Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #5

[FireCraft78]

2 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

The Wish List section is feeling lonelier and lonelier, with each passing post here... 

Agreed, I wonder if devs look at it, however the mailbag questions shouldn't be "wish questions"

[Hotzn]

On 22.7.2018 at 9:56 AM, Shy said:

I could rephrase the question, by asking "Was the change to make loot spawn globally on day 1 and start decaying immediately a conscious design decision? Did you intend for all items to be ruined on Interloper after day 80 or so, or it was unintended consequence?"

I think I can answer you that question, as I have been around here for a while - yes, that was a conscious design decision. Before that, decay would not start before you set foot on a map. So it was possible to transfer to a new map even after hundreds of days survived and find completely fresh loot. Open an oven in a derelict cabin and find a leftover cooked fish at 100% condition. Some players perceived this as weird and critisized it, and at some point it was changed. If I remember correctly, it was also mentioned in the changelist of some update, but I don't have the time to dig it out now. But the master changelist is here on these forums, so if you are interested you can do a keyword search there and find it yourself.

Getting rid of that "weirdness" problem of fresh loot appearing deep in a survival run ("Has anyone been living here recently?") has caused another problem to arise, as you correctly noted - there is now less incentive for the long-term Interloper to transfer to other maps, since he/she won't find much useful loot there anymore dure to spoilage. You have to rewind the development tape quite a bit to understand where this stems from: Once upon a time there was only one map - Mystery Lake. And your loot would hardly ever spoil, since you would have found and used any single damn piece of cloth (granted, that doesn't even spoil) long before any potential spoilage. Heck, most players would not even find the first item, because a relentless wolf would tear them apart before they even got anywhere. Spoilage wasn't really an issue back then. But as the game world grew bigger and bigger and the game became much more forgiving, the possibility to survive in a single region for any considerable time came up. And with it, the phenomenon of loot decaying elsewhere to a considerable degree.

The solution would be to tone down decay times further, especially on Interloper. It would make Interloper a little easier, which could make hardliners complain. But thinking about it, really - if you survive Interloper for 50 days, you are likely going to survive the next 50 days as well, irrespective of whether you find fresh loot on new maps or not. You will rather more likely die due to a mistake/overconfidence.

But anyway, have a go at the custom options.

 

[Hotzn]

On 20.7.2018 at 10:00 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Yes! We've had various discussions about how fun it would be to throw a sasquatch into the game, but to make the spawn chance so low that it would only appear for maybe 1-2 players at most, and then only have it appear as a fleeting glimpse during a blizzard or something, so that anyone who claimed they had seen one would be immediately met with disbelief. Of course, we'd rather spend our time working on adding more wildlife that *everyone* can see.

Man, that would be so awesome!!! Granted, only very few players might ever see it - but I don't think that the development effort would be wasted. Think about how many people would TALK about it! A couple of hazy screenshots from a blizzard could fire an enormous discussion - just like in real life! Hilarious!

Of course it would have to be put into the game without any mention whatsoever on behalf of Hinterland. And then at some point we would have the first thread here on the forums under the title "Is there a Sasquatch in the game?" or something along those lines. And then players would congregate who think they saw or heard it, posting screenshots of indistinct shapes. Personally, I think it should have footprints very similar to those of a bear - to leave room for discussion whether someone experienced a slight graphics glitch or whether those footrpints are really... I mean, really...

I guess I would be the first one to jump into that thread telling a gruesome story of how I was killed by a Sasquatch in a blizzard, and that it shook me so that I got a heart condition and can't currently play the game. Whether I took a screenshot? No, sorry - I really didn't think about that at the time. I was too terrified. Yes, yes, it was HUGE! With red eyes! And enormous teeth! Truly terrifying... 

[MrWolf]

On 7/22/2018 at 6:20 AM, Guenter said:

I like the Bigfoot idea, because one feeling I'm missing in TLD Sandbox: story telling and anxiety (like you hear some shots in the night, or you find a corpse (but not the normal corpse which spawns in the world), which give you the feeling that you are not alone outside...

I think there is an element of this in the game now.  It seems like there are always new or different ambient sounds when it's windy.  I often think I'm hearing wolf steps, or maybe a crow that sounded angry, or a noise that might have been a bark or growl.  The worst is when my dog barks and I look all around thinking a wolf is onto me.

A glimpse of something like a Sasquatch in a blizzard would be pretty cool.  And probably pretty terrifying.

[slvrsrfr]

great post!

keep up the good work!

I've gotten to load it a few times now, then is locks up, but thats progress in my world. One day...

[Spakerman]

On 7/22/2018 at 4:32 PM, FireCraft78 said:

Agreed, I wonder if devs look at it, however the mailbag questions shouldn't be "wish questions"

I'm sure the devs look at most posts on here.  There are great ideas and the activity level here is not high enough that they couldn't keep up.  They would only need to check new threads every couple days for 10 minutes to keep up with what's being posted.  They may not respond to the ideas or agree with them but I'm sure they are seeing them.