My thoughts on the 'Hard Survival' experience as well as suggestions for improvement

[ConflicT Zv]

I will start off by saying I've been playing for just over 100 hours and all of it was spent actually playing the game. I have not played with console commands or done extensive testing in any capacity, these are just my thoughts as a player of the game itself. Keep in mind every suggestion for change is purely arbitrary and would be subject to change and balance. What I'm trying to convey is the how the mechanics would work, the numbers themselves are just placeholders.

Everyone seems to have different views on what the term "Survival" means in terms of gameplay. For myself, I place survival at the very core of the game as everything that drives player actions all revolve around not dying. To keep it simple I will separate the actual survival mechanics (thirst, hunger, energy) from combat and building. Also note that I play on the hardest survival settings offered in any build of the game, as I believe this is where the topic of "survival" is most relevant, so all observations and suggestions will be written with that in mind. Any change listed could be balanced around easier difficulties as well.

-The vitality system: This was changed from The Forest to be a culmination of your 3 survival meters combined, instead of only energy limiting your stamina. I find this change to be smart as it encourages players to continuously be maintaining these stats or suffer the consequences of limited stamina. You are now unable to eat/drink once at the beginning of the day and then ignore food/water until you absolutely need to. This also places importance on preparing for tough fights or long journeys by topping up on food, water, rest, beforehand in addition to bringing enough supplies with you so you don't run out. In short, the more you take care of yourself and your needs, the more effective you are in combat and traversal.

-Hunger/Thirst penalties: I understand the goal was to create a more realistic feel of slowly dying of hunger and dehydration, with slow health drain over time once you run out of a resource. The overabundance of food and water however do make this damage to be largely negligible, as eating meat restores your health anyway. The real penalty comes from the lack of stamina, but perhaps a more aggressive health drain would reinforce the gravity of the situation. Possibly having breakpoints, with health drain getting more severe as these thresholds are crossed. For example, at 30% of your hunger/thirst you would experience very minor ticks of damage, at 20% then 10% this damage increases in significance respectively, and at 0% you die.

-Energy penalties: Ultimately there is no penalty to running out of energy aside from it's effect on your vitality. Some suggestions to fix this might be using similar breakpoints with effects being something like slowed movement speed, blurred vision or blinking effects to simulate nodding off from lack of rest. Maybe at 0% you pass out and lose a portion of your day, or if you're near enemies you get tied up the same as if you died.

-Raw/Spoiled/Poisonous foods: Currently there is no penalty to eating raw meat or limbs, it's impossible to eat spoiled food and poisonous berries and plants do very minor damage and that's it, despite the supposed changes to increase these effects. I think all meat, should need to be cooked and consuming uncooked or poisonous food could possibly inflict a debuff with effects that might include more significant health drain over a longer period of time, reduced healing effects, slowed movement speed, impaired vision or vomiting. The same could extend to dirty water if we ever see it's implementation. Rivers might be safe to drink from, but lakes/ponds and other sources of stagnant water should be boiled to be safe to drink. The ocean dilemma has it's own thread so I'll leave that there. Also let me drop burnt meat. Don't force me to eat my mistakes lol. Also the visual indicator for safe/unsafe foods should be removed on Hard Survival and you would have to consciously remember what is and isn't safe to eat.

-Cooking recipes: The new buffs tied to the cooking system is a great way to provide incentive to actually using it, opposed to just eating dried meat or MRE's. Previously I found it too much work while providing the same benefit, but as it is now I think the system is implemented well, with room to expand upon with new recipes and buffs.

-Temperature/Being wet: As it stands I don't believe getting wet has any effect at all. It doesn't seem to decrease your temperature in any environment. Temperature is solely tied to limiting max vitality and not current vitality so it only has effect if you are full to begin with. My suggestion would be to add a temperature meter alongside our other survival meters with varying effects taking place at different thresholds, to keep consistent with my other suggestions. This meter could be regulated by your clothing, environment, season, weather and if you are wet versus dry. Under most circumstances this meter would be mostly static but in more extreme conditions it would drain slowly as you lose more and more body heat. If the meter is full to half you would be considered at a comfortable temperature, from half to 30% you could suffer from minor reduced stamina regen and your current vitality would be limited, below 30% you would start to suffer slow drain from health in addition to the aforementioned effects and if you stop moving for a period of time you take a bigger hit. At 0% you freeze to death. Should being hot exist? Maybe but that would be an entirely different system altogether.

