V.258 Voyageur way more difficult?

[toddajstewart]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but does the Voyageur game seem like it has been re-balanced in v.258 to be way more difficult. I have been playing TLD since October last year and I've had long runs of 162 (ML and CH) and 284 (ML, CH and PV) days in Voyageur mode. I then lasted in Stalker mode for 64 days (PV). Now back in Voyageur mode at CH and have played twice and not even lasted 10 days. Now on 3rd attempt and not only are the predators more abundant and aggressive, but the weather is savage. I have been caught twice out in the open and died from hypothermia. This has never happened before. A bear just attacked me from over the ice from a long distance away and mauled me. Made it back to the cabin with 8% and I am wondering WTF is going on with TLD. My recent game in Stalker mode was far easier by comparison.

Has anyone else experienced this or have I just been extremely unlucky?

[octavian]

If anything I do feel the weather is even more all over the place. I frequently see it while sleeping. 7 hours left, ???, 5 hours left, ???, 4 hours left, ???, 3 hours left, ??? :lol:

So I can see how getting caught by weather and probably getting hypothermia could be an issue.

As for the predators, I really don't know, I don't play in an expected fashion, I sleep during the day and am active at night, and I play stalker, so what I can tell you is that nights are zombie-wolf fest through and through. The just beam down from orbit in clumps of four or five, and it does seem there are more of them around than usual, but I really can't tell for sure as I haven't tested it.

Many many small things have been changed, obviously, balance [sic], and we have no way to know for sure what and how was changed, but I would say .256-7-8 is harder, yes.

Clothes seem to evaporate now just by wearing them indoors.

[random calliope]

I have seen many more wolves. Where two used to roam the hay field in PV now there are three with a fourth farther away by the barn. Also, there are now two pair that roam the lake in CH together where there used to be only one pair.

On the opposite side, since .258 I've been playing stalker and have only seen one bear - at clearcut in one game and on the lake in the next - and each time it ignored me. I do wonder if it's more randomized now and less a case of just high and low numbers. Sometimes they run from you and sometimes they attack. Sometimes they see you from 50 meters away and sometimes they don't see you until they're 10 meters away. Maybe the animals have their own individual parameters (personalities)?

[bethany]

All major adjustments or balancing we did were completed in 256 ("Deep Forest") and were detailed in our YouTube video:

If we were to make any other dramatic changes, we would certainly announce them. Regardless, no big changes were made in the hotfixes (257 and 258). I think the biggest adjustment from those two was the tweaking we did to make hypothermia a bit easier to recover from.

[toddajstewart]

Not about luck. Tried switching to ML and it is also very difficult. Suggest re-balancing is required for Voyageur as it seems harder than or just as hard as Stalker.

I must have been at the tail-end of the 284 days when the Deep Forest update occurred. By that time I was well and truly established in PV with good clothing and weapons. Starting out in post Deep Forest update is now EXTREMELY difficult!!!

[Bill Tarling]

I must have been at the tail-end of the 284 days when the Deep Forest update occurred. By that time I was well and truly established in PV with good clothing and weapons. Starting out in post Deep Forest update is now EXTREMELY difficult!!!

Or not necessarily as difficult as it may first appear, but updated and different - meaning it requires some changes and adaption to previous techniques.

It should be expected that yes it will require some different approaches to playing now that we need to go out and forage now (rather than standing in our safe zones), and there will likely be more changes handling previous exploits and place holder tasks.

Some things may be made easier, and others might become more challenging as the game is retuned and rebalanced -- but mainly each big change will simply mean adapting and finding a different way of approaching the challenges.

[octavian]

Starting out in post Deep Forest update is now EXTREMELY difficult!!!

What is it in particular that you find difficult?

[toddajstewart]

Less tools, worse weather, more predators.

[jackattack]

Example: Starting in CH, 8 days to find a knife, 16 days to find a pry bar, tag-team wolves ate my boots (while I was in them!), both of my fishing lines broke, I am desperate to find a sewing kit, and I got mauled down to 7% by a bear but managed to stagger into a cabin and crawl into the sleeping bag at 1% (due to freezing).

With the exception of more survivable wolf attacks (although some of the new damage options defer immediate lethality into other obstacles to overcome, which is great), I find that I spend more time on the edge of survival in a long running game.

