Repeat request: more accessory slots please

[Lulzes]

With the release of another update comes another possible accessory (the Cougar Wrap). Can I please reiterate my request for more accessory slots, as I outlined here.

Tl;dr 1.) The number of accessories has grown but the no. of slots has stayed static, 2.) There's nothing stopping you IRL from wearing all of these accessories at the same time and 3.) the tool belt and rifle holster are basically mutually exclusive

[purplebluegreen]

I wish we could have slots for all accessories and they all would be outer layer and break simultaneously. That would balance them. Putting one in inner layer and other in outer makes inner one unbreakable.

Edited July 1 by purplebluegreen

[Mroz4k]

Isnt cougar hide wrap an outer head gear? I thought it was...

Anyway I think its fine to have two accesories only. Means you gotta decide which to wear. Different accessories bring different benefits for different tasks. 

Could be a good mod, though, I reckon. Holster + moose bag for hunting, belt + moose bag for fishing or wood gathering, etc. I think the value of accesories comes from the limited slots for them, wearing them all at once would make people appreciate them less, Id say. But just my opinion.

[K3V038]

37 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Isnt cougar hide wrap an outer head gear? I thought it was...

Anyway I think its fine to have two accesories only. Means you gotta decide which to wear. Different accessories bring different benefits for different tasks. 

Could be a good mod, though, I reckon. Holster + moose bag for hunting, belt + moose bag for fishing or wood gathering, etc. I think the value of accesories comes from the limited slots for them, wearing them all at once would make people appreciate them less, Id say. But just my opinion.

Your opinion is good i think, the slots are limited for a reason

[K3V038]

There is a mod for this, it allows you to combine stuff, like sewing a rifle holster to a moose hide satchel and more things like such

[purplebluegreen]

54 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Anyway I think its fine to have two accesories only. Means you gotta decide which to wear. Different accessories bring different benefits for different tasks.

I disagree.I understand a choice between ballistic vest and improvised insulation but not that I have to decide to put on crampons or moose-hide satchel.

[Mroz4k]

7 hours ago, purplebluegreen said:

I disagree.I understand a choice between ballistic vest and improvised insulation but not that I have to decide to put on crampons or moose-hide satchel.

I think the only reason you really feel that way is because almost all accessories bring some great benefits, so obviously, one would want to have them all equipped, or at least most of them. But it looks to me that devs intented accessories to be more of an equippable modifiers that players could put on and take off to fulfill various tasks more easily.

Consider this - if the devs intended the items to be equippable all the time, they would simply go down the "technical backpack" way and made it a permanent survivor "upgrade".

That said - I have always been a big fan of customization, so if at some point there was a modifier for game generation that would allow players to set an amount of "accesory slots" as a setting, it would be great!

8 hours ago, K3V038 said:

There is a mod for this, it allows you to combine stuff, like sewing a rifle holster to a moose hide satchel and more things like such

That sounds like an elegant solution.  

[Lexilogo]

I agree the Accessory economy is screwed up, but increasing accessory slots outright is IMO the wrong approach. There's nothing inherently wrong with a system where you have to pick 2 out of 8 options to customise your character. However, problems arise when:

• The +5kg bonus of the Moose Hide Satchel is so good that you'd be insane to ever unequip it
• The regular Crampons are right next to the other permanent +5kg carry weight bonus, so if you go get that, you have it as an option, making Improvised Crampons useless afterwards
• Wool Ear Wrap is a direct downgrade to Improvised Insulation, and you can make the latter through hunting instead of luck

So the reality is, Accessories are less a "pick 2 of 8 options" system and practically more like "pick 1 of 5" system. Out of those 5:

