[POLL] Doomed or Survive Long Term

[Scyzara]

Excellent post, Hotzn. Sums up my own wishes perfectly. 

[Vhalkyrie]

Doom should be Story mode, but Sandbox should be Endless.  Sandbox is sandbox - there's no goals or objectives other than what the player decides.

[hauteecolerider]

Well considered and well said, Hotzn! While I'd prefer my characters to live forever, obviously games are going to hit a point where the player is just marking time. Even with changing seasons (progressing from the abundance of autumn into the austerity of winter, or moving from the refreshing renewal of spring to the dry challenge of summer, for example) things do get quite dull from a storytelling standpoint. That's when I park my character and move on - another character, different play style, or even a different game altogether.

[Vhalkyrie]

11 hours ago, Hotzn said:

Now I am aware that probably the majority of players prefer endless survival. It would be immensely interesting to know the reasons. I presume different people will have different reasons, and I can only guess what they might be.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'll speak for myself.  Will for survival.  Why shouldn't I survive?  There are some games that are setup for an inevitable tragic end.  If you've seen my story thread, I describe half dozen situations in which I got killed, all due to ignorance or something that I could have done better.  In each situation, I learned something from it, and carried that knowledge into my next game.  I'm currently 3/4 of the way to day 200.  I get enjoyment out of figuring out how to survive better.  In each case, it's a carrot dangled in front of me, something I can do better to keep surviving.  I'm running into a situation currently where my matches are turning orange, which is a flashing sign that eventually my matches are going to evaporate.  A matchless day may soon be coming.  It will be hard, but I can keep surviving.

If it was inevitable Doom, that would change things.  I'm not sure I would play that game (not in Sandbox at least).  Story mode is fine - I look forward to the story that the designers want to tell, no matter the fate.  In Sandbox, however, this is my story.  I want to live or die due to my choices.  I want to live until the day when I slip because of some error, something I could have changed or done better.  But if I'm just riding the inevitable slide into losing, then I probably would stop playing just before that point.  Take for example if the magnifying glass didn't exist.  At the point where I was holding on to the last match, I would just end the game there and not reload it.  Because at that point I wouldn't have any other options, and the game was over.  I wouldn't particularly enjoy freezing to death during the night, dying of dehydration, and being unable to cook food with not even a chance to change it.

However, with only the magnifying glass, it's extremely challenging.  Only starting fires on sunny days?  While on an extremely harsh map like Timberwolf where you have to have fire at night?  Now that's intriguing.  Maybe I could survive, maybe I won't.  But I have the dangled carrot that maybe I could.

[Drifter Man]

Illogical as it may seem, the doomed vs indefinite views are not mutually exclusive, as long as the doom is sufficiently distant and blurry.

I assume the following experience of a typical TLD player:

1. Early learning phase – many deaths and surviving first for hours, days, then tens of days, learning the basic tricks and techniques

2. Long-term survival: once the player is able to survive, he or she tries to do so for as long as possible. After several hundreds of days (just wondering – how many people here have played for longer than that?), this eventually becomes boring and the player quits

3. Living for the challenge: the player now plays for the thrill of the early game and makes it more challenging by imposing restrictions on himself/herself, or doing “silly stunts”.

Your precise standpoint may depend on where you are, but some things are probably common. No one wants to face an artificial, pre-engineered set of terminating conditions. We want to get an enjoyable and challenging experience but don’t want to know that we’re going to die between days 200 and 500 because the weather becomes impossible. That much I can hopefully say for everyone, or almost everyone.

Players in phase 3) may tend to look for a challenge of increasing difficulty of the game that will inevitably kill them. Their skill, experience and luck will determine how long they survive exactly. They will be able to compete against each other and against themselves, compare scores. But it will also cause the game to lose another important dimension.

I am in 2) and think that the game should be uncertain and clouded as to whether indefinite survival is an option. This will motivate players for long runs. Is indefinite survival actually possible without using the starvation exploit? I don’t know, and I stay hooked.

My suggestion to the developers (and I’m not saying that any of this is easy):

1. Yes, introduce variable weather, wildlife aggression etc., like seasons and medium-term weather patterns that move in and out, but not with the intent to make the game gradually impossible over time.

2. Introduce more activities, places to explore, useful items to look for or craft, so that players don’t get bored after a few hundred days. Introduce items and challenges that only become practically achievable once the player has survived for a long time.

3. Do not impose an artificial limit to kill the player. If the rules of the game eventually lead to my demise in the very long run (thousands of days), then fine. But I want to get there at my own pace, without knowing in advance when and what it is that will prevent me from surviving further.

Nature isn’t there to kill me. Nature just is there. It does not care.

[Scyzara]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

Your precise standpoint may depend on where you are, but some things are probably common. No one wants to face an artificial, pre-engineered set of terminating conditions. We want to get an enjoyable and challenging experience but don’t want to know that we’re going to die between days 200 and 500 because the weather becomes impossible. That much I can hopefully say for everyone, or almost everyone.

