Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #13


Raphael van Lierop

Recommended Posts

  • Hinterland

 

5bc2357ef0480_MiltonMailbag-site_forumcopy.thumb.png.fcef89bcbaa6cc7e728e3c2737f77254.png

Hello community,

Apologies for the delay on this week's mailbag -- here it is! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. Keep 'em coming!

- Raph

*****

Question from @Sipriano:

Quote

Is there an airport in great bear? I say this because the plane that is in timberwolf mountain because the secction of the tail in the side I think it says "great bear airline" and had a logo of a bear

The part of the plane fuselage you can find at the top of Timberwolf Mountain says "Grizzly Air" on the side. That's a fictional airline in the world of The Long Dark. It's not specifically an airline for Great Bear Island. It doesn't specifically refer to an airport on Great Bear. But, that doesn't mean there isn't one. :)

*****

Question from @ArcherAC3:

Quote

 

This was an odd idea I had, and not sure how it would work with TLD lore: can we expect functional microwave ovens during the aurora?

It would be great being able to heat that freezing cup of coffee or tea during one of those cold aurora nights when you just don't feel like or can't make a fire, and could use that extra warmth bonus together with some caffeine or tea to keep moving or recover some condition.

 

It's come up in conversation before but I don't think we would enable microwaves. I like the dependence on rustic, non-technological tools and methods in The Long Dark, and when we enable technology through the Aurorae my hope and goal is that it add some new dimension to gameplay and worldbuilding vs. just replacing an existing non-technological system like campfires, etc.

*****

Question from @piddy3825:

Quote

Just curious to see if there is going to be any further development in regards to 3D object manipulation? We can rotate objects when examining them but arent able to do so when trying to "place" an item on a shelf.  I can find a flashlight in game that is sitting upright on a counter but once i pick it up i can only set it down on it's side for example.  Same goes for the rifle.  I can find a rifle propped up on it's side but once i pick it up i can only place it flat.  What about putting items on the top shelf, sure would be nice to utilize that empty space when "decorating" my base.  and one last question, any chance of getting a system to hang stuff from the walls?  Maybe we can get to stack some stuff as well in the future?

I believe I've written some notes about potential plans for future customization of player space. If we're able to implement some of those features, we'll likely also expand on some of the placement tools you're talking about. We have done a bit of work on specific items, like the Rifle -- you'll notice you can place it in a gun-rack and it lines up nicely. The reason you can find a rifle propped up on its side is that we hand-place those when we create the levels.

*****

Question from @Guenter:

Quote

will you add more guns in future (like crossbow, shotgun (for birds or rabbits), bear trap, revolver (for small defense) ?

Yes! But not many. 

*****

Question from @BareSkin:

Quote

 

To the whole Hinterland team: Are you pleased with the positive feedback you get from players? Is there enough to be satisfied as a developing team?

I said several times in my survival stories that I loved the game (and sometimes hated it, which is the same), but never sent direct feedback to the actual humans behind it.:$

 

We appreciate all the positive feedback we get. We also appreciate the productive criticism. :) I would say that no developer gets nearly enough positive feedback or support for their work, and probably many developers get a lot more negative feedback/hate than they deserve, so if you value the people who create the games you like (whether it's The Long Dark or another game), please let the developers know. We're just people like you, and most of us are mainly motivated by wanting to create great experiences for our players, the best way we know how.

*****

Question from @Sito:

Quote

 

How did you do the texture for the mountaineers hut on TWM? The stonework is awesome! It is absolutely realistic as if a real stone mason placed each stone with just the right shape and fit. Someone must have spent a lot of time to get it just right. Kudos to Hinterland!

On a side note... the mountaineers hut has lights but no wall switch to turn them on or off. Also no power lines and no solar panels on the roof so where is the electric from? And why have motion sensor flood lights? Bears? Moose? Other mountaineers?

 

Sounds like our artists are great texture painters and bad electricians. To be fair, the Mountaineer's Hut shouldn't have *any* electricity or electric lights, due to its remoteness -- you're absolutely right. We should remove them!

