my final thoughtts on cotw

[Xanton]

So I've played for something like 170 hours hours now... I think it's safe to say that the game is good value for money for anybody that likes hunting games. So yes, it's definitely worth the £30. My issue with call of the wild is that it doesn't come close to reaching it's potential.
Before I actually get started, it’s worth pointing out that I’m not going to discuss any of the well-documented issues concerning the despicable state that the game was launched in, the sorry state it is in now, the countless bugs, or the pricing of DLC. Of course, these are all important issues but they have been discussed to death, and if you don’t know what it is I’m talking about, you don’t need to look too far to find out.
Call of the wild is, simply put; unrealistic, repetitive, and offers little to no challenge. The only reason I've managed to play the game for as long as I have is on the graphics and genre alone. If you want a hunting simulator, do not buy cotw. It's not a sim... it's a hunting game. Here's some reasons why...



Animal populations are stupidly high

There's so many animals that you can easily take 20+ animals in an hour. It takes away all of the satisfaction of actually shooting an animal. Players don't need to be killing dozens of animals in a single sitting to be entertained. In this case, less is more. A lot less.... 20% of the current animal population/frequency would be more appropriate. Of course, level/xp requirements would need to be adjusted to fit any population change.
Let’s not forget that in cotw, there are herds of sometimes 30+ red deer/bison/elk. When you take these into consideration, they really kick the population issues into overdrive. Realistic herds and groups are a great addition to the game, but previously exagerrated global animal populations need to be adjusted to account for this. There is also the extended view/shooting distance to take into consideration. This makes it far easier to find animals. The map contains many wide-open spaces which allows for easy spotting of animals and sniping. Again, extended view distance is another great addition, but the limited view distance in thehunter classic was one of the reasons animal populations needed to be exagerrated in the first place. With the view distance increased, there's no need for so many animals.

Animals warn you if they're about to flee

Flat out unrealistic. If you take an animal by surprise, it will flee or attack. There may be some specific circumstances under which an animal may grunt or growl at you as a warning, but it will likely be followed by it either turning and running or attacking... So yes, warning calls do happen. Just not nearly as often as this game would like you to think. It's easily exploited and kills a lot of the need for realistic hunting tactics. Many of you that have already played the game have probably fallen into the habit of sprinting from location to location until you hear a warning call, hitting the dirt > blasting your caller over and over for 30 seconds > shooting whatever it happened to be this time. This brings me onto my next point....

Callers / animal behaviour

Callers are fine on their own. Okay the callers system is pretty bare-bones, but my issues is mainly with the animals' response to callers. If you're hunting in real life, you call the deer in and take your shot and miss... that deer isn't coming back any time soon. There are anecdotes of deer that have been stupid enough to come back moments after being shot at, only to meet their demise upon their return... but these stories are significant because that kind of behaviour is so unusual. But not in call of the wild! In cotw, animals will always come back withing mere minutes of fleeing. All you need to do is blast your caller a few times and hey presto, it's a miracle. You get another chance to shoot that big buck you just missed! but don't worry if you miss again... this is an equal opportunities game after all! You get as many tries as you need, and without having to do any of that tedious tracking! why on earth would anybody want to track animals in a hunting game?

Fleeing distance

The reason you are able to call animals back in this way (other than the fact that the AI is dumb enough to fall for this trick) is because the animals only flee 70-100m. When shooting into a wide open field, you can literally spook a deer 2-3 times before it even disappears from line of sight. Again I feel I have to spout this disclaimer of 'I know this can happen in real life' because people will always use "but that happened to me one or two times, in 20 years of hunting... and thus this is the most realistic game ever made". In cotw, animals will never flee for more than 150m (and that's being generous), unless they are spooked twice. Just for comparative purposes, in real life a deer can flee for miles. A good case scenario would be 500m - 1km assuming the animal wasn’t wounded. You'll either have to track the animal down or wait for the next. THAT'S HUNTING. By failing to accurately portray animal fleeing realistically, EW have removed a huge aspect of the hunting experience. Of course, none of it would matter if they increase animal flee distance on its own, because why would anyone bother tracking an animal for 20 minutes if the populations are so high that they can find and shoot 3 more in that space of time. The only instance in which somebody might make that time investment is if it's a very high scoring buck... but who cares about high scorers. cotw is all about quantity, and not quality.

