Classic vs Call of the Wild

[MADMAN]

hey folks,

I stumbled upon COTW with a friend and now got caught by the fascination for hunting games.

Obviously, I spotted The Hunter Classic too and it looks interesting.

My question is - is COTW the pretty but lets say, a bit stupid sister of The Hunter Classic which is the not so pretty but the smart one? xD

Classic looks to me as the more seriously simulation game - is that so?


thanks and happy hunting guys xD

[Weißbrot]

So far i have read and seen in videos CotW is supposed to be arcade meanwhile Classic is the original theHunter which aims to be a simulation but is alot older then CotW, i could be wrong i am also just a newbie in hunting games.

[DanthemanBoone]

Unlike COTW theHunter Classic is free to play. No capital outlay required to install and play the game. You get a free rifle and single shot shotgun and a doe caller as starting equipment. All animals except the buffalo and bison can be hunted with those to weapons provided you use the correct ammo. Ammo for those two weapons is always free.
A huge amount of equipment, Guns, bows , shotguns, clothing, stands. callers, scent attractants, tents, lodges, etc. can be bought with in game money ( $ GMs) or with real money purchased at your steam account. ($ EMs)
If you have patience you can earn $ GMS from harvesting animals, doing missions or winning Competitions and play entirely for free.
But if you want it all NOW and start buying lots of equipment with real money, it can end up costing you an arm and a leg.

I have played both Cotw and Classic since their inceptions and have found Classic to be more to my liking. Both games have their positives and negatives, but installing Classic and having a look at it will not cost you a bean. What you do from there is entirely up to you.

[Ryax]

Asking on theHunter Classic discussion everyone here is going to have a biased opinion and say classic is better, just as if you asked on COTW discussion they would say COTW is the better game.

You would be better off looking up Youtube video reviews/gameplay on both games and decide for yourself.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by MADMAN:

is COTW the pretty but lets say, a bit stupid sister of The Hunter Classic which is the not so pretty but the smart one?

That's a new to me way of accurately putting it, Yes.
COTW is much more dummy, arcade, FPS although it does have some simulation aspects to it. Classic has a bit more simulation aspects to it but it isn't exactly a full simulation because it has some arcade aspects of how some of the game's mechanics work.

Examples are:
- Routines. Animals in Classic don't have a routine as per you'll find them doing [this] at a specific time of day in [this] area of the map(s). The animals all have several specific areas they appear (spawn) at when a game session is started and they roam a general path from that area and return to that same area (eventually). So once you find a place where animals are, say, 10 minutes in to a game session it's a pretty safe assumption to assume you'll always find them there or somewhere near there every time you play on that map 10 minutes in to each game session. It's a 'safe assumption' to assume that but it's not a guarantee.

Animals do bed and feed but they don't do it in the same area every time nor do they do it during the same time of day every game. Where and when they do those things is random. They do it at some point along the path they roam. We're not able to figure out patterns they routinely follow and do according to the time of day. One game session we start at 8am at a certain location might be packed with elk. The next 20 game sessions we do that same exact thing at the same exact time of day we might not get any interactions with elk at all.

- You'll learn patterns and come to expect the same interactions with the same animal species on each map. An example of this is on the Whiterime map just about every time I start at the southern lodge on that map when I leave the lodge and start walking or running down the hill I almost always get a call from a Sitka Deer and it's almost always in the same general area. Again this kind of thing happens very often but it's not guaranteed to happen every single game session, every time, or at any specific time of day.

- I believe they fixed this exploit in COTW but I remember years ago when I checked that game out we were able to trap animals in a certain area of the map by driving a vehicle to the tracks near either side of the map and just stand there blasting away at animals. That kind of thing isn't possible to do in Classic. The maps have boundaries the animals can cross that we cannot cross to follow them if we're tracking them and they happen to cross. The boundaries are invisible lines, they're not edges of the maps where everything hits an invisible wall nothing can pass through.

[MADMAN]

Originally posted by RavFox:

Asking on theHunter Classic discussion everyone here is going to have a biased opinion and say classic is better, just as if you asked on COTW discussion they would say COTW is the better game.

You would be better off looking up Youtube video reviews/gameplay on both games and decide for yourself.

Yes, thats always a thing when you ask for peoples opinion, thats right. Im watching this for getting a better picture of the game right now

https://youtu.be/ikUxv3fKE6I

@all
Thanks, guys for getting a better idea which kind of experience The Hunter brings. I already installed it and will give it a try.

What I like about The Hunter so far is the whole, lets call it „Item Management and Character simulation“.

This Smartphone in COTW doesnt feel right, I try to avoid it. The Huntermate device in The Hunter looks way more suitable to me but to use it like a Star Trek Tricorder seems a bit odd too. I play these games to chill and to immerse with the gameworld and it feels to me, when Im a dude who how knows huntin I dont need a device to read tracks.

Im still made my mind about that - just throwing some thoughts out here - it feels what I want is to merge „the best“ of both games together. Cant put it in a better way rn now - have to play more. xD

[Jack Schitt]

I view the HunterMate (HM)as a tool that provides what our senses tell us in real life. We need a tool like that in my opinion since it's a video game on a screen. We can't apply using our senses as we do in real life while hunting. There are a few players that play without ever using the HunterMate. There are options in the Options menu in the game that allow us to turn enough game features off to make the game more difficult "realistic" to play.

Track globes can be turned off or we can change the color of them so they're easier to see.
The H key "holsters" anything in our hands. We can use this to get the HM off the screen if/when we don't want to see or use it. Tab key equips the HM again.

