Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #33

[Raphael van Lierop]

Hello community,

We'll it's been another busy week in Hotfix Heaven in the aftermath of STEADFAST RANGER's release. Feels like we managed to get a better handle on the Sprain system tuning, fixed some aiming issues with the Bow and Rifle for you, and hopefully got the Revolver spawn tuning feeling a bit better. We'll have another set of fixes coming out hopefully later next week or early the following week, but I think we've hit the more critical things so we'll let the game settle a bit. Fixing things in a hurry is sometimes necessary, but it can always have unintentional knock-offs so we'll take some extra time with the remaining issues on our list.

Thanks to everyone who sent feedback, and in particular those who sent bugs to our Support portal -- that's been extremely helpful to the team, and we really appreciate it.

Next Monday is Victoria Day, a stat holiday in Canada, so the team will be off for a long weekend, but we'll be back at it bright and early Tuesday morning.

Now, on to this week's Mailbag!

- Raph

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Question from @Morphe:

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Seriously now, (I mean if you want you can answer) is there a chance for the "rose hip vines" climb animation to be dependent from the player so that I control whether I go up or down? Not like it takes much time, but it's sometimes annoying when you want to pick rose hips, but you end up going down/up, which also makes me nauseous (severe motion sickness here). The ability to quickly climb up back would benefit everyone, I think at least.

Just to be sure I understand the question -- are you saying the placement of this Rosehip bush means that a misclick may end up causing you to climb instead? If so, can you send a screenshot of this to our Support portal and we can get it onto the bug list (assuming it isn't already fixed and sitting in our fixed branch, waiting to be released): www.hinterlandgames.com/support

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Question from @Sito:

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My question is how do you prepare your team for the possible negative response to a major update that changes mechanics of the game? With this update ( and previous) the fan base reacts in a hateful way on some things that must feel very personal to you and your team. You work so hard to produce a quality game experience and then you get such negative response from those that previously were so supportive. I can imagine that it would be very demoralizing to you and your team but you and the admin response to player frustration remained positive all week. Good on you!  

Most of the team is not exposed to community feedback, by design. The people who have frontline interface with the community are trained to deal with that feedback. But, it would be a lie to say that negative feedback isn't occasionally frustrating. We've been updating The Long Dark for a long time now, and have survived some pretty big furors in the past (Parasites, various rounds of wolf tuning, every UI update, etc.) so I think we're pretty used to it. 

I've come to see patterns as well. Often the immediate reaction to something is negative, because something familiar has been changed. We all have this same reaction every time Gmail or any app we use regularly suddenly does some kind of interface or UX change that throws us off. But then over time when we get accustomed to the change, we can often recognize how much better it is. I'm not saying this is always true for all our players, but I've seen it happen more than once that the initial "hateful" reaction to something is tempered over time. 

In the end we all want the same thing -- for every player to have a great experience. If the negative feedback is based on something not working as intended, it's easy to take it well because we know it isn't working as intended and we want to fix it! If the negative feedback is based on something we've intentionally changed and believe is better (like many of our various UI iterations over the years), it can be harder to take, but in the end it's our game, our vision, and we believe firmly that we're making this game for the people who like it, not for the people who don't. Just, who those people are can change over time, as the game changes. I think that's to be expected for a game and community that's been "live" for almost 5 years now.

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Question from @amadeuszbx:

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1) Could you name a few of your favorite games? In general, don't have to be anything related to survival or something that inspired TLD. Just several titles that you really enjoy as a gamer, for one reason or another. Can be 2 or 3, can be a whole top 10 if you'd like.