-Animal spawns/Hunting: Before patch 06 I had complained many times of the sheer number of supposedly rare animals like deer and moose in certain areas. I'm delighted to see this toned down with the addition of Hard Survival, but I would take this even further. Squirrels, rabbits and birds I don't have any problems with their numbers, but specifically deer and moose should be exceedingly rare. Compare it to The Forest on Hard Survival where seeing even a single deer after combing the woods for an extended period of time was an accomplishment on it's own, and successfully killing it rewarded you with hides you needed for backpack upgrades and luxury decorative items/trophies. I would like to see the return of unique animal hides with specific uses as well as more variety in huntable wildlife and trophies. Perhaps a small number of hostile animals but I understand this to be a controversial topic as well.

-Scarcity of lootable resources: I have not finished a full playthrough on Hard Survival yet, in fact I'm nowhere close, so I can't fully say how severe the changes to the lootables affect the later parts of the game. But since there are less resources available from the start, this places more importance on hunting and fishing for food, using meat, herbs and cooking to recover health instead of relying on pills, saving ammo for tough situations as it is exceedingly rare and not recoverable, being careful with bow and crossbow shots so you don't waste arrows, knowing when to fight and when to avoid fights so you don't waste excess resources continuously crafting armor or wasting means of healing. Overall I like the change to reinforce a more conservative and careful style of play, so I'm excited to continue my playthrough with this new mindset. That being said, I do see problems arising on longer games when you run out of ammo and there's no easy way to restock, this may need to be addressed or this may just be an inherent part of the challenge that comes with the difficulty. Skin bags still exist to give random supplies, but the random pool of loot that's allowed to drop from them makes them somewhat underwhelming. Maybe if things like small rocks, feathers, money, leaves, oysters etc. were not allowed to be dropped from them, they could be considered an earned form of the stronger loot items.

I understand many of the changes I suggest could be considered extreme and are fundamental changes to the base systems we have. They would take a lot of extra time to code, test, balance ect. and further delay the release of the game. I don't expect much of this to actually become reality, but if I were to design the mechanics myself these are the things I would consider to create a deep, rewarding and punishing system.

So what are your thought's on the currents state of the survival mechanics and their implementation? What do you think of my proposed suggestions and what would you change or like to see reworked or done differently? I appreciate everyone's feedback! Let's keep it respectful and constructive please.

[Defiance]

Originally posted by Rubio DarkYeti:

Originally posted by Defiance:

I noticed you speak like you are the entire community. When you said -We got what we where asking your not speaking for everybody. All people have different opinions of the survival aspect, and it's ok for you to disagree. If you read some posts there are many people who want Dirty water like in the first game, more of a challenge when winter comes like damage to vitality. Also faster hunger and thirst, now it takes several hours before one has to eat etc.. It's quite normal for games to have a couple of difficulty levels that meets different kind of people instead of going into custom every time. The hardest difficulty (hardest custom setting) should of course exist like in most games and then the medium and Peaceful. It's fine for you to not like the Real Survival mode that may come but for people who want a more challenging "panic mode" it's fun like you can see in several other posts. You can go peaceful or medium challenge in this case ;)

In no way did he attempt to "speak like the entire community" You need to stop being confrontational for no reason, this is a simple discussion about what SOME players might like. We are not trying to force our ideas or opinions on the rest of the playerbase, we simply would like to have the OPTION to play how we would like. All we are asking is for options in the Custom mode to be added that allowed us the option of a more difficult and realistic survival experience. This way everyone else could play the game how they liked, and we could play how we liked. No one here ever intended to force a realistic survival experience on anyone else. We simply wish to help the game develop and grow in a way we believe would help it along. Please do not fill this civil and calm discussion with confrontation, we simply want to enjoy the game.

