Lexilogo

I can just imagine the amount of Great Bear Residents who thought "aha, I've seen Fallout 4, I know what to do!" and ran into the portapotties, sat on the toilet, and died for the sake of environmental storytelling

The Ear Wrap is a really good all-round accessory, but even on gunloper, warmth is essentially a binary thing, it doesn't really matter until the actual meter runs out. With that said, I do think it's a valid argument to say the rifle holster is underpowered. It's ~2kg worth of extra carry weight efficiency, only while carrying a rifle, and while every bit of carry weight matters, only getting that benefit when carrying a rifle isn't exactly amazing. The rifle is overkill for self-defense, and if it's hunting you're interested in, it's not like the +2kg is going to help you carry a bear in one load or anything. (and on repeat loads, you'll definitely want to leave the rifle behind in the first place) It feels especially redundant because the Travois is on the horizon, and will most likely upend how we currently think about Carry Weight management. And if it's slotted in the Accessory slot, the Rifle Holster is going to be very irrelevant. Here's a few ideas for potentially making this item better: Maybe make it holsters, instead of a rifle holster? Change the model to include two pistol-style holsters and a knife holster, and instead of halving only the weight of one rifle, it can also halve the weight of a Distress Pistol, Revolver, and Knife, all at the same time, which should up the weight save (once again, only if you are using all of these items at once) to ~3.2kg or so. Maybe go the Crampons route and also add extra benefits besides just carry weight? An easy one would be halving your Rifle's condition decay per shot, decreasing the speed the Aim meter decays with the rifle (it kept your rifle warm), etc? A bit boring (and perhaps this would carry realism complaints) but if the holster removed the weight penalty of carrying a rifle entirely (maybe replace the weight penalty with a max Stamina penalty?), that'd easily allow its weight save to be worth it.

Yeah sure, Custom Game could easily get a "Starting Inventory" customisation option that lets you add random loot pools or guarenteed items to your start. I also think it might be worth considering a Feat that guarentees a starting gun/some other starting equipment, but I suppose that's a different discussion.

For the record, I agree that this is something Hinterland should try stop from happening, I just think Cabin Fever was a bad way to go about it. The game would get better if Cabin Fever was simply removed IMO, (after all, there are plenty of things to do in TLD besides hibernate, now more than ever) but ideally Cabin Fever would be replaced with something else designed to disencourage/stop hibernation. My personal ideal solution is a rework to food decay, (ruined food is no longer edible, you can make jerky to have meat last longer but the process takes effort, resources, and it's calorie-inefficient, and food decay values should also be generally rebalanced) which is usually how a lot of other survival games aim to kick you out of bed. If you have long-term food sources, you could still hibernate, but you'd be burning through high-quality food whilst accomplishing nothing productive. But there's also other options, like the popular idea of adding an equivalent to Well Fed that encourages outdoor survival. I would love a reason to keep up a streak of never using interiors. I was only observing Disease and Cabin Fever's small mechanical similarities because I think it's a funny coincidence. The only points of comparison I think matter between them is that they are/were both hated by their respective communities, and they are/were both defended by the existence of Custom Game settings that could disable them, I was pointing out in this scenario, DST still benefited from deleting Disease. This is a great defense and I'm sure those were great experiences, but I think they are more happy accidents than genuine virtues of Cabin Fever. If Cabin Fever was a more transparent mechanic, or if you looked up how it worked, you probably would've have found yourself in fewer of those exciting situations in the first place, and spent more time sleeping in cars or fishing huts. So yes, I agree getting players in situations where they need/want to abandon the safety of indoors to brave the outdoors is a good thing. Cabin Fever is just a really badly implemented way of doing it IMO. I don't want to get into too many detours on what mechanic in TLD deserves removal/altering the most, but yes, I agree the game should give players the option to wake up when an Aurora happens.