2) The philosophy of Hinterland Studios and its approach to the game development and developers is very clear and very refreshing in the game dev business. Several things that are so exceptional about your studio are: not giving any dates ahead of time, taking your time with the updates (not trying to roll out updates every 2 months or something), focusing on several chosen tasks at a time, instead of trying to fix everything that people complain about all at once. While I can guess that the last one probably comes from the size of your team, it seem that you have a strong philosophy of leading the studio. Something that may be a little bit annoying to some fans (like slow development of WINTERMUTE and not giving any release date at all), from the perspective of game developer working for you seems like heaven! They are not rushed and can take their time to really do what they want and how they want it and to polish up their work, instead of rushing it. So my question here is: What influences such policy and what affected your philosophy of managing a game studio? I know the topic is kind of broad, so you can adapt my question however you see fit. I would just like to get some general comment from you on your approach to managing Hinterland Studio  (or employee's work routine to be precise). Such work philosophy seems (unfortunately) quite rare in game dev business, although it is more common in indie field, and I guess that you are still considered indie developer.

 

1) Pretty sure you'll find this answer elsewhere, but my top-10 are probably (not in any order): Half-Life, Half-LIfe 2, STALKER, BioShock, Deus Ex, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Mass Effect, Thief, and Red Dead Redemption. (I'm sure I'm missing some but those are the ones that I can think of right now.)

2) Myself and most of my team come from "triple-A" so we've all been in the position of having to ship something earlier than we wanted to. This is something we really don't want to ever have to do, because ultimately we are craftspeople and artists who create interactive experiences, and the most important thing for us is that we can be proud of our work. Beyond that, I believe that long-term quality and good-will from our players will translate into long-term success for Hinterland, more than any short-term "cash grab" we might be able to gain by releasing something quickly. Also, you will find that when you focus on creating great things, other people who want to create great things will want to bring their talents and energy to your endeavour. This is not a guarantee of success, but it definitely takes you a big part of the way.

Ultimately, I am not motivated by money -- I am only motivated by creating things I love and can be proud of, with people who feel the same way, and money is only a means to freedom so that we can create more things in the future. I think that as long as we are true to these values, even if we "fail" economically, we will succeed as creators, and leave something positive and lasting behind after we are gone. (So far, we are not failing economically either. )

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Question from @MarrowStone:

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Does tall grass/cattails affect how well wildlife sees you? 

Does birch bark tea work while you have an affliction such as food poisoning? Or does it only work alongside the conditions of normal health regen?

 

1) Not yet.

2) Yes, it should.

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Question from @Azdrawee:

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Since episode 3 and 4 are both going to be about Astrid's side of the story, have you ever considered releasing both of them at the same time, like you did with Will? It would seem only logical. (To be clear: I would much rather have ep. 3 ASAP if episode 4 is nowhere near done yet) 🙂

I've noticed that you like to ask questions that are often thinly-veiled attempts to get me to share information about release plans or dates. I'm on to you!  

We haven't said anything about the contents of Episode Four, so you are making assumptions about the content therein. We will release Episode Three, and *then* Episode Four, and *then* (spoiler) Episode Five. And then WINTERMUTE will be finished. 

Then we will rest.

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Question from @ThePancakeLady:

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The old website... I miss the section where the team was listed with short bios. I get why it was removed. But, I still miss being able to go see who is working on the game. It felt like I could connect to the people working at the studio more as human beings, not just anonymous avatars on the Internet. It was interesting to see a short bio, with devs listing some of their former work. It just made everyone more easy to relate to as people, and made me think of them as individuals, humans, not nameless machines working behind a screen.  

So the question is... any chance the studio would consider adding something like that back, on the website, in the "Studio" section? With each person giving their own short bio, no contact info, used with permission of each person only, of course. Maybe first names only, no photos unless they felt comfortable with it,  just an avatar of their choosing (done in TLD style, of course...)? Or do you feel this could place you, the studio, or individual staff members at risk? (I know you had death threats in the past... which sucks- these things should not happen, but they do these days...). Just curious, I know family and friends who would like to get to know your team better, and I feel like that section on the old website gave me that opportunity. But, again, I know it also gave haters more opportunity to target people or the studio at times, and online privacy is a huge issue these days. 

Sorry for rambling, just a random thought that came up when my family and I were talking about the game with a few friends who also bought the game, because of our obsession with it, lol.

 

Not sure. We'll see. We'll be doing big overhauls of all our websites this year (and into next I suspect) so we'll see how the Hinterland site turns out. If the team wants to be showcased more, I'll be open to including bios again. I personally like them having what small anonymity I can offer them. The internet is not always a friendly place, as you well know.