*****

Question from @neboblizko:

Quote

 

Hello community! Actually here are my couple of questions.

 Have you considered the possibility of adding to the game, a competitive component? For example, to maintain a public leaderboard for survival, but make a limit, play only on the interloper, without regenerating health, without modifications, or something like that. I think that it would be interesting for players to compete with each other.
Also, would you not like to tie a calendar to survival mode? So that the player can see at any moment what day, month, year is. I think it would be interesting to know that Christmas is coming, or that your birthday is on this day.

 

When we first launched The Long Dark on Early Access, we had competitive leaderboards for Survival Mode. Because it's so easy to mod/cheat with The Long Dark, and we couldn't really detect it, this invalidated Leaderboards to a large degree. We also felt that competition wasn't really in the spirit of The Long Dark. 

Not sure about the calendar idea. We played with that a bit with the Whiteout challenge. I think it's something we could build on.

*****

Question from @ThePancakeLady:

Quote

 

With the recent closures of so many game development studios, I know the industry you are in must be on edge, confused, maybe hurting. 
It is fairly easy to sit back and look at the studios that have been shuttered, and declare "They should have done xxx, they shouldn't have done yyy...". 
I am curious how studios that are still going, and growing view their own histories, and decisions made.

In other words, is there anything that you wish you had done, or not done, during the development of this game, and of your studio? What changes do you wish you could go back and make, and what would the hopeful results of those changes be, in your mind? Hindsight is 20/20, so they say. What advice would you give, using your experience and hindsight, to new start-up devs and studios?

Yes, I am trying to pick your brain. My daughter will be going to college, Computer Science. She wants to work with SW, like Mom & Dad, but she does not want to do mundane "boring" work like Mom & Dad. She wants to #gamedev. Our industries are related, but totally different. I have no idea what to tell her to expect.
*worried Mom syndrome*


 

Every situation has a set of specific circumstances and it's hard to provide useful analysis without knowing all the details, which we tend not to ever really know unless we have insider information (i.e. there's always way more to these stories than what comes out in the press). I've been working on games since 2001 and I've seen a lot of ups and downs -- these things tend to be very cyclical, and in my opinion the industry is not more or less stable now than it has been in previous years. I do think the growth of independent studios like Hinterland, facilitated through reasonably priced development tools like Unity, and accessible distribution methods like Steam, have given rise to a lot of small studios who -- as the market becomes more and more saturated -- will not be in a position to survive through their second games. It's very sad but again, I don't think it's particularly new, or even that unique to our industry.

The only studio I can really speak with authority about is Hinterland. We've always tried to strike a careful balance between spending wisely on our game and also preserving as much cash to be able to weather the ups and downs of the industry. This is part of why we've remained pretty static in size over the last 2-3 years -- around 20-25 devs (although we've been growing this year)-- despite knowing that this has slowed down our releases and limited our ability to tackle both Survival and Story modes as effectively as we could have liked. It's also prevented us from developing a second project so far. In general you want to manage your costs against your savings and reasonable expectations of future revenue and that's what we always strive to do, while also keeping money aside for a rainy day so we avoid getting "surprised" like some studios. And if we ever -- heaven forbid -- had to shut down the studio for whatever unanticipated reason, I'd like to be able to do it in an orderly fashion, providing my team with enough financial buffer so that they could comfortably find their next employers and not have to make rash decisions. But, we're fortunate to be in a position to be able to make that choice.

There are many things that if I had to go back and do them again, I would approach differently. The game has evolved so much over time and our early promises about content scope, release dates, or even our understanding of what the game would become over time, often come into conflict with the reality. We're constantly caught between the desire to share information and provide visibility around progress for the community, and the fear that we'll be penalized/punished whenever we fail to deliver something in the exact form or timeline it was originally anticipated. Managing that balance is just part of the job and I understand that, but it doesn't make it any easier. :) We never really get to breathe a sigh of relief or reflect on the good things we've built because we (or maybe it's just something I personally feel? I'm not actually sure if this is something the team feels in general b/c I try to shelter them from it) constantly have that sense of still "owing" the community something that was promised.

