Cougar is going in the wrong direction

[3van3]

I'll try to keep it short, but this is my opinion. 

The cougar being a glorified quick time event is boring and cheap. Having no chance to fight back, except to find a random nest is bad game design. It just resets the timer, and its likely not even in your region. I cannot conceive of a reason you'd want to destroy the nest and waste all that gunpowder, when it'd be easier to just leave a region for a while instead. I guess on Interloper it might make a difference, but even then, 10 days is a long time. 

Having the UI be the main way of knowing that the cougar is hunting you is not the way I'd want it to be handled. Spawn completely gutted deer and rabbits outside my cabin when I sleep. Make wolves very skittish. Heck, the auroras made the wolves go a little crazy. Cats are psychopaths even without a solar event scrambling their brains. Leave beheaded, splayed out carcasses at my doorstep. Blood trails where it dragged a deer carcass somewhere. Bloody claw prints on my door. Anything. There was ample opportunity to make the cougar downright terrifying. You know for a fact that the cougar has "marked" you by leaving a dead animal in your vicinity. Mackenzie/Astrid automatically says something like "Shit... I need to get out of this place. I feel eyes on me." Maybe here, have a non-physical/shootable cougar spawn nearby, screech, and sprint away at high speeds over a hill. That could be your scripted event that ties 1 and 2 together and makes the player realize they f'd up by staying too long. 

Having it just spawn and instantly attack is cheap. I'm not a game designer, but I've been a dungeon master for years. Nobody likes scripted events that are forced. Tying them down and saying "this happens to you now" feels bad. Of course, everything is forced on you. It's code, or in my case, planned notes. There's a line where it crosses from "oh that's sick" to "that makes me feel cheated." In my opinion, best implementation would be to have it spawn ~20-30 feet away near an object and have it charge at you full sprint. Unless you have godly reflexes and have your gun out, you're not gonna spin and shoot the cougar in time, but it gives a chance. That illusion of chance is very helpful in presentation of an unfair game mechanic. 

Make it only spawn in areas that aren't currently in view, so you can't have someone back themselves into a corner and wait, either. Or make it so that if they haven't moved x number of feet or whatever from a location it can't spawn. I'm not sure how you'd code it to prevent cheesing it, though. I'm sure that'd be hard, but worth it. 

I love the loot that it drops, but the chance of ending a 200 day run, or even a 100 day run in order to get a hat isn't worth it. Even though it's a really nice hat. Nearly guaranteed severe lacerations is not worth a hat and a knife. Think of the situation as the survivor in the story. Hunting a bear you can prepare for and find suitable ground. Hunting wolves, you can prepare for. Cougar? You can't. Why would I risk a 100% chance of being mauled, for a slim chance to get a shot off on it after it nearly killed you and gave up? You wouldn't. 

I love the idea of the cougar, I love the items you can craft from it, but the implementation was all wrong. 

I'm glad you at least kept the option to turn the cougar off. I will be doing that until it is fixed. I'm glad I waited for a few days to start playing again. I like the "cheat death" system from what I've seen of others testing it out. 

[ManicManiac]

Just because you may not like certain aspects of a thing doesn't make it bad game design... it just means that it's merely something you don't like.  I think it's a bit disrespectful to be calling Hinterland's efforts cheap and making declarative statements that it's just bad design.

As has been said many times over the last 48 hours, all sides of the conversation are welcome... but you need to keep your comments respectful.  

The rest of your post does have some good points of discussion, however.

Edited June 27, 2024 by ManicManiac

[itsLydt]

Having the cougar primarily exist as a UI popup is immersion breaking to say the least. I was heavily surprised that's route the devs took, because the rest of the game is the complete opposite. So much of the game is using your eyes and ears to adapt to the situation and avoid predators, but for the most dangerous predator of all, the game just straight up tells you it's coming. 

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

My feelings:

Hinterland, we love you.  So, so , much.

Also, I think the cougar has some room for improvement.

In my ideal implementation, there would be no UI warning.  Just tracks, distant screeching noises, dead animals, etc.  More and more frequent signs as the time draws near, but also with an element of unpredictability to give you a justification to "just stay a little longer" because "it probably won't come yet."