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Question(s) from @vta4ever:

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any chance of maps that use human infrastructure to add to the atmosphere and how it plays out, like a map built around an oil pipeline or an airfield?

Could happen!

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do you plan to make a season two?

If we do, it'll be a new standalone game.

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what are some ways I can support you guys?

Positive user reviews help. Sharing news about The Long Dark in your social circle. Reporting bugs you find to www.hinterlandgames.com/support. Gifting copies to friends when the game is on sale. Being in these forums and spreading positive vibes. These things all help a lot!!

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Question from @LilWolf:

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You said several times that you would like to make other games and that Hinterland doesn't become "The Long Dark Studio".

What kind of video game (or genre) would you like to make in the future as Hinterland's second game?

 

I have two new non-TLD games I'd like to start on ASAP. Both of them push their respective genres forward a bit, I believe. One has links to survival and the other has links to immersive sims. I'm thinking about them in terms of how we've built The Long Dark over the years, and also in terms of how the business is changing right now. Not sure when I'll be able to get started on them, but I hope soon!! Every day I wake up worried some game will come out that is too similar to those ideas and I'll have to throw them out and start again. 

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Question from @CalNieDaGtarGuy:

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Just noticed that the hunting lodge in Broken Railroad is named the Mystery Lake Hunting Lodge. I may be totally incorrect, but it would seem that this lodge is nowhere near Mystery Lake, unless I'm missing out on some totally unknown connection point between the two. Is there a reason it is named the Mystery Lake hunting lodge? Did I miss something while playing Wintermute that I should have gotten?

Even though the regions have different names (Forlorn Muskeg, Broken Railroad, etc.), geographically that whole area would be known as Mystery Lake, to the people who had built the lodge. Or, a better way of putting it, the lake would have been a pretty major landmark for that area, which is why the lodge is named after it. We have some internal lore about the hunting lodge and the area around it, but I'd have to dig it up out of the archives from years ago....

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Question from @apple_geek101:

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Is there a Discord server for the Long Dark and if not, would you guys consider making an official server on Discord? I find that I'm on Discord more often than the Steam forums and forums here and it would allow for more discussions about the game and allow for players to play along with each through voice chat, etc.

We don't have an official Discord server. We discussed it a while ago and felt we didn't have the bandwidth to manage and nurture another community. We also felt that Discord didn't seem to be doing enough to maintain a healthy community itself -- there seems (or seemed) to be a lot of issues with toxic people or groups using it. Similar, in some ways, to how communities like Reddit, which are not moderated by devs, can sometimes end up being really toxic places for players, and in the end just serve to turn people off. We made a decision early on only to spend our time and energy nurturing communities that we can moderate properly, because it does't make sense to spend money in a place that is hostile to you and your players, and we know that every toxic person turns off 10+ non-toxic players who might have become positive contributors to the community.

If we felt Discord offered good tools for us to moderate a community there, and if we felt there was enough interest in an official Discord, we might consider setting up an official channel. But until we're confident it's a good place for our players, we won't encourage people to go there.

Please note I'm not talking about individual Discord servers or TLD players at all. I'm just speaking in generalities about a business decision.

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Question from @melcantspell:

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Do you guys run any in-game statistics on the regions the players are located in? Is there any tendency for a favorite region by numbers?

We don't, currently. We shut down our use of GameAnalytics because of GDRP, and Unity Analytics isn't GDRP-compliant at the moment yet either. Until we can roll out an opt-in analytics solution that complies with GDRP, we have no way of pulling this info right out of the game. 

That said, my gut tells me Mystery Lake is the most popular due to it being the first region that appears in the menu and also a good, well-balanced region in general. 

Someone could start a poll here in the forums if they wanted to do an informal survey. Could be interesting!

