Contemplating Waiting

 

So .... there's one thing that's puzzling to me .... for a very long time I had an "automatic night time damage system" in there. If player's would move outside of a hideout after 18:00 pm they would automatically receive damage and eventually die (similar to Darkwood).

Eventually I removed that system, because it became ridiculous. There was no clear source of damage and it didn't make much sense. A player would see a hideout and finally arrive at his safehouse at 18:01 and die or get lost before reaching it.

And that's where the ravens came in. The monks and tree spirits watch you when they discover your location and transmit that location telepathically to the ravens. The ravens then stay close to your location and eventually track you down. Each time you get discovered by the tree spirits again, the ravens become more aggressive. When they catch you at night time, their "superior" is revealed in the darkness. She will paralyze you and kill you almost instantly, unless you have a lightsource that will last longer than 60 seconds so you can escape. (minor bug happens where she and the ravens suddenly get stuck in the ground if you escape her .... it's not perfect yet)

Something was bothering me though. Reward chests only open if the player is "present" at sunrise. "Present" means he is in the basic vicinity of the hideout. Players can cheese this system by staying outside the hideout, watching the shadows patrolling the hideout from a distance and then taking cover or hiding when the ravens are closeby to escape the siren. 

Now I discovered: They can only cheese it if a tree spirit is not watching, because as soon as he does it and a tree spirit is close by, he will transmit your location to the ravens. They will gradually become more aggressive over night until the player is left to choose between wasting lighter time or finally giving in and running back to the hideout.

So the obvious solution is to place these watchers close to every hideout. But if I do that with every hideout, the entire situation becomes predictable again. And I HATE predictability. Also because it makes testing soooo god damn boring. And playtesting and QA is the heart and soul of the development. Play a perfectly predictable game segment 100 times and experience how the joy of your creation is slowly draining out of you.

The situation would (in theory) still be fair, because watchers and tree spirits can't see the player during weather events. The fog, the rain, the snow, the dharmapalas presence .... it clouds their view of the situation. The same is true for the ravens. A rain event will extinguish a player's candles and campfires if they are located outdoors. So he's left in the dark and forced to leave the hideout. He can wait for the event to pass, but the ravens will eventually track him down once the weather event has ended.

But what I want to avoid is "waiting". And aimless "walking". Those two things are absolute fun killers. They destroy any amount of tension unless the player is suddenly required to interact in order to protect himself (like watching a candle, moving between lights, watching the sky for ravens). During weather events at night, no interaction is required, there is nothing he can do.

I stumble across these moments and they bother me. I wonder how much patience the average player has, when even I myself barely have any patience... and the worst thing about some of those situations is: The game fucking REWARDS you for doing nothing and standing in the dark, while the ravens are aimlessly passing over your head.

Will need to fix that. Maybe they'll change their strategy? Maybe there's someone or something else on the ground during these events that attempts to determine the player's location?

Even though the screenshot above was created after I attempted to cheese a hideout ....

Going to upload the first demo of Map Segment 01 to Patreon soon. 

Just needs to be out there. I don't care if someone crosses over the loading zones. I'm not going to restrict player movement even if the map is not populated yet. Zone 02 is work in progress and Zone 05 is empty. Zone 03 will have grain fields and windmills ....