suggestion I don't feel like playing anymore, this may be my last post, I'm sorry.

[Baukster77]

sad to see you go

[WalleyeGuy83]

I'm on the same page where I've stopped playing, still checking forums for updates though.

Needs replayability. Badly. Procedurally generated sandbox perhaps, or just more randomness and challenge.

I'm very concerned that Story Mode will be a one time play-through (amazing then done) experience, I believe that an awesome sandbox with replayability is going to be the bread and butter of this game.

[Docterrok]

1 hour ago, Scyzara said:

I assume this is because you haven't experienced more than a few months of game development (at least if your forum activity somehow reflects your playing activity). That's a bit like watching the same 5 minutes of a 2 hour film over and over again and complaining nothing "new" happens.

Had you played TLD right from the first alpha release version until now, you would recognize massive changes regarding all game aspects imaginable. From tremendous UI improvements to animal AI and from game mechanics to graphics almost nothing has remained static since 2014.

But well, I'm aware patience and foresight are rare commodities these days.

Move on if you feel like it, but please try not to be unfair towards the Devs. They can't do magic and I for one find it extremely disrespectful to complain about a lack of changes if you refuse to observe the game development for a decent amount of time (and I'm talking about at the very least 6-12 months here, not just some weeks). 

8 months, not to be difficult.

[Docterrok]

Again, I mean no disrespect.

[TROY]

47 minutes ago, Docterrok said:

8 months, not to be difficult.

Doc, I have a couple things to say. First, I hope you'll reconsider abandoning this community just because you don't play the game regularly. We will miss your thoughtful, imaginative and entertaining participation. You'll be sorely missed.  While I agree partially with Scyzara, (Ive had the game since a couple months after release and it REALLY has made leaps and bounds) I also feel where you're coming from. I would offer this: Don't delete it. You will find yourself coming back to it after time. Ive quit playing it for a couple months several times, and every time i pick it back up, it feels fresh again. With that said, after playing enough hours to get 500 days survived, after owning the game for 8 months, regardless of whether or not you played it steady for that time, anyone can lose interest. If you have that many hours in the game, you got alot more out of it than you would get from many similarly priced games, alot more than many folks get from any game. No single game can hold anyones interest indefinitely, nor are any of them intended to. (Nor should they for that matter)  Many of us will be sorry to see you go, if you so choose, but hopefully, we'll all get the chance to welcome you back again in the not so distant future. May your socks never have holes, and may your arrows always fly true.  

[Gaboris]

In a sense I agree with you Doc. I haven't played TLD for months by now and even when I did I never went past a few weeks in game time since I just ran out of things to do for myself, but I did say this when I joined the forum.

This game is BRILLIANT. I love it to bits and that's the reason why always come back to the forums and why I drop everything every single time I see a steam popup that's about the game, but STILL the game is just not engaging enough for me to play it for extended periods YET. So personally I just spend my "game time" here and try to bring up ideas that could improve the gameplay experience for me in the future.

 

Anyways as the others have said, I hope after a few months and maybe a few updates of rest later you'll find the game engaging again and until then goodbye.

[Jason C Child]

23 hours ago, Docterrok said:

Ok, I've survived nearly 500 days on my longest run, so hopefully my complaint has some validity. Sad to say, I've grown tired of this game, don't get me wrong, I love the art style and minimalist approach, but with time, this game becomes a monotonous grind fest, I could even liken it to runescape on that front. Now, this saddens me greatly because I truly see this game as special, and the forum community is great, but this game just gets really boring, I understand that applies to all games, but the sheer lack of engaging things to do makes in-game activities feel like chores. I now play this game not for enjoyment, but for calming myself down. But I want to be scared of wolves, I want to explore and discover, but The Long Dark provides that fear and sense of exploration for only a little while, then, I become bored from just doing vast amounts of nothing, I truly wish I could be entertained by this game for longer than a few days. I feel bad for being so critical, but something has to change. I've taken a break from playing after I went on a shooting rampage while naked and fought some wolves with a knife, even then, as my health was at 5% and I was surrounded by wolf corpses, I realized, "this game isn't fun anymore." That saddened me, and I'm telling you this because this may very well be my last post. The story I started in the fanfic forum will eventually fade, my content will go unnoticed, and eventually, my interest for this game as a whole will completely fade into the long dark...

unless...