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Question from @Aiden Milroy:

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I’ve been playing challenge mode quite a bit recently and while travelling through the winding river I noticed just how many unnamed cairns there are.  I know whatever each cairn/note says is supposed to be contributed by the backers but it seems a lot of them haven’t contributed and likely wont in the future.  Is there any chance that the contribution of notes/buffers/cairns will ever make it to the general population

Yeah...it's tough because we try to contact those backers and don't always get through. We're still hopefully we'll be able to get them to contribute their info. I don't feel good about the idea of taking those away from backers and giving them or selling them to the general player population, because they are meant to recognize the contributions of our earliest supporters. We might have to just take the blank ones out for now, so at least there won't be empty cairns.

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Question from @ajb1978:

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Couple questions this time.  First, in the last mailbag you had mentioned that Interlopers were a small but vocal crowd, and I was wondering if you know what the actual distribution is.  Like what percentage predominantly play Interloper, Stalker, Voyageur, Pilgrim, Custom, etc.

And the second question has to do with some of the photographs you can find on the walls of houses, like the one of people playing hockey for example.  That looks very much like it may have been a real actual photo, scanned and passed through a filter to give it the watercolor look.  Is that actually a photo of some real folks that made it into the game as background art?

 

1) We don't have current stats on this, but I believe the Stalker+Interloper side of the spectrum is about 15% total. The rest play Voyageur or Pilgrim. When we can enable in-game analytics again, we'll share realtime data on that. I would say that Stalker+Interloper players are more highly represented in the community forums than they are in the game. (Feels like 30-40% of Official Forum users are Stalker/Interloper players.)

2) I honestly can't remember where those came from. People on the team I believe. We've replaced a lot of them over time.

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Question(s) from @CuteBeaver:

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Firstly thank you for making TLD into the best strategy survival game on steam. My question is threefold and it relates to making indoor gameplay more challenging / dynamic or strategic: 

1) Are there any plans to make indoor temperatures more dynamic? Raise or lower them based on the weather or temperature outdoors? 

2) Has the team considered adding craft-able rugs or blankets to the game? As for the blanket I would suggest something as simple as an "accessory" since we could equip it indoors or use it for sleeping.  A rug on the other hand might be a fun item to "build/place" on the floor in strategic locations for safer crafting during temperature fluctuation. I'm just curious if the team has considered tweaking indoor "game-play" slightly to make it more interesting. (which to be fair is not an easy task) We had some huge improvements, the lighting, and an assortment of stoves to give each shelter more/less value. Those tweaks really changed how we played the game and used indoor spaces. 

3) Any plans to allow water bottles to freeze/thaw? 

Even if my question gets skipped thanks to everyone involved for taking the time to make, answer, and organize the Milton Mailbags.

 

1) Yes, I've been thinking about this.

2) Yes, we have.

3) Not unless I can find something interesting about managing frozen water supply.  

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Question from @Faithful Cartographer:

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Hi Raph!

1) You can have a little hint Hinterland is now developing another game, except The Long Dark?

2) Is there any connection between the air service "Jackrabbit Island" at the beginning of Wintermute and the island of the same name on the coastal highway? Or is it a mistake of Russian localization?

3) Do you follow the ice hockey world championship? You support Canada? This is one of the strongest teams in the world. Since I am from Russia, I hope that our teams will not meet before the final.

 

1) For the present, the whole team is currently focused on Episode Three and Survival Mode of The Long Dark.

2) Mackenzie's (family's) service is called "Jackrabbit Transport". Jackrabbit Island is unrelated to this.

3) I'm not religious about watching hockey, but I do check out the olympic and sometimes the worlds depending on who Canada is playing. It's always exciting to see the Russians and Canadians playing against each other. Old rivalries.  I hope our teams don't meet before the final either. Good luck!

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Question from @Its_the_Gman:

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Hello Raph,

loving Steadfast ranger. Got some questions though. 

- Did Hinterland do some retexturing for the train cars at the train derailment in ML? I noticed this and wanted to confirm cuz it's been driving me nuts.

- The revolver is a cool addition, but i have a question

         - When ever I see a wolf and it charges me, I whip out my revolver, aim down sights, shoot the wolf, see the blood spatter, but he just charges me anyway! 

         - Am i using the revolver incorrectly? Have i misunderstood the mechanics? Why does a wolf not die to a revolver round to the head?

