Compass


Eylhardt

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The most exciting, and scary days with TLD are at the beginning when you have no idea at all of the geography of the regions. In those days I would be lost on mist or a blizzard and have no idea where I was and what was around me.  It induced a pseudo panic.  It was unbelievably stressful.  In those days I didn't use the radial menu.  I didn't know about snow shelters, being able to sleep in cars, or dropping decoys for wolves, and many other things.   As I said, it was so exciting and scary. 

One of the great challenges of a game is not the inherent challenges, but the learning how to play the game and seeing your skills increase and your tactics develop.  When I discovered the Whiteberry maps I thought that they were fantastic. However I soon realised that they took away the challenge and risk.  It was as if you swapped climbing up the vertical North Face of a mountain to driving up to the summit car park in your car.

It is very easy to come up with suggestions that make the game easier.  They will probably spoil the game.

 

 

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Guest jeffpeng
2 hours ago, peteloud said:

When I discovered the Whiteberry maps

I was always one of those that thought those maps really did the game quite a disservice. Especially considering how much work must have gone into them. I used them for reference in some survival stories (of which I wanna do another batch now that I think about it ....) but usually make a point of not using them. I know there was an HRV map out days after Vigilant Flame was released, including caves iirc, and I found that rather .... I don't know.

But actually this made me think:

4 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

It's not difficult to figure out how to orient and navigate without such things in this game.

Not that I disagree with you (at least not this time :D) but .... is it really not difficult? Let me expand the scope a bit .... and get a bit controversial ... as I do every so often:

With making maps a rather rudimentary tool and not giving a position or direction marker TLD draws on a very base line skill: The ability to orientate yourself and navigate by things like the sun and landmarks. This isn't something you easily learn, it's something you develop over a lifetime. Your brain hardwires itself to this kind of functionality the more it is trained to perform this task. Just like hand-eye coordination isn't something you learn in an evening of throwing a ball real hard, or that you don't simply develop a talent for elaborate speech by reading a lot of Shakespeare over the holidays. As such this awareness of your location and your surroundings is something that's developed to different degrees in each person.

I for one was one that used to play outside a lot when I was young, I meandered through the city in my formative years, I went on trecking tours through mountains as a child and my father even taught me how to navigate by the sun and stars (he used to be an officer in the west German navy). And of course we learned similar things in the military (military service was still mandatory in Germany when I was in my early twenties). All of this strengthend my talent to get my bearings by observing landmarks I've seen before from other locations. I literally cannot think of an instance I got seriously lost in real life - ever.

Luckily not everyone led the same life as I did, and probably not everyone has the same baseline talent as I do. Some of that might be genetic predisposition, some of that might be cultural, but as I strongly believe in nuture over nature, I guess most of it boils down to how often you actually had to strecht that particular muscle in your brain.

What I am getting at is that probably most people here arguing that a compass or a map marker would actually hurt their gaming experience, me included, are relatively apt in navigating without a compass and even without a map anyways. So, in all fairness, we actually don't get to talk, since we aren't affected by that problem, and us taking turn discarding this idea might be considered ignorant at best and elitist at worst. Not everyone is as talented navigating Great Bear as "we" are, and not everyone can achieve the same mastery as we have. It's just like I will never have the reaction time to play FPS competitively, or develop the required body coordination to do a 360 on a skateboard and not wake up in a hospital.

Without wanting to sound condescending, maybe when we put in ways to make the game accessible for people that suffer from motion sickness, or simply cannot mash their mouse button real fast .... maybe we should think about ways to make the game accessible for people that lack the talent to find their way in a foreign and unknown environment.

Just a thought from the other side of the table.

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@jeffpeng ...okay we can explore that avenue, I have no issues with that. :) 

[Context]
Accessibility Features: game options ostensibly meant to assist people with physical limitations use technology more easily - limited mobility, fine motor control, or equilibrium type issues... etcetera... etcetera.

First and foremost let me be clear, I have no issues with accessibility features - because they are game options that a player can opt-in or opt-out of.  Optional features like this don't change the experience for everyone, only the folks that choose to utilize them.

To me there's a difference between accessibility features, and things that act as safety nets or hand-holding measures that would seem to exist just for the sake of saving the player from themselves (shielding a player against the consequences of their own bad decisions or foolish actions).

