Weight & Muscle

[pigbull320]

It would be interesting and useful if you could gain muscle by just carrying a bunch of weight around.

Or it could be a 'feat' "Carry more than 80 pounds over X amount of distance or travel thru every map with X amount of pounds: Gain permanent +12 pound recommended weight limit".

[PallasD]

I like your idea!  

I was thinking the same thing; if you're constantly carrying around a heavy pack, why not gain some type of muscle mass after awhile to help with your loads. 

But, I'm also thinking that because it is a survival game, you need constant protein for you to keep that muscle mass and if you're not getting it then you become weaker rather than stronger. Who knows when your next meal is in this game, it could be scare with that new update they implemented. 

That's just my logic though, still like your idea! 

[EternityTide]

It has been suggested before, but there's been little to no chatter about it from the devs. Perhaps it would work, but given how many portions of this community grumble about the game becoming too easy during late stage play, maybe it would be better as an optional feat ("walk 100km whilst encumbered, unlocks permanent 5kg boost")

[Joelle Emmily]

Muscle conditioning due to exercise is something I wanted to suggest, but, I don't think it should be a reward for a feat, I think it should be a progressive mechanic. IE, if you stay inside a lot, you lose some of your strength, you carry around a lot of crap, you gain it. Also, injury, and condition lose, reducing your overall carrying capacity for at least a few days, would also be a neat idea. This would also prevent faster from starving themselves for days; then eating a candy bar to regain condition. They might get healthier doing so, but they wouldn't be able to carry a heavy load until their muscles recover.

[cekivi]

Like @EternityTide mentioned this idea has been mentioned before with mixed community response. It's not inherently bad... but in my opinion the biggest flaw with the Long Dark sandbox remains the late game difficulty and increasing your carry limit would just add to the problem.

[pigbull320]

How about just a system where you can eat more calories than you need, and you gain weight and lose weight depending on how many calories you consume per day. The more you weigh the less stamina you have and the less you weigh the less you can carry. Both having negative effects on tiredness. 

This would prevent you from being able to just stand in a house with 20 MRE's and unlimited water for a few weeks before going out for more supplies. You would be obese and could barely travel far and just walking would make you very tired.

This could be a negative as well as a positive thing.

 

And as for late game, just make it colder every few days and make wolfs more common. Make snow storms more common. Make supplies spoil faster and lose condition. After so many days make 'close encounters' with wolves lethal no matter what, if they get on you.

Theres plenty we could do to make the game impossibly hard. But I think 'Pilgrim' difficulty should remain extremly easy with very little negatives in the game. 

[LucidFugue]

 

On 03/10/2016 at 2:23 PM, pigbull320 said:

This would prevent you from being able to just stand in a house with 20 MRE's and unlimited water for a few weeks before going out for more supplies. You would be obese and could barely travel far and just walking would make you very tired.

Who is to say there is something wrong with that playstyle? Notwithstanding that cabin fever already achieves this, there are nomadic players and homesteaders. Hinterland sees both as valid. It's telling that they have both a challenge to stockpile resources in a central base (whiteout) and a challenge to move from one place to the next (nomad). 

The main problem with body conditioning systems is that they just duplicate what other systems already do.

They increase stamina or carry weight as a result of keeping up calorie intake and staying active. By design, you cannot keep up calorie intake without exploring and staying active. Locations won't naturally come stocked with everything you need to sit around for days. If you want to haul weeks worth of resources to a cabin, you need to put in the effort to set that up. It's banking resources and perfectly valid, especially since global decay rates were implemented. 

Maladies actually achieve the negative effects of body conditioning in a much more eloquent fashion. Instead of punishing players for sitting indoors all day, they punish players by requiring them to sit indoors all day. Hypothermia, intestinal parasites, dysentery... They all require you to take care of yourself and rest. They make you weaker, they drain your stamina.

The kicker is, you need to have the resources stocked to deal with them. So it's implemented in an inverse fashion. I think that is why a lot of people don't see that it's already there. 

[pigbull320]

@LucidFugue Getting fat from eating 2400+ calories and not moving for a month and gaining weight is just realistic. Sure it makes the game harder and blah blah blah. But its more realistic. If you don't move for a month and eat a bunch of calories you are going to gain weight and be very slow and require more calories. I'm not worried about affecting someone's playstyle. 

I was merely suggesting a more realistic system/mechanic they could add to the game to give us another thing to worry about or strive to do.

