Timber Wolf

1 minute ago, TROY said:

I'm concerned about the use of the mouse click macro. While doing so may help standardize the tests, 8.3 clicks per second seems like considerably more than an average player would be able to do without a macro

That may well be true, but it's not more than I am able to do.  And since that's the speed I've been using since I started these tests, I need to keep it the same in order to be able to compare the tests through the different versions.

Furthermore, I really don't think it matters what speed I use as long as it's always consistent.  I'm not looking to find out exactly how much condition is lost in a particular situation, as opposed to finding out how much of a difference there is in condition loss between the different situations.

1 hour ago, MarrowStone said:

@Timber Wolf, the echaustion numbers confused me, I always believed that was the most important factor.

I was also surprised by this and am going to test it again.
 

1 hour ago, MarrowStone said:

Have you tried with a character with a fully depleted sprint bar instead of exhausted? I've no clue how youd do that consistently though.

I did run a depleted sprint bar test back in .393, but it didn't seem to make a difference.  In order to perform the tests, I would spring until the meter ran out and then immediately walk up to a wolf.

On the other hand, in that same test group I did fully exhausted tests and it definitely did seem to make a difference.  Although back then, I was only running 10 of every test, so the numbers might have been a little off.

I'll also add that when I was running these tests while exhausted, it was clear that the fight meter was filling up much more slowly than it normally does.  Never-the-less, the condition I lost wasn't really any different than when in the other states.

6 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

I don't think there's enough evidence of a difference to make more testing worthwhile, though.

Probably not, but I might run some more tests in a state of exhaustion.  I really thought that would make a difference.  And since the sprained ankle tests had a much lower standard deviation, I kind of want to see what happens if I have several injuries.  And now that makes me wonder what difference it might make if I am dealing with intestinal parasites.  Hmmmm.  I guess I have more tests to run.

1 minute ago, Ruruwawa said:

The SD for the exhausted and overburdened states seem to suggest this states are slightly protective, and that just can't be right lol.

No, that doesn't seem likely!   My guess is that with more tests all of the numbers would even out.

1 minute ago, Ruruwawa said:

Are the numbers in the table remaining condition (n), or condition lost (100-n)?

They are condition lost (100-n).  But in the case of the sprained ankle (96-n), and exhausted (98-n).

(Note: Here are links to the previous test -  .393 and .426)

The test scenario: A 100% stalker character wearing no clothes walking toward a wolf.  Measuring condition loss for 20 struggles.  Used a macro to automate 8.3 mouse clicks per second.  This time I used some different character states, always using a hatchet.  I was carrying 50 kg for the overburdened tests and 6 pieces of fresh venison (3 scent bars) for the stinky tests.

I was a bit surprised by the results.  I thought being exhausted would have an adverse effect.  These results seem to show there is little to no difference between these different states.

2 minutes ago, JAFO said:

I doubt they're connected.. after all, the scent radius is much bigger than the blood-spotting radius..

The size of the radius is irrelevant, the usage of a radius for both mechanics is what matters.

I've really never bothered following the blood trails, because I found it to be easier just to hang out somewhere warm and wait for the animal to bleed out.  Then go outside and find the carcass, which is sometimes close to the spot where it was wounded.

However, this thread got my attention and I had to take a look for myself.  So, I beat the crap out of a wolf with my hatchet to see what would happen.  Right after the fight, all that could be seen was the initial blood splatter from the fight.  Then I had to move forward to start seeing the blood trail.  I could move forward and backward and forward again and watch the blood trail appear, disappear and then reappear - in the same spot.  I could move sideways and have the same thing happen.  This means the blood trails are only visible in a small radius around the character. 

I wonder if this change is connected to the implementation of the scent mechanic, which also functions in relation to a radius around the character.  It might be an unintended byproduct and could probably be logged as a bug.

4 hours ago, cekivi said:

On the bright side, I'm Dr. cekivi now

Congrats! 

27 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

I'm totally in love with the aurora. ^-^

It is so beautiful!  Thanks for sharing! 

