Wolf Attack - TAP A BUTTON?? Seriously?!!!!


Lamoi

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Led Zeppelin: "Bring it back bring it back oh now oh now oh.." Sorry, love that song.

I'd rather not mash anything except my spuds though (Irish) and would really prefer a skill based system, not necessarily complex or requiring a huge overhaul that frankly at this stage I really doubt they'd do. Cheers for posting mate, as Bethany sort of said above the more attention it gets on here the more attention it gets back there.

Having a more complex system would be alright I think, as long as it is either intuitive, or explained. The original system arguably failed on both accounts. I didn't really have an issue with it, but I can see the point of view of a new player, who felt that system was unfair.

P.S. Nice specs! :D

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The wolf fighting mechanic has never been good. Period. It has essentially always included some form of button smashing. Reading any TLD forum will almost always have a front page thread complaining about it too. Always.

What it needs is reasonable consistency. They might want to consider doing something more like the bear and just have RNG take over. This way it makes avoiding them or preparing to fight them the actual focus (and removes the macro abuse). Low fatigue, lots of crafted clothing and knife then RNG is better. High fatigue, hypothermia, worn out clothing, sprained wrists or ankles, bare hands, then RNG is going to suck.

If they want action then some form of QTE (quick time event) would be more appropriate anyway--in my view the current system doesn't qualify as a QTE as it doesn't rely on any twitch reflexes or hand-eye coordination. The system whatever it is should let a user more clearly discern the affects (and effects) of having a weaker state overall, or less prepared state overall than the current system.

QTE events, for example, are typically more mapped out to let the user know what they have to do to succeed or not, and could be designed to provide more feedback (such as a statement from the NPC during the fight saying, "this is harder without a weapon" while trying to punch or something else along those lines). In contrast, the current system(s) provides almost zero user feedback to let the user know what's important about fighting a wolf or not (since everything is explained away by a person assuming they didn't mash fast enough). The user must realize one fight seems to be going more slowly than another because their mashing is taking longer, and then somehow equate this poor information to a host of factors which affect the outcome. It's a horrible system.

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I think we should have options for fighting a wolf

instead of "mash the mouse button"

We should have 3 gameplay mechanics

1) Fend off - while you're pressing the button to fend off the wolf, the wolf will do less damage

2) Prepare attack - charging up strength to attack the wolf

3) Attack, release the attack

This way you have to balance between protecting yourself and attacking the wolf.

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The wolf combat was definitely simplified in favour of the number of new players we see die repeatedly with no idea how the old combat system actually worked.

Hi Bethany,

Please do not pander to uniformed new players that can't figure out the game. Make the game the right way, and they'll either learn and adapt or be too stupid to figure it out. Also, consider a tutorial where bad things happen to you and you're shown how to react if you're not going to make a .pdf manual that explains this stuff.

As you say, the new aftereffects of an attack are great, I agree. Unfortunately that is nullified by the simplification of the actual melee combat event.

Was this another reaction to what you folks saw at E3, similar to people thinking warmer/colder was a navigation aide?

Hi Klesh,

My job is to assess feedback, and provide help when needed.

Please do not make statements suggesting that players that question, or need help with understanding new systems can't figure it out because they are too stupid to do so. Please consider this a warning, as this kind of attitude is generally not welcome in this community.

Hmm a curious position, make the wolf fighting mechanics more simple and more akin to a QTE button mashing sequence, and then when players suggest that it's too dumbbed down you threaten to ban them?

Criticism is good, and frankly after 100 hours of game time I can say for sure that I preferred the old system.

And I did not have a hard time learning the original system when I first started, the controls were right there in front of me, in big letters, maybe I died one time, but after I read the instructions I thought "oh that's not so bad"

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something else just came to my mind that worries me much more than smashing lmb ....

In my current run i am at day 17 and maxed out my firestarting baseskill to 96%, now i wonder if it is

possible with wolves too?

I mean, the new minigame makes it easier time after time to fight a wolf, as if there is a hidden

"base-wolf-fight-skill" that is growing with each fight. The problem is, that you dont die anymore from an attack.

:arrow: take a knive, go naked, fight a wolf (find a single wolf), go inside to heal up, repeat ......

