""Dump Gear" button, and a few other suggestions....

[cowboymrh]

As if the Hinterland Devs don't have enough to do........

Since it is assumed that you are hauling your accumulated gear around in a virtual backpack, it would be nice to have a "Dump Gear" keystroke which would be the equivalent of taking off your backpack.

This would be handy (for example) when you want to make a quick side trip up that hill to harvest a birch branch you see in the distance, or you round a corner and come face to face with a bear or wolves and need to lighten your load quickly.

Hitting the "Dump Gear" button, would drop all the items you are carrying except your weapons, and 1 decoy, as if taking off your backpack.

Then, when you are done, you simply left click on the backpack to "load up" again.

It would be nice if this "backpack" was larger and a different color than the green "daypacks" that are scattered around the maps.

Having a real "backpack" that you can put on and take off, as well as load items into and take out of would add a lot more realism to that particular part of the game.

Plus, the developers already have the "loading" and "unloading" interface in use in the game now with the refrigerator and freezer that can be easily be adapted to the backpack.

Even better yet, would be to have some items you can carry on your person (rifle, knife, hatchet, ammo, decoy) then the rest of your gear could be put in the backpack.

It would be your choice...... what to carry on your person (for quick access), and what to carry in the backpack (that you have to dig around for). Just like real life! The weight would be the same regardless.

Another suggestion I would like to present is a "simple sled" that could be constructed on the workbench.

Many times I find myself overloaded with gear, especially when moving to a new location or map.

A simple sled would be a great asset.

It could be constructed on the workbench with a "developer determined" amount of scrap metal, harvested wood, and large amounts of animal gut fashioned into rope.

The weight of the unloaded sled, "if carried" would be somewhat heavy, (say 30 pounds or so) but when pulled across the snow or ice would only be like pulling 5 pounds. The items you would load in the sled would only feel like half their weight when loaded on the sled.

So this way, you could pull a sled with 50 pounds of gear, and it would only feel like 25 or 30 additional pounds.

Of course, going through a mine or cave (dirt and rock floor), the sled would not pull easily like it does on snow or ice, so you would have to unload the sled, carry it through the mine or cave to the other end, then go back and get your gear, and carry it through the mine or cave and then reload on the sled again to continue on the snow outside the other end of the mine or cave.

So anyway...... those are a few suggestions I have.

Thank You again for a great gaming experience Hinterlands!!

[druffzilla]

The "dump gear option" sounds like a good idea, a few times it happened already that I got attacked by a wolf just infront of my door after I went to gather some wood and couldnt sprint properly anymore, in reality you would of course just drop the wood your carrying and make a run for the house... it would just need some tweaking that you dont drop your whole bag or the stuff you dont want to drop...

[selfless]

Biggest problem of drop backpack is what happens if you don't/can't get back to it. Giant can of worms containing all sort of player suggested improvisations and workarounds not to mention all the "what drops/what stays" arguments.

Better to leave it as is and make player suffer consequences of choosing to travel overburdened.

It is, after all, a game about making wise choices. Not so much how to get out of bad ones.

[Carla393]

While this is an interesting concept, dropping everything seems like a can of worms. Perhaps a better solution is adding a "select all" button when you're in each tab of your backpack to quickly select everything. And then also add a "drop selected" button. There would also have to be a way to deselect items in the tab you don't want to drop off.

[whisperwind777]

We need to make good use of the green backpacks. Now they are useless after you've looted them. Wish they could be picked up and put inside my sweet home.