Hunting & Camping out

So I'm sure this has been talked about off and on in various threads. I don't recall anyone putting them together into one discussion so I thought I'd give it a go.

The one "profession" most likely to need to camp out.. or the one most suited for it I should think would be the hunter.. or let's just say anyone who's going hunting. Though honestly anyone could find themselves in the position to need to camp out.. and let's face it.. some folks just enjoy sleeping under the stars.

So this brings to mind, what essential gear is actually necessary? My solution.. tent (shelter for weather conditions), bedroll, axe and cooking utensils.

Then we possibly add a few other accessories like a flint box.

With the axe you should be able to craft yourself some basic items related to outdoor crafts. Such as a tanning rack for preparing leather or furs. A smoking rack for fish and items of this nature that can be placed around the camp site.. these items can be broken down and tossed when you're done with them.

The camp can act as a temporary home in the wild while you're out hunting/harvesting. It would not provide any extra storage but it would allow you to build temporary tools like the afore mentioned racks so long as wood is available.

Now let's say we're going to treat this as a temporary home. The first person to set up camp could interact with the tent in order to grant permissions like they would a house that would grant acces for others to make use of the camp (but would not have access to anything in your tent let's say). Ownership of items should stay with whomever places them.

Camp should provide a temporary save zone against wild animals as a benefit. Tents could act as a limited capacity, temporary storage. An inactive tent should decay over time with the risk of losing stored items.

Here I'm thinking the purpose of the camp isn't to live there, but to stay only whlie you're harvesting or hunting. With decay you're encouraged to move and go back to towns to unload your excess inventory.

Tents could possibly be fashioned out of cloth, furs & leathers. (Furs and leathers being more durable but obviously heavier).

I'm thinking there should be more craftables but as I'm neither a hunter nor advid camper I'm drawing blanks. Oh.. perhaps cages or hitching rails. Since we'll have pets I assume a pack animal is likely.

I guess I could've also put this under housing but the intent isn't to provide a permenant residence. Camping out should come with risks such as loss of inventory stored in tents if the player is gone for more than say 48 real hours. The idea is to provide a temporary base for harvestors/hunters.

 

Yea, I've been pushing the idea for (H)ole-up & camp to return to the game in several threads because it ties into a lot of other things I would like to see as well.

The first thing I've been pushing for, if you've been reading my comments, is that I'd like food and sleep to be necessary, though the penalties would grow slowly; and the second is that I'd like travel time to be large, with wide expanses of wilderness. This would lead to a lot of trekking through the wilderness and living off the land. Basically, the idea is that most adventure happens on the way to getting somewhere, and not at the location you're going to. Setting up camp with your party, then, could be a major element of fun of the game.

Setting up camp hasn't been in since in U6 and hasn't really been a good part of play since U5, since the wilderness in U6 was really tiny and narrowed out by the cities. Its a major part of gameplay I miss from U5, which, as I've mentioned I loved for the sense of adventure and exploration.

Tents shouldn't be absolutely necessary, but yes it could provide a benefit if you need safety from animals. You would use your camping time to sleep, eat, have your bard play music, plan your adventure, apply bandages to wounds (which you shouldn't be able to do in the middle of battle!) and drink potions, use the fire for warmth, and would even be a good place to log out of the game. Would obviously also be a good place to train if you have the time, between travels to towns and cities.

You should be able to gather hirelings/henchman for your party if you don't know any PCs, and they would camp with you, pack animals would also obviously be a good option. Note, when you have hirelings and pack animals, you have a lot of travel storage, so don't need to rely on a bank or house as much.

 

Will be interesting to see how this plays out. One of the main drivers for camping in ultima was to speed up the night cycle. But you took the risk of being attacked.

In a multi-player game speeding up relative time gets tricky. But I think it could actually be a cool PvP opportunity if you had a "raid the campsite" vs "defend the campsite" battleground.

 

@PrimeRib, yea and I've suggested that campfires be visible on the overland map, including in dense forest where you normally wouldn't be able to see travelling players from the tree cover.