Most here know by now that I am a huge proponent of player choice.  Feats operate the same way.  They are things that change the experience slightly (by making things a little bit easier, in the case of feats), however a player can simply choose not to use them if they don't want to.  Just like the accessibility options, the player can choose weather or not to use them.  Again, because they don't change the experience for everyone... then I'm perfectly fine with it.

Where I tend to take issue is when folks want to change my experience just to better suit their personal gameplay preferences.  In my opinion, this is not okay.

Being able to recognize simple patterns, and be able to orient themselves in relation to other things in their environment... is just something humans need to be able to do in order to survive. :D  If a person can get lost in a gas station because they don't have the capacity for geospatial awareness... then they have far more pressing matters to worry about than whether or not a video game has a compass.  ...so to answer your question: Yes learning how to get a round in a region and learning it's features is objectively easy (it's keying off one of the most basic of human skills). 

The Long Dark has always been a game that (by Raph's own words) is not going to hold our hands... so I feel the idea of compasses (given the lore) and map markers just kind of undermines one of the fundamental ideas behind the game.  To put it another way, one can't make a difficult/challenging experience that's easy for everyone. ¬¬ Those are incongruous ideas.

However, going back to my previous point I would be all for map markers (to sight a specific example) as an optional setting, so those who do want it can turn it on.  I mean if Hinterland wanted to sink the time and resources to make a thousand different "accessibility options" then I'd be in support of that; just as long as I can opt-out.
 

:coffee::fire::coffee:

21 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

So, in all fairness, we actually don't get to talk

If we are talking about fairness... then we all get to talk - that's what forums are for. :) 

 

Edited by ManicManiac
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Guest kristaok
On 11/21/2019 at 2:54 AM, jeffpeng said:

I really think most people, especially those new to the game, do not realize that part of the "fun" of this game is getting lost.

NOOOPE.

PS. I am not new to the Game at all.

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Guest jeffpeng

@ManicManiac ^^

Just a few short things since it's really late in my part of the world:

  • First of all I was playing .... well not the devil's advocate .... but someone's for sure.
     
  • I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume what is easy for this person or hard for another. I could extend this to virtually any skill humans are supposed to have in some capacity, but a significant subset is still lacking regardless of that and for whatever reason. 
  • You usually are one of the big proponents of "If you don't like it don't use it" when it comes to removing something from the game. Now how does that not apply when adding something to the game you for a change can "choose" not to use? :D
     
  • However: At no point I suggested this should be a mandatory thing. Actually I would support @MarrowStone's idea of making it something like a feat. Not exactly like they proposed, but I feel like the direction is the right one.
     
  • Actually 
    On 11/22/2019 at 6:03 PM, ManicManiac said:

    If we are talking about fairness... then we all get to talk - that's what forums are for.

    No we don't. My entire argument is based on people actually displaying an inability to navigate by landmarks and terrain. I've experienced this in people before, and it's not because they are lazy or refusing to "put in the effort". They simply lack what you so aptly call "geospatial awareness". You don't get to tell a person that they should just try harder with something they probably are struggling their whole life to overcome.

In general I don't think a game like TLD should invite the "git gud" culture so prevalent in today's gaming landscape. I'm with you on that I wouldn't want this to be a mandatory change, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that this is actually excluding a lot of people from enjoying the game.

20 hours ago, kristaok said:

NOOOPE.

Well, what can I say. I had my best time in TLD being lost. Maybe assuming others have similar masochistic tendencies was a bit premature. I can see how .... people not as hell bent on challenge as I am might find this rather frustrating.

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23 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

First of all I was playing

That's cool, I didn't take it any particular kind of way... I was just answering some of your counter points, and explaining my point of view a little more.  I bear no ill will :) 

23 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

You usually are one of the big proponents of "If you don't like it don't use it" when it comes to removing something from the game. Now how does that not apply when adding something to the game you for a change can "choose" not to use? :D

And I still am... as I've mentioned before, I always respect whatever decisions that Hinterland makes regarding their game.  So to that end, if Hinterland saw fit to add a compass, I would respect that and choose not to use it.  However, if folks are discussing it...then I'm inclined to state my point of view on the idea. :) 

23 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

However: At no point I suggested this should be a mandatory thing.