Players in phase 3) may tend to look for a challenge of increasing difficulty of the game that will inevitably kill them. Their skill, experience and luck will determine how long they survive exactly. They will be able to compete against each other and against themselves, compare scores. But it will also cause the game to lose another important dimension.

Which dimension are you talking about? In my opinion, the game would rather gain a whole new dimension by making it finite because it would make all of your your choices in early and mid-game way more meaningful than they currently are.

Just imagine for example you knew right from the start that the temperatures (both interior and exterior) would decrease over time. During the first few days, your starting clothes may be sufficient not to freeze while sleeping in a bed, but at some point (e.g. day 20) you'd need a full set of premade clothes and later on (e.g. day 100) the fur clothes. And at some point, even the fur clothes won't be enough any more and you would also need to keep a fire burning at night during blizzards (day 200+) or during all nights in general (day 300+).

Knowing right from the start that having a huge stockpile of firewood will be essential for your survival later on would add a lot to the current game for me because it would actually make all my decisions - no matter whether on day 10, 50 or 200 - a lot more meaningful than currently. Atm it doesn't matter at all whether I bother to create a stockpile of 1000 pieces of fir firewood (or millions of sticks) during my game or whether I just spend that time sleeping. If anything, collecting larger reserves of firewood is rather a disadvantage compared to sleeping. In an eternal game without an increasing difficulty curve I will never really benefit from creating larger reserves of wood, water, cattail stalks or anything else because I will never actually need them.

During my leaderboard run one year ago I accumulated 1,5 tons of firewood just because I didn't want to spend my days hibernating. It was pretty pointless of course because I never burned it up even though I kept a fire burning 24/7 just for fun during the last 150 days or so. When my character finally died, I had firewood of the weight of a mid-sized car lying around in a fishing hut without any purpose.

Imagine how great it would have been if that huge stockpile of firewood I collected during the course of my game would actually have had a purpose and given me the opportunity to survive some more weeks in a world getting colder and colder! I'd certainly have loved that. And I'm not only talking about firewood here, a steep increasing difficulty curve would also influence your decision making on various other levels as well.

During the first, relatively "easy" days saving tools or ammunition might actually make you gain an advantage 300 days later when every moment you spend outside hunting or harvesting meat will be way more dangerous due to temperatures, more aggressive wolves or whatever else. Your decisions during early and mid-game might have a massive impact on your survival times in late game and taking risks at the start might give you the opportunity to squeeze out some more days in the end. Every decision made and every risk taken on every day might have an impact dozens or hundreds of days later.

I very much hope the Devs will allow modding at some point after the story mode release. It would be nothing but awesome to have a finite, really hard version of the sandbox (with much less prey & resources and an increasing difficulty curve) in my opinion. What I enjoy most about TLD is the struggle for survival and an increasing difficulty curve would certainly make me struggle way more (and thus have more fun) than the current game design.

If inevitable death turns out to be a sideeffect of this increased struggle, I'd gladly accept it. In my opinion, it's way more rewarding to live one intense year of challenge and fun than to live 20 years or boredom and pointlessness.

[common]

Well said Drifter Man.

knowing that the finite amount of resources will lead to your death makes the game feel almost cut short to early ( to me )

i love this game but after day 200, if I was to die due to a bear attack or something,  i don't think i could start another and that would mean i would not play the game and I am pretty sure the Devs want me playing it.  Of course that is me and not everyone else but I am not one of the players that keep replaying different starts.

Maybe if the game changed somehow the next play i do, and i do not mean restrictions imposed by me but the game itself and the way i play the new game had something very different about it ,  I would give it another go.

Now that I think about it, the one and major thing that is stopping me from ever doing another play after this character dies ( almost 200 ) on stalker are the same maps.  I would totally do another play through if i was in a place unknown to me where every corner can hold danger or loot.  But i have survived for many days in each zone already, went into most of the buildings....there will not be anything new there for me on a new game....yes, new maps, all of them, so characters do a restart when game goes live.  But again, I hope i will have the excitement and wonder when starting a second play through as i did when starting the first.

 Maybe, there will be replenishing resources to make an arrow, and no lack of bandages and cloth and even random dynamic events to make the end game more exciting and one will be able to play....5 years from now ( in real time ) ?   

I mean I want this game to be playable and exciting 5  years from now ...( just a number i came up with ) 

anyways ...its morning, im tired and i need a double double  

best game ever....well top 5 of all time for me for sure ...

 

[Ohbal]

I'm divided

I'd love the game to have an "end"... this end could be either a "You Survived" or "You Faded into the Long Dark". I'd like the difficulty to increase overtime. I'd like the "You Survived" achievement to be incredibly difficult to get. I'd like to feel like my choices during the first 100 days actually make a difference into the next 100, and so on. 

A game tailored to kill me 100% of the times would be somewhat weird. It would indeed boost the competitive side of it: who lasts for longer, but that's about all the benefits I see. 

