UnReal World > General Discussion

Some new player's feedback

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flibbo:
Hi guys.

I discovered URW two weeks ago after someone told be about it on Reddit. Never heard of it before despite it being ancient and me loving survival games. I thought a new player's feedback could be valuable so I thought I'd give some. This is gonna be long, just ignore if you don't care :)

First of all I do love the realism of this game, the full seasonal changes, the realistic time progression, the skills and general mechanics of the game - getting food, injuries, encumbrance etc. I always appreciate realism especially in survival games. I also found the game to be quite addictive and even immersive despite its dated graphics, then again I'm not the kind of games who always needs the hottest high end shit. I really like the setting too, iron age finland creates a naturally fitting theme for a survival game rather than having to invent a more artificial one like the post-apocalyptic setting of The Long Dark for example.

There are also some things I didn't like and some features I miss and would like to see added. I did take a look at what is planned for the future so I'm not going to mention the things already on that list. One of my first deaths was rather infuriating - it was early spring and I was walking across a still frozen river or small lake while zoomed out in the wilderness map. The first couple of tiles I could just walk normally but then once I reached the center I suddenly got the message that "Hey surprise, you can't trust the ice after all! Gotta zoom in!" so I did since I had no choice, being in the middle of a big frozen body of water and sure enough after a couple of steps I broke in. Couldn't pull myself back out and drowned. A death that I think was complete BS, if I can't trust the ice please tell me from the start in the wilderness map, like it usually happens, and not after I'm halfway across just to death-troll me.
Another case of bad communication is when you forget to put your clothes on an then travel in the wilderness map. You know those messages you sometimes get that you have to confirm by hitting space? Why don't they happen when you travel why freezing? Instead you just find yourself suddenly dead if you don't constantly stare at the message window, your cold indicator AND of course on the map to avoid robbers. This makes travelling very tedious.

Then there's clothing - anything ordinary like nettle, linen or wool for which I get the strange message "It's impossible for you to repair this item of clothing" (paraphrased) when I want to repair it, but it's no problem at all to fix up fur or leather items. I suppose that's because the corresponding raw materials in the former case don't exist in the game (yet?). Same thing for the good iron-based armors. What does this mean for the player? Even the tiniest tear or scratch to any of those items is permanent, you can never get it back to the state it was before. Maybe you've searched and traded a long time for a full set of fine clothing - it's all pretty much ruined once you meet a hostile NPC, an angry animal or even just fall a couple of meters when trying to climb. Only way to avoid this would be to stick to fur or leather items only, which completely rules out any of the good armors. Very frustratring.

A few things are also just plain wrong in terms of realism, which this game otherwise does put great importance on. Most obvious to me is the ability to drink seawater. Everyone knows you can't quench your thirst with that, it would only make it worse. Also swampwater and any other water is 100% safe to drink, always. Water in this game is basically as pure as modern day bottled water, no matter where it comes from. In reality you'd have to worry about bacterial infections (especially in swamps) and boil any water before drinking to make sure it's safe, seawater would be out of the question of course.  On the other hand, you can't melt snow or ice down for drinking water in the winter.
Then there's rope: can only be made from leather, even though hemp does exist in the game. Hemp ropes would be the first thing that come to mind for me in this case. Other plant fibres should work too, maybe at a lower quality depending on what exactly you use.
Tying equipment used for smoking or drying meat should not be lost when done. It doesn't become part of the food, it's just used for hanging it...
Some fire mechanincs I find a bit odd also: The buildable fireplace generates so much heat, you only need to put 3 branches and maybe some firewood in there every couple of days and your cabin will be a sauna even long after those puny branches are burned out. You don't need to keep a fire going for a cooking job that takes hours, or even a smoking job that takes weeks. The actual burning time for the amount of firewood added is too short. When preparing soil for planting, it takes way too long for the ground to "cool down".

That's it from me for now!

caethan:
> Most obvious to me is the ability to drink seawater. Everyone knows you can't quench your thirst with that, it would only make it worse.

Surprisingly enough, this is not actually true.  The Baltic Sea, particularly in the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia (i.e., coastal Finland) is much less salty than the rest of the ocean.  There's so much river water flowing into the sea that it dilutes out the seawater substantially.  So you get freshwater fish living happily, and it is in fact drinkable.