Did anyone tried it? I can imagine that after the 20th time you can kill all wolves with your hands instantly without having injuries .... this would be kind of an exploit i think

hmm, i've heared there will be a new map soon and with that, ill maybe start a new run .. so lets give it a try :D

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Hmm a curious position, make the wolf fighting mechanics more simple and more akin to a QTE button mashing sequence, and then when players suggest that it's too dumbed down you threaten to ban them?

Not what he said, how he said it - if you imply a portion of new players shouldn't count for any reason it makes the tone of the forum non-inclusive - as Klesh (Zappa!) said himself, "Fair enough". This is the best administrated forum I've seen and thus the first one I've posted on (also I'm hooked on TLD now, sounds ominous).

I agree with Klesh that maybe the team jumped the gun a bit based on E3 reactions and I wonder how this works. I mean, I buy a game and don't know how to play I'll figure it out - Crusader Kings 2 took me an embarrassingly long time to even get started recently, needed YouTube tutorials and they were out of date, but it was worth it for the deep game later. However, put me in a seat at some games convention and I'll straight away be asking the person officiating - "how the hell does this work? Maybe you should make it clearer" etc.

I wish we could talk to the Dev team about what is possible on combat at this stage, it's hard to speculate now. For example when I first played the game I wished there was no mini-game at all- you just draw your knife/hatchet fps style and manoeuver/strike the way you would bash with the crowbar in Half Life. That way you could fight multiple wolves at once, back off, use terrain etc. But then it would be a different game, less scary and putting it in now would ruin balance. Also, I think this has to be wrapped up by Xmas and they only have a certain amount of funding available.

In the long term view I'd say "Guys please do "pander" to new players, sell as many copies as possible and then make us a huge sequel set in spring, where you explore the melting waterways of Canada in a birchbark canoe (mobile base), finding clues of other survivors - overhaul the combat system for that." If you've read my waffling earlier you'll know that I keep asking for things that wouldn't require (but I dunno) much change to the existing engine because not only do Hinterland totally deserve to go the way of CD Projekt RED (i.e. rich), if they do they can keep making quality innovative games for us.

I can't see them bringing back the old system because a lot of experienced players seem ok with the change and new ones will probably find it easier to pick up. But I keep rambling on (love that song too) about putting some player skill back in because navigation and shooting require skill and it works really well - if you mess up you get messed up - and I think it would be more consistent and enjoyable if wolf bashing did too. Also, my finger hurts.

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Survivor wrote:

Re mashing mouse buttons when you suffer with artritis.

Previous versions of TLD allowed a re-map of the Action key to be used instead of the left mouse button. I used the Spacebar which was much less painful and worked very well. This disappeared with one of the updates around 1.8 I think! Although the Action key can still be re-mapped, wolf attacks require use of the mouse only. Could this change be reversed?

Do you have arthritis too? Mine is very mild but since I'm only I worry a bit. I'm totally pro options for gamers with any impairments - color blind etc. so in the words of Led Zeppelin: "Bring it back bring it back oh now oh now oh.." Sorry, love that song.

I'd rather not mash anything except my spuds though (Irish) and would really prefer a skill based system, not necessarily complex or requiring a huge overhaul that frankly at this stage I really doubt they'd do. Cheers for posting mate, as Bethany sort of said above the more attention it gets on here the more attention it gets back there.

Yeah, A bit of arthritis and RSI - too much time playing TLD!

Seriously, it is much easier to repeatedly tap a keyboard key than the mouse button. I use 4 left button clicks followed by a right button click to fight wolves and that seems to work pretty well most times.

I've also noticed that although I've re-mapped the Action key, I still have to use the mouse left button to pick things up which wasn't the case in earlier versions. What's the point of re-mapping a key when you can only use it some of the time?

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Yeah, A bit of arthritis and RSI - too much time playing TLD!

Seriously, it is much easier to repeatedly tap a keyboard key than the mouse button. I use 4 left button clicks followed by a right button click to fight wolves and that seems to work pretty well most times.

I've also noticed that although I've re-mapped the Action key, I still have to use the mouse left button to pick things up which wasn't the case in earlier versions. What's the point of re-mapping a key when you can only use it some of the time?

