Do you think wildfires can be salvaged?

[Cheggf]

9 hours ago, xDarkSoul18x said:

When summer hits you essentially have 2 options. Cave or just stay in your base with flingers

The only thing summer restricts is chopping down entire forests, but even that can be done if you just bring a luxury fan.

[Pig Princess]

I think the main problem of wildfires is lack of reward for dealing with them, in particular, players are rewarded with... absence of punishment, which isn't a good design in my opinion. And, of course, offscreen wildfires; that thing should be removed, because player has no way of even trying to fight them, which is unfair and not something people usually come to the game world for.

I'd like to give some examples of challenging mechanics, that player nonetheless can benefit from:

1. Winter's low temperature. While deadly for unprepared player because of health depletion during freezing and growth of most plants stopping, it also reduces spoil rate of perishable items, completely stops ice spoiling below 0 and allows mini glaciers to regrow, e.i. results in additional filler, that never spoils in ice box/while temperature is low enough. Despite the fact that surface ponds freeze (disadvantage, because watering can can't be refilled and player can't fish there), low temperature also leads to farm soil not loosing water to evaporation + frogs/mosquitos can be annoying, as well as collision box of pond while it's not frozen.

2. Insanity. It can kill inexperienced/inattentive player, forces one to spend additional time to fighting shadows, often weapon durability, as well as extra fuel for light source and possibly armor and healing items, but in return player who learned how to fight them somewhat efficiently and not die gains access to nightmare fuel - crafting ingredient for powerful gear - and in Wigfrid's case she can use nightmares to raise her sanity/health without spending appropriate food/dedicated healing items/wearing clothing for extra time.

3. Rain as it is in Reign of Giants. Above certain tresholds player receives sanity damage, freezes, items slip from hand (which easily can kill one), items in the inventory become wet and spoil faster, wet fuel is less efficient; on the other hand, electric weapons deal more damage, stuff is less likely to catch fire and spread it, farm soil is watered naturally (DST) and farms work with increased efficiency (DS), mushrooms and flowers regrow and birds spawn rate increases.

4. Volcano eruption in Shipwrecked. That thing can easily destroy one's base and faith in everything good in life, but one can use this for killing hoards of mobs, to destroy objects incapable to catch fire - like magma piles - and get loot from them, to farm obsidian - powerful crafting ingredient - by extinguishing lava pools with ice, or to farm rocks, flint and charcoal otherwise.

5. Wetness in Hamlet, e.i. alternating heavy rain and fog. Negative RoG effects when player is wet, reduced movement speed and visibility range during fog are disadvantages; positive RoG effects, growth of nettles (non-spoiling food, good for combating hay fever and consume in general), refilling of sparkling pools (renewable gold outside of buying it in pig bank) are advantages.

6. Aporkalypse. Disadvantages: increased frequency of vampire bat waves (possibility of being killed or just annoyance, their drops lead to flytraps overpopulation), all mants turning into mant warriors (which will chase player until death), Ancient Herald (boss, brings destruction to surrounding and possibly death should player have not enough space to maneuver), inaccessible pig shops, thunderbirds do 10 lightning strikes instead of 3, constantly awaken parts of ancient hulk, ancient spirits in ancient pig ruins, game over for Wilba if catched without necklace and water biome divides aporkalypse calendar and her location, pogs and pikos turn aggressive. Advantages: free light (due to red full moon), lit caves (pig ruins, mant cave system; possibly a bug), no season-specific effects (hay fewer, brambles, fog or rain, etc.), no royal guards-firebenders, friendly elder mandrakes, increased frequency of vampire bat waves (if one wants to farm them and is ready to fight them a lot), no BFB (it becomes annoying at some point even though it's easy to skip it's friendship gesture).

7. Darkness (DST and DS + it's DLC). Disadvantages: Charlie attacks, insanity, inability to interact with objects outside of inventory (DST), lack of mobs that show themselves outside of darkness (birds, and as a consequence, seeds in meaningful amounts), inability to grow farm plants, player-planted flowers withering, general night behavior of some mobs (bees, bats, etc.). Advantages: general night behaviour of some mobs (beefalos, volt goats, ewecus, etc.), ability to steal from royal guards in Hamlet without alerting them (player should be in complete darkness).

More examples can be given, but I think the point I'm trying to show is clear: aside from wide variety of methods to combat some challenging mechanic, there should be reward for player for doing so instead of avoiding it, and Klei clearly can do that, which is proven by both old vanilla and relatively new Hamlet/DST exclusive mechanics.

I wrote some suggestions in similar thread about wildfires a while ago, here is the link:

Quick summary: heat waves instead of 11 days of constant danger aside from dusk/night; no offscreen wildfires; increase of drying racks efficiency during heat wave (and/or instant decrease of time left until ready upon entering smoldering state regardless of whether it was extinguished or not afterwards in summer); all loot lying on the ground for a few seconds turning into cooked version/ash (if flammable) during heat wave, but cooked version being 100% fresh; ability to upgrade ice flingomatic with gems to achieve various effects aside from normal functioning, ability to get unique resources by allowing wildfires modify existing ones in specific controlled circumstances or acquired by drying during heat wave resources player otherwise is unable to dry.