Which I love. (But I would like more sewing kits. And scrap metal.)

[SteveP]

That is my impression too except that for some reason, things seem to have become more abundant on my last play. No one seems able or willing to explain how "balancing" or tuning occurs. Sounds like from Bethany that they did it once only during the .256 update however I think they also did something during .258.

There is also a question of the variability of random placement and weather. The weather changes in the game are quite abrupt although the sky does give clues. In reality, the wind should shift direction over the course of a few hours, not in minutes as in the game and that's only when a big weather system is moving through. Normally the wind blows from the same direction all day changing only a few degrees at a time. (disregarding gustiness)

[toddajstewart]

Thanks jackattack for confirming my experiences. I must reiterate that my experiences are when starting a new game.

[jackattack]

The crazy weather is, per the game, a result of the geomagnetic event. It is sci-fi disaster weather, not a simulation of real/natural weather. The cues to predict the next weather change are a recent and very welcome addition.

I think items are generally a bit less scarce since the update, but item drops have always been a bit of a crapshoot. I played a dozen games before I found a rifle round, and then one game I found four rifles in the first couple of days. I've had eight sewing kits in inventory in some games, and had my clothes falling off in others because there were no sewing kits to be found. I wonder if the item calculations are done game-wide or map-wide?

[octavian]

The crazy weather is, per the game, a result of the geomagnetic event.

They said the weather is the way it is so players experience "more" of it.

[jackattack]

Huh. My explanation makes way more sense...

[toddajstewart]

In my current game, it took 20 days to go beyond starving from one day to the next on snared rabbits while waiting for found maple and birch to cure. On other games I have not been so fortunate to find a knife, hatchet or lantern within the first 5 days.

[SteveP]

That is my experience too; the weather and lack of adequate clothing and not quite enough food or harvest-able carcasses has made the early game, first 10-20 days pretty much a crap shoot. It is difficult to gain a reliable sample of exactly what resources are available with each run; this is a function of the game's internal algorithms.

I suspect that the variability (a parameter of probability distribution functions) is a bit too high for many items and for weather. Also the tuning or balancing process does not seem to be explained, documented and may be ad-hoc (chaotic). As an old QA person, I try to keep on them to address this issue but I don't feel that I'm making headway or at least nobody is willing to talk to us outsiders about what could be in-house development issues. :twisted: Or maybe it's just too busy for the devs to get to balancing and instrumentation issues. Instrumentation is where you build into a program the ability to peek at what's going on. Gathering mortality data is a great way to do this but there are other approaches too.

I've found by experience that the way to make progress on issues like this is to be ultra-patient, non-critical and take the time to explain the issue carefully. As an outsider, we don't have a lot of weight with internal (political?) issues however users experience this problem different; they can't analyze why things are difficult; they just know they have a WALL to break through to get the first weapon and to get moved to a new area with better hunting resources.

Once someone has evolved a strategy that works for a given build, they tend to stick with it. Some of the top players have been at this game for months and probably have the inside track. I think multiple survival strategies should be viable at moderate difficulty level. You should be able to fish and survive. You should be able to trap rabbits and survive but maybe with diminishing returns. Placement of snares could be key since I've a suspicious weather might be involved in the snares being ruined. If there were a greater selection of trappable animals, this would really mitigate trapping as a viable strategy. If the average life expectancy of a snare is X days, X days should be greater than the time it takes to cure a gut. Otherwise, you eventually run out of snares and cured guts are the critical resource. Don't forget, you also need a large supply of guts to make every useful craft item like the bow, clothing, fishing tackle and snares.

My feeling is that the early game is a bit of a crap shoot; many players just retry until they get a favourable starting position. (a symptom of high variability) Getting the hunting rifle is one of the first obstacles to overcome so a concerted effort to do that might be the best strategy. Fighting with wolves is another way to acquire meat and guts but there are only so many combats you can survive before you run out of something. Seems to be plentiful supplies of antibiotics in my recent games but is that just purely random?

Is there a range and mean for the number of each critical item being spawned for the game? for a specific example, what is the average, minimum and maximum number of hatchets per map? and so on for each item type in the game. There should never be zero. There should probably be on average 3 hatchets and knives per map but maybe 2 is enough. The minimum should be one and maximum is not important but obviously greater numbers of an item should be less probable.

