Beautiful but flawed

[Gori]

Hey folks i am really glad to finally play the release Version of TLD

and for the most part I love it - it is beautiful but as much as I would love to praise everything about the game - I cannot

The Tutorial Section for Wintermute is absolutely horrible in my opinion - let me explain

The very first thing I have to do in Wintermute is a "struggle" with a piece of metal which took me almost a minute of insane button mashing to the point where my finger began to hurt - I finally managed but the first thought I had was: If this would have been a wolf instead of a piece of metal I would be dead now

I realize this might be a bug or a problem only on my end and I guess most people will just tell me to click faster or with a specific click pattern but I tried this with a controller and with the mouse and have struggled with a lot of wolves in sandbox over the years and never had this kind of problem.

After the struggle the tutorial proceeds to teach about the fundamentals like heat, health, water and sleep - which is good - but this would have been a really good time to teach a new player these things properly, instead it teaches the worst practices ever, if you played the sandbox like this you would be dead before dawn.

First I have to make a fire but it doesn't matter if you you a stick or a piece of firewood to do so - if you use the firewood, you are wasting it because the game cuts to the next day with the same results if you use a stick. The tutorial fails to teach you about sleeping and recovery - you just awaken the next day, perfectly rested and warm even if the fire had only a 8 minute stick in it - normally you would not survive the night this way

Then the tutorial wants you to find something to eat but it fails to teach you that you should eat before you rest to recover your condition - how could it, it doesn't teach you about sleeping - in fact a new player would not even know that he has to sleep because the game does it for the player in the first few days

The 9 hour fire is another thing you would never do in normal play - this is made worse by the fact that you can screw yourself over in this part if you light the fire for a few hours, warm up then find more wood to fuel the fire, warm up, search more wood ... this way you will never get a fire that lasts long enough and you will eventually run out of wood in the starting area

Essentially you teach the absolute worst practices with the tutorial - waste food, waste firetime 

and fail to teach the most important mechanic - how to recover while sleeping

When you are finally out of the ravine the game expects you to know that from this point on you have to sleep for yourself - you should have taught this from the beginning  

Then after the cave you encounter your first wolf - here I was worried thinking back to the metal piece struggle so I tried to avoid him

You cant wait until he leaves because its a scripted wolf - he will sit there for all eternity - so I distracted the wolf with some stones and snuck by him ... than there is the bridge wolf - here I tried several approaches:

I tried sneaking around the bridge - if you do that he will come down the slope behind the bridge to look for you - it almost seems as if he was scripted to find me no matter what

I tried scaring him with a torch, he didn't seem to care but this could have been just bad luck so I ran back on top of the bridge and hid in a car

Again he found me easily and just walked around the car - btw I was not carrying any guts only a few pieces of cooked meat

I got out of the car, ducked and tried to bait him with some meat - he didn't care, again could be just bad luck

After some sneaking between cars, trying to make my way across the bridge, entering a car when he was close and exiting the other side, he finally got me and I thought: OK now we will see if this struggle plays out like the first one at the beginning and I was as expected, the struggle indicator didn't even budge and I was hammering the button with at least 8-10 clicks per second - nope - dead ( I had good condition because despite the tutorial never teaching me - I know how to recover sleeping in a car )

I tried the struggle a few times but it was always the same - I assume it is a bug because most people on the forum seem do do it just fine

I am sure with a few tries I could have snuck by him but at this point I was tired and quite a bit ... well let's say - annoyed ( I could think of other words ) and gave up for the time beeing

Please don't look at this as whining or ranting - I really try to be constructive in my criticism 

and I will play the sandbox and I am 100% sure I will love it like I always have but the Tutorial left nothing but a real bad aftertaste

 

Stay warm

Gori

[Jens]

I completely agree with your critic, but I didn't have/feel the button mashing problem, not with the iron or with wolves. Anyways, I'm getting the same feeling, it's beautiful but flawed, needs more work on it. The journal information/mission updates could be better too.