Can you still use RMB in wolf fights, does either button do? I haven't tried, maybe you mean pre-update. Space bar is definitely easiest to map to for mashing, agreed - reminds me of Benny Hill slapping that little bald guy on the head. I was thinking though, if you have or can afford (not me!) a mouse that can use macros maybe that would do for you bashing our furry friends/dropping 40 sticks on a fire. But for combat it would be a case of "press button get rid of wolf" rather than "mash button like a telegraph operator spelling antidisestablishmentarianism to get rid of wolf" and for me it's not just about the forefinger blues.

I love the rest of the game so much, I wish hand to fang combat required skill without being too arcade style. I still say selective clicking at the right time - more accurate = less damage taken/more done - is the way to go, but if Hinterland disagree I'll maybe save up for another Logitech supermouse and program a side button to do the work for me. You could start a thread for "Bring Back Olde Style Control Mapping" but my "Long Game Ennui" thread only got four posts so far and two of them were mine so, roll the dice... :roll:

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Button mash reminds me of the old arcade trick of holding an electric toothbrush (or variable speed "facial" massager) against the firing button. However, I don't really desire to kill my keyboard or mouse by similar methods.

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I don't think the new mechanic is viable. If you're going to tell me that I need to mash a button repeatedly as fast as I can, I'm going to find the best and most effective way to do it. In this case, the best solution was to make a macro with my gaming keyboard to simulate mouse clicks when I have a button held. This has rendered wolves completely inert for me since my keyboard can "mouse click" so fast that the encounter is over before the bar even appears on screen. You could impose an artificial cap on how many times per second the game will register a click, but if you do that then I feel like the game should just assume I'm clicking at the fastest possible rate and just give the player an appropriate number of afflictions for the fight.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, eliminating the wolf encounter mini game and just having a wolf attack inflict X amount of condition damage and afflictions based on, for instance, your level of fatigue, weight and hunger might be a better system. Perhaps even give some sort of mechanism to trade calories and fatigue to lessen the damage done so you can decide whether you should take immediate damage that costs medicine to heal, or if you should trade up fatigue, food and water to save those supplies if you're running low. It would certainly motivate players to use stealth and keep their supplies and status in order.

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Smacking a wolf around with a surplus military rifle isn't going to do a damn thing to the rifle. They were designed to be used in H2H, after a fashion, and cracking something upside the skull with the stock, or "body-checking" something with the rifle isn't a big deal. Hell, you can do the above with modern firearms, much less one with solid wood furniture!

Protip: you can already use the knife and the hatchet as melee weapons. The knife has a blade at least 4 inches long. That is PLENTY long to defend yourself with, just so you know. And, how is stabbing a wolf going to damage it? It has a full tang and a thick back. The only way you are going to break that is doing something specifically to break it. The handle won't break off during routine use: that is why any "survival knife" worth its salt will have at least a half-tang, and overwhelmingly preferably, a full-tang. They are almost indestructible with proper use.

Same thing with a hatchet. Drop the blade, or preferably, the poll, on top of a wolfs skull, and you will have a very dead wolf.

Seriously, you people are severely overestimating just how tough animals are. While stabbing a wolf in the torso with a knife or a spear might not kill it right away, it is 1) going to die from blood loss anyways and 2) going to run away. Animals, especially predators, don't like to get hurt, and prey showing even the slightest bit of resistance is likely to be left alone. This is why animals have "dominance matches", so they can eliminate the need for a fight and therefore, the possibility of getting injured.

One-on-one, all things equal, I am fully confident in my ability to fight off a wolf bare-hand, so long as I don't freak out and fall on my back like we do in-game. With a weapon (even if it is only a solid branch), my chances increase exponentially.

Seriously, people. Humanity has been on top of the food chain for at least 200,000 years, since the development of fire and pointy sticks (not even spears, with sharp stone points, just fire-hardened tips!), all because we are smarter than most other animals, and can use our brains to plan and come up with weapons and strategies on the fly. Losing the electricity would not take that away

You, I like you

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Hmm a curious position, make the wolf fighting mechanics more simple and more akin to a QTE button mashing sequence, and then when players suggest that it's too dumbbed down you threaten to ban them?

Criticism is good, and frankly after 100 hours of game time I can say for sure that I preferred the old system.