I think I should explain myself a bit more as my previous counter to the Custom Game argument was more of an authoritative statement rather than an in-depth argument. Customisation options do not negate bad game design features, because at the end of the day, game design is about creating an enjoyable set of rules. That's why, despite most TTRPGs having the caveat "the GM can override these rules at any time", they still have dozens and dozens of books dedicated to the pursuit of the best possible set of default rules. (and why the playerbase still don't like bad design decisions made to the default rules) Customisation options are great when you can't satisfy an entire playerbase, and so need to give them multiple choices. (eg. it's not like Celeste's Assist Mode is in the game because the platforming mechanics are unfair. They're in the game because players don't all come to a game in equal condition) But using customisation to defend bad game design is cowardice on behalf of the designer, and is no different from arguments like "well, if you think that's overpowered, just don't use it". While Cabin Fever is a unique problem, if it's any consolation to Hinterland, I think it's pretty comparable to a mechanic Don't Starve Together implemented, Disease. Klei had the guts to admit that, yes, even though Disease could also be turned off in the settings, that wasn't an excuse for it remaining in the game, especially as a setting that was on by default. Practically the entire playerbase recommended turning it off, and servers that forgot to often found their farms destroyed by the mechanic with little warning. (coincidentally, Disease is also a mechanic that targets the player after ~50 days and is designed to disrupt the consistency of a player's base) When they reworked farming, they simply removed it, and the playerbase was overjoyed about it, because it was badly designed and it was one less landmine for new players to quit the game over. Even if you think Cabin Fever is a fine mechanic, would you actually miss it if it was deleted?

Wait, sorry, did I do that? Apologies if so, years of Internet living has jaded me and probably made my tone of speaking in argument a bit nasty. Rest assured, I really don't mean ill will, I just like dunking on silly things, and I think Cabin Fever is silly haha

Custom difficulty settings are good to have, but are never an excuse for bad game design features, especially when they are on by default. They're only relevant in discussions of Cabin Fever to let people know it can be turned off, not to defend it. Unless you haven't actually trawled the game's wiki. If you are playing TLD organically, Cabin Fever is extremely unintuitive for a bunch of reasons: As far as I know, the game has no warning Cabin Fever is coming- I don't remember off the top of my head if there is even a loading screen tip about it The invisible Cabin Fever grace period depending on difficulty has no info on it and is likely to confuse players as to what they've suddenly been doing differently There's no indication that Cabin Fever is a weeklong tracker, as opposed to an invisible meter or etc There's no indication of what does and does not count as outside to the point where even veteran players are frequently confused as to the exceptions. HOW is any player on Earth supposed to realize that the inside of a car, the interior of a fishing hut, or the inside of a cave counts as "outdoors", but numerous other interiors in the outdoor zone don't? This is an odd thing for Hinterland to ask players to do, when they designed the crafting system that usually requires you to be indoors to do it and incentivises long crafting sessions If we agree going outdoors doesn't provide any consistent game design threat to players (especially when, Ravine aside, numerous other spots essentially provide all the benefits of being indoors while counting as outdoors) what is the point of a mechanic that disables timeskipping if it doesn't provide such a consistent game design challenge, besides annoying the hell out of people via disabling timeskipping? Broken Ribs are definitely the most dangerous status effect in the game (besides arguably frostbite's permanent consequences) but there are two important differences: In application, Broken Ribs are very clear about the fact they are a rare status effect granted by failing a very specific task (hunting moose) as opposed to being implemented very specifically to shut down a method of play (which, for the record, is not always bad) In consequence, Broken Ribs present you with a dangerous gameplay scenario and ask you to use some medicine and survive it for ~5 days. While being forced to survive in a zone you might prefer to leave definitely takes away player agency (as do most meaningful consequences in videogames) there are plenty of ways players can handle it because, well, it's still TLD survival, it's simply a travel restriction. By disabling timeskipping, Cabin Fever inherently cuts off part of the foundation of TLD's survival mechanics No, you make choices over the previous ~5 days without any transparency on the mechanic then Cabin Fever Risk pops up

