Biweekly Developer Q&A IV (ANSWERS ADDED)

[kissemiss]

Hi all,

Time for a new thread! Answers will be gathered on the 11th of October, then answered on the 18th of October.

IMPORTANT NOTES

• This is NOT a discussion thread. All posts should be in the form of a question, directed to the development team. Anything else will be removed. We do this to ensure that we can seek out and find your questions easily.
  
  
• We will not be able to answer ALL questions in the thread, we will take a selection of questions we feel that when answered can best inform the most players.

//theHunter: Call of the Wild Team

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Q: Do you have any plans to implement "Steam Trading Cards" in this game?

A: Miro - Game Designer: While they’re not the top item on our priority list at the moment, we could definitely add add them to our game in the future. We just think that the precedence should go to more pressing issues, first.

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Q: Are there any plans to increase animal render distance. And what are the issues with doing so?

A: Nicola - Producer: The rendering distance is something we discussed a lot in the team, especially while we worked on our Vurhonga Savanna map. The map doesn’t have as many trees as other Reserves, so it became a very obvious thing for everyone in the team. However, changing it, would mean that we have to change the code base of our game engine and that could have an effect on every other feature we added to the game and it would also have a huge effect on the framerate of our game. It’s not impossible, but the amount of work we would have to spend to assure that CotW would still run smoothly is a lot. Instead, we decided to add more treelines to our Reserves, so it’s not too obvious, and spend the time of our programmers on other features that gives the players more features instead of focusing on this specific gameplay experience.

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Q: I think the quality of the open world landscape, a good balance between realism and arcade, and last but not least the gun-handling are core elements in this game. And these elements - in my humble opinion - still belongs to the best we can see in simulation-games today.

Which game-elements do you continue to improve in the future? What is your focus?

A: Miro - Game Designer: From the game design point of view, our focus is definitely to listen to the community and give them everything that can make COTW even better, and this applies to both content and user experience. We want the players to be thrilled at every update and stay hooked for a long time.

Another aspect is that we always try to focus on is the technical advancement of the game. We want it to evolve and stay on the top as the best hunting game on the market, and this is only possible by drawing inspiration from the continuous feedback of our players.

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Q: What is your strategy on deciding what reserves to add in the future? Will you decide all on yourselves, or are you going to let the community take part in deciding (e. g. taking proposals from the community, letting players vote among options given by you)?

A: Nicola - Producer: Deciding on a new Reserve is a very complex process. After a new release of a Reserve, our Product Owner Phil sits down with a lot of team members in a big meeting, that includes team members from world design, vegetation art, character art, animation, programming, game design, sound design, QA, production but also TK from our community team. We always try to give our players their biggest wishes, but it’s not that easy.

A new Reserve should look different to the one before, and even people would like a specific area as new map, we sometimes feel that we couldn’t give them all the animals they would expect for it, so we might create disappointment with the release. A good process we found is looking into the maps and the animals players want, then see if we can make the map happen with enough animals, if not, we choose a high requested animal or an animal we would need to do a requested map and check in which other areas in the world these animals live. Iterating this way means that we can constantly add new content without letting players wait too long and we are increasing our animal feature sets, so that maps that would require more complex animals can happen at one point in the future.

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Q: Does the scent eliminator lose effectiveness over time or does it stay the same over 30 minutes? I saw a dev using it more than every 30 min in stream.

A: Miro - Game Designer: It stays the same for 30 real-life mins, then you have to use a new one. I guess that if you saw somebody use it more frequently than that it was to be better safe than sorry! Are you sure it wasn’t a scent lure? As you may know, the scent eliminator is used on yourself, so its effect “follows” you, while the scent lure is used on the area, and attracts the animals in that specific spot. If we indeed happened to use a bit too many scent eliminators in our stream is because, well, we really don’t want to risk its effect to go away in a tense moment, and every time you use a new one, its effect renews.

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Q: When following a trail, there's scat every twenty yards or so. Do you think the animals defecate too much or are you happy with the current rate?

A: Miro - Game Designer: They definitely drop a lot of clues, but that’s a gamification of the real thing. Maybe the high frequency at which this happens isn’t super realistic, but the droppings are incredibly useful to know how long ago the animal was there.

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Q: Have you considered adding selectable game variables along the lines of "Realism Mode"?

This would be a collection of rules, such as fines for hunting certain species at night (Deer, Elk, etc), bag limits per day, seasons (Rifle Season, Bow Season, Muzzle-Loader season) and other things that players can choose to make the game less "Arcade-y".

A: Miro - Game Designer: We definitely consider that, but that would really change the type of the game that COTW is. We carefully evaluated whether or not to spend time and resources of our relatively small team to give more options to hardcore gamers, and we reached the conclusion that, for now, we can offer a greater challenges through the hunt club events and the side missions of every reserve. If you didn’t try them, give it a shot, you’ll see that they will test the skills of the most hardened of hunters!

This of course doesn’t mean that in the future we couldn’t add some advanced mechanics such as realistic hunting seasons, or different rules for night hunting, it only means that we’re very carefully evaluating every type of drastic gameplay modifiers that could heavily influence the game that thousands of dedicated hunters play every day and learned to love.

[BONITE]

When will you put new animals on the cards, some cards seems deserted, animals are rare, we walk for hours without seeing anything !

[Sienna]

Do you have any plans to implement "Steam Trading Cards" in this game?