Couple of thoughts that immediately came too mind:

1. There is no need to call other players stupid in order to give feedback on a game feature.

2. Nobody is threatening anybody with a ban for giving feedback, they are however giving a warning that you should respect your fellow players/ forum members or face the consequences.

3. I've criticized a lot of TLD's features over the past year, but never has a mod deemed it necessary to warn me or threaten to ban me. It really isn't that hard.

4. I'm glad that the mods on this forum actively remind us that we need to keep things civil here.

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I don't think the new mechanic is viable. If you're going to tell me that I need to mash a button repeatedly as fast as I can, I'm going to find the best and most effective way to do it. In this case, the best solution was to make a macro with my gaming keyboard to simulate mouse clicks when I have a button held. This has rendered wolves completely inert for me since my keyboard can "mouse click" so fast that the encounter is over before the bar even appears on screen. You could impose an artificial cap on how many times per second the game will register a click, but if you do that then I feel like the game should just assume I'm clicking at the fastest possible rate and just give the player an appropriate number of afflictions for the fight.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, eliminating the wolf encounter mini game and just having a wolf attack inflict X amount of condition damage and afflictions based on, for instance, your level of fatigue, weight and hunger might be a better system. Perhaps even give some sort of mechanism to trade calories and fatigue to lessen the damage done so you can decide whether you should take immediate damage that costs medicine to heal, or if you should trade up fatigue, food and water to save those supplies if you're running low. It would certainly motivate players to use stealth and keep their supplies and status in order.

Thanks for confirming that macros work - I've just been advising Survivor to try it and I might myself when I get the equipment. I'd prefer a mouse side button though, but same difference. I disagree with your second paragraph (In a friendly and non-judgemental way!!) because you basically have what you asked for already - a macro will bash the wolf and you'll come out of it based on your initial health, clothing condition and weapon type. Button mashing requires minimal skill, macros virtually none. What if shooting involved clicking once on your target and waiting for the computer to resolve? What if you could click on any location on a map to "fast travel" there? I think the melee system needs more player skill not less - "auto resolve" is useful in a 4x strategy game but does not fit the human vs. wilderness theme here, even less so than LMB persecution.

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As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, eliminating the wolf encounter mini game and just having a wolf attack inflict X amount of condition damage and afflictions based on, for instance, your level of fatigue, weight and hunger might be a better system.

Count me as a -1 on this :?

If mashing is either good or bad, this is not better.

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I like the current wolf mechanic. I think it causes a state of panic in the player, at least the first few times they encounter it. It still does for me, because I'm usually holding a torch and running, thinking "no no no no no!" before the wolf catches me.

I was thinking that one thing to make it slightly more interactive while still keeping the level of panic is a very simple "protecting yourself" dynamic: maybe the wolf's jaws are somewhere on screen and move around as he goes for various body parts, and the closer your cursor is to it the less vital damage you take (simulating shoving your non-fighting arm in his mouth instead of letting him bite your neck/head). Still button mashing, which as much as many people don't like it, accurately simulates panic, but adds some small amount of player skill.

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If you mapped the mouse button to act like that, you wouldn't be able to interact correctly with other objects. :-)

The point of the change is to make wolf interactions more survivable and less complex.

You need a mouse with extra buttons, usually on the side. It'll come with software to emulate "hammer LMB like a maniac" or whatever on one of the extra buttons - a macro - the actual LMB functions as normal.

I'd say the point of the change is to help sell as many copies of the game as possible by doing what you just said, not sure it'll do that. I don't think most players mind a system that takes a little figuring out and/or practice. In fact when it comes to release day reviews, I can't see IGN/GAMESPOT etc. caring about wolf melee at all, the rest of the game is so amazing - and surely most people buy games based on web review scores these days.

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I'd like to be able to at least pick a point on the wolf to attack (if the wolf fighting mechanic remained like this). No fancy graphics or anything, maybe something like -

left mouse click attacks torso

right mouse click attacks neck (shift click - 5% chance of stabbing it in the eye/slitting throat/instant death)

And/Or

A visual (text) comes up on the screen to tell us how/what part of the wolfs body/neck was damaged (a bit like how we get told about sprained ankles/lacerations etc...). It would be nice to know that the little swine got a taste of his own medicine and would make the whole wolf fighting mechanic seem not so pointless.