[Nervous Pete]

Hi Gori,

Thanks for your thoughts there. I've been lucky so far in not having had any crashes. I've also been able to avoid almost all the wolves through my special brand of craven cowardice, and only had trouble when the wolf unexpectedly switched up its patrol route in Milton. Anyway, it seems the button-mashing thing has changed now and that a rhythmic clicking at a half-second rate does the trick. 

I'm enjoying it so far, my only quibbles are with some of the writing and some awkward transitions in cut-scenes. (Some of the writing is brooding and atmospheric, some of it is surprisingly clunky, another pass over the draft scripts wouldn't have gone amiss.)  I very much love the world-building from what I've seen so far though, and I do like the characters, so that's half the battle. I'll be writing a chunky review when I'm done. 

[LucidFugue]

I concur with your thoughts re: the tutorial not teaching sleep, then throwing the player into an environment that is honestly more deadly than most sandbox starts - no bedroll, and the nearest shelter half a day's trek through wolf infested territory. 

 

Heck, wolves don't even spawn in on Voyageur until after day 1 if I'm not mistaken. There was no need to contrive a situation to make players deal with wolves that early in the game. The environment, the weather is the primary antagonist in the opening moments of the game. 

[starfighter441]

After leaving the cave, and almost running into Fluffy's cousin, I lit a torch and circled around to the left of him, sprinting at a high rate of knots.  Got to the bridge, and ran into the other wolf, he didn't like my torch though and decided to not bother me.  I'm presently in one of the cars just after the bridge, and will find out tomorrow if the game saved there, or when I exited the cave.

As for other points raised about the tutorial, I tend to agree.  It really went against my training or whatever we shall call it gleaned from not quite 3 years of the Sandbox, but what are you going to do if you can't progress any other way?

Also could someone tell me how I ended up what must be 100+ metres below and 200 or so ahead of the fuselage of my aircraft ( whose windscreen appears to be intact) and lived?

[QuietFire]

Agreed on all counts. With the wolves, I also died a bunch trying to cross the bridge. Worst though, was after I got across I got jumped by another one with no cars around (torch never works unless you manage to hit them in the face). Still haven't made it across again. 

[Nervous Pete]

15 minutes ago, QuietFire said:

Agreed on all counts. With the wolves, I also died a bunch trying to cross the bridge. Worst though, was after I got across I got jumped by another one with no cars around (torch never works unless you manage to hit them in the face). Still haven't made it across again. 

If you throw the torch between you and the wolf before it goes into full charge-attack mode, and then manoeuvre yourself so that an invisible line draws between you and the wolf through the fire, and back up slowly, the wolf will pad towards you singe its nose on the fire, yelp, and run away. Usually works, but not much help in a sudden ambush! You can also distract wolves before they see you by lobbing a stone in the opposite direction of where you want to go. They'll go and investigate the noise. 

[RossBondReturns]

Heck I had no problem with the wolves after or on the bridge on my 3rd attempt. I made it rhough with a bit of light to spare...lit my second torch and just moved right at the wolf and he whimpered and took off.

Different things happened every attempt

 

[Gori]

Thank you guys for all the comments - I tried the suggestion to go with a constant 2 clicks per second approach and I noticed something:

2 clicks do nothing to the struggle bar but if I click 5-6 times really fast and stop after that I can actually see the bar twitching but only after I already stopped my input. If I do this twice in a row I can see the bar moving a few times but it always falls back to 0 before the next input seems to get through.

So my assumption at this point is input lag - I tried this with a ps4 controller and a mouse with the same results.

Maybe it is a Mac specific problem - my PC died on me and I had to try Wintermute on the Mac, so maybe anyone of you guys is playing on Mac and can confirm ?

I am going to buy TLD for the ps4 on August 8 and see if I the struggling is any better.