Also, I'd love to see the attack take this form:  It spawns into the world 100m away somewhere in a 180 degree arc behind you.  It should be behind some kind of hard cover like a hill.  Then charges you at top speed (which should be faster than a wolf or bear) from behind.  It should make noise as it approaches to give you a chance, but not much.  Since it's running, maybe it could be as loud as normal wolf footsteps.  I feel like something like this could be just as dangerous to the player, but still provide a chance to fight or even win before the potentially fatal struggle happens.

I think it has huge potential to be a game-defining element.

 

Edited June 27, 2024 by I_eat_only_wolf_meat
clarity

[itsLydt]

Personally I was envisioning a predator that is immune to the pathing problems of wolves and bears. Standing on a weirdly shaped rock or on a ledge will not help you, because it can simply jump or climb to you. I guess the current implementation is kinda like that but....seeing it coming for you like that, and the few seconds of panic you get from it, trying to escape even though it's futile...that's the rollercoaster of emotions I crave haha

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

There are tons of things that could be done.  Imagine opening the door of the Pleasant Valley farmhouse to go outside at dusk, and you see a couple inches of tail vanish behind the barn, or a silhouette on a distant ridge that slinks away when you see it.  These things would be incredible, but they also sound really ambitious. Somehow HL is going to have to strike a balance between an ideal system that can't practically be pulled off and what we have right now.

[turtle777]

I like that the cougar is not just another predator that we can hunt. The mechanics are creative and innovative.

I'm a bit bummed that I can't get an easy cougar hide and claw, because it's such a hard thing to obtain, but I appreciate that it's something special, and worthy to go to great lengths to obtain.

IMO, if the cougar was just an easy hunt like moose and bears, it would be boring.

-t

[dbmurph22]

I also am glad killing the cougar isn't easily cheesed and exploited.

And I think a cougar attack functions alright as an "event."

But there needs to be some grounding of the cougar in the reality of the game as a shared space entity and the icons don't quite work well enough in a game that's not based fully on icons (this isn't a text or board game). 

Also I don't like that there's a flat cost to the benefit of killing it - the attack is 100%

My personal idea is to give interactable glimpses of the cougar leading up to the attack event. They could be quick and with enough distance that getting the kill on it would be really difficult. This could manage the exploit element. You could make the appearance fairly static and then disappearing, which helps with implementation at not having to find pathing. 

Then with the attack event being 100% but not sure when it will happen, there's a real push your luck mechanism there. And you're faced with the decision - do I keep trying or leave the region. 

I kind of think the ability to attack after in the slo-mo event is fairly clever, but it doesn't quite work as an up front guaranteed cost for a chance at the kill.

[Amir]

I was honestly thinking about the same thing today... I'm just not a fan of UI warnings. The cougar should be terrifying, we shouldn't see it coming... we should keep looking around and listening in order to see or hear something that warns us about the cougar. Dead animals lying around could be awesome.

Misery mode spoiler:

Spoiler

I believe broken body affliction and cougar don't work well together! Imagine not being able to restore condition, while the only way to face the cougar is for him to attack you first! Obviously nobody will ever want to face the cougar on misery mode.

[itsLydt]

Another great idea from reddit forum is having it be more or less likely to attack you in certain areas of the map. For example, a heavily wooded area or ravine, you're easy pickings for the cougar. But if you're out on a frozen lake, no way to sneak up on you, you're fairly safe. But of course you will eventually drop your guard...spend too long in your inventory, or too long staring off into space, it may still get ya. And forget sleeping outside, at least without a fire. I don't think anyone wants the cougar to be exploitable or huntable. We just want it to feel interesting and like it's part of the world. Right now it's essentially a region wide cabin fever and the UI popups feel out of place in a game that otherwise rewards being observant.

[KirbyAWD]

I was just thinking about this today and thought of something else that has a lot of HUD/UI indicators; the Darkwalker.

 

Although funny enough, you could say the Darkwalker is even more "real" than the cougar, at least you know when it's getting close and from which direction.

Edited June 27, 2024 by KirbyAWD

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

1 hour ago, itsLydt said:

For example, a heavily wooded area or ravine, you're easy pickings for the cougar. But if you're out on a frozen lake, no way to sneak up on you, you're fairly safe.

Damn this is good.  This works well with HL's philosophy of giving you "interesting choices".  Take the long safe route, or the short, potentially more risky route.