[Just-guy]

On 8/24/2021 at 10:46 AM, Ohan said:

what if wildfires were more telegraphed and intense and occured periodically instead of a constant, low level, difficult to detect danger. I wonder if that would make them more engaging and less annoying. 

something like this: the screen would go smokey/ashy/orange and the character would announce that a heatwave is imminent. the threat of wildfires could be paired with maybe a spike in temperature so u need to find shade or eat something cold/use a luxury fan/chilling amulet. it would last like the entire day period maybe and occur like ~3-5 times per summer or whatever. 

This kinda thing i imagine would also require a bunch of new items to deal with the new dangers etc. (like the bamboo/palm leaf structure that protects against rain in SW but for heat) Would make above average trees also even better. 

As an upside of the heatwave, meats and crops could be cooked when dropped on the ground during the heatwave.

[viberr]

personally, I want wildfires removed and replaced with a new mechanic

but if Klei can rework wildfires and make them fun then I'd be completely fine with that but as of right now, me no like

[kiwikenobi]

@Pig Princess You have made a very smart observation about the lack of reward for wildfires! I was prepared to disagree with you about the fog/rain in Hamlet, but you made a perfectly accurate and valid point about the nettles. Perhaps, if wildfires came in heat waves, they could purge the world of all of the twigs and rot that are often lying around that wind up cluttering the world and make it run slower in particularly long-running worlds. I think there are already mods/commands that do that; it's something that people want done sometimes. I like your other ideas for benefits that could come with wildfires, too.

[Keller Max]

I would be OK with random fires, as long as having non renewable recources - RENEWABLE. Why can't we have renewable Grass Turfs (plants), Berry bushes, Saplings, Reeds, Cactus, Spiky bushes. It was very frustrating when my Reed Trap setpiece combusted for some reason.

Everything common should be renewable or regrowable, because it can be randomly burned.

[Digi_056]

On 8/26/2021 at 12:50 PM, Pig Princess said:

I think the main problem of wildfires is lack of reward for dealing with them, in particular, players are rewarded with... absence of punishment, which isn't a good design in my opinion. And, of course, offscreen wildfires; that thing should be removed, because player has no way of even trying to fight them, which is unfair and not something people usually come to the game world for.

I'd like to give some examples of challenging mechanics, that player nonetheless can benefit from:

 

Quick summary: heat waves instead of 11 days of constant danger aside from dusk/night; no offscreen wildfires; increase of drying racks efficiency during heat wave (and/or instant decrease of time left until ready upon entering smoldering state regardless of whether it was extinguished or not afterwards in summer); all loot lying on the ground for a few seconds turning into cooked version/ash (if flammable) during heat wave, but cooked version being 100% fresh; ability to upgrade ice flingomatic with gems to achieve various effects aside from normal functioning, ability to get unique resources by allowing wildfires modify existing ones in specific controlled circumstances or acquired by drying during heat wave resources player otherwise is unable to dry.

I think weather events like heatwaves are an idea that could be built upon, spring already has a similar thing with frog rain, (it's raining aggressive frogs, but think of the meat and battle opportunities), winter could have a blizzard, (it's extra cold, maybe hard to see where you're going, but food wouldn't spoil, maybe spiders or other mobs would stay inside/pacify, because they're too busy not freezing to death)

[vorti]

I think instead of being random, it should be a consequence. For example if you leave tools, rot or other random stuff on the ground, they can cause smoldering, but if you keep your base clean and tidy, you should be safe.

On weather events: Maybe a short but really strong hailstorm for summer. Kinda like in SW, but less tropical.

[QuQuasar]

I think my biggest problem with wildfires is how artificial they feel due to only smoulding around the player. It's not "wildfires are sweeping across the constant due to extreme heat", it's "things in your vicinity might start burning randomly." So the optimal strategy is a very meta one, reliant on unloading the parts of the map you don't want to burn. With the bosses this sort of localized attack makes sense since there's only one boss in the world at a time, but not so much with the wildfires.

Here's my idea:

Wildfires should behave more like tree petrification. When a wildfire is triggered, every tree in a large region of the map will be marked as "on fire". If you go there while the wildfire persists you'll find the entire forest burning, and if not it will be converted into a charcoal forest after a day or two. Since only tree's are marked as burning, less common resources (pig houses, spider nests, etc) will be spared.

As an addendum to this idea, while a wildfire is occurring embers could drop from the sky around the player. This would replace the automatic-smouldering mechanic as a source of random spot fires. Since falling embers would be far more visible than smouldering and wildfires wouldn't always be happening, it would also make preparing for and controlling summer fires without a flingo far more viable.

[Spirit Glow]

Im fine with wildfires but i do like the heat-wave idea. Something a lttle more telegraphed so that my stuff isnt burning a screen over without me noticing...not again