Conflict removed some words that I responded to -when he said, -We got what we asked for.. Then I said the group that is not in that category do not agree that we got what we asked for

[Defiance]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Originally posted by Defiance:

I noticed you speak like you are the entire community. When you said -We got what we where asking your not speaking for everybody. All people have different opinions of the survival aspect, and it's ok for you to disagree. If you read some posts there are many people who want Dirty water like in the first game, more of a challenge when winter comes like damage to vitality. Also faster hunger and thirst, now it takes several hours before one has to eat etc.. It's quite normal for games to have a couple of difficulty levels that meets different kind of people instead of going into custom every time. The hardest difficulty (hardest custom setting) should of course exist like in most games and then the medium and Peaceful. It's fine for you to not like the Real Survival mode that may come but for people who want a more challenging "panic mode" it's fun like you can see in several other posts. You can go peaceful or medium challenge in this case ;)

I speak for no one but myself, purely from an analytical and design perspective. When I say "we got what we were asking for" I'm specifically talking about players like you and I who were advocating for the return of Hard Survival and received it. Am I wrong?

If you'd read the OP I mentioned implementations, changes and suggestions for improvement on all of the mechanics you mention, and yet you continue to repeat the same nonsense in this thread and every other thread that even remotely suggests the term 'survival'. Survival mechanics do exist, penalties for said mechanics do exist, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not.

It is normal for most games to have multiple difficulty levels, as we currently do: Peaceful, Normal, Hard, Hard Survival, Custom. Clear, concise, easy to understand, no further difficulties necessary. You never answered what "Real Survival" even means to you. Do you want to die in one hit and have to eat 20 meals a day? How many players would willingly choose to play this knowing it's effects? Leave the extremes and wacky settings to custom as that's where they belong. It's fine to make suggestions if this is truly what you want but know that the likelihood of it happening are slim to none.

Dude I and many more people did not get Hard Survival mode we where looking for. We already talked about this, I told you several times what kind of Hard survival mode we want for winter etc.. Cold damage, Thirst damage, Hunger damage, Infection damage.. As simple as that. We did not get them in the way we wanted, a little bit like Ryan said and described. I get more the feeling that you don't like the harder Survival mode we are talking about and when you said - Our chances are slim etc, why ? There is big chance we get dirty water for instance.. It's easier if you stop putting things in category, some people like it your way and some like it mine. Some "Real winter" some don't.. I did not get those survival elements and many more people are not happy with it, there are more posts about these discussion of (Real winter) like my first one and several more.

[Defiance]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Very interesting, it seems most of the changes to Hard Survival, aside from the looting being the big one, is just the speed at which consumables restore your hunger/thirst and possibly slower health regeneration from healing sources?

Almost but not quite, Here are the patch notes -Hard survival; Reduced food spawns in crates. No Item storage crate respawn on load in this game mode. Lowered fish and animal spawns. Decreased target health and stamina regen speeds while cold. Increased penalty for raw/rotten meats

[Rubio DarkYeti]

Originally posted by Defiance:

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Very interesting, it seems most of the changes to Hard Survival, aside from the looting being the big one, is just the speed at which consumables restore your hunger/thirst and possibly slower health regeneration from healing sources?

Almost but not quite, Here are the patch notes -Hard survival; Reduced food spawns in crates. No Item storage crate respawn on load in this game mode. Lowered fish and animal spawns. Decreased target health and stamina regen speeds while cold. Increased penalty for raw/rotten meats

Yeah, I found most of that out by going into the custom settings. I like to have all the time settings on realistic, and start in Winter too. It makes building a cabin much more necessary

[Defiance]

Originally posted by Rubio DarkYeti:

Originally posted by Defiance:

Almost but not quite, Here are the patch notes -Hard survival; Reduced food spawns in crates. No Item storage crate respawn on load in this game mode. Lowered fish and animal spawns. Decreased target health and stamina regen speeds while cold. Increased penalty for raw/rotten meats

Yeah, I found most of that out by going into the custom settings. I like to have all the time settings on realistic, and start in Winter too. It makes building a cabin much more necessary