From a business standpoint, probably the most painful thing to live with is the promise to provide all 5 episodes of WINTERMUTE for free for the price of the game, as this has put us at odds with how the business model has evolved for a lot of our competitors, who provide less content for the same price. But we believe in living up to our promises, even if delivering takes longer or requires more effort and $$$ than we originally expected, because a big part of this exercise is in building trust and loyalty with our community, so that hopefully you will all support us in our future games. And fortunately, that "future value" promise in The Long Dark has helped to keep it relevant for players, because they know that when they buy our game they aren't just getting the game as it exists today, but they're investing in the future as well.

I could write a book or fill an entire podcast with just answering questions about the business of games so I won't try to do that here. 

Regarding your daughter -- we need more women in tech and in games so I'd encourage her to pursue her interest! I never recommend going to a games-specific program or getting a games-specific degree, but if she gets a general computer science degree, she will be well placed to work in games, and if she finds it's not her cup of tea down the road, she can always shift into another tech-related field. I will say, however, that I've worked in tech outside of games (during the first dot-com bubble in the early 2000s) and I have a lot of colleagues who work in non-games software development, and the notion that software dev outside of games is somehow more stable  than games is a bit of a fallacy.

*****

Question from @Doc Gonzo:

Quote

A few years ago I remember you discussing the percentages of players that utilize the various difficulty levels.  I believe voyager was the most popular, followed by stalker and finally pilgrim.  This was before the addition of the interloper difficulty if my memory serves correctly.  How do the percentages look today?  I'd be curious if the game's age, the introduction of interloper and story mode have made any differences. 

Unfortunately, we don't have any current metrics for the Experience Mode use as we had to disable all of that due to GDRP. We'd like to find a good way to re-introduce opt-in analytics but we just haven't had the bandwidth to tackle it. I recall the breakdown in the past being Pilgrim (most popular), Voyageur, Stalker (least popular). I would imagine those ratios are probably fairly similar today, with Interloper being the new least popular. Maybe I should say "common" vs. popular, since each mode is popular with the player community who prefers it. :)

Story Mode has its own Experience Mode settings and the breakdown is fairly along the same lines -- the modes that focus more on exploration/narrative and less on survival challenge are more favoured, most likely because players tend to treat the story mode as a tutorial for Survival and therefore start it when they are less experienced players. 

*****

Question from @ThatDearGuy:

Quote

So much snow, but sadly no skis to be found. Will we one day get our cross-country on in The Long Dark? I mean, this is Canada.

Not until we have legs and feet. :)

*****

Question from @Smellyfries:

Quote

 

Do you plan on adding pajamas in The Long Dark?

It came to my head thinking that wearing them give you a small bonus to rest. 

Enjoy your guy's day!

 

No plans to add a pyjama rest bonus but that's pretty funny!!

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

*****

Question from @AJosen:

Quote

I know you guys are very busy working on so many things, but I have always wondered why the Lee Enfield No.4 Mk1 rifle in game doesn't have the actual bolt that it has in real life. If you would be able to make the rifle in game look more like the real life version it would be a really cool addition to an already amazing game. If you guys intended for the rifle bolt to look the way it does in game I would be interested to know why. Thank you for your amazing game! 

Are you referring to where the lever on the bolt is, and how it's not as far to the back of the bolt in our model as it is on the real Lee Enfield? If so, I'd say this just an error on our part, although seems like a fairly minor detail. If we can fix it easily without having to redo the entire animation, we will.

*****

Question from @Smellyfries:

Quote

Do you plan on improving the way fog transitions into the game? At the moment it just randomly appears, even if there are no clouds or anything to really tell it's going to be foggy.

Our weather transitions in "sets" to avoid things like going straight from Clear to Foggy. Are you sure this happens? If so, it's a bug.