Anyway - I felt like I wasn't really fair to the game, I said it#s beautiful but proceeded to only list things that annoyed me

I wanted to rectify that because there is actually quite a lot about the game that I do like:

The cutscenes - I only saw two of them but I really liked them, I enjoy having a backstory for my survivor and I really like the characters aaaand the voice acting - absolutely brilliant ( it helps of course that both voice actors are actually two of my favorites )

There is one scene when they are both on the plane and Will says:

"Freelance doctor - seems legit"

I actually had to laugh out loud - it's not actually that funny but I don't know it was the delivery of the line maybe - loved it

Then there is the lighting - I don't know what changed exactly but I felt like the game never looked this beautiful before 

The new mechanics like stone throwing is absolutely genius - a godsend for distracting wolves ( when it works )

but maybe it makes the game a bit to easy ( for my personal taste ) not because of the distracting but because of the rabbits 

I got quite proficient at knocking the little guys out even on a good distance - in sandbox I might have to restrain myself and not use it

 

I think there will be quite a bit more for me to praise once I get past the annoyances but that probably has to wait until August 8 assuming my problems with the wolves are because of the Mac

 

Thank you guys for reading and commenting

Stay warm

Gori 

 

[June]

1 hour ago, Gori said:

I got quite proficient at knocking the little guys out even on a good distance - in sandbox I might have to restrain myself and not use it

 

Try Interloper. Then we talk again ;P

[Gori]

23 minutes ago, June said:

Try Interloper. Then we talk again ;P

Really ? What's the difference in interloper ?

No stones ? 

Or is the aiming harder ?

Now you got me curious - wanted to have a look at the new areas in sandbox anyway - will try rabit hunting in interloper once I get back home

[ChillPlayer]

Hunting Rabbits is the same in all difficulties, you just depend more on it in Interloper

[Gori]

21 minutes ago, ChillPlayer said:

Hunting Rabbits is the same in all difficulties, you just depend more on it in Interloper

I see, I thought June meant the actual stone throwing at rabbits is harder.

I don't mind the interloper difficulty, quite the opposite I enjoy the challenge of not having tools and having to evade the wildlife instead of fighting ( I don't have a choice right now anyway since I cannot seem to win a struggle )

I also like that your survival in interloper is more about the weather then the wildlife

What I initially meant was: If I can consistently hit a rabbit with a stone in interloper I might not do it at all - else I have no need for traps or any other food sources - ok I cant always find a rabbit when I need it but if the little tutorial area with the bunnies is any indication of the throwing mechanic in interloper than I will be eating a lot of rabbit from now on because it took me 6 or 7 stones to catch 4 bunnies and those can last you quite some time if you are rationing

 

[June]

2 hours ago, Gori said:

in sandbox I might have to restrain myself and not use it

 

 

@Gori I was referring to this. Refraining from any food/hide/gut source will definitely get you killed in Interloper. It´s really hard, but once you try it and survive every other difficulty becomes a cakewalk. Maybe aside from Stalker (Wolfpocalypse)^^

[EricTheGreat12]

2 hours ago, Gori said:

Maybe it is a Mac specific problem - my PC died on me and I had to try Wintermute on the Mac, so maybe anyone of you guys is playing on Mac and can confirm?

  Reveal hidden contents

"Freelance doctor - seems legit"

 

 

The Mac version is good on my end

[Gori]

16 minutes ago, June said:

@Gori I was referring to this. Refraining from any food/hide/gut source will definitely get you killed in Interloper. It´s really hard, but once you try it and survive every other difficulty becomes a cakewalk. Maybe aside from Stalker (Wolfpocalypse)^^

You're right of course, every food source is precious but I think I will try and restrict myself a bit and only go for rabbit stoning when I really need it and can't find any cattails,fish or mushrooms.

[Gori]

13 minutes ago, EricTheGreat12 said:

The Mac version is good on my end

Too bad - I thought I was on to something

Are you using a mac mouse with your mac ?