Exactly Necessary is a good word, as in meaning. The struggle to really prepare for the winter makes the game more challenging. Still as in real life one takes damage after a while when it's cold, at least in my world =) So hunting for hide and search for warm clothing, heating your base up with fires. In combination with water that has to get cooked etc etc =)

[ConflicT Zv]

Originally posted by Defiance:

Dude I and many more people did not get Hard Survival mode we where looking for. We already talked about this, I told you several times what kind of Hard survival mode we want for winter etc.. Cold damage, Thirst damage, Hunger damage, Infection damage.. As simple as that. We did not get them in the way we wanted, a little bit like Ryan said and described. I get more the feeling that you don't like the harder Survival mode we are talking about and when you said - Our chances are slim etc, why ? There is big chance we get dirty water for instance.. It's easier if you stop putting things in category, some people like it your way and some like it mine. Some "Real winter" some don't.. I did not get those survival elements and many more people are not happy with it, there are more posts about these discussion of (Real winter) like my first one and several more.

This will be my last post on the matter as I'd like to return to a calm discussion.

Let me further clarify by saying my statement "we got what we were asking for" was specifically regarding the addition of Hard Survival difficulty. We asked for a Hard Survival difficulty and we got a Hard Survival difficulty. Nowhere did I attempt to speak for you or the community by saying this difficulty was exactly perfect, in fact it's pretty clear it's not considering the amount of threads and discussions on the topic. It is a step in the right direction however. And I do firmly believe that the chances of the devs adding yet another survival related difficulty are slim to none. I'm sorry you took what I said out of context.

It's clear you and I have different visions of what Hard Survival should be. I've done my best to clearly outline how I'd like to see improvements made and you've given me some insights into what you're looking for as well. While they may be different in their execution they're still both trying to accomplish the same goal: adding more depth to the current survival mechanics.

[ryannorgreeves]

Couple things I think we're misfiring on.

I believe that even if Conflict used the exact phrasing "We got what we asked for" that's not in the context of "we asked for this and now its done" I believe that's in the context of "We asked for a Hard Survival mode and we received a Hard Survival mode" Many people in the survival threads I've been in had at one point in time referenced the game missing a Hard Survival mode.. so while that doesn't speak to the full community as some people want ATV's, nudity filters, predator animals, some guy on top of the mountain that does.. something, more stone building options, better FPS.. etc. That doesn't speak for the whole community. But people asking for more survival options were indeed for the most part unified on getting a Hard Survival mode added. All of this paragraph is irrelevant as we're just trying to argue over someone's verbiage. But hopefully this lays it to rest.

Regarding the necessity of building a cabin right away, aren't places like the 3d print cave warm enough to not freeze if you started in winter? There's a bed to sleep and save. A stream not far for fresh water. In theory a base isn't necessary. Its a player choice. In theory the player can concoct a variety of their own imposed rules like "I'll only allow myself access to the bunkers once in a while, and will not use them for sleeps and saves. - cause reasons." The game doesn't have to impose ALL the rules. A person can say they won't even loot anything in a container, or refuse to fish for food and only hunt deer and rabbits. What we can't do is impose penalties on our player for eating the wrong food, being out in the cold too long, etc. The game has to have some of those mechanics implemented for a player to do allow them to do anything.

[Rubio DarkYeti]

Originally posted by Defiance:

Originally posted by Rubio DarkYeti:

Yeah, I found most of that out by going into the custom settings. I like to have all the time settings on realistic, and start in Winter too. It makes building a cabin much more necessary

Exactly Necessary is a good word, as in meaning. The struggle to really prepare for the winter makes the game more challenging. Still as in real life one takes damage after a while when it's cold, at least in my world =) So hunting for hide and search for warm clothing, heating your base up with fires. In combination with water that has to get cooked etc etc =)

exactly, I kinda wish I hadn't gotten a Winter Jacket in my first crate though, kinda took the tension out of it...

[ConflicT Zv]

Originally posted by ryannorgreeves:

Couple things I think we're misfiring on.