*****

Question from @Avosetta:

Quote

I think it's being mentioned in Wintermute, and definitely evident to be seen, that the Quiet Apocalypse is more than just Aurora and cold - more specifically 'seismic activity'. Is this something we will see more of in the future of TLD? Maybe new earthquakes or rockslides? 

As you can see from the environment, and also pick up if you read narrative collectibles and knowledge you can unlock by gaining Trust with NPCs in the current version of Episode One and Two (keep in mind we've removed the Trust mechanic in Redux), Great Bear suffered a series of setbacks years before the events of the game. The Quiet Apocalypse specifically references the events after the aurora wipes out our technology infrastructure. That said, yes I'd like to see reminders of the seismic past in the form of small quakes, slides, etc.

*****

Question from @Vonwoah:

Quote

How do you fine tune, but also add new content to The Long Dark without affecting the existing mechanics and ensuring those mechanics aren't affecting another? In programming that is done through writing tests, but do you guys do analytic heat graphs of player data of where most players die, areas traveled, etc?

Well, we don't always manage to introduce new mechanics without affecting others. Sometimes we want to affect others. Sometimes we don't want to but it happens anyways due to unanticipated outcomes. The Long Dark is actually an incredibly complex simulation with tons of overlapping systems so really the best way to understand how tuning or mechanics changes impact the game is to let players experience the changes and let us know what they find. We do a lot of in-house testing as well, both the dev team and we have a dedicated internal test group that is supplemented by an external game testing company, but in general we do our best to really analyze and understand the changes we are making before we make them, and we analyze our own work to ensure we don't introduce undesirable results. 

Moving forward, we do have plans for more automated testing -- ex. running nightly test scenarios on a dedicated server and then studying the outcomes in the morning to ensure the results are as expected -- but in general we still rely a lot on intuition and player feedback. I touched on this before but we had to shut down our analytics gathering due to GDRP and we haven't been able to replace it yet, but hopefully we'll be able to do so soon and that will provide another useful dataset.

*****

Question from @NardoLoopa:

Quote

Raph, can you talk about how the team decided to render this adventure in Watercolor?  It's rare to see a game that specifically flouts whatever realism the graphics engine can muster in favor of artistic expression.  It certainly works.  The visual style deserves a lot of credit in creating the lonely and beautiful experience of the game.

I think I've talked about this pretty extensively in interviews over the years, but the primary motivation was the desire to deliver a beautiful aesthetic experience that is at odds with how dangerous the environment is, the need to develop an iconic look that would stand out from the rest of the crowd, and the fact that I personally don't find photo-realism that interesting from an artistic standpoint. :) 

*****

Question from @Kauffy:

Quote

 

This might stray into request territory, but is there some reason why the player breath effect seems to have largely gone unchanged since the original version of the game? I think it adds an excellent element of immersion for the experience of the cold, but it can also break immersion when your breath appears right in front of you during a howling gale, or (as I think it still does), be visible in near-darkness, essentially blinding you.

I definitely wouldn't want to get rid of it, but it seems like it could be a useful element for the player to immediately determine wind direction when, e.g., circumnavigating a wolf.

 

If it ain't broke...

But seriously, we improved the night-time treatment in the last major update so having breath effects blind you at night should no longer be an issue. As far as using it to tell wind direction -- that's an interesting idea. That said, there is already a lot of feedback in the world that communicates wind direction to you.

*****

Question from @DavidinNorwayHD:

Quote

Pretty much since the beggining of the games development you guys have talked about adding NPC's into the game, which sounds amazing by the way! The only thing that would scare the me more than a Wolf and a Bear, is seeing another ''living'' person in the Survival Mode. I was just wondering, how far you have come in the development with the NPC's? When you made the ''Survival Vignette'' videos on youtube back in 2013,  the Tent and the Cabin videos, it made me really excited to see what you guys were gonna do with them. I don't expect to get alot of information about this... but i'm just curious. Also, my mom wanted me to ask if you have thought about adding Wolverine's in to the game.

