More Difficulty Levels for a More Tailored Game


Im_harris

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I have owned this game for a week now and have really fallen in love with it. The only issue that has really been bugging me is the difficulty levels. I really enjoy the more realistic condition changes in the level known as "Pilgrim", but also enjoy the action and scares in harder levels. If there was a mixture of these aspects I wouldn't be able to pull myself away.

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Sort of a "custom" difficulty?

A bunch of boxes you could check for how quickly conditions would deplete, whether or not animals would show aggression, etc?

I could really get behind that.

I currently call "Pilgrim" the "realistic" play mode, because things deplete at a reasonable rate, and wolves don't attack me.

But I'd like that tiny little extra bit of a challenge that aggressive wildlife would provide, without also ramping up the food and water consumption to levels that don't seem to reflect any kind of constant hunger/thirst I've ever experienced in the real world... and I have done the "live off the land" thing in the Canadian woods before. (By choice, I wasn't stranded or anything)

So yeah. Long story short, a "custom" difficulty sounds amazing and I highly agree that should be added.

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That all sounds great... but it came become a balancing nightmare. Especially when the sandbox is a test bed for the storyline game to come. If players started checking fewer wolves or less aggressive wolves for Stalker, would Stalker be balanced? Or what if we wanted a checkbox so there were fewer animals but the calorie load was realistic. Some might complain Stalker suddenly became to hard/easy, in their rush to get to "the end game". Then we have another hew and cry there is not enough stuff to explore (on three main zones).

I could easily visualize a series of check boxes or sliders, with the three given difficulties defining those settings for the player. We could then go in and change it some more. That said, lets balance the finite to get the story dynamic set correctly. Once that is done, then lets see if we need to add more discrete choice to tailor the game more.

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If you had the ability to adjust just *one* element with a slider, which would it be? Loot spawn, animal life, weather, ect?

Ouch! Tough Choice.

Right now we don't have to go out and hunt for food. Just walk a little ways out into an open area (the hayfields @ PV, the lake @ ML, the ice or coastal town site @ CH) and kill two or three wolves. Maybe run a deer or a rabbit out into the wolves for a bonus bit of loot. I think this chaps my hide the most. If I

could reduce the amount of animals but increase the calorie load accordingly, that would be my pick.

Hanging weight of a field dressed bull elk is about 400 lbs. A large buck maybe 120 lbs. Grey wolves weight between 80 and 100 lbs, so the hanging weight should be about 75% of that, so lets just run the middle and say 67 lbs. You usually get about 75% of hanging weight as cut meat. So a bull elk would be 300 lbs, buck 90 lbs and 50 lbs for a wolf. A 4 oz serving of elk steak is 120 cal, or 480 cal per pound. Lets just keep the current calorie load per pound the same as is the game. A bull elk would net 136 slabs of meat @ 2.2 lbs each, a deer would be 40 slabs @ 2.2 lbs each and a wolf would be 22 slabs @ 2.2 lbs each. Right now a wolf has between 8 and 12 lbs of meat and a deer 18 to 24 lbs of meat.

End Result: Increase the meat harvest five fold and reduce the animal count accordingly to balance it out. That is the TLD I want to play.

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If it were me, like I said, it'd be the aggressiveness of predators. I love everything about Pilgrim mode's difficulty as far as the hunger/thirst/etc gauges go... They feel the closest to "real life" at their rate of depletion.

I'd just like the ability to have everything from Pilgrim be the same AND have wolves attack.

On the harder difficulties, it would be neat to be able to adjust the rate of reduction in item/food percentages. If I'm going to freeze, starve, and be mauled left and right, I'd like to know my knife is going to stick around a while longer, hahaha! :D

I do like the idea of increasing the scarcity of game (while also giving that scarce game higher yields), however.

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  • 1 month later...

As the title suggests I'd love to see more options to tinker with.

For example setting the amount of loot separated into categories (food, materials, weapons etc..)

Amount and spawn rate of animals.

Just a few I could think up right now. I mainly wish this feature because to me pilgrim mode is too easy and voyageur & stalker too hard.

Oh, also it'd be awesome to set the chance or max amount of burned down buildings in the world.

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As the title suggests I'd love to see more options to tinker with.

For example setting the amount of loot separated into categories (food, materials, weapons etc..)

Amount and spawn rate of animals.

Just a few I could think up right now. I mainly wish this feature because to me pilgrim mode is too easy and voyageur & stalker too hard.

Oh, also it'd be awesome to set the chance or max amount of burned down buildings in the world.

That could be interesting, essentially make it a "custom" difficulty setting.

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