 

I understand this. But the point is that no one actually wants to sit through the time their character is sleeping. When you camped in ultima, you either sped through the night in 30 seconds or got attacked. So basically you're opting in to some kind of mini-game where your camp might get attacked and we're messing with relative time.

 

Yea, the multiplayer aspect creates a problem if you actually want the player to be able to sleep through the night.

It probably could be implemented though without speeding time or requiring the player to spend the whole night sleeping. Certainly, you could eat relatively fast. Sleeping would just show your sleepiness debuffs gradually decrease over the time you spend sleeping, and wouldn't require you to wait until morning, allowing you to try to break out of it at any moment. The realism of the length of the process could be fudged for the sake of making the game work.

I'm not sure if anyone else has any other suggestions. Maybe the players time and the world time could somehow be out of sync and yet the differences managed somehow by the game to make it work in multiplayer.

That's a problem they're going to have to manage anyway with the differences between overland map travel and regular travel. As others have pointed out, time should go by more quickly when you move on the overland map. Its a huge problem even without sleeping and camping in the game.

 

Sleeping is the one reservation I have about camping out. Still I think we need something like this for any occasion where the player would want to spend an extended amount of time in the wilderness.

Perhaps just being within the camps perimeter for X amount of time is enough to have the same effect as sleeping.

I think my primary concern here is what level of safety should a camp have? I think part of the question involves the PvP settings for those who are part of that camp. I don't feel that camps should be 100% safe.. but it should be safe enough to be able to leave a few things behind for a few hours. I don't want some PKer coming along and killing my mule the instant I leave. (And you know some people would do that).

At the same time, even if I'm playing completely "care bear" that day (I seriously dislike that term) there should be some risk of attack.. bandit raid or whatever baddies come out at night etc. Perhaps part of the solution for this is that the camp should only be assaulted while the player (or players) is there.

There also needs to be things for players to do at camp.. such as skinning/tanning, cleaning your fish & cooking etc.

 

Make camps a offshoot of Hunting/Skinning. Just look at SWG for inspiration. As you skill up you can build better and better camps with better amenities. The basic idea is to heal your wounds (perhaps in SotA heal your "hunger" or repel/mend/immunize against weather) and a place you can do things in the middle of the wilderness that would usually require a city like crafting, sleeping/resting/eating. In a camp you can craft food, or simply just resting will give everyone inside it a small food like buff or reverse from stat degradation in the event that they go with the "stick" hunger method. (Stick being punishment for not eating, Carrot being benefit for eating).

If Devs decide for hunger to play no factor in game we can use weather as dept that incurs and must be reversed. If its a thunder storm that inflicts a penalty to vision, a camp can remove that condition and leave you immune to it for a short time. If it is a snowstorm, certain level camps can come stocked with protective clothes for party members who came unprepared. Higher level camps will have storage, crafting, a carrier pigeon mail system, come with food, clothing, a spot to add buffs like poison applications to weapons, a place to gain benefits from playing music - perhaps increased skill acquisition.

The point is, make camps available to everyone via crafting and make them useful for solo, group play, but don't make them an absolute necessity.

 

I don't really think you need to have skill based camp setup. If you want extras I think they can be crafted separately with very little skill required.

One scenario I envision could be popular for either solo or groups when entering dangerous areas.. setting up a camp outside of a dungeon for example and leaving your pack animals behind so they're not at risk. In this situation the pack animals would be completely safe from random attack and would not venture outside the camp.

Players should be able to build a kind of temporary craft stations for simple things like tanning, cooking and processing materials for transport to market. This would allow them to take more back with them. (ie a gutted fish is lighter than a freshly caught one so you can carry more of them etc).

 

I'm not sure what you meanby "skill based craft system." The skill has to come from somewhere. Either it is a craft skill and therefore needs to be earned through skilling up or its a skill tree in combat. Would have people just buy camp a for 10 silver, camp b for 20 silver or camp c for 40 silver? That's terribly boring. Someone has to be able to craft a camp and the different types of camps have different amenities. The camp should be the end result, not a thing to customize once you put it up, that's sounds like what started as a simple camp begins a 10 minute chore of upgrading it just so you can buff your party.