For the time being, we're still focused on improving how NPCs live in the Story mode. Once we get that right, we'll figure out if and how to extend them to Survival. Having said that, we've generally heard from our "sandbox" players that they prefer the game's solo nature and wouldn't like to see other survivors in their game. We've kept that in mind as it's been a very consistent piece of feedback.

*****

Question from @MueckE:

Quote

 

I just started a new game for faithful cartogropher, so visited all places and thought about how TLD has changed over time and how every map has it's unique features. Then i realized that there is potentially a big issue regarding the story and how places are designed. Some places look like they have been abandoned for many years, others look like in the weeks after an catastrophy. Hydro dam for example looks like a place where people came long after the plant has been closed. At the same time you find to many things (loot) that tell a story of people all of a sudden just disappeared because they didn't even bother taking important items with them (abducted by aliens? :) ).

In Maintenance Yard, a car is still on the lift with the toolbox beside it, as if someone who worked there just disappeared from one moment to the other. At the same time it looks like an abandoned place where vandals and thieves have raged over many years and also at the same time it has elements that says that people had to leave in a hurry, but will come back as soon the "earthquake" is over.

Will there be an overhaul of the enviromental storytelling? I don't see how the story will explain why the whale facility (and many other places) looks like a place that has been shut down 20 years ago and since then has been scavanged, looted, experienced vandalism but you still find items you only would find if all people suddenly would have disappeared. If the story takes place in the weeks or months (even 2 years) after a catastrophy, where people would have left in a hurry but planning to come back, Hydro dam would be clean and organized (except damage caused by an earthquake or something).

 

There won't be an overhaul to the environmental storytelling because there's nothing wrong with it. :) If you've played any of WINTERMUTE and/or collected any of the narrative collectibles that touch on world background available in Episodes One and Two, there are a lot of hints that touch on the history of Great Bear over the years, and the decline of the population there long before the Aurora showed up. So, the reality is that all of those things are true -- some people abandoned things quickly long ago in the past for events that happened then, other people abandoned places and things more recently due to the events you experience in the game story, some people in between occupied the places that had been abandoned originally, other survivors (like you) have moved around looking for shelter and supplies since you crashed your plane, etc. It feels like there are multiple timelines reflected in the environment design, because there are. :) This is pretty unusual in a game world, as most tend to focus on one timeline of events and their worlds reflect that single timeline, vs. the real world where very few places only show a use or occupation from a single moment in time and not things that happened, or people who arrived, before or after. We're trying to create the sense of a history to the world before you got there.

*****

I think that's all the time I have for Mailbag this week. I hope the answers are interesting to you, and many thanks for the great questions! Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

- Raph

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please use this thread for discussion of @Raphael van Lierop's answers. However, while we will be monitoring the thread, he won't be following up on questions here. If you have more questions please post them in the main question thread and they may be addressed in a future Milton Mailbag.

If you want to know if a topic has been addressed please check the Milton Mailbag Index.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Raphael van Lierop said:

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

I think some of us actually remove the clothes before sleeping to reduce decay. Which is even more silly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, BareSkin said:
29 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

I think some of us actually remove the clothes before sleeping to reduce decay. Which is even more silly.

I went through a phase some time ago of removing clothes before bed, just for the sake of it. I was trying to play the game exactly as I thought I  would behave in the same scenario if it really happened to me. And that also involved taking my boots and coat off when I entered my shelter, changing into a nice comfy pair of sneakers and jeans for indoors, and putting all my gear away in logical places instead of lugging a heavy pack around my house.

I got fed up with it after a while, because it was such a faff. If the UI made it easier to do, though, I can definitely see myself taking advantage of it. If there was a sleep bonus for wearing more comfortable clothes in bed I'm sure people would use it, but it might also get to be pretty chore-like.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

I'm on the fence for these sorts of bonuses because they might cause gameplay where a person would constantly be switching in and out of seperate items of clothing to min/max each task theyre doing.

Sometimes I switch out clothes for particular days, such as a hunting outfit (warmth/protection), a climbing one (weight/mobility), and a general exploratuon one (warmth/weight), but most of the time I dont bother with that many clicks and just use my general purpose outfit because it's easier to just get up and go.

