a matter of knowing which ropes are ok to move.. 

[Fuarian]

You can detach ropes from a rock. Been this way since they added ropes.

[hozz1235]

34 minutes ago, Fuarian said:

You can detach ropes from a rock. Been this way since they added ropes.

 

On 12/14/2023 at 4:45 PM, Leeanda said:

You can detach other ropes and move them elsewhere... . In most cases it's best to put them back though after you've finished with them.

 

[Enigmaecho]

On 12/14/2023 at 6:24 PM, Cyclone35 said:

Something interesting happened during a normal playthrough of mine, I took the mountain climbing path in Ash Canyon to acquire the backpack expansion. However, the rope climb down towards the mine was missing a rope. Sometimes its close by, other times I'd have to travel farther to find one. But I had no luck finding that rope. I felt upset, dissatisfied that I came all this way and can't continue further. If I was a hardcore player, I would journey far to obtain a spare rope from another region (spoiler: I'm not). But then it hit me, in a realistic scenario, wouldn't it be possible to detach a rope that you tied to a rock and reuse it somewhere else. Some survivalists would bring there own rope with them and reuse it when necessary. So wouldn't make sense if you can detach the rope and put it on a different rock? That way players don't have to walk a long distance just to find 1 rope hidden somewhere on the map.

Let me tell you about the 40 second rule used in every (good) open world game. Study has shown that a player can stay immerse in a videogame, as long as they don't spend over 40 seconds traveling between points of interest. If the player discovers something of interest along the way, that timer gets reset. If they can see their destination  But if all their doing is walking to their destination, it will suck the life out of them. It makes you lose your immersion as it feels more like a chore to get from point A to point B. This is what I felt looking for that stupid red rope on a mountain side. 

If you’re trying to apply the 40second rule to the long dark you might as well just not play, it takes literal hours to travel across the game when most open worlds can be walked side to side in under 10 mins. The fundamentals of TLD are inventory and resource management and everything is coded around that principle, we can detach ropes for the explicit purpose of relocating them to lay out maps in a way that works for us, if they were to already have all ropes active it would eliminate a large portion of challenges by allowing access to all short cut routes