EDIT - Truracs

This was quite a major thing to leave out. If you haven't played classic, you probably won't know what Truracs is. It's basically a system that randomises different aspects of a trophy such as the number of tines, the length of the tines/beams, the circumference of tines/beams etc. etc.... basically, it makes every set of antlers unique and realistic. It encourages field judging (judging how high a set of antlers will score) and just gave a really realistic feel to the animals. In cotw, there are a set number of variations of antlers. There's actually only a small, very limited handfull of variations for each deer species. There's no point talking about truracs too much as you can probably find entire threads with hundreds of comments discussing this topic. It just feels like a massive step down from a game that is coming close to being a decade older. The current system in cotw feels extremely half-baked and lacklustre.


These are some of the main issues concerning realism and difficulty. There are many more issues than this, but they are mostly minor and more forgivable. I think the game was made in this way in order to attract new players to cotw and classic. EW have tried to tone down some of the sim aspects of classic so the game is more accessible to players with no real hunting experience or less time to play the game. This is, in my opinion, probably the most fatal misjudgment made by EW. Thehunter classic was not inaccessible in terms of difficulty… I, myself have introduced many people to classic and not one of them had any problem picking up the mechanics, even when I was not there to show them the ropes. Call of the wild did not need to be less challenging or realistic. In fact, there was quite a lot of room for cotw to become more challenging and realistic. There will always be an audience that has no patience for walking long distances, or waiting for 30 minutes just to see an animal, or having to spend a good deal of time tracking down an animal after they missed or messed up their shot. Truth be told, even call of the wild isn’t ‘casual’ enough for these people. All EW have achieved with their strategy is alienating players that want realism and challenge, and falling short of pleasing players that don’t want these things.

Probably the worst part of all of this is that lots of us have seen this coming since beta, just hoping that EW had the sense and willpower to turn it around. Maybe they will in the future, but I can’t see that day coming any time soon. Call of the wild is a fantastic game, but it will soon be forgotten. Thehunter stood the test of time, even with the burden of an extremely unpopular payment model, outdate graphics and hoards of negative reviews. Unfortunately I think call of the wild is nothing more than a half-baked sim that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It's a great game, but for myself, that is overshadowed by how much of a missed opportunity it is. It’s exceeded expectations in terms of graphics, but has fallen far short in terms of gameplay. Ultimately, I don’t feel it lives up to its predecessor, regardless of the many issues classic suffered from.

[Rager]

Hm I guess I can understand your points, but I kinda don't want a super realistic hunting game. Hunting takes a long time, and when I get in a game..I do want to feel like I get some hunting done even if I play for a short time.

The people who want realism, I don't know what to tell you. Challenge part? Well I can agree with this. Hunting just any animal is fine, but getting the super high trophy or rarer should be the challenge part. So is it? If not what are some ways to improve it.



At the end of the day it needs a nice balance of video game and realism. I don't want it to be as tedious as real life hunting. In fact, I hate real life hunting. At the same time, I don't want it to be so many animals yay! feeling as well. I want to hunt some for my prey.


For the ground work. This game is great, it needs some tweaking to make both sides happy sure, but it can be done.

[Snipawolfe]

That's the point though (in the case of callers/flee distance/how forgiving the animals are/animal population). This game is meant to be more accessible to all players. It's TheHunter Classic "easy mode" in-game as well as easy mode on your wallet for buying it as compared to playing THC.

I know for sure they'll add a lot more content, hopefully leaderboards/competitions so we have good reason to hunt specific animals, and so on, but I also know they'll rebalance some of the game in the future if there's a large enough outcry to warrant it.

