Game strategy: more work, less combat?

[SteveP]

What do you think about the idea of making wolves much more scarce and have the game more about the struggle with weather and starvation? The game could become much more strategic because you should actually spend a lot more time processing firewood in fall for winter and most of the time, wild animals are not an issue.

The sneaking and avoiding of wolves seems to play too great a role in this game making it very difficult to move around sometimes and getting food very difficult. I think we should be able to forage for more found food such as mushrooms, tree bark, roots, berries and fish.

I think wolves should be treated more like a scarce resource with consequences for over harvesting them.

Perhaps there is a passive way to keep wolves away from a work area such as you are spending a week or two logging firewood. Normally such things don't attract wolves. Being lost in the dark or leaving a blood scent or spoor on the other hand, are things that attract real wolves.

[selfless]

You may be missing the opportunity to live in a new world mitigating and integrating to the threats it provides. Events have changed your environment, can you adapt to survive? That sorta thing. Tons of strategies available there I think.

Foraging for mushrooms, berries, and fish: it's there.

You may be describing Pilgrim. Few wolves and they run away.

Maybe you are noticing that the game model starts to fall apart as the months start turning into a year? I think that is not a flaw and the game is not intended to be perpetual. 'Sandbox' only exists to have the opportunity to play openly in their game world. The real game will be 'Story Mode'.

Regardless, no. Lumberjack simulator is not my interest...

[SteveP]

The strategic element of the game was an intentional design goal and one which I like very much. I'm just addressing this common concern that a lot of people are expressing about wolves and difficulty and suggesting some alternatives. Fortunately, this type of game development, soliciting user feedback and utilizing alpha testing during development is a great way to build software in my expert opinion (career in S/W dev & test)

I have a small favor to request "selfless": please keep your comments helpful and avoid speculating upon other people's skill or proclivities. Avoid the "you" pronoun except if offering specific helpful advice. Thank you.

As to gathering and stockpiling wood: the game goes to lengths to try to simulate this; it is a very important and never ending battle in the wilderness for survival. The change in wood foraging means that we MUST stockpile wood in my opinion. I have a separate thread for wood sledge wishlist that would make this viable.

Wood Sledge

I absolutely [glow=red]love[/glow]that we can provide feedback and suggestions during game development!!

Steve

[Ruhroe]

The wolves do provide a sense of danger and are important. The new sprint feature makes it so with some clever maneuvering, backing up slowly to position where you can get out of view, then sprinting all while trying to break proximity and the wolf's visual line of sight, you can escape. It's actually pretty enjoyable and not easy. If this fails, your stamina is too low, or you are too weak, you should pay with resources (condition loss, medical supply use, clothing durability loss, etc).

The main problem with the wolves is the fighting interface, and how to capture a quick do or die fight, while keeping it reasonable. Personally, the current system makes it so I pretty much have to use a click and hold key in order to just survive (much less shoo it away). Of course, this totally trivializes the encounter, making it so the wolf dies and I take no damage at all.

One suggestion is to replace the combat with a Quick Time Event (QTE). Basically, it's a system where you have to react by pressing a button in response to a stimuli. This removes a quick mashing mechanic and replaces it with a more twitch/reflex base event series. How they would do this of course has a lot of different possibilities.