I will admit I feel a sense of dread coming every time the current difficulty level's Cabin Fever grace period wears off, and I really don't think the game should feel that way. I remember a previous discussion on this, citing that Hinterland should take cues from the well-recieved Well Fed and instead make a buff that encourages players to stay outside rather than a debuff that forces players to leave shelter, and I agree with it for sure. Cabin Fever mostly encourages unintuitive workarounds to what technically counts as "indoors" and boring, safe exploiting strategies for veteran players. I genuinely can't name another survival game with a mechanic truly equivalent to Cabin Fever (Project Zomboid has boredom, but that's more like a dynamic need allieviated by a bunch of things, not a "you need to touch grass" meter) and that's probably not because Cabin Fever is an avant garde piece of game design that won't be appreciated in its own time, it's probably because Cabin Fever is a bad idea, and the intuitive & fun solution to "how do we stop players from bunkering" is to make food decay matter as a serious threat, instead of being essentially deleted from the game at Cooking level 5

Players should be punished for screwing up a wolf encounter and letting it reach them. Lessening that impact by having injuries play a role like this would kind of compromise that and probably make wolves too forgiving IMO, it'd lessen the tension of needing to get a headshot with the bow. That could be mostly fixed by making recent injuries not count- But then it becomes a really niche feature for a situation where, somehow, you hit a Wolf, it runs, then it gets in a struggle with you later before it dies of blood loss, which is a very rare scenario in current wildlife behaviour. I'd love a wildlife overhaul where their behaviour and the process of hunting them was more indepth, but that kind of thing really does not seem to be in the cards for this game.

This'd be a fantastic asset to inject a bit of variety into Great Bear, I'm all for it.

I agree that spray paint having luminosity depending on whether it last got light, or lighting up its surroundings, or behaving realistically like a luminescent material IRL does would be nasty work. Making spray paint easily visible in darkness in a way that looks totally fine within the game's artstyle, however, should be dirt easy and just take a little bit of mucking around with the textures. We've been going nearly nine years with completely clouded, nonreflective ice, we'll be fine seeing an overly simple glow in the dark effect.

I'd love this. Spray paint is already brighter than most surfaces in the game, so I already kind of use it for this purpose. Fully incorporating it as a mechanic would be an excellent QoL feature and incentivise using the item more frequently.

Hinterland adding Quartering was their direct response to people asking for this feature, and I don't really see the point in Quartering continuing to be a thing if carrying carcasses became possible. I will definitely say in terms of FEEL, I vastly prefer the fantasy of throwing a wolf's body on my back, walking through the snowfields with it then tossing it onto my dining table to butcher, than spending an hour in the open to magic the wolf into a bunch of bags to pick up. But in terms of gameplay, carrying bodies makes Quartering mostly redundant. I don't think it would be outrageous to suggest that carrying Deer/Wolf bodies could just replace Quartering for them entirely, and Quartering becomes a feature exclusive to moose, bears, and similarly heavy animals?

I would like an extra Wintermute difficulty too. My ideal experience would be a "Mackenzie Must Die" difficulty where instead of just being an Interloper port, it remixes aspects of the campaign and etc to make the experience extremely difficult to survive.

Well, my thought is mostly that Project Zomboid has strength/fitness because- like its Panic and panic desensitisation system- It's supposed to act as a barrier to you being able to deal with zombies well at the beginning of the game. I also don't think exercise would fit as well, because there's not as many variables you need to consider in TLD compared to PZ. In PZ an exercise session will leave you tired out, and in a world where zombies could break into your house at any time. (plus, in a world where there is much more active time pressure and things competing for your attention) In TLD I think it'd devolve into encouraging fairly boring hibernation sessions. If TLD had a Skill for simulating your survivor's physique, it would probably just be one skill IMO and be a steady build from a variety of sources. Eg. You get points from simply eating a kilo of meat, surviving outdoors for periods of time, each hour you spend Harvesting, etc. It could effect things like what you mentioned, or other stuff like the max capacity for Needs/Condition, wound recovery time, harvest times/calorie efficiency, etc. I think it'd be nice to feel the experience of truly starting as a weenie and working your way up, but my main concern is that it'd take a lot of balancing work. Presumably, some power would need to be deducted from players by default, and fully levelled players would be stronger in many inherent, important ways that'd have big knock on effects on the game. Could work out and be quite fun, though.