cattailstalker

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  1. Feels very Red Dead Redemption 2 to me, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing as I generally enjoyed the hunting aspect of that game. I do agree that it should be rewarded accordingly with the additional challenge though, it’s been a bit since I played RDR2 but I recall not bothering with some Legendary animals as the only rewards were cosmetic items or gear that didn’t feel worth the time or effort. About halfway thru the game I did start to feel a bit exhausted by what began to feel like a collect-athon of various item types, and that was with the use of horseback, maps, and fast travel. If it weren’t for Rockstar’s strong storyline and characters, I probably would have abandoned RDR2 (as I’m not a completionist-style player), and TLD Survival Mode obviously doesn’t have the equivalents to offer. However, I’m sure Hinterland is aware of potential balancing risks, and if they decide to add the feature to Survival they’d put their own spin on it without adding ‘bloat’.
  2. This is a great way of putting it. In my opinion it feels too Fallout/trait-based RPG-ish for a game like TLD. If anything, the 'debuff for the sake of having a debuff' concept should be applied to the Badges you [can] select at the beginning of a new game, e.g. something like "Tea Drinker: The Warming Up buff from drinking teas lasts twice as long, but stamina is permanently reduced by 20%" [the idea being that you'd constantly feel like you need to pee from consuming so many liquids all the time, lol - I'm just coming up with some silly on-the-spot example here to illustrate my point]. It seems an odd choice to apply the debuff-for-the-sake-of-debuff concept to food items, especially an item the player must go through deliberate efforts to get (cook). Finding the proper ingredients, leveling up Cooking skill, and in some cases even finding the recipe - that all in itself seems like it should be the inherent tradeoff for a food item like this, since It's not like cattails - which in comparison take relatively very little effort to acquire and are a consumable that most players view as pure gain at no cost. (A similar example of what I view as balanced game design in this respect: as many are familiar with in Minecraft, Rotten Flesh is a guaranteed drop from killing Zombies: as a consumable, it's plentiful and easy to get, but restores a very little Food points, and comes with an 80% chance of inflicting a 'Hunger' debuff that will essentially negate nearly all of what little Food points were gained. Thus as a lootable item it's generally seen as garbage, and as a consumable it's really just used as a food of last resort.) In TLD's case, I think the simpler (better?) option would be to simply reduce the amount of calories of the pie/whatever food if it feels too overpowered without the debuff ('Tiredness' or otherwise).
  3. I haven’t found any medications (natural or manmade) in the revamped beachcombing. This is playing on just vanilla interloper. Mostly just finding meh clothing in poor condition - so basically one piece of cloth - which is fine with me. I wouldn’t want beachcombing to risk becoming too overpowered for interloper difficulty…personally, the enjoyment comes mostly from the novelty/thrill of spotting and retrieving ‘treasure’ washed ashore, rather than the actual loot itself. And I think it’s even more fun now, seeing the new ‘containers’ it spawns in, adding more ‘life’ and immersion into the game world in what I think is a very creative way.
  4. Love this TLD science experiment! I have always been curious about the clothes-drying mechanics too, since there can be so many variables, eg. keeping clothes on, dumping them on the floor, proximity to fire, type of clothing, indoor ambient temp (without fire going), etc. Off the top of my head, wool/hide items tend to take the shortest to dry and jeans seem to take forever! (Playing on interloper, but I don’t see why player level should make a difference with regard to this particular mechanic.)
  5. I have over 3k hours in TLD and speedrun Subnautica, so I think your game idea sounds fantastic! I think survival game 'meters' are done best when their importance (rate of depletion, I guess) matches the game's defining 'theme' of survival, if that makes sense. To me, what defines TLD and makes its survival experience unique is the cold and constantly dropping temperature. What makes the game challenging and fun is managing the temp meter above all else. This meter is the hardest to manage, the quickest to deplete and most critical to your HP (essentially your progression in an open-ended 'sandbox survival' game, no?). Learning to successfully deal with this meter, I think, means learning how to play and enjoy the game. Similar may be said for Subnautica's O2 meter. Story progression requires exploring deeper, which requires equipment and upgrades. Note there's only one ranged weapon available for self-defense, but four oxygen tank upgrades to unlock! The greatest danger in going deeper isn't necessarily the alien 'wildlife', but your constantly depleting oxygen meter, gating further exploration or else requiring the player take a well-timed risk. Discovering and managing that risk/its rewards are what really defined my first experience playing Subnautica. On the other hand, I didn't like managing a cold meter in Subnautica: Below Zero. Exposure depletes health at what seems a much higher rate than lack of oxygen. Meanwhile, with a large part of the game land-based, oxygen stopped being a concern. In what would seem laughable on Great Bear Island, BZ's cold is a constant temp and eventually dealt with by wearing a snowsuit. In Below Zero, meters tended to be annoying or fairly ignorable, making my gameplay less immersive or memorable than I expected. About useless survival meters: Rust is a 'survival' game, but (having an embarrassing amount of hours in this game as well) its hunger and thirst meters are fairly easy to ignore. They honestly could probably be removed without much changing in the game, since PvP is at its core, not 'survival'. No one raids for your food stash! I think many recent survival games tend to 'tack on' survival meters (along with common offenders like crafting, co-op, and base building) simply to tick boxes rather than to provide any thoughtful or enhanced player experience. In short, sticking to one survival 'theme' - and doing it well - tends to make for the most challenging and enjoyable 'survival' games for me. Meters should be meaningful to the game's ethos, arguably defining and creating a memorable experience for the player. Anything less and they just become a HUD-cluttering nuisance.
  6. You're not alone, I've also had very bad luck with bedrolls on Interloper post-DLC update. But I should note that out of all the 'critical tools', I can usually go pretty long without a bedroll and be fine, so it's a lower priority for me than, say, a hacksaw. That being said, so far Ive only ever found a bedroll in one of the large stacked pipes at the rear entrance of the Dam (coming from Winding River). It's been there a few times for me when many of the past 'usual' spots came up empty.
  7. I live in NYC, so no car and no garage...so does that mean you'd have my entire apartment building to loot? 😃 You'd need a really high condition prybar and/or lots of memento keys to access it, though! And some apartments would be completely empty...
  8. I'm also interested to learn of/discover the new interloper bedroll spawns, so far I've only been finding it at the Dam in a pipe near the Winding River transition. It's been super enjoyable so far discovering so many new 'hiding spots' in the game! I'm almost disappointed when I find an item in its "old", expected, spot 😄
  9. That is a really interesting thing to bring up - I hadn't thought of it that way! I have not yet been to AC in my time playing the new update, but I have noticed that DP also seems buffed in terms of loot spawns, now making an Interloper start there more intriguing than (my usual) speedrunning Hibernia-mine-lighthouse-church-wolf gauntlet and GTFO, on to Coastal for cat tails...
  10. Playing on Interloper, I found matches in the PV Farmhouse on the same metal stand they're usually on, but one shelf above - i.e. where the static spray paint spawn used to be. I believe there was also a box of matches at 3 Strikes...the loot there used to kinda suck (or hit/miss at best, IMO) so I wandered over there and there were 2 hefty deer carcasses and...a wolf carcass...? Very interesting addition, if intentional! Good loot as well, plus saplings, worth it i think if you have the fuel/means to stay for a bit. Obviously the matches i mentioned aren't set spawns though, since many others have also lamented a lack of matches in the region. Just possibilities for other survivors, I suppose. 😅