MigrantWorker:
Yes, the inability to repair fabric clothes is annoying. But on the other hand, it only takes 20 spruce twigs to build a rainproof shelter... ;)

Erkka:
Welcome aboard, and thanks for the feedback Flibbo!


--- Quote ---  A death that I think was complete BS, if I can't trust the ice please tell me from the start in the wilderness map, like it usually happens, and not after I'm halfway across just to death-troll me.
--- End quote ---

Well, things went like that because when you started crossing the lake the ice was still thick enough to be trusted. And only got weaker when you got that message telling so. That means that the game had no way of warning you the moment you stepped on the ice - at that very moment the ice was ok, and the game can't predict how many hours you are going to spend walking on the ice and how the weather will be during those hours.

The ice thickness is tracked hour by hour, millimetre by millimetre. And in real life it also is so that after a freezing cold night the ice can be safe early in the morning, but becomes dangerous after noon, as they day gets warmer. These are things that the game can't so easily tell you beforehand, so we just have to assume that players pay special attention always when moving on ice, especially in autumn and springtime.

Also, when crossing thin ice the same rules apply in the game as in real life; go crawling, as your weight gets spread on larger surface and you won't fall through that easily. And have a knife wielded, for in case the ice breaks you have greater changes of pulling yourself back to solid ice if you can trust your knife into the ice instead of desperately trying to grab slippery ice with your bare hands.

In real life Finland a few people drown because of this kind of reasons, every year. Sure, we can call it complete BS, but then I think it is more like a way the world works, and the game simulates the same BS  :)

flibbo:

--- Quote from: caethan on July 23, 2018, 08:12:54 PM ---> Most obvious to me is the ability to drink seawater. Everyone knows you can't quench your thirst with that, it would only make it worse.

Surprisingly enough, this is not actually true.  The Baltic Sea, particularly in the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia (i.e., coastal Finland) is much less salty than the rest of the ocean.  There's so much river water flowing into the sea that it dilutes out the seawater substantially.  So you get freshwater fish living happily, and it is in fact drinkable.

--- End quote ---

Wow, I did not know that! Thanks for clarifying.


--- Quote from: Erkka on July 24, 2018, 10:56:46 AM ---Welcome aboard, and thanks for the feedback Flibbo!


--- Quote ---  A death that I think was complete BS, if I can't trust the ice please tell me from the start in the wilderness map, like it usually happens, and not after I'm halfway across just to death-troll me.
--- End quote ---

Well, things went like that because when you started crossing the lake the ice was still thick enough to be trusted. And only got weaker when you got that message telling so. That means that the game had no way of warning you the moment you stepped on the ice - at that very moment the ice was ok, and the game can't predict how many hours you are going to spend walking on the ice and how the weather will be during those hours.

The ice thickness is tracked hour by hour, millimetre by millimetre. And in real life it also is so that after a freezing cold night the ice can be safe early in the morning, but becomes dangerous after noon, as they day gets warmer. These are things that the game can't so easily tell you beforehand, so we just have to assume that players pay special attention always when moving on ice, especially in autumn and springtime.

Also, when crossing thin ice the same rules apply in the game as in real life; go crawling, as your weight gets spread on larger surface and you won't fall through that easily. And have a knife wielded, for in case the ice breaks you have greater changes of pulling yourself back to solid ice if you can trust your knife into the ice instead of desperately trying to grab slippery ice with your bare hands.

In real life Finland a few people drown because of this kind of reasons, every year. Sure, we can call it complete BS, but then I think it is more like a way the world works, and the game simulates the same BS  :)

--- End quote ---

I understand and of course I do not take issue with the realism part, but with the game's communication to the player. The point is, that when crossing ice is risky, the game doesn't let you do it in the wilderness map, which is good but it means that when the game does let you do it, of course you think that it's perfectly safe. I'm not convinced that there's no way to prevent it suddenly changing half-way across. You could for example do a check of how the situation would develop in the next 24 hours (or longer) and if during any of that time it would become risky, the game would stop you even if it's safe right now. Maybe communicate with a message like "you don't believe the season is safe for travelling on ice" or something like that. Of course this wouldn't prevent anything if the player runs in circles on the ice but you'd catch like 99% of the cases.
Of course now I know how the game works and will be more careful, but I'm pretty sure almost all new players would fall for this trap and you can imagine how frustrating this is.

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