If instead the bonus was tied automatically to the quality of bedding you were using such as a bedroll vs a high quality bed then It'd make sense.

Items that belong in the accessories slot might fit this role a little better, much like the moosehide satchel.

That's just my 2 cents.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

Question from @AJosen:

  Quote

I know you guys are very busy working on so many things, but I have always wondered why the Lee Enfield No.4 Mk1 rifle in game doesn't have the actual bolt that it has in real life. If you would be able to make the rifle in game look more like the real life version it would be a really cool addition to an already amazing game. If you guys intended for the rifle bolt to look the way it does in game I would be interested to know why. Thank you for your amazing game! 

Are you referring to where the lever on the bolt is, and how it's not as far to the back of the bolt in our model as it is on the real Lee Enfield? If so, I'd say this just an error on our part, although seems like a fairly minor detail. If we can fix it easily without having to redo the entire animation, we will.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only Enfield nut on here! In truth the bolt handle has bugged me for quite a while, glad to hear your interested in fixing it. While we're on that subject, a .303 cartridge looks nothing like the one in game, .303 has a real steep taper and is "rimmed" on the bolt end. Also, the cartridge in game has a dimple on the primer; an unfired round shouldn't have one. The dimple is the mark the firing pin makes when it strikes the primer and detonates the round. 

Cheers guys, I love these Q&A sessions!

Sam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This was my favorite mailbag to read so far. I really enjoyed the longer explanations, in particular the reply to ThePancakeLady was really great.

4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

From a business standpoint, probably the most painful thing to live with is the promise to provide all 5 episodes of WINTERMUTE for free for the price of the game.

I feel this. After playing Ep. 1 and 2, I went to the store page to see the reviews, and that was the first time that I actually paid attention to the fact that all 5 episodes were supposedly included with the price of the game. When I purchased the game, I didn't even know full episodes were going to eventually be released, so for me, the episodes were just a bonus. So when I saw that five episodes were included, I thought to myself "wait a second, it took them this long to make 1 and 2... this company is going to go out of business before they finish the rest." I was kind of hoping that Hinterland would make 3, 4, and 5 significantly shorter—like as long as one of the chapters in the previous two—so that they could just fulfill their obligation and move on to projects that would generate revenue. Dang them and their commitment to quality.  I would actually prefer to pay for DLC or a new game, rather than have a company go bankrupt trying to complete an obligation I don't care about and therefore not create more things I can enjoy.

4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

No I do not. Yes they are silly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

To be fair, the Mountaineer's Hut shouldn't have *any* electricity or electric lights, due to its remoteness -- you're absolutely right. We should remove them!

Yay!

Many thanks, Raphael, for a particularly interesting dispatch!

7 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

From a business standpoint, probably the most painful thing to live with is the promise to provide all 5 episodes of WINTERMUTE for free for the price of the game, as this has put us at odds with how the business model has evolved for a lot of our competitors, who provide less content for the same price. But we believe in living up to our promises, even if delivering takes longer or requires more effort and $$$ than we originally expected

I know I, and probably many others, would be more than happy to throw some additional money in Hinterland's direction to keep things rolling along. Yes, I know there's all the TLD merchandise available to buy (I already have some) but the problem with that is that a) Hinterland only gets a portion of the proceeds, because there's the supplier to pay as well, and b) a sizeable chunk of money goes to postage (quite a big chunk for us non-US/CAN people).  If there was a way to make a payment of say, $5 - 20 directly to Hinterland, to me that would be far preferable to spending a bigger whack of money on merchandise, knowing that Hinterland are only going to see, for example, 20% of that money at most, with the rest going to suppliers and postage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Admin featured and pinned this topic

Всем привет. У меня такой вопрос, почему, когда на улице -25, наш персонаж может спокойно пить чай, кофе, воду, приготовленые очень  давно? Конечно, вы изменили механику приготовления воды и еды, что было очень круто, но то, что можно выпить воду, которая должна была быть льдом и после этого даже горло не болит–это как-то неправильно. Надеюсь, что вы прислушаетесь к этому. Спасибо

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

From a business standpoint, probably the most painful thing to live with is the promise to provide all 5 episodes of WINTERMUTE for free for the price of the game . . .