I actually view this game as fun once more, this can be done in many ways, I don't want to threaten my support for this game unless you add things, but these are my suggestions to make me engaged once more.

• make animals way more dangerous, I don't want to be able to kill entire wolfpacks naked with a pry bar
• give us things to do, home decorations, cards, whittling, honestly, anything other than that "pass time" button.
• something to read, comic books, journal entries, anything.
• comic relief
• refined mechanics for combat
• a possibility to be able to survive forever
• refined afflictions
• Npc teasers

I feel really bad being so cynical, but honestly, I'm just not feeling it anymore. To give you more reference as to what keeps me engaged, one of my favorite games is Unturned because I simply cannot get bored with it. Thank you for reading and Im sorry if I caused some offense with this post.

Ah, yes...announcement of departure, check. Statement regarding retaining membership for an"limited time" in order to "reply to comments".

For a second I thought this was a Medium post about why someone was leaving Facebook...

[Ohbal]

20 hours ago, TROY said:

With that said, after playing enough hours to get 500 days survived, after owning the game for 8 months, regardless of whether or not you played it steady for that time, anyone can lose interest. If you have that many hours in the game, you got alot more out of it than you would get from many similarly priced games, alot more than many folks get from any game. No single game can hold anyones interest indefinitely, nor are any of them intended to.

I was just about to say exactly the same thing. 

There is just a limit of "engagement" you can obtain from a game. Even the perfect game would get boring if you play it daily. The brain needs new stuff to feel engaged, that's why learning is such a blast

Take your time out from the game, I'm pretty sure most of us do the same thing. I haven't turned it on for two weeks I think, but the community is great and I want to see what happens when this train gets to the end of the line. I'm pretty sure you won't resist the temptation of trying out any update including a new region or the story mode once it gets done  

[Wastelander]

See you, Space Cowboy. Hope you'll one day come back to us.

[Dirmagnos]

Well, i dont play game all that much lately as well.

At first been busy but then gave it a go after latest round of fixes. I m currently at 64 days and that took me like a month real time to get that far. And even that i spend mostly experimenting.

While certain additions feel interesting, there are a lot of things that are still same and that makes things not as exciting. Plus, game is rather static, with minimal randomness aside loot(which is also a problem for me now, since on Stalker majority of containers contain nothing, kinda kills whole exploration trill).

On top of that there are also several features that i completely despise, like parasites, a topic that i have been pushing around rather extensively. Major survival exploits and shortcuts also receive 0 attention(they have been around for a looong time and nothing has been done, while minor or cosmetical ones, like hibernation, have been receiving overhaul after overhaul, often with disastrous results for general gameplay), like ability to live off completely ridiculous amounts of food or battling wolves naked or predators patiently waiting while player starts up a fire. There is a whole list of those.

And on top of that pile, there are quite some features on roadmap that make seriously worried, for example idiocy like mental health. Or various ideas that tend to steer game towards camping simulator not survival game(lets make a chair, put it on a porch and then relax in it, puffing pipe and enjoying star fall, because life is great).

All those things combined kinda kill the joy for me. Im not quitting per se, but i have troubles committing to game as well. Not really playing, but holding fingers crossed that things will get better on a later date.

[Pillock]

I think the game is progressing fine. Better than fine, really - I'm generally impressed by the scope of new gameplay brought about in updates, which freshen the game up for me; and they're regular enough to keep me interested.

I will agree that things do become predictable once you have game experience, though. Variety of experience is what keeps people coming back; getting set into repetitive cycles of activities is what causes boredom and loss of interest. Ideally, each Sandbox playthrough would tell a different story, containing different series of events. Simply adding 'more content' doesn't achieve this - it just just pushes back slightly the time when you've 'finished' everything. More "randomness", as Dirmingos said, does help, as would longer-lasting injuries and afflictions because they would shape your experience and your decisions/actions more than they do currently. But the one thing that most of all forces you, the player, to act differently -and currently this only happens at the beginning of a playthrough- is NOT having access to particular tools or items: when you don't have a gun, you play differently; when you don't have an axe, you play differently; when you don't have warm clothes, you play differently; if you don't have a warm shelter, you play differently. That keeps it interesting.