The probability of an item being present in a large number of game samples would look like a histogram. The shape of the histogram is likely to be a discrete Weibul probability distribution that looks a bit like this:

So more clothing is needed and the weather should be more moderate at least in the beginning stages. The weather itself can follow an increasing or other type of probability function that takes into account the probability of the player having acquired the necessary stuff to deal with the weather. I hate being forced out into the storm on a futile quest for calories. In past game play, you could venture out and survive. Not any more. Get lost in the mid map area of Mystery spells doom! :twisted:

Weather could follow cyclical patterns like a week of favorable weather followed by two or three days of crap. It could progress as it does seasonally so that you know certain tasks have to get done before X day (October in the real world)

I'm not sure if there is enough wood available to gather in most places if you get stuck outside and have to weather a storm, particularly overnight. I had no trouble surviving storms in the previous game play, even through a whole night without a bedroll. This is no longer possible unless you have a good shelter like a fishing hut, bedroll and have trucked in a huge pile of (recycled) wood.

Or in layman's terms: it's a crap shoot. Yes, it is harder. Probably the weather should not ramp up the really bad storms until after 20 days. Wolves don't seem to bother a player much the first 2 days. The player has to transition to subsistence mode from looting mode in X days. All the parameters that affect subsistence gathering play into this especially weather!

Will they give us a peek inside the box? I dunno. I know I could provide better advice and tips. I did this sort of thing (S/W trouble shooting) :geek: for a living for 30 years or so. It's probable that they are just really busy. :ugeek: PRIORITIZE!! (this is the easy part)

Apologies in advance for the technical talk. :mrgreen:

[octavian]

@SteveP: I think you just need to play the game longer to understand it. Once you know the maps the game becomes too easy. Also, I never wear clothes on stalker except if I'm testing or harvesting an animal, so I don't know why you keep bringing up clothes . Also, all spawns are known, hatchet, rifle, whatever. And if you, or anybody else, feels the game is too hard, Pilgrim or Voyageur is always available to learn these things. The game is imbalanced, yes, but the overall impression is that its too easy, not too hard, mainly due to the overabundance of wildlife.

[toddajstewart]

Thanks SteveP. Totally agree with what you said.

I want to repeat this to the people who keep saying Voyageur mode is easy.

Surviving the FIRST X DAYS is not easy.

If you have been playing the game for over x days, it is highly probable that you have already found the items you need to survive more EASILY (hatchet, knife, lantern, rifle). If you found those needed items quickly in your game, then you had a 'favourable starting position'. You most certainly will not always be this fortunate. I am now at day 25 and still have not found a rifle. I have had to cure found maple and birch to make a bow and arrow which took days of subsisting on catches from 6 rabbit snares.

Since v.256:

PILGRIM mode is too easy? (Don't know. Never played it)

VOYAGEUR mode is hard.

STALKER mode does not appear any harder than VOYAGEUR mode.

[toddajstewart]

The weather is terrible. I still have no rifle. It's now 33 days of starving from one day to the next.

It's just not fun anymore! Really annoyed with the changes to the game! Losing interest!

[jackattack]

How are you not filled with a sense of accomplishment and pride about lasting over a month without a rifle? I think that's amazing!

What map are you playing? There are some places you are more likely to find a rifle, and some places where you might find one that are kind of counterintuitive.

[Foxen]

Just a suggestion:

Build a bow...and then take your time to find a rifle

[toddajstewart]

Foxen: I have a bow. Read previous post.

Jackattack: On ML map. Yes, I would not have been able to do 30+ days without having played the game before. The problem is that the weather changes fast and becomes prohibitively harsh for venturing far from shelter. Attempts to find items are relegated to second when I am just trying to not freeze and hunt food. This is a very slow process. Anyway I am going to stop complaining and deal with the game as it is now.

[toddajstewart]

Day 35: Finally found rifle. END RANT.

[jackattack]

Grats!

[brian71mm]

I think the most aggravating part is that there are twice as many wolves, worse weather, and not as many resources on voyager. Multiple times have I been attacked by a wolf only to turn around a corner only to be slaughtered by another while trying to seek refuge. Its fucking annoying and I'm losing interest with it. I cant see much of a difference between voyager and stalker tbh