I believe that even if Conflict used the exact phrasing "We got what we asked for" that's not in the context of "we asked for this and now its done" I believe that's in the context of "We asked for a Hard Survival mode and we received a Hard Survival mode" Many people in the survival threads I've been in had at one point in time referenced the game missing a Hard Survival mode.. so while that doesn't speak to the full community as some people want ATV's, nudity filters, predator animals, some guy on top of the mountain that does.. something, more stone building options, better FPS.. etc. That doesn't speak for the whole community. But people asking for more survival options were indeed for the most part unified on getting a Hard Survival mode added. All of this paragraph is irrelevant as we're just trying to argue over someone's verbiage. But hopefully this lays it to rest.

Regarding the necessity of building a cabin right away, aren't places like the 3d print cave warm enough to not freeze if you started in winter? There's a bed to sleep and save. A stream not far for fresh water. In theory a base isn't necessary. Its a player choice. In theory the player can concoct a variety of their own imposed rules like "I'll only allow myself access to the bunkers once in a while, and will not use them for sleeps and saves. - cause reasons." The game doesn't have to impose ALL the rules. A person can say they won't even loot anything in a container, or refuse to fish for food and only hunt deer and rabbits. What we can't do is impose penalties on our player for eating the wrong food, being out in the cold too long, etc. The game has to have some of those mechanics implemented for a player to do allow them to do anything.

Yes exactly correct. It is silly to be arguing over the misinterpretation of my phrasing, but I can understand how it might have been misconstrued.

I also agree that it's largely up to the player to decide how they want to experience the game and that may include self imposed restrictions or conversely creating incentives when there otherwise wouldn't be any. Not saying there is no reason to build a base, the benefits are quite apparent, but it's true it isn't vital to survival. That being said, building is clearly a large part of the game and ignoring it only deprives the player of a large portion of the game and the interactions and mechanics surrounding it. Certain players may not put a focus on large scale building but there are still incentives in place to encourage building in some capacity.

[ryannorgreeves]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

I also agree that it's largely up to the player to decide how they want to experience the game and that may include self imposed restrictions or conversely creating incentives when there otherwise wouldn't be any. Not saying there is no reason to build a base, the benefits are quite apparent, but it's true it isn't vital to survival. That being said, building is clearly a large part of the game and ignoring it only deprives the player of a large portion of the game and the interactions and mechanics surrounding it. Certain players may not put a focus on large scale building but there are still incentives in place to encourage building in some capacity.

This makes sense. I'm actually more of a base builder player than survival guy to be honest, so I'd sorely miss any base building features were they to be removed. So definitely not saying there isn't merit in building something, just pointing out that likely there will never be a dire need to build a base within the game unless they pose some other sorts of penalties that would prevent a player from using those baked in ready to use sleep and save spots.

A bed could be built in a cave to my knowledge as well (we've used tents for quick save). I do think that might be an interesting angle for boosting a more difficult experience if anyone has thoughts. What sort of penalties might the game impose for using ready to go save/sleep spots.

My thinking is the various orange and white tents maybe have a % chance of being woken to deal with an enemy - you deal with them and then you can try sleeping again. And also less sleep restored than a built base with a bed. For the bunkers and caves (like 3d print) where there's a chance of something else.. maybe pschological.. like you have a % chance where you just wake up from a nightmare (don't need to know what the nightmare is, just that you woke up), Try to go to sleep again and it just says "You don't feel comfortable enough to sleep here tonight" or some such. You need to go find a new place to sleep or deal with the low sleep situation.

I think saves can just happen like they happen at any of those spots, but the sleep there would have a chance of penalty. Thoughts?

[Defiance]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Originally posted by Defiance:

Dude I and many more people did not get Hard Survival mode we where looking for. We already talked about this, I told you several times what kind of Hard survival mode we want for winter etc.. Cold damage, Thirst damage, Hunger damage, Infection damage.. As simple as that. We did not get them in the way we wanted, a little bit like Ryan said and described. I get more the feeling that you don't like the harder Survival mode we are talking about and when you said - Our chances are slim etc, why ? There is big chance we get dirty water for instance.. It's easier if you stop putting things in category, some people like it your way and some like it mine. Some "Real winter" some don't.. I did not get those survival elements and many more people are not happy with it, there are more posts about these discussion of (Real winter) like my first one and several more.