 

I didn't say skill based craft system.. I said skill based camp setup.

Here's the thing.. how much skill does it take to pitch a tent? I have no hunting skill in RL but I can pitch a tent without any real difficulty. And usually you're not going to go to a crafter to buy a camp. You could craft and buy tents of varying size sure.. but you're not likely to pack up crafting stations of any size and take them with you. You've have to build them on site.. THAT should require some minor skill sure but it should also be independant of the status of the rest of the camp.

Just setting up a camp shouldn't require any real skill at all. So I don't see how having different levels of what sounds like entire pre-made camps complete with crafting stations and storage really fits in.

Craft or buy a tent, cooking supplies, maybe a few traps and an axe. Go out.. pitch your tent.. set up the camp fire, then build the extras you need on site. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

 

@Bowen

A pup tent takes no skill to create yes. What about making a fire in the rain? Or a tent that can fit a table inside for a feast? How about a pigeon that can deliver mail? My idea for a campsite skill is a wide range of tents and camps.

I'm really not clear on the game mechanics you are proposing. You say you want tents, but then how do you make complex tents with amenities for many people? Why would you carry around a carpenter workbench, a saw, a stove, a spit for roasting, a set of chairs and tables and a pup tent in your inventory when you can have a tent making skill or craft which lets you make different types of tents which have all these things already included when you "setup" the tent. Why would you have people in your group all remember all these different things when a camp kit can by either pre-crafted, or crafted on the spot.

For something so full feature and useful you would definitely have to skill it up to go through the progression and receive all the possible benefits of campsites.

The tent making skill could start out with small tents and eventually make "camp sites" which have everything built into the tent when you break it out. For me, the tent is a temporary shelter. You can use it anywhere from 5 minutes to send some mail to 4 hours if you have a feast after a successful hunt.

 

I always felt like a 'fatigue' stat would make all this work. The longer you go outside of town and comfort, the more fatigued you'd get. It could affect anything from your ability to just XP gain if it got low enough.

But if you took some time in camp, eating some food, doing some weapon maintenance, it would go back up. Not as high as being in town, but up.

If you log out in camp or at an inn, the fatigue would actually disappear or be in surplus, making you more successful for a while in your adventures/crafting.

It would be another reason to be in a bigger city as well.

And another tweak to how weather affected the player.

Granted this is all very simulationist, and not everyone gets into that level of detail. But thought it was worth interjecting.

I've implemented this into my table top games as a way to limit healing when not at a healer. Your fatigue and such regenerates your HP less, and you'll get to make less overland movement the next day.

 

@Robert
We are working off of very different visions here. I'm a bit surprised at why you're asking me why I'd carry around stuff like chairs when I already clearly stated.. tent, cooking supplies and an axe and nothing more.

I have a very hard time envisioning the need to make a huge tent with a fancy table for a feast. You're saying a tent is a temporary thing but are you really going to hold feasts at a camp you're only setting up for a small party for one day? And how many people would go through the effort of crafting a tent on site? This makes no sense to me.

Furthermore, who's going to go through the effort to do their main crafting at a temporary camp? And it takes no camping skill to use a carrier pigeon.

What I am suggesting is a temporary base for hunting and adventuring. What you seem to be suggesting sounds more permenant and for large groups or else why would need all that extra, permenant sounding stuff in a temporary shelter you might only be using for 5 minutes?

This is a small scale vs large scale kind of debate here. I just don't see the need to go that far for something so temporary. Where are you going to get your feast table? Building it on site would be carpentry, not camping. Same with chairs.

Now a tanning rack.. that could just be some large sticks tied together. Easy to set up, easy to break down. Don't need to take a with you. A full fledged carpentry bench? You don't want to take that with you either, so why build one on site? Not so easy to break down or build.