• The Foreman's Tool Belt and Security Chief's Rifle Holster are both underwhelming, providing an effective carry weight bonus of 2.43kg and 2kg at best, factoring in the fact they have weight themselves and in the best case scenarios of carrying an improvised + regular hatchet + heavy hammer at the same time or Barb's Rifle. While any amount of carry weight is good, the amount of conditions to just squeeze in an extra ~2kg is a crazy tradeoff, especially for the Rifle Holster as you could just not carry a rifle and save 4kg.
• The Ballistic Vest is good at what it's supposed to do, but carries the insane downside of +6kg, making it absurd to carry around unless you are specifically planning to get mauled. The Cougar created a situation where you might actually plan to get mauled, but that is likely to change in its rework, so we're back where we started. If you don't cheese at all when hunting and have good inventory hygiene you might equip it for special occasions, but nobody's using it regularly
• Improvised Insulation is great, its weight-warmth ratio is 8C per kg which is exceptionally efficient. The only downside is like all clothing, if you're already above 0 when standing outside it's wasted carry weight, but otherwise it's amazing, especially on colder difficulties.
• Crampons are a great everyday item that, while best with ropes, aids traversal in every region.

So out of those 5, it's really only Improvised Insulation and Crampons competing for the last spot. IMO the best solution here is an accessories rebalance, such as:

• Hinterland considering making the Moose Hide Satchel a permanent, single use passive increase like the Technical Backpack
• Security Chief's Rifle Holster negating more of the weight of a hunting rifle, maybe even negating the weight entirely
• The Foreman's Tool Belt applying to one of every unique tool in your Inventory instead of a max of 3 (saving you up to ~5 kilos if you're carrying every tool and variation, less if improvised tools don't count as unique)
• Wool Ear Wrap getting a buff to compete with Insulation, I would propose it gets a large Windproofing improvement
• Ballistic Vest potentially getting a weight reduction to something like 5kg, though really I think it's ok for it to be an absurdly lopsided item with big upsides and big downsides

TL:DR: I think the goal should be to make the choice of filling your Accessory slots more interesting, not less of a choice.

Edited July 3 by Lexilogo
i originally wrote "wear day" instead of "everyday" lmao

[xanna]

However the accessory slots could be reworked, it has to make sense primarily in the base game.

Most of the accessories are only available on TFTFT, so there is a challenge to keeping the choice interesting in the base game when it's only for satchel, crampons, ballistic vest and ear wraps.

I don't have any suggestions, I just wanted to make sure we don't forget how much of this stuff is DLC-only

[xanna]

@Lexilogo Love this. Thanks for laying everything out so clearly

[xanna]

5 minutes ago, xanna said:

Most of the accessories are only available on TFTFT, so there is a challenge to keeping the choice interesting in the base game when it's only for satchel, crampons, ballistic vest and ear wraps.

Oh hey, that's not a bad answer: keep it as it is now, but add an item in TFTFT only that adds one more accessory slot (or something cleverer/more subtle), to accommodate the plethora of accessories that come in TFTFT.

If we're willing to travel all the way to the Gold Mine in Ash for the Tech Backpack, we'd sure as heck do something similar for an extra accessory slot.

[ManicManiac]

I also think that the limited (2) accessory slots create interesting choices that the player will have to make.
I think that more accessory slots, also means that we'd just be closer to the realm of "having the best of everything..."

Whereas with just the two, we do have to essentially choose our loadouts more carefully and deliberately.
Perhaps plan out when and how to make use all the accessories we collect along the way.
To my mind it's much more interesting to have to carefully weigh benefits and drawbacks of having to make those choices.

In any case, it's a wish list item... so I'm not decrying the idea in any way, I'm just offering my perspective on the subject.

[Mroz4k]

On 7/3/2024 at 2:25 AM, Lexilogo said:

So the reality is, Accessories are less a "pick 2 of 8 options" system and practically more like "pick 1 of 5" system. Out of those 5

While I agree with you that adding accesory slots may not be the solution, i see nothing wrong with what you wrote right here.

For starters, lets remember that there is a significant difference between base game an Tales DLC. Half of the accessories are not available in the base game. 

Also, there is really nothing wrong about wool wrap vs improvised insulation or improvised crampon vs crampon. Its the same as there is nothing wrong with difference between a knife or improvised knife. For example, improvised crampons are craftable and worse version but thus accessible earlier. Also, it usually takes some time to get moose bag and till then, you would wear something else. Once you have them, sure, there are probably options of acccessories you wont ever wear... But I mean, so is Sports vest... You would likely never wear it once you have better clothes...