Restricting access to these things is what will give the Sandbox real variety in the longer-term, I think. (Acting alongside the added content that is going to appear further down the line, obviously.)

[cowboymrh]

Docterrok ......   There's not a darn thing wrong with taking a little time off and trying some other games. TLD will always be here and waiting for you when you decide to come back.

Getting tired of video games (even the great ones) is nothing new.

LOL   Lately, believe it or not, I've gone back to playing Age of Empires (Age of Kings)!!.........  a 15 plus year old game!!!, And still have a fun time playing it!!

I have a "group" of 5 or 6 games that I shift around to and The Long Dark is in that group along with: Civilization V, Europa Universalis, Dirt 3, Call of Duty (Black ops), Joint Operations Typhoon Rising .......................................... many of these games are over 10 years old and I still enjoy playing them from time to time.

Just keep in touch from time to time!!  I'm sure you'll get that longing to start a new Stalker game on Timberwolf Mountain again!! 

[Hotzn]

On 30.7.2016 at 5:49 PM, Docterrok said:

I actually view this game as fun once more, this can be done in many ways, I don't want to threaten my support for this game unless you add things, but these are my suggestions to make me engaged once more.

• make animals way more dangerous, I don't want to be able to kill entire wolfpacks naked with a pry bar
• give us things to do, home decorations, cards, whittling, honestly, anything other than that "pass time" button.
• something to read, comic books, journal entries, anything.
• comic relief
• refined mechanics for combat
• a possibility to be able to survive forever
• refined afflictions
• Npc teasers

I feel really bad being so cynical, but honestly, I'm just not feeling it anymore. To give you more reference as to what keeps me engaged, one of my favorite games is Unturned because I simply cannot get bored with it. Thank you for reading and Im sorry if I caused some offense with this post.

No offense taken. Now that everyone has commented on your leaving (or not leaving) the community (shame on you, are we not good enough?), I would like to redirect attention on the suggestions/wishlist as quoted above.

Make animals more dangerous: This is something many long-time players have been wishing for. Basically, it's part of the wish for a higher difficulty or, in other words a difficulty mode beyond stalker. We all know from various comments made by the devs that only few players would play such a super-hardcore-mode. But those players are the most dedicated ones who advertise the game a lot to others. So I still think a super-hardcore-mode deserves consideration.

Give us things to do: I would also like to see the possibility to customize my base. Put paintings, photos, maps or animal hides on the walls, move furniture around etc. That would be a great addition.

Something to read: I would love to find things to read as well. Corpses could have notes on them telling of their last struggles, or who they were and what they were up to. There could be notes to be found in certain locations, left by other survivors in hopes of finding people, things or places. It would be awesome if the game would tell little "stories" across the various maps. Like for example we would find a note in some place, written by person A to person B, telling person B that person A managed to get hold of some provisions and antiseptic, and that person A was going to, let's say, the "house on that island near the Coastal Highway" to hopefully meet up with peron B if he/she found the message. And then if we went to Jackrabbit or Misantrope's, we would find the corpse of person A with some provisions and antiseptic and a notebook telling us why he/she didn't make it, and whether person B showed up or not. That kind of thing.

Comic relief: Does not fit the setting in my view, so rather no.

A possibility to survive forever: see above.

Refined afflictions: Yes, currently afflictions are rather a nuisance than a real danger. Infections etc. should be threatening, maybe last several days and have a crisis with an uncertain outcome.

NPC teasers: Not sure what is meant by that. NPCs are on the roadmap.

[Dirmagnos]

1 hour ago, Hotzn said:

Make animals more dangerous: This is something many long-time players have been wishing for. Basically, it's part of the wish for a higher difficulty or, in other words a difficulty mode beyond stalker. We all know from various comments made by the devs that only few players would play such a super-hardcore-mode. But those players are the most dedicated ones who advertise the game a lot to others. So I still think a super-hardcore-mode deserves consideration.

We dont need some fancy ultra-mega-super-hardcore mode. We need normal Stalker mode.