[akodo1]

Generally, when you look at people who are in survival situations, they are pushing their bodies too hard to gain much muscle mass.  To get muscle mass you need a well balanced diet plus a bit of extra protein (our survivor probably lacks other nutrients) plus good rest.  (Not just sleeping length, but sleeping before you are exhausted etc.)  

Also, to get muscle mass body builders will to a small amount of heavy lifting, it's actually counter-productive to do a lot of it.  If our survivor is getting a well balanced diet and plenty of rest it's more likely the stamina will increase not the raw lbs that can be carried.

[Jebru]

I think you could off set the benefits of gaining strength and stamina with the added risk of injury. It already seems like we are more likely to sprain an ankle or wrist when walking with a heavy pack. What if we also risked a back injury requiring pain killers, any time we spent too much time with an overweight pack? 

[cekivi]

37 minutes ago, Jebru said:

I think you could off set the benefits of gaining strength and stamina with the added risk of injury. It already seems like we are more likely to sprain an ankle or wrist when walking with a heavy pack. What if we also risked a back injury requiring pain killers, any time we spent too much time with an overweight pack? 

Interesting solution to make overloading gear more of a risk/reward puzzle. Would you add the ability to sprint or increase the encumbered walking speed to compensate for the increased risk of negative afflictions?

[pigbull320]

On 10/13/2016 at 11:39 PM, cekivi said:

Interesting solution to make overloading gear more of a risk/reward puzzle. Would you add the ability to sprint or increase the encumbered walking speed to compensate for the increased risk of negative afflictions?

I think it should be as realistic as possible without being too easy. It should have positive and negative effects allowing you to chose which option is best.

In real life you CAN run with a 120 pound backpack. Hell I've done it. I'm not saying you can run fast or for long, but If you did it often you would eventually be able to carry more, farther, faster, and for longer.

You should start out depending on the difficulty in better or worse condition weight/strength wise and be able to improve/worsen both depending on the difficulty more easily.

For example pilgrim mode you would start out in above average shape and be able to carry more and require less calories.

If you started in a later difficulty it would be hard to get in shape and easy to gain weight and lose muscle. You would start out slightly overweight and out of shape. Not being able to carry too much (maybe 50 pounds would be the recommended weight or something, you guys would have to do the math and science). And you couldn't run fast or for long.

 

For example:

Walking with a heavy backpack and eating more calories than you need would increase your weight and strength and decrease your stamina and make rope climbing almost impossible.

Running and eating the right amount of calories would increase your muscle slightly and your stamina.

 

Now these are just ideas of how this COULD work, I don't know all the science and health facts and information so I'll just supply the idea's and leave the numbers to you folk.

[Wastelander]

Maybe it's just me, but I like the current weight system - you can carry more than the "recommended" weight, it just isn't a good idea. When I broke up with my ex-girlfriend and moved into a furnished apartment in a student dorm, I hauled my stuff there without a car, so 30kg of "recommended" weight seems reaonable to me.

However, the other posters in this thread make some very good points, so some "getting used to it" could work very nicely. 

[pigbull320]

Well I'm just suggesting ideas for the mechanic.

We could just have it where the recommended weight goes up as the game goes on (simple)

We could just leave it how it is and call it a day (lazy but simple)

We could change it so you can gain/lose weight/muscle and increase/decrease your stamina (realistic but time consuming to code)

If everyone could think of a better way to do this and suggest it, eventually we could mishmash everything into a great idea that maybe the devs would be willing to spend time and money doing.

Right now we're only in alpha, this is something more for late beta or post-release. But If we can polish this idea and come up with something, maybe the devs will stick it at the bottom of a long list of needs, and when they reach this we can get some 'want's' in.

[cekivi]

52 minutes ago, pigbull320 said:

Right now we're only in alpha, this is something more for late beta or post-release. But If we can polish this idea and come up with something, maybe the devs will stick it at the bottom of a long list of needs, and when they reach this we can get some 'want's' in.

Very accurate

[LucidFugue]

On 15/10/2016 at 8:35 AM, pigbull320 said:

We could just leave it how it is and call it a day (lazy but simple)

I'm not saying the current system is perfect, but I would object to calling it lazy to leave it how it is in the context of coding in some form of dynamic weight limit based on body conditioning. 

