codyh

In any case I think it's better to control rifle availability through its associated resources, that being ammunition and rifle cleaning kits. In the apocalypse, the actual weapons would be fairly available, battered by use (almost all found well under <50% condition by stalker) and discarded by the former owners as soon as they ran out of ammunition. Of course a rifle with no ammo is merely a weight debuff. By stalker difficulty, ammo boxes should be extremely rare and absolutely never found near a weapon. These would have been used long ago. Your best bet for ammo boxes would be pristine areas (aurora mine one example). Most ammunition found would be single rounds, rolled accidentally under a sofa and forgotten. Even so such ammo should be limited. Even more common should be spent ammo, lying sometimes on front porches, sometimes in trash cans, sometimes 3-5 stashed by a previous user in a workbench. When a stalker does find a rifle they should need to look for a cleaning kit, and to scour carefully for precious ammo. The limited availability of ammo and plentiful spent casings will give them a strong reason to craft more ammo as well. They might even craft a bow as an alternative. It will open some interesting choices! When you give the player a powerful tool, make them work for it, make choices (do I conserve? Do I craft ammo? Make a bow instead?). Make it a journey. The reward will be all the sweeter

One use of tinder could be that it increases fire temp without increasing burn time. Has some logical grounding and would have enduring usefulness beyond lvl 3.

Yep this is a variant on the idea of reducing overall recovery rate, which in principle I think is an awesome idea. Having 5%/day recovery base + modifiers with birch and herbal tea would really make condition that much more valuable and make it more likely players are forced to be out in low condition, plus increase the value of those teas, instead of being just heat-sources. Adjusting condition rates is a challenge though since it has flow-on impacts to other things - condition loss rates across the board would need some examination, and secondary modifiers like warmth loss rate in interloper. I think the warmth loss rate in interloper is a good example of excessive reliance on the warmth resource to create challenge, to the point where it forces player into specific choices. The high warmth drop rate in turn creates reliance on condition as a resource, which then makes condition recovery harder to adjust. What we don't want to create is the kind of gameplay seen in NOGOA and other extreme challenges - the community term is "technical" gameplay. It's fine for a player challenge but it really is quite constrictive for general play. Requiring a player to have perfect knowledge of the "right" choices tends to create formulaic and highly meta gameplay. My proposals are about expanding both the range of player pressures and player choices, I think constraining condition recovery fits in really well with that. It does have some more challenge to balance but perhaps hinterland could set up a system of beta-testing balance changes through custom game codes and calling for feedback?

What we learned from Skyrim is that if you populate a world full of even partially readable books, people *will* go and collect every single one. It's also hard to overstate just how much that created historical depth to the world in Skyrim. Since the Long Dark doesn't have people to relate the stories, books would be an amazing way to build history. Crowdsourcing it might help with the work but Hinterland would need to define a high level arc for them to fit within (e.g. books providing snippet-level insight the history of particular towns or mines or areas). Skyrim had a good example there too, most books were just a few pages, just a short cut-out that provided some summarised history. You can certainly picture "Hiker's Guide To Great Bear" being a coveted title...

It's always weird going around mystery lake or coastal and seeing massive piles of wood and not a single chainsaw. Geomagnetic apocalypse or not, they should work just fine. Just think of all the things I could do with a chainsaw. I could maul bears. I could scare every wolf within a km. I could cut fishing holes wherever I want. And if I have any fuel left over I could make months of firewood out of those log piles. I'd be willing to suffer a 10kg weight cost in order to become a crazed chainsaw killer (of virtual rabbits and bears). Failing that, give me a wood saw and a few hours and let me start attacking logpiles

I'm not sure why the ovens and grills aren't working anyway, since they're gas appliances and those houses have a tank, assuming it's not empty. What's weirder is seeing those random houses which have lights but no network connected power and no generator.

I really like these. Feats operate in long dark similarly to traits in other games. Some of them use a system whereby negative traits allow the addition of positive traits. In long dark, this could mean each negative feat added adds an extra feat slot, allowing you to use multiple positive feats with a cost.