Make wolves more dangerous and decrease their amount to Voyageur levels. I was so disappointing when i learned t hat there is just more of them, instead of them being tougher, when i first started playing on Stalker. Their numbers are imo perfect on Voyageur. Increase detection range by 50%, damage by 30%, speed by 20%(current situation, where i can outrun wolf is simply ridonculous), aggro time decrease by 50%(i can simply run away while wolf is taking his time growling) and halve chances for then to bleed out to death(currently if seems to be 100%, but i may be wrong). Decrease chance for bear to bleed out by 70% of current - i can just pop one shot from safety of fishing cabin(or sitting on fallen tree) and then just wait for it to die, wtf(also if player enters into building, then animal should be teleported to random spot on the map, instead of just staying outside). Bears in general need to be a serious threat once engaged, not this silly pencentual damage(like dealing flat 80% condition damage, so if player is below prior to engagement, that hes done). Decrease deer amount by 30% as well, hunting in general is way 2 easy. Same for fishing and trapping - players can just camp around one rabbit spawn or fishing hut and live like kings - longer respawn rates ought to do it, forcing moving around from place to place.

Animals should never approach fishing cabin if player is sitting inside - they cant get in anyway(unless it changes) and it only allows effortless kills.

Instead of reducing amount of found stuff, add condition penalties instead, eg newly found items will have, in general, lower starting durability. Current system ,where player cant find anything in majority of containers, kills whole exploration buzz. It becomes tedious grind in attempt to find at least something, often complete junk that player dont need, adding to frustration. There are a lot of features that could be added without going after amount of stuff, like decreasing quality of found stuff(like finding premium winter coat would become a lot harder).

Remove fking parasites, they dont neither make any sense nor have any point. With beefed up wolves whole feature will become obsolete. At the same time make penalties from other medical conditions more severe(and i dont mean stupidity like doubling amount of pills needing to cure it, but greater penalties) and requiring more time to recover. Add alternatives for curing ailments, so that if im out of antibiotics i wont just sit there waiting for inevitable death - like ability to clean wounds with warm water, bandage and ample rest(and i mean actual rest, not where you pop a bit of antiseptic and continue running around like nothing happened) - wont be as good as antibiotics, but at least player would have a fighting chance against infection. People use those basic skills and survive even in modern world. Maybe add Medical skill that would affect things that deal with healthcare. Player in general seem to be mainly dependent on modern world remains with extremely little attention put into adaptation. 

Fix friggin gamebreaking exploits, like one that allows living off minuscule amounts of food or maxing out firestarting with just 1 match.

Make weather bit more severe, with more common blizzards for example.

And huge penalties for fighting wolves naked. Remove

Decrease condition restoration, by a LOT. Currently condition management is absolutely non-existing. One of the the most critical features of the game is completely casualized. Sleep for one night and youre as good as rain, kicking butt and chewing bubblegum, even tho you were on the verge of death just 12 hours prior. On top of that add penalties for condition restoration based on various secondary conditions, like sprained ankle or hunger or cold.

Quote

Give us things to do: I would also like to see the possibility to customize my base. Put paintings, photos, maps or animal hides on the walls, move furniture around etc. That would be a great addition.

Something to read: I would love to find things to read as well. Corpses could have notes on them telling of their last struggles, or who they were and what they were up to. There could be notes to be found in certain locations, left by other survivors in hopes of finding people, things or places. It would be awesome if the game would tell little "stories" across the various maps. Like for example we would find a note in some place, written by person A to person B, telling person B that person A managed to get hold of some provisions and antiseptic, and that person A was going to, let's say, the "house on that island near the Coastal Highway" to hopefully meet up with peron B if he/she found the message. And then if we went to Jackrabbit or Misantrope's, we would find the corpse of person A with some provisions and antiseptic and a notebook telling us why he/she didn't make it, and whether person B showed up or not. That kind of thing.

Thats exactly what this game doesnt need, becoming camping simulator. Its supposed to be about survival, not setting yourself comfortable in and enjoying the show. the more time devs put into wood carvings the less it will be spend working on survival part.

And notes, seriously ? Guy is freezing and starving ,but he will take his time to write a few "dear diary" lines. Or instead of going for an extra can of pork'n'beans, hel opt for couple of pencils and pack of A4 papers. Genius !