Here's a perennial favourite: what features would you like added to the Long Dark, or what features would you like to see simplified or removed entirely?
(This is a decathread because we are too small to have megathreads yet)
(This might end up being my own personal gripe thread, so buckle up)
13 Comments
syntaxseed@phpc.social · 3 pts · 3y
@rbos My biggest gripes are mostly interface / convenience related.
I wish the mouse wheel worked in more contexts like the horizontal 'place' cooking menu (hate that thing - what I want is always at the far end).
I wish tool selection was 'remembered' so every time I break down a small branch I don't have to reselect 'hand'.
Agree that the recipes are too specific. Allow any kind of meat in stews. 💯
We need another utility slot.
Travel is just way way too slow. I always sprint.
Lemmylefty@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3y
Quality of life:
Equipment:
Issues:
I’ll probably think of more at some point. I don’t want to fuck with the game TOO much, because the contemplative loneliness mixed with moments of high stress are what makes it fun.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 3y
Awesome list, hard agree on most of this, lots of good QoL and simplifications. I love things that simplify gameplay, the charm of TLD is that it has (mostly) intuitive "physical" mechanics.
The cave wall thing is innovative, and could be an interesting sound design idea. Certainly less cheesy than putting down a bedroll and trying to "grope" your way out.
Being in BI right now, I'm super 110% power-tool on board with putting in a shortcut once you've done it once. Requiring a rope is a good thought that would add additional challenge and planning, I would have done it as a board you can push over or place or something.
I don't see how car horns would work without electricity though. Maybe only during an aurora? Or maybe they're air horns with pressure still remaining and you get a couple charges. It'd be nice to have some option when there's a bear huffing around the vehicle you hid in.
Speaking of vehicles: being able to turn around in vehicles to look behind the stupid car.
Maybe one day I'll go through this thread and curate a master list of ideas.
Lemmylefty@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3y
Yeah, I’m the same way. I’m happy with most of vanilla TLD because I can see how gameplay is balanced with intuitiveness, buuuuuut there’s something a bit silly about having 14 oil bottles that you can’t merge.
Oh sure, like a board from that adjacent warehouse to the roof of the workshop? That could work, and it’d be easier to implement than a rope bridge.
The gap between the main pier and the workshop has always bugged me: there’s no way a timberwolf couldn’t jump that gap, so maybe extend the gap some more as well?
I forgot about that, lol. XD
I like the multiple uses idea. Maybe something like the flashlight wherein the aurora charges it up but there’s a limit? It could either be total usage or days since the aurora, which forces you to remember that detail. You’d want some sort of external indicator it was charged, but not headlights as in an aurora. If it was JUST the internal lights, would that be too subtle, or would that reward careful players?
If it broke a timberwolf pack’s morale that could be lifesaving.
I had another idea: customizable in game maps.
I tend not to use the rock caches, since most of the time there are containers and landmarks everywhere, but the plethora of rocks to build the caches suggests another option: drawing trails. Click and hold both mouse buttons/3rd button and that indicates the beginning of a trail that either ends when you run out of rocks or when you release the button. Then it shows up on your map as a drawn line, letting you mark up your map in the way you tend to travel.
Something like that would keep me from checking the wiki all the time…
rbos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 259d
Coming back to this a couple years later - looks like you got #2, #4, and your second section #1 and #5.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 3y
Another cooking gripe: A lot of the new recipes don't use "prepared" versions of ingredients, like everything else. This makes them inconsistent with other recipes. Why rosehips and mushrooms and burdock, and not prepared rosehips, mushrooms, and burdock? Why is acorn bannock calling for acorn grounds instead of raw acorns?
For that matter, why aren't we preparing carrots, potatoes, and such? The entire "preparation" dial when you start a new recipe should be separated into steps done ahead of time, when you don't have to worry about your fire. The preparation for meat should be cooking it first.
xanna@mastodon.ie · 2 pts · 3y
@rbos yeah, agree. Where it trips me up is that rosehips are a usable item now, so it's no longer a no-brainer to prepare them as soon as you have a minute.
Plus for me, that's an extra line to put in my already extensive inventory spreadsheet.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2y
Moar wishlist items:
rbos@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 3y
Here's one: Cooking has too many recipes right now. There shouldn't be six different stew recipes, there should be one stew recipe that takes (say) meat, flour, oil, and vegetables as input. The resulting calorie value, and perhaps bonus properties, should depend on what you add to it.
Acorn flour should be able to sub in for old mill flour.
I'd also say fish oil should work in lieu of cooking oil. Maybe some fish give you lantern oil, some fish give you cooking oil.
Edit: They added animal fat, which is cooking oil now. Good solution, though you now end up with a lot of useless animal fat. Unless you make a lot of pemmican...
syntaxseed@phpc.social · 2 pts · 3y
@rbos These are great. I absolutely agree. Esp about the flour. Need more synergy between recipes & ingredients because it's just not realistic to carry all these things with you all the time.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 223d
Another idea I posted in the TLD wishlist thread just now: some sewing tweaks.
1: Start all clothes at 120% condition. Sewing skill only lets you repair to 80% at level 1, then 85, 90, 95, 100%. This reflects the idea that you are ultimately an amateur at sewing, even with skillbooks and practice. You'll never do as well as a machine-made item.
Handmade items start similarly - 80%-100% condition depending on skill level. This gives you more reason to level sewing.
2: Decay rates are already well-known to be silly so I won't touch on that too much, but I think spawned artificial clothing should scale to fully decay after three years if well stored, where "well stored" is "inside and not being worn", while handmade clothing should only last a year. Have a base value, and apply a multiplier to all items, as well as additional decay multipliers for items specifically described as "long lasting" like the cougar wrap and wolf pants. And of course multipliers for blizzard, wind, outside vs inside slot, etc.
3: I'd like to see the quality of the cured hide come into play for sewing, too. Makes no sense that you can turn a 1% quality rabbit pelt into a 100% quality gloves. Without adding any additional items, that would seem a pretty straightforward change, and intuitive.
If they were willing to add a mechanic change, or new items: have hides cure in two different ways, tanned and untanned. Tanning leather can involve applying (say) 0.1L of cooking oil and 0.1kg of salt for a hide, which creates eg a "tanned bear hide" (curing 1%) and always gives you a 100% hide for crafting.
4: Some way of preserving clothing might be nice. Akin to the curing box, a cedar chest with a consumable could work. A fragrant herb to keep away bugs, like birch bark, might serve as a consumable, or just the cedar chest itself.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 3y
You should be able to select what tool you use (cutting saplings, digging burdock, cutting fishing holes) if there are multiple choices, like you do with matches lighting a torch. I almost never want to use my axe or knife when my hacksaw or crowbar is available.
later edit: looks like they added tool selection when cutting holes in the ice, hooray!
rbos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 247d
Saw this today: buddy burners. In TLD terms, it could just be some tinder, cooking oil (or animal fat) and a can. Provides 8-10 hours of light, maybe, and a 1C warmth boost. I used to make these all the time as a kid!
https://www.rootsimple.com/2007/01/buddy-burner/
A variant uses two cans and can be a stove.
https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/buddy-burner.html