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

Hi thanks for responding! Of course I wouldn't expect a promise or these specific changes. The main outcome I'm hoping for is to focus attention on what I see are the main areas for improvement of game balance, that being food availability (and the overpowered starvation workaround), playthrough variability and to a lesser extent indoor QOL. I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas and perspectives, this is my gentle pressure. Thanks again for putting your time and love into this game, it has been a real treat. As an engineer myself I appreciate all the work that goes into these long term iterative projects.

First off I love this game, great work especially on the environment and ambiance, it makes me feel so lonely I usually have to listen to a podcast or something to feel people around. I love interloper and after a bunch of playthroughs myself and also watching Twitch streamers I have ideas I'd like to share. I'm mainly wanting to address what I see as an issue with the difficulty model (particularly in interloper) and the way resource constraints are managed. One or two of these I can already see have been impacted by item changes in the recent release but these ideas largely are separate to those changes. The game issues I see are: Food is excessively available and becomes a non-constraint past the very early game (1-3 days in most modes, 10-14 in interloper) and allows unlimited stockpiling Item and tool constraints mean interloper early and mid game is formulaic, late game lacks meaningful objectives beyond what a player RPs. Replays lack variability. Constraints designed to push players outside create immersion-breaking and non-intuitive meta gameplay Due to lack of other options to create risk, excessive weight placed on warmth in interloper for creating challenge. When looking at solutions, I'm trying to work towards a few principles that I think work toward a fun and highly replayable game: Control difficulty through resource pressure not by limiting player choice options Avoid using punishment as a way of promoting desired outcomes (instead use rewards as positive pressure) Provide variability in replays, try to ensure different playthroughs can be as different as possible Provide a rhythm to the game intensity. Allow for intense moments, periods of relaxation and periods of purposeful preparation in between (think a sine wave of pressure) With that in mind here's my ideas: 1. Make Calories Scarce There are several ways I suggest to increase calorie scarcity. With increased difficulty, increase the respawn time of game (excluding rabbits?). By interloper, either they do not respawn at all or better they have a random respawn time between 1 week and 1 year. Or maybe an additional fixed chance of never respawning. This is the primary change, that will drastically influence the way people play. With low/no game respawns, players will be forced to migrate far for food. The players will feel the pressure of hunger and need to go out increasingly further afield for calories, making them take risks. With this we can also start to take the constraints off of indoor play since people will have a limited ability to stay in one place. For higher difficulties, predators are easily manageable anyway. I think having a long but random respawn is more likely to catch an experience player unaware, or at least force them to exercise caution since they really don't know when the bear/wolf/cougar will come back. Or, with a no-respawn model we would really get to see how far people could survive as a challenge. Make meat lose caloric value as condition falls. Starting at 50% condition make it drop in caloric density linearly. This will prevent infinite stockpiling of meat. We want to see players living with limited resources, killing more or less when they need food and with a very limited stockpile. This is another way to keep people moving and always having some level of resource risk. Make starvation cost maximum fatigue. When players use the starvation strategy, this should build up a negative modifier that saps maximum fatigue. After several weeks of starvation this should drop max fatigue to zero, effectively killing the player slowly. The recovery rate should be such that 18 hours without starvation compensates for 6 hours of starvation, and having the "well fed bonus" multiples the recovery rate while active (2-3x). This change will eliminate the ability of players to long-term starve themselves to conserve calories, while still using it as a short-term strategy. Players will then have three food strategies: Keep yourself fully fed to get the carry bonus Starve yourself to conserve energy (max a few weeks), saving 75% in short term Manage starvation to about 6h/day to keep fatigue drop within 0-10%, saving you up to 25% in total calories and a small fatigue loss but is long term maintainable This new third strategy provides a difficult to manage but useful meta strategy to complement the greatly reduced food availability. I prefer this model to just increasing the condition loss of starvation because it preserves temporary starvation as a player strategy (more options are better). 2. Provide more playstyle options in early/mid interloper This set of suggestions particularly relate to interloper, where the lack of tools and high end equipment means overall gameplay lacks variability. Each replay is very similar and the player is pushed into a set of specific decisions especially in the early game. These changes are aimed at providing more options and variability to each playthrough. Allow all items, including high end items to be spawned in interloper at extremely low chance (1-2%) A low spawn rate for high end equipment will mean that on a particular playthrough there may be for example 0-2 rifles anywhere in the world. This will have a few impacts, but most importantly it will give the player a reason to go looking. They may not find what they are looking for, but there's a good chance they'll find at least 1-2 pieces of high end equipment by careful searching and this will help make their playthrough unique. They could even get lucky and find a rifle in their first region which will dramatically shape their game and make each play feel different. Most importantly, the player will always have