This will be my last post on the matter as I'd like to return to a calm discussion.

Let me further clarify by saying my statement "we got what we were asking for" was specifically regarding the addition of Hard Survival difficulty. We asked for a Hard Survival difficulty and we got a Hard Survival difficulty. Nowhere did I attempt to speak for you or the community by saying this difficulty was exactly perfect, in fact it's pretty clear it's not considering the amount of threads and discussions on the topic. It is a step in the right direction however. And I do firmly believe that the chances of the devs adding yet another survival related difficulty are slim to none. I'm sorry you took what I said out of context.

It's clear you and I have different visions of what Hard Survival should be. I've done my best to clearly outline how I'd like to see improvements made and you've given me some insights into what you're looking for as well. While they may be different in their execution they're still both trying to accomplish the same goal: adding more depth to the current survival mechanics.

Actually the best place to discuss things is face to face.. So much misunderstandings in the written word. All these writing back and forth could be done in 5 min in real life... I am just gonna continue to fight for a more real survival mode in some other post, as I am one of those who really like that cold damage, dirty water and all that..

[ConflicT Zv]

Originally posted by ryannorgreeves:

This makes sense. I'm actually more of a base builder player than survival guy to be honest, so I'd sorely miss any base building features were they to be removed. So definitely not saying there isn't merit in building something, just pointing out that likely there will never be a dire need to build a base within the game unless they pose some other sorts of penalties that would prevent a player from using those baked in ready to use sleep and save spots.

A bed could be built in a cave to my knowledge as well (we've used tents for quick save). I do think that might be an interesting angle for boosting a more difficult experience if anyone has thoughts. What sort of penalties might the game impose for using ready to go save/sleep spots.

My thinking is the various orange and white tents maybe have a % chance of being woken to deal with an enemy - you deal with them and then you can try sleeping again. And also less sleep restored than a built base with a bed. For the bunkers and caves (like 3d print) where there's a chance of something else.. maybe pschological.. like you have a % chance where you just wake up from a nightmare (don't need to know what the nightmare is, just that you woke up), Try to go to sleep again and it just says "You don't feel comfortable enough to sleep here tonight" or some such. You need to go find a new place to sleep or deal with the low sleep situation.

I think saves can just happen like they happen at any of those spots, but the sleep there would have a chance of penalty. Thoughts?

That's an interesting take, one I hadn't considered. In The Forest building in caves was allowed. You could take in logs 2 at a time and build just the same as on the surface. Planters even had a special property that let them grow mushrooms only in caves, making it clear this was an intended function. As tedious as this was, I think the reason it was okay was because in that game cannibals and mutants didn't respawn in the caves. Once you cleared them out you could use them as your own personal network to safely travel to different points on the map, so building things like lights, beds, ziplines and storage only reinforced this quality of life feature.

Since this isn't the case in SotF, I'd almost suggest removing the ability to build anything at all in caves, including tarps. This would do two things. Increase the need to build your own shelter and increase the difficulty of the cave systems. You would not be able to place a tarp and then run back and save every time you take out an enemy, or reload if a fight doesn't go your way. You get 2 shots, you screw up and it's back to the start. As for the preplaced beds and save points, maybe there's a chance you could get awoken by a group of mutants that you'd then have to deal with.

Maybe if they added more surface caves of varying sizes (like a few of the small dead end caves we find around the map), those could provide natural shelter, be helpful early on before you have established yourself, cater to players looking for more efficient ways of protecting themselves and also to players who just enjoy building with the cave aesthetic.

Further along the topic of caves, I'd like to see more incentive to re-exploring already completed caves. Mutant types, amounts and locations could be slightly randomized so you don't always know where, what and how many of each enemy is in the cave. Maybe each cave could have a unique elite type of mutant similar to the blue puffy, with a rare drop of some kind. They could be treated like a dungeon run to an extent. This could even be expanded on and maybe this elite mutant could spawn within a certain radius of it's respective cave entrance on the surface either alone or in groups. That would make building near cave entrances a much bigger risk.