Don't want to sound pessimistic because I love TLD, Hinterland and Steadfast ranger, just wanted some clarification on revolver mechanics to avoid some frustration 

 

Hi! Yes, we did retexture the train cars. Thanks for noticing.

Not every headshot will result in a death. Might have been a "glancing" shot.  I don't think you're using it wrong.

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Question from @Moll:

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Can we get way of shooting revolver in single action mode for more accurate hits? Or any future improvement of this firearm, like true revolver function where you can hit an empty chamber betweem shots in non fully cylinder? Because Revolver doesnt look so polished in terms of animation and feeling. Quality of work spent on rifle seems and feel much better. 

We'll see! The Rifle has been in the game for years. The Revolver, for days. Give it some time.  

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I think that's it for this week! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and I hope you have a great weekend. 

- Raph

 

[ThePancakeLady]

12 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

The internet is not always a friendly place, as you well know.

Thanks Raph. I understand. And yes, I do well know. Sadly, I think many of us know this from personal experience. Enjoy your holiday weekend.

[Sito]

Thanks Raph for your openness to all the questions asked. I think your game studio is awesome and what you have produced is top of the line. I have never loved a game. Until this.

What game can you just stand on the porch and feel the beauty and emptiness of the long dark?

Edited May 18, 2019 by Sito

[ArchAngel]

This is my first time posting directly on anything besides a facebook group but i just want to say that you guys are doing a great job with this game. Ive hopped on this particular hype train relatively recently as I got the Xbox one version a few months ago. Since then this game has become one of my all time favorites, to the point my younger brother just rolls his eyes when I start gushing over pretty much anything TLD related. Lol 

You guys at Hinterland are all doing a really awesome job, and you outdid yourselves in style with the new update. I love the revolver and the new depth it offers to hunting strategy. Please dont stop what youre doing! I can't wait to see what this game continues to grow into and become. In any event youve got yourself a ride or die fan lol

[Azdrawee]

6 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I've noticed that you like to ask questions that are often thinly-veiled attempts to get me to share information about release plans or dates. I'm on to you!  

I'm sorry, I'm just really excited about WINTERMUTE! 😀

Thank you for your answer and enjoy the weekend. ☺️

[ProsPex]

13 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

We might have to just take the blank ones out for now, so at least there won't be empty cairns.

Oh please don't take them out. It took a lot of time and effort (admittedly it was very enjoyable) to find  and document them all. If you do anything with the cairns, make finding them all an achievement

Edited May 18, 2019 by ProsPex

[LilWolf]

Wow, now I'm excited to see these projects!  Thanks for the reply.

[MikeV]

Hi RAF. I have a question: could you make the ultimate survival of not only death, but also due to the fact that the character waited for the rescue or something? Survival is interesting, and even very much, but survival for the sake of survival without the opportunity to escape, not cool(

[GothSkunk]

On 5/17/2019 at 7:20 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

 

Positive user reviews help. Sharing news about The Long Dark in your social circle. Reporting bugs you find to www.hinterlandgames.com/support. Gifting copies to friends when the game is on sale. Being in these forums and spreading positive vibes. These things all help a lot!!

 

I tried to do this during the recent Post-Apocalypse sale on Steam. However, Steam would not allow me to gift TLD to a couple friends on account of regional price differences.

 

Any suggestions on how I could work around that?

[ThePancakeLady]

3 hours ago, GothSkunk said:

I tried to do this during the recent Post-Apocalypse sale on Steam. However, Steam would not allow me to gift TLD to a couple friends on account of regional price differences.

 

Any suggestions on how I could work around that?

The only way around that, that I know of, and is legit, is to wait for the game to go on sale on Humble Bundle or Amazon.com (Sadly, it seems most platforms besides PS4 are not available right now on Amazon...), and make sure you are getting a Global Key that will activate worldwide, regardless of Region, and send them a gift link or the game key code in an e-mail PM. Not sure what the Global Key availability is with either vendor... be sure the details say it is Global and will activate anywhere. Been a while since I gifted a key from Humble.

[MikeV]

And when will the next Milton mailbag??