Its not good to look at items only from the endgame perspective, they all have their place earlier, too.

I second @ManicManiac in that in the end, it is a wish on a wishlist, so I just wanted to provide my perspective, hopefully it provided somwthing worthwhile to discussion.

_______

One more bit of food for thought:

What if an extra accessory slot was a part of a feat? What would yall think of it? Sacrificing a slot for permanent feat boost to get extra accessory slot? Sounds balanced to me, but I bet most of the detractors would disagree with me.

Edited July 4 by Mroz4k

[BattleAngel362]

getting an extra slot for completing all 3 tales in a give world would in my opinion be the best solution , could be an item or something, like the technical backpack. but once you finish the tales you now have 1 more slot, which would encourage you to do the tales

[ThePancakeLady]

I think an elegant solution would be to add a slot to footwear on the paperdoll- the only gear slot that is limited to 1 item, no layers. Remove crampons from the top accessory slot, and make the new footwear slot *only* available for crampons (either type). Rather than requiring another Feat or something like finishing Tales to unlock (since people who do not own the TFTFT DLC would not be able to unlock the new slot- which would result in a ton of uproar over it being DLC-locked)- have it unlock after crafting your first set of improvised crampons or finding a set of crampons in the gameworld. Decay rates for the crampons remain unchanged, and carry weight adjustments for equipped vs. unequipped in inventory remain the same.

Simple, easy to understand how it works, available for all players, whether they own the DLC or not.

Edited July 4 by ThePancakeLady
Typonese, always typonese

[Lexilogo]

8 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

Also, there is really nothing wrong about wool wrap vs improvised insulation or improvised crampon vs crampon. Its the same as there is nothing wrong with difference between a knife or improvised knife. For example, improvised crampons are craftable and worse version but thus accessible earlier.

That's a totally fair point, I agree there is a place for direct upgrade and early game clothing in TLD. I think Improvised Crampons are fine and don't need changing. (though if I had a time machine to correct extremely petty issues, I would give the real crampons a different location than right next to the backpack) Wool Ear Wraps I do have an issue with because they're super rare loot, outside of Loper you can often find two Expedition Parkas before a single ear wrap, so they shouldn't be direct downgrades to a hunting item IMO.

8 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

What if an extra accessory slot was a part of a feat? What would yall think of it?

It's a fine idea, it'd be comparable to the game's other strongest Feats, (eg. you could get +2C from an extra insulation through this feat, much like the Cold Fusion feat's +2C, at the downside of having to get the extra accessory and the extra weight, but with the upside of versatility) so I would like it as a Feat. Feat rebalancing is its own can of worms, but I think that approx. one accessory slot's worth of strength is where Feats should strive to be at.

Edited July 4 by Lexilogo
added "the real crampons" to clarify that's what I mean

[Mroz4k]

20 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

I think an elegant solution would be to add a slot to footwear on the paperdoll- the only gear slot that is limited to 1 item, no layers. Remove crampons from the top accessory slot, and make the new footwear slot *only* available for crampons (either type). 

Simple, easy to understand how it works, available for all players, whether they own the DLC or not.

This is a beautiful, simple and very reasonable solution that I could get 100% behind.

On top of that, it even opens the potential for some other kind of "footwear accessory" in the future, something like cross-country skies, or snowshoes, which would themselves have their own use in the future.

19 hours ago, Lexilogo said:

Wool Ear Wraps I do have an issue with because they're super rare loot, outside of Loper you can often find two Expedition Parkas before a single ear wrap, so they shouldn't be direct downgrades to a hunting item IMO.

I think this is an issue of perspective, as I tend to easily find 3 ear wraps before I get a single expedition parka. I often even opt not to wear them even if I have the option simply because of how useless they are. What I think is an issue here, however, and I would agree with you there, is that they are considered by game to be somewhat rare loot, whereas it should be "uncommon" at best. Though, given how useless they generally are, the less of them I see, the better  i also have a feeling this might have been how they were intended to be. If they were added on the loottable as an equivalent of Vool Toque, I would be fine with it, too. To me, they really are just a heavier, future piece of cloth.