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Hi Rafael! I studied the developer diary and had a few questions.

1) I'm a big fan of WINTERMUTE and I was personally upset that the playing time of episode 3 will be drastically reduced, besides 3 action centers will turn into 1, and even it will be a gratifying valley, which I know as 5 fingers =( You said that the action of episode 3 will take place in a completely new region, and now it turns out that it is not so =( Question to you, what will happen with this new region, will you add it to the survival mode? Or he does not exist and was only in your plans?

2) Why in July you so suddenly called the release date of episode 3, and then 3 months after the "release date" is published in the Developer Diary, which States that episode 3 is still unknown how many will be in development... What happened? If you named a date, it turns out that you were so sure of the release date, so the episode was already almost ready?

3) And the last question, as we are working on episodes 4 and 5, they are already in any stage of readiness? Or did you not start working on them at all?

Thank you for your attention!

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I fell into a late night Wikipedia black hole and found myself on a page about the wolf and moose relationship on Isle Royale, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolves_and_moose_on_Isle_Royale ) and it struck me on how similar the environment and wildlife is between Isle Royale and Great Bear. This got me wondering, during development were there any islands that you researched into or drew inspiration from in order to create the environment of Great Bear? (Also, part of me kinda wants to see a pack of gutsy wolves attempt to take down a moose in game, is there any slim chance of this happening?)

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After the announcements in the latest dev diary I'm really excited to see what you'll do with Pleasant Valley. It's a nice enough region but I have to admit it feels a bit empty at times.

Now, I think it was before Redux hit that players were warned about upcoming changes to MT, ML, FM and BR in survival mode and that we should move stuff out of the way so as not to lose it when the areas got changed. I panicked and laboured at this for close to three evenings, shlepping all the gear and food I had stashed in those locations to the Ravine (it being the closest unaffected region), going back and forth thinking my precious possesions from my longest running save file could be deleted. Then of course I found out that I needn't have been so thorough and that the actual changes were minimal (from what I could see, might be totally wrong here!) and mostly consisted of furniture and other interior having moved slightly etc.

My question is: will this be the case again for Episode 3?

I dread having to do this for Pleasant Valley if it comes to that. I have a hoard of loot in the Farmhouse and it gets tedious and boringly repetitive to just haul things back and forth to the next region over. Of course I could always just risk it and leave everything where it is, or become Zen about it and swear off earthly possessions. I'd much prefer to get a slightly more specific warning like "players should move their possessions outside of building X, Y and Z" or something along those lines. Please advise and thank you.

 

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I'm very impressed with the new developer update.  However, I'm nervous as well.

I'm nervous about what I like to call "resource creep".  I'm not sure if there's an established term for it but it amounts to adding new mechanics and resources without doing anything to increase the difficulty of the overall game beyond static difficulty setting adjustment.  Over time the end result is, while there may be a few "hardcore" zones that provide some challenge, the majority of the zones, particularly those that were introduced early in the game's development, become boring and easy and fail to provide any meaningful sense of threat as the game goes on.  I can already see things like the active feats system as well as in-game stuff like the moose hide satchel causing this.  The mechanisms already in place (progressively increased cold, reduction of wildlife, etc) help but I'm not sure if they help enough.

Has "resource creep" been discussed in-house and if so,  are there plans to address it beyond what's already been implemented?

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Have you ever considered adding multiple skins for items? For instance, crowbar is always blue. I think it would be interesting to also have a red crowbar. Even more interesting would be to have multiple skins for items like the rifle, I understand that this would be a bit harder to implement, but I'm already seeing myself abandoning my 100% rifle in exchange for a one with a terrible condition, but a nicer colour.

This could extend even to animals - wolfs, for instance, could have some different shades of grey, or even white. Bears could be brownish, or completely black. Along with the first person clothing, this would be a change that wouldn't really affect the gameplay, but would improve the game a lot, in my opinion.

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What are your thoughts on adding thunderstorms into the game? Certainly would make those dark stormy nights even more haunting when camping out on a mountain with the thunder roaring in the background. Flashes of lightning against the wolves in the forest... Definitely gonna put that revolver to some good use. 