Because I was using a normal/pc mouse ... I know I am grasping at straws here but I really don't think it's my inability to click fast or consistent enough - still hoping I will have more success on the ps4

Thanks for confirming anyway

[ChillPlayer]

1 hour ago, Gori said:

What I initially meant was: If I can consistently hit a rabbit with a stone in interloper I might not do it at all - else I have no need for traps or any other food sources

Trapping has become somewhat obsolete due to Stone Throwing but using Rabbits as a food source is rather a last resort for me. I value them first and foremost for the guts which I can turn into fishing lines or need plenty of to craft cloths. Without a rifle and the bow only available later in the game, having some Rabbits around is a big relieve.

[Gori]

13 minutes ago, ChillPlayer said:

Trapping has become somewhat obsolete due to Stone Throwing but using Rabbits as a food source is rather a last resort for me. I value them first and foremost for the guts which I can turn into fishing lines or need plenty of to craft cloths. Without a rifle and the bow only available later in the game, having some Rabbits around is a big relief.

That's too bad - I quite liked trapping but my usual diet consists of mostly fish with a side of cattail and some mushroom soup anyway so I don't think it'll make that much of a difference to me but I hadn't thought about the "easy guts" and yeah I guess I can see why that would be a big help. I think I will be carrying lots o stones from now on.

"Oh look there's a few guts hopping over there" 

[mystifeid]

18 minutes ago, ChillPlayer said:

Trapping has become somewhat obsolete due to Stone Throwing but using Rabbits as a food source is rather a last resort for me. I value them first and foremost for the guts which I can turn into fishing lines or need plenty of to craft cloths. Without a rifle and the bow only available later in the game, having some Rabbits around is a big relieve.

I'll have to try and see if it is still possible to survive without eating rabbits or fish.

[ChillPlayer]

11 minutes ago, Gori said:

I think I will be carrying lots o stones from now on.

you don't need to, watch me kill 3 rabbits with one stone

 

[Gori]

41 minutes ago, ChillPlayer said:

you don't need to, watch me kill 3 rabbits with one stone

Heh you have quite impressive stoning skills 

But I have to say I am just a little bit disappointed - when I saw the video title I honestly thought you managed to knock out 3 bunnies in one throw ... without picking up the stone - that would have been impressive 

[ChillPlayer]

1 hour ago, Gori said:

But I have to say I am just a little bit disappointed

It was not my intention to mislead you, only to show that you don't need to carry around lots of stones

I actually tried to kill two Rabbits once with one stone, they were perfectly aligned but only one died, I guess it's not possible.

[jwcarlson]

8 hours ago, Gori said:

but maybe it makes the game a bit to easy ( for my personal taste ) not because of the distracting but because of the rabbits 

Agreed.  But the mechanic of being able to pick the rabbits up is fantastic.  You shouldn't have to skin/gut a rabbit in a blizzard when you can run your trap line and haul back 3-4 rabbits to clean in your shelter.  I don't know if it will translate from stoning rabbits to trapping them, but it should.

Also, having cleaned a few rabbits in my life, as long as it isn't frozen solid, it takes just moments to clean a rabbit...

 

[TWM]

On 3-8-2017 at 2:02 PM, Gori said:

The very first thing I have to do in Wintermute is a "struggle" with a piece of metal which took me almost a minute of insane button mashing to the point where my finger began to hurt - I finally managed but the first thought I had was: If this would have been a wolf instead of a piece of metal I would be dead now

I realize this might be a bug or a problem only on my end and I guess most people will just tell me to click faster or with a specific click pattern but I tried this with a controller and with the mouse and have struggled with a lot of wolves in sandbox over the years and never had this kind of problem.

Apparently, this is a frame rate issue. Although on my system, I *do* have the same issue with wolves. It's quite frustrating getting eaten all the time (even on Voyageur).