[hauteecolerider]

5 hours ago, Scyzara said:

I very much hope the Devs will allow modding at some point after the story mode release. It would be nothing but awesome to have a finite, really hard version of the sandbox (with much less prey & resources and an increasing difficulty curve) in my opinion. What I enjoy most about TLD is the struggle for survival and an increasing difficulty curve would certainly make me struggle way more (and thus have more fun) than the current game design.

As we have been discussing on another thread, this right here would be the sole reason to have mods. To tweak gameplay and make it more interesting for those players who want tougher challenges the longer they live.

As far as Doom or Surviving, we all die in the end. The Long Dark comes for each of us. In my opinion, it becomes more a question of whether I'm going to stop playing the game before TLD comes for my character, or will I play it long enough to see it happen.

I'd like to survive long enough for my character to become comfortable with the routine, but it wouldn't be unwelcome to me as a player if something unexpected happened at that point. Maybe an asteroid impact in Russia or a mega-volcanic eruption in Krakatoa . . . Or Elk Wasting Disease wipes out all the deer in the game and the wolves and bears start competing with each other to make me the main course . . . That's the idea that keeps me going . . .

[cekivi]

On 2016-04-02 at 8:44 AM, Hotzn said:

After all this blabla (thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read up to here), what I am driving at: I would appreciate if this game introduced a third curve to work against the other two curves flattening out - a difficulty curve. If the game would become gradually more and more difficult, the temperatures colder, food scarcer, wolves more dangerous, blizzards longer, we would be forced to exert our skills and knowledge of the game more and more until... well, we finally die. But how would I enjoy this last fight, this clinging to the last scrap of life. Already starving, finding that last deer carcass and gaining some more miserable days. Overcoming that fever one last time to gather strength, take the rifle and venture out into the foggy cold to hunt... or fade into the long dark somewhere alone in the deep forest...

What you describe would be consistent with a second ice age or, worse, a snowball Earth. Now, the development arc for the Long Dark is to have all four seasons be playable. My preferred mode for the sandbox would be to play through winter, emerge into spring and desperately try to prepare and store enough in summer and fall to survive the winter again. Each year man made buildings would wear down from lack of maintenance necessitating you to continually work on your chosen area. Animals will be depleted from over hunting, wild fires may render your progress moot etc. To get back to what Hotzn and TheRealNFK said you would need to constantly make choices and as time wears on you may eventually be doomed. Endless survival is not guaranteed.

Now, I have no idea if the Long Dark sandbox will ever have all seasons be integrated. It'd be nice but that means we're getting 4 games for $25 which isn't a particularly sustainable business model for a studio. So, it is likely that the sandbox will only ever be one season. An endless winter. That's why I really like @Hotzn's idea since it would mirror what an endless winter would do to the world. Humanity's constructions would be frozen in time but as the plants freeze and die the food chain will collapse. Everything will become scarcer. Global temperatures will continue to drop as the albedo of the Earth increases from the snow and ice. Like Hotzn said, the difficulty of the game would slowly increase as the months wear on to the point where all the pantry's have been raided, all of the deer have starved, migrated or been eaten and what little is left are a few desperate predators with only one obvious food source: you. Given time even they will leave until all that is left is one survivor raging against the night as the temperatures plummet, food becomes a memory and the weather becomes ever more unpredictable.

What will kill you in the end is far from certain but in an endless winter something inevitably will. There is a reason why nothing lives in the interior of Antarctica. No creature can survive on solely sun and ice in -50C.

[Drifter Man]

7 hours ago, Scyzara said:

Which dimension are you talking about? In my opinion, the game would rather gain a whole new dimension by making it finite because it would make all of your your choices in early and mid-game way more meaningful than they currently are.

I am talking about the uncertainty, open-endedness of the game. While I do not advocate immortality by design in the game, some hard-wired system that eventually kills the player (again, by design) is something that would turn me away after one or two attempts. Let there be a set of challenging and variable rules and conditions. How will you adapt? No matter how long you live, let there always be surprises, unexpected threats and changes.

If I read correctly, you are essentially suggesting a race in stockpiling firewood. Wasting time exploring new lands or enjoying sunrise from the top of a lookout is punishable by death. I just don't think this should be all about rushing towards certain goals or stockpiling anything... And I certainly don't want "345 days, after that you freeze no matter what" to be the ultimate answer to TLD.

But I also respect that what you are looking for is different from what I'm looking for. How about this: Voyageur to voyageurs, Stalker to stalkers?

[Ohbal]

I've seen this conversations happening in most of the Early Access games I follow, the development cycle gathers different individuals with different playstyles, and somehow we all want to get what would get closer to ours. 

On one side, I completely understand the devs wanting to deliver their original design. On the other, and this is the important bit, the sandbox mode is golden.

I feel that with this Early Access model, with so much feedback from players, games can go one step beyond thanks to this sandbox modes being present. As many people said in this thread, expanding the configuration of the sandbox mode to allow customization on: wildlife abundance and respawn rate, weather, amount of loot, etc... would pretty much alllow for all styles to get what they want. It may be different from the original design, but that's the beauty of this kind of development, the game and ideas grow in unexpected ways