My thoughts after lots of playing

[Dez1013]

So far I'm really enjoying this game. Love the atmosphere, the visuals, and after playing on all three difficulties I really like the balance of voyager. I had a few suggestions.

-Item consolidation would be nice and help to unclutter the inventory. Especially with matches.

-Water storage. I hope there will eventually be some way to keep water without having to pour it out and so you don't have to carry so much with you. The bottled water you find should have the option of being pooled with either your larger water store or kept in bottles so you have more freedom.

-Clothing you are currently wearing shouldn't have a weight so you're only penalized for carrying extra (which more than likely you should just breakdown to cloth anyways). This would free up some weight in the inventory since I find that even while carrying a little bit of food, plus water, and survival tools I'm usually overburdened.

-Compass as an item would be really nice to have, though I'm guessing with what causes the catastrophe in the story they may be rendered useless.

-Some way to warn you when you're sleeping outside (or fishing, harvesting meat, etc) that your condition is dropping. Its pretty frustrating to just die in your sleep with no way to wake up, especially when you're caught in a blizzard.

**Just thought of another

-Food goes bad so quickly, and harvesting off animals or fish can give you way more than you can use sometimes. What about adding salt to the game as a item to allow for preserving meat. Same properties with a slower decay?

I can add to this as I think of things, usually in the middle of playing. It should be fun to see how things change.

[Larkid]

You don't have to waste water. When you drop 1L or whatever, it shows up on the ground as a new bottle of water.

[Dez1013]

Holy hell! I didn't know that. I was so afraid because the menu says something like pour out which doesn't imply that its retrievable.

[romerabr]

The matches with the same degradation % and kind (wood or cardboard) are stored together. But I really think matches should not spoil, unless if they get wet.

[joki]

In general there is different spoiling speeds for gear, ranked from lowest to highest "spoiling speeds":

Item in a container/drawer < Item on the ground < Item in your inventory

So after you have touched an item, and you are concerned about its spoiling speed, put it in a container.

Many of the decisions, regarding wear on clothing and gear was made for game balancing reasons primarily.

[Morav]

I agree with the suggestion that it should have more warnings regarding the player status. It was anoying to have to keep checking the survival stats every 5min to see how the character was going. My suggestion is he or she should verbally comunicate his or her needs more often. For example, when I was nearly dying from cold, the character didn't say a thing and I only found out how serious his conditions were after I checked the stats. Besides verbal comunications, there should be other ways of comunicating the needs. For instance, when in extreme cold, the screen could tremble to simulate shivering. When dehydrated, there could be a camera effect to simulate dizzyness. And so on.

[joki]

There are icons whenever a visible stat (starvation, deyhdration, exhaustion, freezing) moves below a quarter border, e.g. hunger crosses the 75% level, the 50% level, the 25% level border. In that case an icon will be displayed for a few seconds in the lower left corner. If below the critical % border, the icon will be red, and be displayed permanently. At that point the player will start losing condition until he either dies, or the critical stat is increased above critical border.

Also note, that you lose condition the fastest from freezing by far, following by dehydration (not even close), followed by starvation and exhaustion at the same speed.

[akodo1]

There are icons whenever a visible stat (starvation, deyhdration, exhaustion, freezing) moves below a quarter border, e.g. hunger crosses the 75% level, the 50% level, the 25% level border. In that case an icon will be displayed for a few seconds in the lower left corner. If below the critical % border, the icon will be red, and be displayed permanently. At that point the player will start losing condition until he either dies, or the critical stat is increased above critical border.

Also note, that you lose condition the fastest from freezing by far, following by dehydration (not even close), followed by starvation and exhaustion at the same speed.

I have never noticed the red icons appearing and disappearing when in 'good' condition but passing the 76%, 50%, and 25% levels.

I have seen the icons appear when I am really low, but still have calories left (and other stuff) kind of as an early warning, no %, but I've never seen the icon appear at 75%

[KD7BCH]

They were changed in the last or 2nd last patch to make them less intrusive. So you have to watch for them or just take an extra 5 seconds and watch your trends before you start moving once you get into a weather area.

[Pillock]

I agree with the suggestion that it should have more warnings regarding the player status. It was anoying to have to keep checking the survival stats every 5min to see how the character was going. My suggestion is he or she should verbally comunicate his or her needs more often. For example, when I was nearly dying from cold, the character didn't say a thing and I only found out how serious his conditions were after I checked the stats. Besides verbal comunications, there should be other ways of comunicating the needs. For instance, when in extreme cold, the screen could tremble to simulate shivering. When dehydrated, there could be a camera effect to simulate dizzyness. And so on.

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see more of. Yes, it would be intrusive - but being freezing cold or starving hungry or severely dehydrated or suffering exhaustion is very intrusive to your ability to concentrate on and carry out otherwise-normal tasks.

[Dez1013]

My complaint wasn't that you can't see the status. It's that when you're doing something that you've set to do for a certain time period such as sleeping or fishing the time is sped up so if you're not quick on the escape button you can freeze or starve rather quickly and there isn't anything you can do about it.

That came to me after I was caught out traveling and had to rest before I collapsed, so I set myself to sleep for 4 hours. In that time, I died, and rather quickly and I had no chance to react to it. Really frustrating.