Hotklou2404

That could be cool. They could make a new affliction for that. Wet - The player character is wet due to having submerged themselves in the waters of a hot spring. Increased heat loss and increased risk of hypothermia until you dry yourself up. Of course this affliction would only be given to you if you submerged yourself sufficiently inside the hot spring's waters, and its negative effects will only come into effect once you exit the water. To counteract the Wet affliction: Just wait on a dry surface for your character to dry up. Heat (like from a fire) helps speed up the process. Put some clothes on. Of course, while your character is wet, their clothes will gradually become wetter as well. The innermost layer of clothing will be wettened first. Having clothes on also speeds up the drying process and helps counteract the affliction's heat loss and increased hypothermia risk, but the wettening of your clothes causes a whole other problem for you to deal with.

Perhaps they do cringe at the idea of that, but as shown in the Story mode's first act, right after your plane crash lands, at least McKenzie will sleep on the floor if necessary. At the very beginning when you've found no bedroll or bed yet and you're inside of that small cave, McKenzie did in fact just lie down on a bunch of leaves that's been arranged into a makeshift "bed" and then took a nap. He slept on the ground on top of a bunch of leaves. He had no bedroll and no bed, just his makeshift leaf bed and a fire to keep him warm. And while the leaves might be slightly more comfortable than the hard floor, it isn't a whole lot warmer. In fact, the wooden flooring of a house with a warm fire lit inside is much warmer than those leaves. I fully support the idea of being able to sleep anywhere on the ground, without needing to sleep on a bed or a bedroll. If you die because of you sleeping on the floor instead of on a bed or bedroll, then that's on you. Penalties could include reduced condition recovery, reduced affliction recovery and reduced temperature while sleeping. Sleeping in a bedroll gives a bonus to your temperature. Sleeping on a bed gives less of a bonus (or no bonus? I don't really know...). And sleeping on the floor would actually reduce your temperature. Sleeping on the floor should be a last resort, but it just feels wrong to not be able to do it at all. There will come situations when you simply don't have access to a bed or bedroll, and not being able to at least sleep on the floor is just plain stupid.

An alternative to using boats to get to the island would be a land bridge made of ice. It is very cold out there, so why not? This Land Bridge would be a transition zone that exists between some Great Bear coastal region and the Little Bear island. Now what could be inside this transition zone to make it interesting? Well, one thing I can think of is ship wreckages. You could find abandoned, broken husks of ships which you can enter and explore. The ships would not only provide valuable shelter, but also good loot. To encourage exploration of the ships, and to make the crossing more difficult, the Land Bridge transition zone could have strong winds and dangerously low ambient temperatures. There could also be some spots on the Land Bridge where the ice is thin and weak enough for you to break a small hole through to the water underneath, allowing you to catch fish. But beware, these fishing holes do not have little huts over them that provide shelter against the wind.

I love that idea. Perhaps the story could be that the Survivor went out on a hunting trip, but then a series of unfortunate events (e.g. bear chase and blizzards) caused them to end up somewhere they don't recognize and they summarily got lost in the wilderness. Having no idea of where they are, and perhaps having lost some of their navigational gear (like their compass and maps), they wandered off in some random direction in search of food and shelter. Luckily after a few days they finally did find shelter inside an abandoned building, and in this building was also a lot of supplies. Supplies which they have been using to set up camp and keep themselves fed and healthy. And among these supplies was also a huge stockpile of flares - flares which they have been firing off into the night sky each night in the hopes that someone might see them. What effects this could have on the gameplay is this: On their way to shelter, they had to make fires along the way to keep themselves warm during the nights. So the player will be able to use these burnt out campfires as a guide of where the Survivor had been, and thus where they might have gone next. And because the Survivor had lost some gear along the way (during the bear chase and the blizzards), the player might perhaps even find a backpack or some random stuff in the region where the Survivor had gotten lost. That would be the first goal during this Challenge - find the Survivor's lost gear to get some clues on where they might have run off to. PS: If possible, it might be a good idea to rename this forum topic to something like "New challenge idea: Find the lost survivor" to give a better idea of what's discussed inside.

Well... with that heavy backpack on your back it would be very difficult to do that. So they'd have to limit how much you can carry with you when you climb over, otherwise your character would get sprains and such. But I think that could be interesting!

As I mentioned, there would be containers (e.g. a chest or a locker), doors and gates that are locked and kept shut with chains. A prybar would not be useful against chains, but a bolt cutter would.

Well... the pry bar also doesn't have any use other than opening locked doors and containers does it? The different types of tools have different uses. There are those that open up doors and containers, and there are those that are used for harvesting corpses and materials. I think it's perfectly fine that way. The bolt cutters and the pry bar would be the only tools to open up doors and containers, but they cannot be used for harvesting corpses and materials like... say, the hatchet can.

Hmmm... perhaps the bolt cutters could instead be more similar to the pry bar. There could be many containers, doors and gates that are locked up with a chain, which you would need the bolt cutters for - no need to limit it to just one or two gates. Then there would also have to be multiple bolt cutters in the game world, not just one. They could populate all the current regions with containers, doors and gates like these that are locked with chains.

That would be perfect, if they made us able to just step over small obstacles like rocks and debris that you sometimes get stuck, even though it looks as though you should be able to just walk over it.