This model doesn’t work with starvation strategy since you don’t actually starve for 24h, just eat the min calories to sleep. Maybe something even simpler would be sufficient? Like a small max walk speed debuff while starving and higher fatigue drain rate? Anyway a starvation debuff would only ever be important outside the first two weeks if food availability is significantly lowered

it’s going to be a difficult area to balance since predators are both a threat and food source. the problem is frequent respawns plus unlimited meat stockpiling together eliminate food scarcity especially later in the game. I’ve had, and I’ve seen others have months of food stockpiled. Add to this a 75% reduction in consumption through starvation and it becomes a non-issue as soon as you have a bow. I think ultimately all three of those need to be addressed to solve food scarcity. I wouldn’t suggest making all the changes at once. I think a good starting point would be to make food inedible when ruined, then start tweaking condition drop and respawn times in higher difficulty and see the results on gameplay. these are tiny changes with potentially significant impacts. I also think some starvation debuff would be prudent a good solution for the moose/bear problem would be to add salting. If salt is a limited resource it would allow longer preservation on a limited basis. On the issue of predators reducing over time, I think most interlopers aren’t even slightly threatened by wolves. I wonder if random length respawns (extending over time but random) would be more likely to catch an experienced interloper unaware. killing an interloper should come to pressures working together - food scarcity forcing them to travel, bad weather catching them when they do, and predators being the surprise but in general I would prefer interloper wolves just to randomly roam the map, I’m really not a fan of fixed locations and routes edit: I have no idea why parasites only exist in predators but salting should make meat safe

I love the idea of a semi covered pit fire. It could provide a bonus to fire lifetime, lighting chance and some wind protection at a cost of only having one cooking slot (directly over it), longer preparation time and a greatly reduced warmth radius. You could also be forced to start it with soft or hardwood? For the OSCF it could have as a cost/benefit faster preparation time, better placement options, better quality torch output at a cost of lower lighting chance, no cooking slots, faster burn time and more wind exposure. it would be so nice to have several fire types to pick from based on what we are aiming for.

I imagine if you could find 6-12 rounds lootable (average 9 std dev 3), plus another 12-24 casings that would give you total 18-36 rounds craftable at a time. We could also add in a 5% loss chance (casing damaged after firing). Due to the difficulty of crafting new ammunition it would limit its use, maybe players reserve it for bear or moose hunting. There's got to be a balance in there between investment vs reward. Suffering a 4kg weight debuff + ammo crafting providing a benefit of easier large game hunting

If we had rifles with low, random spawn chance, and very low lootable ammo (no packs, just single bullets rarely and a good amount of spent casings in various places), it would provide some incentive to craft ammo. This would provide interlopers with a meaningful objective. Ammunition crafting is currently underutilised as a mechanic due to the amount of work required and risk involved. In most playstyles world ammo is sufficient to last a long time so players don't often craft unless they really want to. People spend most of their time in a game working toward a series of objectives - initially just survive, but then get your base set up, find the best equipment, etc. It's what motivates people to keep playing. Finding a weapon and going through the significant work of crafting ammo for it would be one more way to give a meaningful objective to interlopers. It wouldn't imbalance the game, since the work of actually finding one and getting a meaningful amount of ammo would make it strictly a mid-late game option. We already have the flare gun which has fixed locations but limited ammo, and the bow which is extremely available and has highly available ammo but must be crafted. The firearms would sit between these, being randomly available, with very limited ammo, but (with lots of work) able to craft more. In general I think the principle we should follow is to create challenge through resource constraints rather than removing player options, in this case by limiting ammunition availability and making players invest time for the reward of a firearm.

I was just thinking of a really simple way to limit the overeffectiveness of starvation. If calorie use over the last few days is below a certain amount, then apply a "malnourished" condition, which drops maximum fatigue by 25% and reduces carry weight by 5kg. To clear the condition you would need three days without starvation (same as well fed). This would provide an opposing condition to the well fed bonus and be a starting point to overall making food more important. Ultimately, I don't think there's any way to balance the calorie resource without addressing the overpowered starvation strategy. Being able to cut food intake by ~75% without any significant costs makes any attempt to balance food impossible.

I'd also like to see them always charge when you are not facing them, even if you're holding fire. Also when there are multiple wolves, it would be good to see the "active" wolf switch on a chance roll to a wolf currently behind the player.

I adore candles in RL, I would just love to have the soft flickering throughout my house and destroying my eyes as I try to read