I realize I'm straying away from the topic of survival but I just really enjoy coming up with new ideas.

[ConflicT Zv]

Originally posted by Defiance:

Actually the best place to discuss things is face to face.. So much misunderstandings in the written word. All these writing back and forth could be done in 5 min in real life... I am just gonna continue to fight for a more real survival mode in some other post, as I am one of those who really like that cold damage, dirty water and all that..

That's fair, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

[ryannorgreeves]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Originally posted by Defiance:

Actually the best place to discuss things is face to face.. So much misunderstandings in the written word. All these writing back and forth could be done in 5 min in real life... I am just gonna continue to fight for a more real survival mode in some other post, as I am one of those who really like that cold damage, dirty water and all that..

That's fair, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

I guess I didn't realize that a more realistic survival experience hinged heavily on such a small amount of things. To me the most realistic survival experience would require the player to deal with sore hands from working with all this stuff, being unable to light fires as easily in any damp/wet areas. Needing to dry out wood else it will throw out a smoke signal. A game could get as granular as they wanted, but there's a point of diminishing returns that is hit. If the games is almost as difficult as really going out in the woods and doing this (save the fact that if you die, you don't really die) more people will walk away. Real survival in the middle of nowhere isn't as easy as any of this. Just watch any season of Alone.

Defiance,
I'm disappointed that the conversation just needs to be cold damage and cold damage to be of any value for you. Hopefully they will add in cold damage and you'll feel like the game is ready to play. Some of the others in this thread I think enjoy thinking of things outside of cold damage that would enhance the game from a survival experience. Its not to say the game couldn't be enhanced with some cold damage.. or hell even a slider that went from no cold damage to if you are outside in the winter away from a fire for more than 5 mins regardless of what clothes you've piled on, you will die from hypothermia. The add-ons would only get a player up to a maximum of 5 mins without being near a fire or in shelter without meeting their death.

I'd just reiterate that it is ok to go a post or two in a survival thread without saying "cold damage". Its been referenced in this thread enough that if the devs read this and made it their blueprint for survival mode, its gonna happen.

[Defiance]

Originally posted by ryannorgreeves:

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

That's fair, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.

I guess I didn't realize that a more realistic survival experience hinged heavily on such a small amount of things. To me the most realistic survival experience would require the player to deal with sore hands from working with all this stuff, being unable to light fires as easily in any damp/wet areas. Needing to dry out wood else it will throw out a smoke signal. A game could get as granular as they wanted, but there's a point of diminishing returns that is hit. If the games is almost as difficult as really going out in the woods and doing this (save the fact that if you die, you don't really die) more people will walk away. Real survival in the middle of nowhere isn't as easy as any of this. Just watch any season of Alone.

Defiance,
I'm disappointed that the conversation just needs to be cold damage and cold damage to be of any value for you. Hopefully they will add in cold damage and you'll feel like the game is ready to play. Some of the others in this thread I think enjoy thinking of things outside of cold damage that would enhance the game from a survival experience. Its not to say the game couldn't be enhanced with some cold damage.. or hell even a slider that went from no cold damage to if you are outside in the winter away from a fire for more than 5 mins regardless of what clothes you've piled on, you will die from hypothermia. The add-ons would only get a player up to a maximum of 5 mins without being near a fire or in shelter without meeting their death.

I'd just reiterate that it is ok to go a post or two in a survival thread without saying "cold damage". Its been referenced in this thread enough that if the devs read this and made it their blueprint for survival mode, its gonna happen.

As to answer your - I'd just reiterate that it is ok to go a post or two in a survival thread without saying "cold damage". Its been referenced in this thread enough that if the devs read this and made it their blueprint for survival mode, its gonna happen.. My thread had it way longer than yours =) So come there, why should I post here only. I post on the biggest on the the topic for the moment and the others around. It's good that you try to make your post as big as possible, and perhaps you will get there to spread the word, but don't come and tell me on MY post and here that this post is in some way the only one that there is a reason to discuss it on. There more the merrier