Well that begs the question: Why do the bolt cutters exist at all, then? Why introduce the player to an item that they will only use once - an item that has no use anywhere else or in any other gamemode? They should've much rather introduced the player to the hacksaw right from the start, then. But since the bolt cutters exist now, why not give it some use in Survival mode? They could make up some excuse about the hacksaw not being strong/sharp enough to cut through the chain - that only this bolt cutter can. I love that idea! There are elevators, so why not put them to use? To prevent the player from getting stuck at the other side (they wait too long and then the aurora goes away and the elevators stop working), you could have the player open up an alternative route once there to travel to and fro more easily and without need of the aurora being there.

The Bolt Cutters item would be right at home in the Survival game mode. Just like the keypad-locked door at the Last Resort Cannery requires you to trek across the map to a radio tower to get the combination to open the door, the Bolt Cutters could be used similarly. Be it in an already existing region or in an entirely new region, the Bolt Cutters could be used as the "key" for getting into an area that is inaccessible due to it being behind a locked gate. You could even put the Bolt Cutters in a region far away from the location that it grants access to, meaning that the player will have to travel across several regions first to get the Bolt Cutters and then to get the Bolt Cutters to the gate that it opens. EDIT 1: "Why not use the hacksaw to cut the chains instead? It can cut through metal, right?" Well for one, the hacksaw already has its uses. It is fine as-is. But the bolt cutters do not have any uses outside of that one quest in the Wintermute game mode. And if you need an explanation for why the character wouldn't use the hacksaw anyways, well then that would be because the hacksaw would not be strong/sharp enough to cut through these chains. Everything has its limits, and this is the hacksaw's unfortunate limit. Therefore, you'd need the bolt cutters to cut the chains. EDIT 2: Perhaps the bolt cutters could instead be more similar to the pry bar. There could be many containers, doors and gates that are locked up with a chain, which you would need the bolt cutters for - no need to limit it to just one or two gates. Then there would also have to be multiple bolt cutters in the game world, not just one. They could populate all the current regions with containers, doors and gates like these that are locked with chains.

1. Add "Very Low" difficulty tuning. Sometimes I would like to turn something down just a little bit more. 2. Some settings miss a "Very High" difficulty tuning. For example: "World Gets Colder Over Time", "Wind Variability", "Aurora Frequency", "Empty Container Chance Modifier", "Harvestable Plant Availability", "Reduce Container Item Density", "Reduce Wildlife Population Over Time", "Scent Increase From Meat/Blood", "Wolf Fear", "Timberwolf Morale", "Struggle Bonus", "Struggle Condition Damage Modifier", "Struggle Clothing Damage Modifier". While some of these settings probably don't need a "Very High" difficulty tuning, I think it would be worth it to give some settings that difficulty tuning.

Rolling sounds like it would be very clumsy and take a lot of effort to do with that heavy backpack on your back.

I love the idea of bear traps. These would be placeable like Snares, but would be more useful against bigger wildlife. It would still kill rabits, but it could wound and cripple larger animals like deer, wolves, moose and bears. Some would die out within minutes due to blood loss, while others would get away with some injuries. It would take time to set up the trap, so no instantly setting it up in front of a wolf that is charging you. And the trap would have durability that it loses over time and each time it triggers. I also love the sound of better wolf attacks. They should fight more as a pack, and as you said, circle around you to keep you on edge and unsure of when they'll attack. Perhaps if one wolf sees you it howls to alert the rest of its pack? Or perhaps once it gets wounded its cries of pain alerts the rest? I find it weird that the wolves of a pack are almost always very far away from one another, and they don't alert each other of dangers or food (such as the Player).

Good things come to those who wait. It'll get here... eventually.

Being given a warning when you're trying to shred clothing that you are wearing would be incredibly helpful and not at all annoying on too "in your face" or anything. Also, as @Mroz4k mentioned, the ability to stop the shredding process could also perhaps be useful.

That would indeed be very cool to have, but don't you want both jumping and that?

Ah. Yes that would be fine as well.

Give us a "custom mode" for Wintermute so we can tweak some settings to how we like them. Even if we can only tweak some of the settings, it would be fine. What do you guys think about that?

When both ankles are sprained, it should disable sprinting as usual. But when only one ankle is sprained, it should perhaps do this instead: - Sprinting speed reduced by 50%. - Increased risk of spraining your other ankle while sprinting. - Increased risk of getting the "Pain" injury. Why? IRL, if your life is in danger and you still have one good ankle, then you would still force youself to move faster to try and get to safety. This is why sprinting is not disabled completely. BUT because you are supporting most of your weight on your remaining good ankle and because you are not accustomed to moving around that fast with only one good ankle, you will not be able to sprint as fast as usual and you will have increased risk of getting injured if you try to move around too fast. This simple change would still allow you to move faster than usual if you got only one sprained ankle. But the increased risk to get injured even more would still make it too risky to sprint too much, unless you have absolutely no other choice.

It could be useful at times to be able to do a small jump. Just a teeny tiny jump to boost you over small things that you can get stuck on. Jumping would make you get more tired and/or use up some calories. Jumping while being overburdened (you are carrying too much stuff) would have a higher chance of causing an ankle sprain. You would not be able to jump in situations when you are unable to sprint (ankle sprain, fatigue, hunger, etc.). If you jump onto a rock to try and get away from wolves, the wolves would do an animation where they lift themselves up against the rock with their forelegs. This would allow them to reach up higher to try and bite at your legs. If that fails, well then they just keep pacing around the rock, barking at you every now and then. Then you would either have to wait until they get tired and go looking for other easier prey, or you would be forced to get off because you're getting cold, tired, hungry or thirsty.