I definitely felt like every kill in THC mattered (and most kills in COTW are just there to line my pockets and give me exp), but part of that was just the way the trophies were presented and how they added posing with the animal, TruRacks, etc. In THC, you hunted for trophies/competition scores so taking doe/low weight animals/etc was all a waste of time.

I hope some day to see the "end game" of COTW be true trophy hunting, but the way they've incentivized hunting everything in sight makes it seem kind of unlikely they'll flesh out the trophy system more.

I basically just spewed a bunch of unorganized thoughts out, oops. Anyways, I respect your views but I think you'd be wrong to write off COTW as it is right now, since THC took years to come close to what it is today and has been for the past couple years. If COTW is going to be their primary revenue stream going forward, I think we can certainly expect to see a "realistic" difficulty setting some time in the future and EW will capitalize more on all of the potential COTW has as both a fun/accessible hunting game as well as a realistic hunting sim.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by Rager:

Hm I guess I can understand your points, but I kinda don't want a super realistic hunting game. Hunting takes a long time, and when I get in a game..I do want to feel like I get some hunting done even if I play for a short time.

The people who want realism, I don't know what to tell you. Challenge part? Well I can agree with this. Hunting just any animal is fine, but getting the super high trophy or rarer should be the challenge part. So is it? If not what are some ways to improve it.



At the end of the day it needs a nice balance of video game and realism. I don't want it to be as tedious as real life hunting. In fact, I hate real life hunting. At the same time, I don't want it to be so many animals yay! feeling as well. I want to hunt some for my prey.


For the ground work. This game is great, it needs some tweaking to make both sides happy sure, but it can be done.

I totally agree that the game shouldn't completely reflect real life hunting. Nobody wants to play for 10 hours and not see a single deer. Obviously the game has to sacrifice realism for gameplay reasons. I think it would be cool to have a game mode that attempts to be as realistic as possible ^_^ a sort of hardcore mode. Considering we're just talking about animal population here, it wouldn't be hard to implement.

The same applies to animal flee distance and some of the other points. If animals were fleeing for 2km, people would never bother tracking them down. My grievance is with the fact that in cotw it's so grossly unrealistic it's like nails on a chalkboard. A deer fleeing 100m is a complete joke. Happening across 5-10 bears in a 1km^2 area when I'm not even actively trying to hunt bears is ridiculous. Apex predators just aren't that common. The same applies to most species in cotw. The populations are just obscenely high.

I actually disagree on the difficulty. Hunting a large trophy shouldn't be the difficult part. All animals should be challenging, regardless of their size. An experience hunter irl doesn't find a roe doe a piece of cake, but a large roe buck a huge challenge. Both are very challenging. Hunting difficulty should mostly differ by species, with larger trophies being slightly more skittish than usual. A large trophy might be slightly harder to lure in (this is actually done quite well in cotw), but every animal should be challenging. Getting a big trophy should be as it is in real life and in thehunter classic - based on luck and commitment.

[Rager]

Originally posted by Xanton:

Originally posted by Rager:

Hm I guess I can understand your points, but I kinda don't want a super realistic hunting game. Hunting takes a long time, and when I get in a game..I do want to feel like I get some hunting done even if I play for a short time.

The people who want realism, I don't know what to tell you. Challenge part? Well I can agree with this. Hunting just any animal is fine, but getting the super high trophy or rarer should be the challenge part. So is it? If not what are some ways to improve it.



At the end of the day it needs a nice balance of video game and realism. I don't want it to be as tedious as real life hunting. In fact, I hate real life hunting. At the same time, I don't want it to be so many animals yay! feeling as well. I want to hunt some for my prey.


For the ground work. This game is great, it needs some tweaking to make both sides happy sure, but it can be done.

I totally agree that the game shouldn't completely reflect real life hunting. Nobody wants to play for 10 hours and not see a single deer. Obviously the game has to sacrifice realism for gameplay reasons. I think it would be cool to have a game mode that attempts to be as realistic as possible ^_^ a sort of hardcore mode. Considering we're just talking about animal population here, it wouldn't be hard to implement.