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Could you consider randomize the spawn of wolves in caves? I just discovered that there is a cave in Desolation Point with a wolf living in it and was an amazing experience (I panic a bit). I think it would greatly improve the gameplay experience inside caves because you wouldn't know if there are wolves inside or not, and you will need to be focused.

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This questions are directed to the Survival Mode Dev team: 

  1. Was it planned by dev team that the indefinite survival is possible or that was an unexpected outcome?
  2. Is it intended that magnifying lens don't decay?
  3. Is it in your plans to review/rethink late-game?

Lately I read a lot of players arguing that the worst enemy of long term survivals is boredom, and I think it has a lot to do with the sensation of indefinite survival. What makes exciting to play is the knowledge that you will die evetually. Beachcombing and magnifying lens, mainly, make possible to survive indefinitely. Have you considered to "nerf" some mechanics in this sense? For example disabling beachcombing at some point, magnifying lens actually decay, spoiled food not eatable and so. Thanks a lot! ;) 

 

Edited by muoz
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Hello Raphael!

I recently saw you twitter rant regarding some steam reviews which are actually more like support requests but without possibility to do support thing. Also in a previous mailbag I did asked you about issues tracker in jira, and you said Hinterland prefers players to use the support portal (and I did B|).

So my question is: why so many game developers prefer to provide blackhole-like support forms over public issue trackers (like ones e.g. Red Hat and Mozilla have)?

Let me clarify and also share my experience and opinion: every time when I reported bugs trough support portal I did received an confirmation email (obviously written by not a robot but by a real person, which was very nice :$ these days). But afterwards it is a blackhole. I can not even check if I already have uploaded a particular screenshot of mine. I can not write "me too" under someone else's report (often this action can make me feel better about my difficulties with a game or software). I believe when an unhappy player leaves negative one-line steam "review" they want their words to do three things: 1) to attract developer attention 2) to be read by other players 3) to stay. Your old jira lacks 1 (at leas it seems so from outside) and partially 2, your support portal lacks 2 and 3, your (or Steam's) hypothetic public issue tracker can do all 123 but does not exist (why?), Steam Review also does all 123 but it is not its purpose.

Edited by legolegs
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Is this apocalypse affecting other areas other than Great Bear?  I know Will makes a comment about the weather being unusual before he and Astrid set off, but that seems to be the extent of which we're told about the greater world outside of Great Bear in regards to this apocalypse, aside from the financial crisis going on.

Edited by PlayerPawn
Clarity.
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I would love to see more challenges implemented for survival mode to compensate of new things making survival easier. Currently most challenging are first 10-20 days. Do you have plans of adding diseases like flu / cold / fever?

There are no other people to carry pathogens, but in very cold climate viruses can survive for long time until it gets warmer (burning fire) and can inflict infection. Such infections are not deadly by themselves, but untreated makes organism susceptible to other affictions, like pneumonia or myocarditis. And you cant cure viral infections simply by antibiotics. Those can reduce risk of much more serious bacterial infections, like pneumonia. To deal with viruses player needs to stay in warm and stimulate immune system ie with herbal medicine. This can lead to interesting decisions when player lacks food or already has high cabin fever risk :)

 

Also have you considered some progressive difficulty for lower survival modes - Pilgrim / Voyager ? Pilgrim is nice setting for new players, but once you learn basics its impossible to die in this mode. What do you think about increasing environment settings mid-game after XX days passed ?

Ie you start at Pilgrim, after survival of 150 days difficulty increases to Voyager - needs increases, wolves becoming aggressive etc. After another 150 days difficulty advances to Stalker and game stays in that mode until player falls into long dark :)

Edited by Arran
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Since the story came out, a part of it that I really enjoyed was the "conspiracy theory" element of it. For example the supposed presence of the canadian armed forces on the island or the apparently "illegal" presence of the logging company. I'm really keen on seeing how it will all unfold in the future. My question would be: What made you (the team at Hinterland) choose to include this subject into the game and why? ;)

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