You see my focus, what makes sense to me.. is the entire camp should be easy to set up, easy to break down and easy to move. The bigger and more complex you make it the harder this is on all fronts.. it'd take massive efforts to clean up and move.. just imagine the inventory space of having to take all that stuff away or the impact on the environment of having to leave things behind...

 

Ok Robert and I were reconciling our visions in chat and I'd like to clarify some of my thinking for the record. I was really focused on the one-man camping idea. If there is a mechanic for pre-planned groups to set up a larger camp with more options I'm fine with that.

My primary concern is inventory space. A large camp with portable craft stations or whatever else should require mutliple pack mules or just enough collective inventory space to get all that stuff out there and bring it back. If there's a good way to do that then I'm fine with it.

Also I'm cool with combining smaller camps with different features into a larger one.

 

On the subject of hunting.

Please ensure that there is some veracity in "hunting". Too many games have dumb and easy to catch wildlife, that usually just stand still until taken down from ranged attacks or within agro range. In SotA please make hunting rewarding in that the pry is wily (large detect range), hard to find (hides from predators) and require real hunting skills to track down.

 

It's funny how the little things can make games immersive. Spending 10 minutes to reach a hunting ground and 10 minutes to stalk a single target or gather a single ingredient can be more fun than slaughtering 100 mindless mobs 10 feet from town. As long as the reward has value and is realistic, I'd prefer the former. It should take effort to kill a deer and you should get meat, hide, horns every time and it should be of real value. Not copper pieces and a green weapon very so often off of a pig.

Camping does indeed take skill. I remember me and two of my friends panned for gold all day before setting up a tent on a beautiful scenic point between two still creeks. And then drinking ourselves into a stupor. Two of us were ok in the tent. The other guy's face was one continuous mosquito bite the next morning as we basically camped right in the middle of a mosquito breeding ground. Wish I had pictures....it wasn't pretty, but it was funny (for two of us).

 

I would say make camping a skill.
As you get better you can put up bigger stronger tents that may come with some nice accessories.
And help your rest stat go up faster.

As far as needing sleep, I would say yes to that.
I would not use camping for healing though.
It does not matter if your fighting monsters or crafting the sleep bar should go down just the same.

I would expect you could sign out of the game after setting up camp.
During the time your offline while camping, room at the inn, or sleeping at your house the bar for sleep would go up till completely rested.
So at least a few hours to go from no sleep to completely rested.

If we need to sleep while off-line that should help on macroing.
You can't just macro all the time or your player would die of exhaustion.
Maybe macro's are not a problem now - I have not played many mmo's lately.

Sure you could be gaining rest while in camp mode while cooking or crafting things.
This is where your skill would help move your rest up faster.

As far as being raided by PK's, hmm.
Maybe based on your skill you stay hidden better.
And maybe if you have pets they could let you know people are near.
And I still would like having a booby trap skill.
So maybe you can set traps around your camp that might slow down the raiders.

 

Not to nitpick but rather so people understand my viewpoint on the skill issue. I make a distinction between skill and knowledge. Pitching a tent requires very little actual skill. At least it's never given me any trouble. Now a set of survival skills like scrounging for firewood or starting a fire I can see.. but as survival.. not 'camping'.. I'm not sure why a 'camping' skill bugs me.. maybe I'm just hung up on the tent thing.

The problem with sleeping is.. nobody wants to watch their character sleep and there's no way to 'fast forward' time online. So sleeping would have to be instantaneous online which doesn't make any sense. I do think the offline mode should allow for sleep though since real time isn't an issue in that case.

 

A solution about sleeping time in multiplayer could be to make characters "dream". Dreams would be mini-games based on your character evolution and what was the day made of. Nightmares like you want to escape monsters but find out you move very slow, nice dreams where you fly and collect things or race with birds...many things.
Some really absurd and funny things sometimes.


NPCs you met could also appear and remind you your pledge to help them, or maybe you could sometimes foresee things like traps in a place you haven't been yet (this could be a reward for a "successful dream"). You could even be proposed missions.

Given it's an "Ultima" game dreams could also be tied to the mental or spiritual evolution of the character.

I know, cons are legions. Just don't wake me up...