[Domtaro]

1. How max is the TruSCORE?
   regarding to Total Score, and each item (A,B,C...)
   
   
2. Can I know evaluation criteria about the TruSCORE?
   e.g.
   100~ normal
   200~ rare
   300~ legendary
   ...

Thanks.

[Roreo]

Are there any plans to increase animal render distance. And what are the issues with doing so.

[Peacemaker]

I think the quality of the open world landscape, a good balance between realism and arcade, and last but not least the gun-handling are core elements in this game. And these elements - in my humble opinion - still belongs to the best we can see in simulation-games today.

Which game-elements do you continue to improve in the future? What is your focus?

[McSqurl Nugget]

Are antique weapons, percussion muzzleloaders or even flintlock, a possibility to see in game?

Preferably with old school smoking powder to create a big smoke cloud, and reload animations for pouring powder in the barrel, adding patch and ball/bullet, and tamping it down?

[rexinkognito]

1. What is your strategy on deciding what reserves to add in the future? Will you decide all on yourselves, or are you going to let the community take part in deciding (e. g. taking proposals from the community, letting players vote among options given by you)?

2. Will you add reserves resembling ones in Classic to COTW, or are you going to choose entirely new settings? Can we even expect to see "remakes" of classic reserves like Hirschfelden?

I would love to see a reserve similar to Logger's Point / Whitehart Island / Settler Creeks being added to COTW.

[WolfAyron]

Dear developers,

My questions are:

1. Are you planning fixing some of the terrain glitches in Medved Taiga as there are some parts where you can easily fall into the ground, below the map and die? Even animals can stuck in these places.

2. Will you increase the animal render distance globally, or at least giving a slider in options, letting us set it?

3. Will you take a look at the surrounding/background as there are some glitches when I am rotating my view with the mouse?
When I look straight to one direction, the background (mountain or hill) is 'full'. I mean it is homogeneous; there are no parts which disappear causing to see through the mountain for example.
But when I rotate my view with the mouse, some parts of the background which get to the periphery of the screen (my view) disappear, small slices, so I can see through the mountain/hill like it was not there or the borders of the map are not physical.

4. When I use binoculars and look far away to a great distance, or to the sky (sun, moon) it always a bit blurred, not sharp. But when I just look at the sky bare-eyed, everything is sharp. Do you know why is this happening?

Finally I want to thank you very much for creating this breahtaking and calming game. I really like playing it.

[Soard666]

Do you intend to add any retro weapons like black powder muzzle loaders? Would be interesting! One shot! Hit or miss... make it count, cause it would take too long to get another one ready! Could make a nice strong short range weapon.

[Everjumper]

1.Can we see more varieties of animals activities in the future(like males fighting with their antlers, etc)?
2.Any plan to give our main charactor a body? At the moment he/she only have two arms when using the first person perspective.

[Jumbled Hokum]

Do you have any plans to fix the codex or animals so they are accurate to weapon class? As an example the 270 and the fallow deer both being a class 2 but we get zero integrity for them and the 20ga slugs also say class 2 but we get no integrity either.

[Straffe]

What are the future plans for multiplayer?

[Office-Man]

0. What do you think of cosmetic rewards for finishing certain quest lines? Maybe just an item that you can place in your lodge.

1a. The maps are very beautiful and have a realistic atmosphere, especially Hirschfelden with its sound effects .Do the devs/designers travel around to get some inspiration?

1b. Does the scent eliminator lose effectiveness over time or does it stay the same over 30 minutes? I saw a dev using it more than every 30 min in stream.

1c. regarding multiplayer missions you said: " if we were to add missions for free too then it would detract a lot from the desirability of purchasing our DLCs."
How about enabling multiplayer mission only for those who purchased the DLC?

2a. Does a bad score/shooting females decrease my chances for respawn of higher scoring animals?

1. What is the effect of need zones ingame? Does it have an affect on the overall amount of animals or the quality of animals in the map?

2. Do you plan to add wolves on Medved?

4. Will you add Australia? Pls dont forget Emus.

5. Do diamonds have more movement animations? In thought that a lvl 9 water Buffalo was shaking its head more often.

6. Some areas, especially the mountains are very barren whereas the lakes/rivers are usually full of animals. Will you add some mountain animals? I also noticed that the AI has trouble moving over mountain areas, I hope that this does not prevent you from adding mountain species.

7. Will you add any incentive to hunt other areas? Right now the best tactic is to Farm the Same spots over and over but the game has such a beautiful big map, any incentive to hunt there besides missions would be great.

8. Do you plan to add a new class animal above diamond at some point?

9. Are you happy with the current Implementation of consecutive harvest?

11. The talent that has a random chance to attract other animal species with scent lure was supposed to not work on the newer animal species, can you confirm, and if yes,is this bug fixed

[DirtyPotter]

1. Would it be possible to make a "semi-realistic" Tracking Mode possible? - Tracks not glowing/showing through the terrain (they can glow or have a glowing colored silhouette, so you know that is the particular animal you are tracking but the bushes, trees and terrain can cover the glow)

2. Would you make an option "Block-" or "Unblock DLC-Content"? - So the ppl who want the DLC content for free can have it and the ones who don't, have to pay with in-game currency to unblock it.

3. Are you planing to make an "Ironman"-Mode? - lower money you get, kills with wrong ammo or weapon give little or no rewards and if you die, you have to start from scratch (so there is reason not to die, besides of your own pride ?)

[Sethas]

Question: Will you implement dogs like in theHunter: Classic? If so, when can we expect them?