A suggestion from someone earlier (appologies I can't remember who it was and it wasn't exactly like this but...) also sounded good where we could actively prepare to defend ourselves and then retaliate within a given time frame. It could be as simple as "click a button when prompted" and we are given a 1-2 second time frame to do so. Success means we get a hit in, failure = we take damage. A "Stop the moving box in the correct area" could also work.

Mashing one button, in this literal life/death situation, in a game like this where this is one of the most dangerous situaion out of the whole game is really out of place. If it stays like this you should also change the bear mechanic where when the bear approaches us we simply press the "N" button (N representing the word "NO") and the bear does a little dance and then runs away :lol:

dancing-polar-bear_o_700325.jpg

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For those of you who have had enough of this kind of salami mechanic I suggest the following. Auto Clicker 3.0.1. Works great for wolf encounters. Until the developers actually make a skill based system instead of this button mash fest that exist right now I am not going to waste time breaking my finger or my mouse trying to click the almost 100 clicks necessary to fend off a wolf bare handed.

Auto Clicker will do it tho and give you a fighting chance in Stalker on Day 1.

Enjoy.

Hinterland don't want to give me a way out of infection if I don't have the materials readily at hand, I go online and find exploit around poor mechanic.

I'm sorry but until you guys give us real wolf battles where we have to actually try to kill a wolf by aiming against a dodging target, an actual melee system, with craft-able spears or a wood morning star, something to defend myself that doesn't weigh 8lbs. Or give me a real wilderness experience where days at time I go without seeing wolves EVERYWHERE.

Right now I am so pissed at TLD, I feel if the game is going to cheap me I am going to cheap right back.

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Why bother? It's not really that hard to avoid wolves most of the time anyway. I'm not saying I like the current fight system, but keep in mind:

-alpha

-'real wolf battles' are not the goal of the game

-you are basically trolling by posting something like this (ie. a 3rd party exploit)

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Well Toe, current system sucks. That is why. I am not trolling. I am providing feedback. This is what action X is resulting in Y. Sick of dying after 60 or 80 days with infections I can't stop because I haven't gotten the means to fight it, and I can't avoid the wolves everytime. I see the wolves daily. They are the zombies of this game and the game is about survival not survival of the wolves. I get tired of justifying it.

You play your game I'll play mine. Mine now includes a workaround. Call it an exploit if you want, I am still dying even with it, but at least I have an even odds against the cheapness that is TLD right now.

Give me the means to stop infection or survive it by enduring and costly means but the all is lost, no hope mechanic because you can't possibly click as fast as the computer and even if you could it still doesn't mean you can out click the life bar of the wolf is asinine.

Challenge Yes. Cheap No.

That is all.

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Well I don't quite agree with you on this. While I don't like the current mechanic at all and I suck at it, it doesn't mean you have to die of infection at all, certainly not after 80 day. I'm at day 96 and haven't been infected once even though I have been in a couple of scrapes with wolves. I could have avoided at least half of those fights, but I was trying out hunting with the bow and arrows and if you miss the buggers they are right on top of you before you know it :)

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Presumably, there are people who test these changes before the update is made public and, presumably, they write a report of some sort. Their own experience of it, what works, what doesn't, why, and so on.

And presumably the studio trusts these people, most importantly, trusts that their opinions and play style is relevant both for their own (Hinterlands') vision of the game and relevant from the perspective of the average TLD player.

And written words are objective. Two different people reading the same report x delta.time apart from each other will read the same words. So in this particular sense, a report is objective, even if the person writing it is subjective, if you just take it at face value instead of trying to "interpret" what it says. It says literally what it says. And of course you corroborate these reports with objective data, like my small test apropos the outcome of wolf struggles, but extensive and in-house.

And ultimately someone or a group of people, whatever, make a decision based on all the evidence, this is it, this is the mechanic, or this is not it, it doesn't work as intended, it will be changed or scrapped, whatever.

Couple this with the fact that they always reassure the player base by saying they're a world-class team with a clear vision so presumably the current system, since it made its way into the game, makes sense in their vision, and we'll see how in the future.

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