The pending release of Wintermute and the general timing of discovering TLD was  what encouraged my original purchase.  I didn't know there were to be 5 episodes, but the addition of the story-mode sounded like something I wanted in on.  This was before I played the game -- so this was part of my reason for purchase.  However, as Wintermute wasn't quite released at the time, I played Survival first.  And that's the game I fell in love with.  The loneliness, the mystery of why the world had come to this, and where the people were, really set a tone that is rare in games.  Also, the complete lack of "tutorial" mechanics thematically harmonized with "survival".  Pitch perfect.

When Wintermute was released, I quickly found that adding the backstory subtracted from the untold story of Survival.  While I yearned to know why and what happened, it turns out I didn't really enjoy knowing.  I understand that people honestly express this desire "to know", but I think it works against the artistic achievement that is Survival.  To that end, whenever I give the game to another person, I tell them to just eschew Story-Mode; just go ahead and die a lot in Survival -- it is  the fun.

You probably have a bifurcated playerbase: those who want the story completed, and look forward to every new episode (I'll admit, even I do), and those who felt the game was whole and complete with Survival (of which I am a member).  I think you are wise to follow-through on your promise -- not sure if it makes business sense, but certainly moral sense. 

TL;DR: But back to the point at the top of my post: the releasing a new episode is a natural way to refresh advertising and attract new interest to TLD; I hope it is reflected in your sales numbers.

16 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Question from @DavidinNorwayHD:

For the time being, we're still focused on improving how NPCs live in the Story mode. Once we get that right, we'll figure out if and how to extend them to Survival. Having said that, we've generally heard from our "sandbox" players that they prefer the game's solo nature and wouldn't like to see other survivors in their game. We've kept that in mind as it's been a very consistent piece of feedback.

+1 Loneliness and solitude are such important parts of my experience with TLD; glad to hear the TLD team acknowledge this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/14/2018 at 4:55 PM, ThatDearGuy said:
On 10/14/2018 at 4:52 PM, MarrowStone said:

I enjoy the warmth mechanic regarding cooked foods and drinks. If we go by that logic then manually choosing which ankle sprain to heal with painkillers is the silliest. lol.

Lol I never even considered that before.

Well, that's actually a bit silly it doesn't heal every sprain you have when you take them, since they apply on you brain, and you only have one. That'd be nice if they were healing all at a time, do I take them now or wait for another sprain?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, BareSkin said:

Well, that's actually a bit silly it doesn't heal every sprain you have when you take them, since they apply on you brain, and you only have one. That'd be nice if they were healing all at a time, do I take them now or wait for another sprain?

The player must just rub two onto each affected area thinking it works like a local anesthetic, and it just works via placebo effect. Haha.

But it does make a swallow sound effect...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would like to know if there are any plans for a small multiplayer? I would just love to play the game with 3 other friends. I think it would add more to it as you could either share some of the stuff you find with them or hog it all to yourself. or all work together to survive as long as they can. It would be a fantastic group game.

Also how do you get batteries for flashlights? I have 3 flashlights but have never come across batteries

And finally is there any chance in siphoning fuel out of cars to be able to use it as fuel to start a fire?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, James.S said:

Also how do you get batteries for flashlights? I have 3 flashlights but have never come across batteries

There's a battery in there. The flashlight only works when the aurora is active. Next time you get an aurora, try it out! There's two settings... on, which drains the battery slowly, and high, which drains it fast... and can repel aurora wolves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Admin unpinned and unfeatured this topic
  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/13/2018 at 3:40 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Curious: do people like those kinds of bonuses? We tend to avoid them because they feel a bit silly but they would be fairly easy to add.

Yes, i do like silly bonuses like that. Don't go overboard on them, but i would like it if you could add a few more of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.