[MADMAN]

Originally posted by Jack Schitt:

I view the HunterMate (HM)as a tool that provides what our senses tell us in real life. We need a tool like that in my opinion since it's a video game on a screen. We can't apply using our senses as we do in real life while hunting. There are a few players that play without ever using the HunterMate. There are options in the Options menu in the game that allow us to turn enough game features off to make the game more difficult "realistic" to play.

Track globes can be turned off or we can change the color of them so they're easier to see.
The H key "holsters" anything in our hands. We can use this to get the HM off the screen if/when we don't want to see or use it. Tab key equips the HM again.

Absolute align with that. There has to be gameplay elements that tell you as a player what you do sense in the gameworld. I dont think that a device like that is a good solution in terms of simulation-like game design.

I decided in COTW too to disable to all HUD elements to play the game in the most simulation way thats possible and the devs had that in mind too, I guess. I prefer to hunt rather one deer with a challenging, excited and an amount of uncertainty in the experience than a ten deer grind. If I want to go for easy target, I go for goose on a field.

In COTW there are little screen messages thatll tell you the details about the track you see or the call you hear, if you interact with them. That works pretty subtle in my opinion. The design of the Huntermate device in COTW on the other hand is complete garbage - a freakin smartphone ... however, I got lost here xD

Of course, every player has its own idea of a perfect gaming session and its good for a game to have options to tweak it that way.

What I miss in COTW is more details for the player representation in the world. First, you cant see your feet when looking down, a detail yes but I care for it. There seem to be way more equipment items in The Hunter that deepen the idea of preparing for a hunting trip. Saw camping supplies for example, dont know what they are for but I if there is a reasonable mechanic that make me think about such things. I appreciate it.

Clothings are the next point, it simply doesnt matter what you wear in COTW. A ghillie suit or an orange warning dress - whoaat? On the other hand, a backpack makes you louder and more visible for the animals. Simply missing that kinda tweaking for clothing too and IT SEEMS in The Hunter they already had this kind of equipment mini-game.

Moving is next, seems way to fast even when you walk. I looked at The Hunter, well thats a reasonable walking speed for someone who is moving through the woods, lookin for deer. Yes, there are these people who always wanna move as fast as possible and go everywhere at best at the same time but for a huntin game, Im not sure about that mindset.

... so. I know I am presumably very lookin for the details here and some might say its not that important, what is right at the end of the day. Im just kinda have so much fun with this game and so all these kinda things came to my mind when playing.

I will take a trip to Classic when I finished Hirschfelden ... will see how that goes.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and thinkings about the game guys.

[Jack Schitt]

Clothes: some of the clothing sets in classic do make a difference. Some don't make any difference at all. The sets that do make a difference the effect they provide isn't a drastic difference. We can hunt successfully wearing any of the clothing sets.

Moving: Running is a bad idea in this game. Don't do it if you want to see animals often. There are sections of maps where it doesn't matter how stealthy you are and there are sections of maps where running through that area disrupts activity on the entire map.
The quieter you are the more often you'll see animals in this game.

Some of the ways it's best to go about playing this game makes sense, some of it doesn't make any sense at all. People either like it and play this game for many years or it's not for them and they move on to another game pretty quickly.

[MADMAN]

Ive played the tutorial and throwed an eye into the shop to see the variety of equipment there. Cant help myself but I want to see more stuff from classic in COTW ...

The movement in Classic seems better to me, slower. The crouching is better, like when you move, you are a bit higher as when you stand still, which kinda represent that kneel and keep you head down movement style.

In COTW you are simply hovering lower over the ground ...

[HooCairs 🏹]

I have played both games. Classic since 2010, CotW since its introduction. At first CotW looked better, but overall I returned to Classic. The main reasons are:

• Lots of competitions that can keep you busy every day
  
• Online stats, trophies, achievements, etc. that give you and others something permanent to look at
  
• 660 missions to be done
  
• Daily missions
  
• A bit more realistic (but it is still a game)

As RavFox said correctly, people on this side of the fence will be biased and vote for Classic, and I am certainly one of them.

Glad to see you got started. This may also help (along other stuff on the Wiki):
https://thehunter.fandom.com/wiki/New_Player_Basics

And then of course the Youtube videos. Some videos appear in the wiki as well.

[llIIIIIlllIIIIII]

Something I dont see anyone mentioning, the Hardware Required.

You can play classic on a dual core CPU from 11 years ago and a GPU from 8 years ago.
For COTW you need at least a 1060 TI to have a 144hz experience, and a quad core CPU.

If you are brave, you can probably play classic on Integrated graphics on low settings if you wish.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by llIIIIIlllIIIIII:

Something I dont see anyone mentioning, the Hardware Required.

You can play classic on a dual core CPU from 11 years ago and a GPU from 8 years ago.
For COTW you need at least a 1060 TI to have a 144hz experience, and a quad core CPU.

If you are brave, you can probably play classic on Integrated graphics on low settings if you wish.

The minimum system requirements for Call of the Wild are much less than that. It does require a quad core CPU but the GPU minimum says GTX 660 / ATI 7870. I've run COTW on an 8800 GPU, medium settings and a 1050Ti in 4k.
Not that that's extremely important but it's not cool to share info that isn't factual.

[Jack Schitt]

My point, which is relevant to address, is that their info was misleading and inaccurate. System requirements are determined by benchmark processes. They can be relied on as accurate.

[Jack Schitt]

Looking up what a benchmark video testing program is should fill you in on how system requirement lists are created. Yes, to get minimum requirements they set all settings as low as they decided to make them go, recommended specs are determined according to the hardware used when the benchmark starts running smoothly. I'm aware of this info because I have experience doing it. They don't just guess or throw darts at a wall blind folded to get that info. :P

This is headed off-topic. That's not fair to the OP.

[Pete Gaimari]

I get 80-100fps in COTW.

I get 240fps in Classic if I don't lock the fps.

Classic is easy to run.