a new objective to go out into the world - to find another high end piece if it exists. Make the makeshift knife and hatchet, makeshift. Allow the player to build the knife with scrap metal and cloth (1h) and the hatchet with stones and sticks and cloth (2h). These should take double condition damage from use, cannot be repaired and are slower than the real knife and hatchet. The forge variants should be the real knife and hatchet. This change will allow the early-mid game interloper to avoid having to run to a forge immediately. The current model is just too restrictive, it makes every playthrough look identical in the early game. This will allow players to spend a little more time in their early regions before eventually going and constructing proper tools. Ultimately we want to help each playthrough feel different, and to do that we need to allow the player to make different decisions. Provide 3(?) matches for the interloper start and remove the guaranteed spawns I'm not sure on the right number here, but I think not providing matches is a mistake. It makes every interloper starting run a direct sprint to the nearest guaranteed matches. This requires the game to guarantee matches in each interloper starting region (which is against the playthrough variability principle). Three would be wild, because there's a small chance a player could fail all three on their first fire. Players could choose to find a book before lighting to reduce the chance, they could take their chances in the wild with sticks. They'd have the option of making their own risk choice. Depending on where they start, this could result in very different decisions and impacts on early game. 3. Improve indoor and general QOL Many of the indoor mechanics are geared around encouraging players to spend more time outside. I believe this is a result of the excessive reliance on the warmth resource and the fact that food has been excessively available. With the food changes, this will no longer be a problem. People will have great difficulty spending extended periods indoors due to food scarcity and will eventually need to go far afield to eat. Remove cabin fever and replace with a "hardiness" bonus for consistently being outside. Instead of punishing people for being inside, give them a minor air temp bonus for consistently living outside (as in your body has adapted to the colder environment by consistently being outside). This bonus can build up as a player spends more than a certain number outdoors average over 7 days period. Maybe bonus maxes out at 24h and is zero at 18h average? Make covered and indoor fires last longer in embers mode. Once a fire burns out its primary fuel source it should stay in embers mode, reducing in temperature by 1 degree/minute until reaching zero, at which point it goes out completely. This rate should be impacted positively or negatively by whether it is enclosed (longer), the ambient temperature (higher ambient longer embers) and wind (more wind faster drop). This will make indoor fires overall last longer in useful cooking time, and give outdoor very hot fires a short bonus to lifetime. Make meat condition drop depend on being in containers, not inside/outside. This mainly resolves the weird meta of people cooking and leaving meat of the house and lying around on the ground, which is immersion breaking. It also greatly increases usefulness of stone caches, which should have the stone requirement halved. In the future I think open meat on the ground should attract predators so this is a good leading change. Remove condition drop of long term processed food goods. As a limited resource, I think it is better for gameplay balance to allow these to stay at full condition. It allows stacking and preservation as an emergency supply, and they already last long a long time. Or, maybe just eliminate it while in containers. Increase ambient light indoors, especially in morning/dusk. We don't need to be punishing people for being inside anymore, just fix it. Particularly the first two changes will minimise the weird meta behaviour of setting up open fires directly outside a house for cooking. Let people cook inside if they want! It is extremely odd, and with the food resource crunch we no longer have to worry about people spending too much time indoors. 4. Make weather more volatile with increased difficulty This one is fairly straightforward. I think in interloper especially there is a little too much reliance on horrible ambient temperatures. To my mind this is has happened because of the lack of other avenues to present player risk, but again with the proposed food changes this will no longer be the case. I think instead of relying on ambient, we should be creating more variability in weather. For example, I think pleasant valley should be *actually pleasant* while sunny and without wind, even on interloper. Make it one of the warmest regions during a sunny day! A good equipped interloper should have positive warmth during the good times even in late game and this should encourage them to go out hunting. Then a blizzard hits. And pleasant valley gets decidedly unpleasant. I want to see random length blizzards that can last multiple days, stretching a players limited food stocks to the breaking point. The twin changes of reducing food stocks and creating weather volatility that can suddenly root a player on the spot for multiple days will create moments of risk. Since players will be more often migrating between regions and with very low food stocks, there will be more opportunities for this kind of situation. The flip being, when the pressure is over the player gets a beautiful day and we give them the chance for the adrenalin to drop before we hit them again. We want players to take risks and go out into the world, we want them to think about preparing for bad times (like collecting cedar/fir) and create climaxes in the game around a confluence of resource pressures. More periods of amenable weather will also open more game mechanics to interlopers that are often closed, like mapping, collecting heavy wood, exploration and just relaxing in between times of intensity. There's a lot here and I'm sure I forgot some things. I've tried to stick to ideas that sit either completely within existing mechanics or are relatively minor (adding random chances to respawn time for e.g.).