The same applies to animal flee distance and some of the other points. If animals were fleeing for 2km, people would never bother tracking them down. My grievance is with the fact that in cotw it's so grossly unrealistic it's like nails on a chalkboard. A deer fleeing 100m is a complete joke. Happening across 5-10 bears in a 1km^2 area when I'm not even actively trying to hunt bears is ridiculous. Apex predators just aren't that common. The same applies to most species in cotw. The populations are just obscenely high.

I actually disagree on the difficulty. Hunting a large trophy shouldn't be the difficult part. All animals should be challenging, regardless of their size. An experience hunter irl doesn't find a roe doe a piece of cake, but a large roe buck a huge challenge. Both are very challenging. Hunting difficulty should mostly differ by species, with larger trophies being slightly more skittish than usual. A large trophy might be slightly harder to lure in (this is actually done quite well in cotw), but every animal should be challenging. Getting a big trophy should be as it is in real life and in thehunter classic - based on luck and commitment.

The thing is, on the difficulty part it needs to be balanced in a game way. If all hunts were tough, what about people who don't want tough content? Who just want to sit back and enjoy the game?

I want tough content to be in the game, but makes more sense for high trophy rating hunts to be the tough element, while normal hunts are balance for players who just enjoy hunting at a fast pace.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by Snipawolfe:

That's the point though (in the case of callers/flee distance/how forgiving the animals are/animal population). This game is meant to be more accessible to all players. It's TheHunter Classic "easy mode" in-game as well as easy mode on your wallet for buying it as compared to playing THC.

As I said in the post, the game doesn't need to be more accessible because classic was never inaccessible. They've mischaracterised the game's lack of popularity for it being too 'hardcore', when the only thing preventing it from being popular was the payment model. Classic was by no means a hardcore game. It was actually a little too easy itself. It was certainly more punishing though, but that doesn't make it hardcore. The punishment is vital for the gameplay. If there's no cost to spooking an animal, then it negates the need for a lot of the hunting mechanics.

[Rager]

I don't think Classic was hardcore. I mean some aspects of classic are easier than this game. Tower hunting, and bait barrels being one. I just think this game is a new style of hunting.


I love the RPG aspects of this game. Earning money and such, but other parts of the game needs work for a great balance.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by Rager:

Originally posted by Xanton:

I totally agree that the game shouldn't completely reflect real life hunting. Nobody wants to play for 10 hours and not see a single deer. Obviously the game has to sacrifice realism for gameplay reasons. I think it would be cool to have a game mode that attempts to be as realistic as possible ^_^ a sort of hardcore mode. Considering we're just talking about animal population here, it wouldn't be hard to implement.

The same applies to animal flee distance and some of the other points. If animals were fleeing for 2km, people would never bother tracking them down. My grievance is with the fact that in cotw it's so grossly unrealistic it's like nails on a chalkboard. A deer fleeing 100m is a complete joke. Happening across 5-10 bears in a 1km^2 area when I'm not even actively trying to hunt bears is ridiculous. Apex predators just aren't that common. The same applies to most species in cotw. The populations are just obscenely high.

I actually disagree on the difficulty. Hunting a large trophy shouldn't be the difficult part. All animals should be challenging, regardless of their size. An experience hunter irl doesn't find a roe doe a piece of cake, but a large roe buck a huge challenge. Both are very challenging. Hunting difficulty should mostly differ by species, with larger trophies being slightly more skittish than usual. A large trophy might be slightly harder to lure in (this is actually done quite well in cotw), but every animal should be challenging. Getting a big trophy should be as it is in real life and in thehunter classic - based on luck and commitment.

The thing is, on the difficulty part it needs to be balanced in a game way. If all hunts were tough, what about people who don't want tough content? Who just want to sit back and enjoy the game?

I want tough content to be in the game, but makes more sense for high trophy rating hunts to be the tough element, while normal hunts are balance for players who just enjoy hunting at a fast pace.