The amount of stuff you can carry is a vital balancing mechanic. At the moment stamina loss and tiredness are linked how much you are carrying. This presents a fantastic risk/reward proposition. You are encouraged to really think about what you need to have on hand at any one point. Good quality clothing is heavy. Tools are heavy. Firewood is heavy. The current limit prevents you from carrying as much as you'd like, and that's a good thing. 

Try this challenge: Set out for a journey with no more than 15kg carried when you have access to all the survival gear you want. You start to make some interesting choices based on what you plan to do and what unexpected scenarios you can expect. Am I really gonna need more than 10 bullets in the rifle? If I have a knife, do I also need a hatchet? Maybe with a lantern, water and food I can just take matches and rely on gathering sticks if I need a fire... Can I risk dumping the bedroll because I know I can get to a bed? 

In the early game weight isn't much of an issue because you're busy finding everything you need, and lugging stuff to a safehouse tires you out during a phase of the game when you can really only safely travel for a short period of the day anyway as you lack proper clothing to survive cold nights/mornings. Later in the game what to carry with you and what to stash away in safehouses rises in importance 

Increasing carry weight over time by any means diminishes the value of this system. I just worry this is coming from a place of wanting to be able to carry a full set of survival tools, a full set of clothing, and enough food and water at all times. That is where this leads - instead of encouraging interesting gear choices, you encourage carrying everything because your character adjusts and the penalties disappear. 

[cekivi]

1 hour ago, LucidFugue said:

Increasing carry weight over time by any means diminishes the value of this system. I just worry this is coming from a place of wanting to be able to carry a full set of survival tools, a full set of clothing, and enough food and water at all times. That is where this leads - instead of encouraging interesting gear choices, you encourage carrying everything because your character adjusts and the penalties disappear. 

Well said  

[EternityTide]

I agree with the above. You're a survivor scavenging to keep alive, not a soldier kitted out with enough food, water and ammunition to last the long march into the Soviet motherland. 

I recently shifted the majority of my gear from coastal highway to the pleasant valley farmstead, a trip that took 4 forays back and forth ( mainly to keep my load light enough to climb up the rope to abandoned coal mine no.5, in order to avoid a route that was occupied by a particularly persistent bear), and nearly killed me ( first, and hopefully last, time I had to use an emergency stim). It's that kind of gameplay that makes this game a challenge, and differentiates TLD from DayZ and Rust.

 

[Mikhail_Reign]

I don't really think you would be gaining that much muscle mass anyway. Shivering is a crazy work out. Being cold in general is a MASSIVE drain on your body. Granted, in this game is relatively easy to get to a point where you can sit inside for a month and eat and not exhaust your supplies, but I feel that's a balance issue with food being to easy to find.

 

its like saying climbing Mt Everedt would build muscles. I'm sure that training, in optimal conditions before hand would, but the minute your on that mountain your body would be cannibalising it's self to stay alive.

 

 

 

[cekivi]

2 hours ago, Mikhail_Reign said:

its like saying climbing Mt Everedt would build muscles. I'm sure that training, in optimal conditions before hand would, but the minute your on that mountain your body would be cannibalising it's self to stay alive.

They don't call the last few hundred meters of Everest the "death zone" for nothing...

[Jebru]

On 13/10/2016 at 11:39 PM, cekivi said:

Interesting solution to make overloading gear more of a risk/reward puzzle. Would you add the ability to sprint or increase the encumbered walking speed to compensate for the increased risk of negative afflictions?

Sorry for the late reply. I like the way they do the sprinting and walking speed right now. If you reach a certain weight, you can't run anymore. And a heavier pack wears you out, which eventually slows you down. I would keep that all the same. I would simply add a risk of a back injury for a heavy pack. This could be done even without adding a benefit.

But if we are going to play this game through multiple seasons, I think we need to have some long term health changes to reflect how our body adjusts. The better you take care of your body early on, the better health you will have later in the game. Conversely, if you are constantly risking death with encounters with wild life or multiple cases of hypothermia, your body is eventually going to weaken and not be able to do the things it used to. 

[cekivi]

15 minutes ago, Jebru said:

But if we are going to play this game through multiple seasons, I think we need to have some long term health changes to reflect how our body adjusts. The better you take care of your body early on, the better health you will have later in the game. Conversely, if you are constantly risking death with encounters with wild life or multiple cases of hypothermia, your body is eventually going to weaken and not be able to do the things it used to. 

That sort of long term benefit/consequence would certainly add to the narrative element of the game.