Beautiful shots @Ruruwawa!

2 minutes ago, SnowWalker said:

I tried to do that too but I can't figure out how to change that in the options.

Go to Options > Audio and then move the Voice slider all the way down.

This is fantastic!!!

23 minutes ago, selfless said:

I've played with the voices turned off for close to a year now.

Same here.  After playing the game for so long, the voice only serve to annoy me now.

Another knife?

On 7/23/2017 at 6:06 PM, Drifter Man said:

I'm not too happy that the outcome depends on such a dumb factor like clicking speed. But they can't include a full-scale wolf-wrestling simulator in the game, so I'll have to live with it.

Well, the outcome really depends on clicking speed, choice of weapon, clothing protection stats and fatigue - along with an element of randomness.

4 hours ago, Scyzara said:

I assume your characters died during those struggles where they suffered 100% condition loss, correct?

That's right.
 

4 hours ago, Scyzara said:

Just as a sidenote: I personally find it rather questionable if the current huge variety in struggle outcomes (between <10% to >90% damage taken are possible under equal conditions with a pretty fast clicking speed) benefits the fun while playing, but I've been saying that since two years or so now.

I remember the times when your clicking speed actually had a much higher impact on the damage you would take (and pure randomness had a smaller effect), but that system wasn't perfect either, as it put slow-clicking players at a huge disadvantage. Guess it's very hard to find a perfect balance between both aspects, and currently the emphasis is more on the side of randomness.

This is a very good point.  It made me curious, so I rattled off 20 more tests with the improvised hatchet in Interloper - except this time I set it to 50 clicks per second.  Let's see how a super-human Astrid does against the wolf.

Without a doubt, randomness plays a large role in the outcome of the struggles.

How fast can you click?  Find out here.

I thought it was about time for some Interloper tests.  The same scenario as I used for the Stalker tests.  Have a look.

Welcome to the forums @dmbjt!

I use a program called Xpadder that allows me to map keys to controller buttons.  It also let's me configure a repeated button press at a particular interval, which I set to 8.3 per second.  So while I run these tests, I remap the button I normally use to bring up the Journal.  When the struggle begins, I just have to hold down that button until the struggle ends.

This is some really great stuff!

15 hours ago, Scyzara said:

Behold Astrid Odinson and her faithful warhammer Fluffnir! 

This inspired me to do some hammering!  I fought the same wolf with the hammer over and over until it died.  The quickest I could kill it was right at the beginning of the third consecutive fight, which happened 3 of the 10 times I tried it.  The other times it took 4 or 5 fights to kill it.  I never saw it bleed and it would always die during the fight.

23 minutes ago, JAFO said:

So....

If you're not on Interloper, it really, really pays to look after your knife and hatchet for as long as possible. If you're on Interloper, take good care of your hammer.

That does appear to be the case.  More tests might show the improvised hatchet and hammer leveling off.  But one thing seems clear, the improvised knife is not good.  When I was testing with it, the struggles "felt" a lot like struggles with bare hands. 

I ran 20 tests with each of the improvised weapons under the same conditions as the initial test.  Then integrated the results.  The following shows the condition loss to my character.

22 hours ago, JoE Smash said:

The devs information says the knife gives you a 40% damage bonus and the hatchet a 20% damage bonus when fighting wolves.

I decided to look into this further and followed the wolf after every struggle.  When I used the hatchet, it took around 2:30 real time for the wolf to drop dead.  When I used the knife, it would only take about 1:00 real time.  This was very consistent across about 20 trials and the struggle duration didn't seem to make any difference.

So, the knife does seem to do more damage to the wolf than the hatchet does.  But I don't think the cost in your own condition is worth having a quicker bleed out.

7 minutes ago, JoE Smash said:

The buttons probably don't work due to a bug. Or I have to figure out what to push....

I'm not sure how that works, or is supposed to.  Maybe @Patrick Carlson or @Mel Guille can shed some light?