Like I said, difficulty should vary by species. Mostly in terms of how easily they scare and how they respond to calls. This is already how the game is. There's actually nothing unrealistic about luring in the animal and taking your shot. The lack of challenge is mostly tied to the lack of punishment. There's nothing stopping a new player from calling in and taking a shot at a monster buck, but that player shouldn't be able to repeatedly call the same animal back over and over until they land the shot.

There's also a limit of what should be accepted withr egard to player demands. If players don't want any challenge and they just want to 'sit back and enjoy the game' they probably shouldn't play a hunting game where failure is a possibility. I could understand you making that point in an exploration game (of course, they're welcome to explore in cotw instead of hunting), but this is a hunting game and frankly they'd be idiots to think they could play this game and there not be any challenge.

I do hear a lot of people making these points... The point that 'what if players want it to be easy'. What if players want it to be hard? Do those players not get any consideration anymore? Nobody is asking for some level of difficulty that a person with an IQ above 50 couldn't thrive at. We're not asking for thehunter to become Eve online. Just some tiny consideration towards realism and enforcing the basic principles of game design, such as punishment/reward, and overcoming a challenge.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by Rager:

I don't think Classic was hardcore. I mean some aspects of classic are easier than this game. Tower hunting, and bait barrels being one. I just think this game is a new style of hunting.


I love the RPG aspects of this game. Earning money and such, but other parts of the game needs work for a great balance.

Precisely. Classic wasn't hardcore, but EW seem to think it was. It got the balance right.... it was realistic but not impossibly difficult for people with no hunting experience or with little time to play the game. Cotw doesn't strike that balance. I actually think classic could be slightly more realistic and still strike that balance.

[Rager]

Originally posted by Xanton:

Originally posted by Rager:

The thing is, on the difficulty part it needs to be balanced in a game way. If all hunts were tough, what about people who don't want tough content? Who just want to sit back and enjoy the game?

I want tough content to be in the game, but makes more sense for high trophy rating hunts to be the tough element, while normal hunts are balance for players who just enjoy hunting at a fast pace.

Like I said, difficulty should vary by species. Mostly in terms of how easily they scare and how they respond to calls. This is already how the game is. There's actually nothing unrealistic about luring in the animal and taking your shot. The lack of challenge is mostly tied to the lack of punishment. There's nothing stopping a new player from calling in and taking a shot at a monster buck, but that player shouldn't be able to repeatedly call the same animal back over and over until they land the shot.

There's also a limit of what should be accepted withr egard to player demands. If players don't want any challenge and they just want to 'sit back and enjoy the game' they probably shouldn't play a hunting game where failure is a possibility. I could understand you making that point in an exploration game (of course, they're welcome to explore in cotw instead of hunting), but this is a hunting game and frankly they'd be idiots to think they could play this game and there not be any challenge.

I do hear a lot of people making these points... The point that 'what if players want it to be easy'. What if players want it to be hard? Do those players not get any consideration anymore? Nobody is asking for some level of difficulty that a person with an IQ above 50 couldn't thrive at. We're not asking for thehunter to become Eve online. Just some tiny consideration towards realism and enforcing the basic principles of game design, such as punishment/reward, and overcoming a challenge.

Yes, but here is the thing. You idea would make all of it hard, while having certain elements in the game tougher gives players both things to like about the game.


So while I do understand your points, and the game is already set up some to be like that. (roe being super easy to hunt.). You also got to keep in mind if the game just said here just hunt roe, people would not enjoy just doing that for how they want to play.

So tough content should be in the game, but it should not come at the cost of players who just want to enjoy. Also, the game is design for players to sit back and enjoy right now so they should not be playing a hunting game is a silly comment. In fact, a hunting game is perfect for relaxing and not having such hard core elements. That is in my view anyway.

[RamMack]

You hit on 2 points that I notice alot.
1. The callers are too powerful, effective.
2. Spooked animals shouldn't return.
I do believe these two points alone would change gameplay tremendously.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by Rager:

Also, the game is design for players to sit back and enjoy right now so they should not be playing a hunting game is a silly comment. In fact, a hunting game is perfect for relaxing and not having such hard core elements. That is in my view anyway.

Just because the game is designed in that way, that doesn't make it any less stupid. The fact this game is failing faster than any of us ever predicted is a sure sign of stupid game design choices lol. I also fail to see how flee distances and population changes make it any harder for players to lure in and shoot an animal. Probably because it doesn't... All I'm saying it that you shouldn't be able to find and shoot 20 animals in the space of an hour, and those animals should actually flee a distance that is meaningful and requires you to make an effort in tracking them down.

You said that it's important to provide for both players that want a challenge and players that do not. I agree... but the game doesn't provide ANY form of challenge. A lot of concern is being given to players that don't want a challenge, which is funny because they are the ONLY group given any consideration in cotw.

Still you conflate what I'm saying with advocating for hardcore gameplay. I've said a billion times that the game doesn't need to be hardcore. I don't want it to be hardcore. I loved classic and that was far from a hardcore sim. What I do want is a shred of realism and some actual enforcement of the game mechanics.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by dmcpherson65765:

You hit on 2 points that I notice alot.
1. The callers are too powerful, effective.
2. Spooked animals shouldn't return.
I do believe these two points alone would change gameplay tremendously.

Yes, these are probably the two biggest issues. I would maybe add animal warning calls as the third, because it's so heavily exploited and destroys any need to hunt realistically.

[RamMack]

Originally posted by Xanton:

Originally posted by dmcpherson65765:

You hit on 2 points that I notice alot.
1. The callers are too powerful, effective.
2. Spooked animals shouldn't return.
I do believe these two points alone would change gameplay tremendously.

Yes, these are probably the two biggest issues. I would maybe add animal warning calls as the third, because it's so heavily exploited and destroys any need to hunt realistically.

Animal population is also right up there. I remember the first and second week playing, I couldn't get nowhere. I had to keep starting from the base in PNW. I would head out with every intention of onlocking more outposts, only to get sidetracked shooting and chasing animals. Finally I had to just force myself to next lookout so I could find another outpost. And repeat process like I had blinders on.

[Rager]

Originally posted by Xanton:

Originally posted by Rager:

Also, the game is design for players to sit back and enjoy right now so they should not be playing a hunting game is a silly comment. In fact, a hunting game is perfect for relaxing and not having such hard core elements. That is in my view anyway.

Just because the game is designed in that way, that doesn't make it any less stupid. The fact this game is failing faster than any of us ever predicted is a sure sign of stupid game design choices lol. I also fail to see how flee distances and population changes make it any harder for players to lure in and shoot an animal. Probably because it doesn't... All I'm saying it that you shouldn't be able to find and shoot 20 animals in the space of an hour, and those animals should actually flee a distance that is meaningful and requires you to make an effort in tracking them down.

Still you conflate what I'm saying with advocating for hardcore gameplay. I've said a billion times that the game doesn't need to be hardcore. I don't want it to be hardcore. I loved classic and that was far from a hardcore sim. What I do want is a shred of realism and some actual enforcement of the game mechanics.

This game is not realling failing though. People are leaving for now waiting for some key bug fixes to happen, but so far I know many classic players enjoy this game more, Because classic engine is way to limiting. Many players just waiting for more content. So I doubt how tough it is has anything to do with it.

Mind you the progressive kills part of the game is very annoying and needs changes.

Also I am not trying to conflate. I am just stating that realism makes things tougher, and I want a balance game for all types of players. How they got it now is not perfect, but it is close.

[Xanton]

Originally posted by dmcpherson65765:

Originally posted by Xanton:

Yes, these are probably the two biggest issues. I would maybe add animal warning calls as the third, because it's so heavily exploited and destroys any need to hunt realistically.

Animal population is also right up there. I remember the first and second week playing, I couldn't get nowhere. I had to keep starting from the base in PNW. I would head out with every intention of onlocking more outposts, only to get sidetracked shooting and chasing animals. Finally I had to just force myself to next lookout so I could find another outpost. And repeat process like I had blinders on.

Been there xD. Have you ever hunted at balmont lake? You can get like 30 harvests in one run xD