I covered this sort of thing in my responses as well... "I mean if Hinterland wanted to sink the time and resources to make a thousand different "accessibility options" then I'd be in support of that; just as long as I can still opt-out."

23 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

My entire argument is based on people actually displaying an inability to navigate by landmarks and terrain

And I was simply saying that when it comes to discussing ideas on a forum, then everyone in the community has a voice. :) 
I don't think discussions should exclude anyone... I think that the expression of all points of view on a subject is helpful when it comes to forming a complete view of a topic/idea.  When discussing an issue someone has, I don't think it's right to exclude the point of view of folks that don't have an issue with a thing, because then there is an avenue for players to exchange methods, techniques, or aspects of playstyle that might help those struggling find a better way that works for them.
 

:coffee::fire::coffee:
I wasn't trying to be combative in anyway, I was just expounding on the conversation since it seemed like you wanted to discuss it further... that's all.

Edited by ManicManiac
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Guest jeffpeng
37 minutes ago, ManicManiac said:

I wasn't trying to be combative in anyway

Oh please do. I mean chances are the devs will actually read this at some point and then arguments for both sides should have been made in the most convincing way possible.

As to how I think this actually could work (since who sleeps anyway):

Make it a sort-of joker feat people can choose to enable in all game modes, but they forfit their progress towards actual feats like they do with the custom game modes. Another joker feat could be to disable perma death - that's another issue a small portion of the player base has big problems with. To not dull it down completely you would limit those to one per game and again at the cost of feat progression.

Alternatively you could just make it a simple yes/no in the custom toolbox. 

Again: I'm personally not big on any of this. If it were for me Faithful Cartographer would have never happened. But .... reading through this and a few threads that already tackled this issue reminded me of a very particular "disablity" of myself.

I'm 37 years old, my hearing is very good, amazing even considering I played in two bands for a prolonged period of time. I can literally hear a tap leaking from 3 rooms away, and when I sleep in a room with an LCD screen that has a blinking LED to signal that it's in standby, I hear the power supply switching. I consider myself to be an attentive person, I read people very well, I would even consider myself talented in the shrewd art of empathy. Several physicians of different areas of medicine have independently confirmed that both my ears and my brain are in working order and do meet the standard of the general human. Still .... when two people in the same room at a moderate distance that do not have vastly different voices (like a high pitched female voice, and a low bass-bariton male voice) talk at the same time ... I understand .... nothing.

Needless to say conversation at something like a party is utterly impossible for me. But even a christmas dinner is something I can only manage employing lipreading and filling in the blanks extrapolating from how the conversation is going, and of course this invited some of the most entertaining and some of the most emberrasing misunderstandings of my life. My people know that I am like that, and most of the time they try to be considerate of that .... for about 15 minutes or so, after which everyone bursts out in uncontrolled conversation anyways. I've been accused of simply not listening, I've been accused of not caring, hell I've even had people call me stupid, and the worst kind suggest I'm suffering from some kind of autism, and I should just take this or that med.

The truth is: I don't know why I simply fail in this simple discipline even children master effortlessly, and so does nobody that should know. I never could do it, and having passed the age at which things do physically improve I can safely assume I never will. If there was an option I could tick that would make everyone in the room shut up when some is talking to me ... I would check that option so hard. But that option doesn't exist. So... I am effectively excluded from enjoying social gatherings. For life.

And I guess that's why I think, now that I actually really thought about it, that people should't be excluded from having fun in a game they love just because they can't tell north from south and all the trees look exactly the same.

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8 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

I've been accused of not caring, hell I've even had people call me stupid, and the worst kind suggest I'm suffering from some kind of autism, and I should just take this or that med.

It's a common issue. I suffer from it to a certain extend (I can focus on one person talking in a group but it's an effort, and after one or two hours my brain switches to I-am-not-here mode...). A friend of mine can't follow a one-to-one conversation with music in the background, even very low.
And yes, sure, it's an autistic trait. But autists are human, and "nothing human is alien to me". Everybody have autistic traits. The number and the extend of these traits can define one of the form of autism.
Tell this people that a diagnosis is a very complex procedure, it requires a lot of sciences (that most of these guys couldn't grasp) and a little of "art".

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Guest jeffpeng

@LkPAppreciated, but I don't wanna expand much more on this, or else it might become the "Jeff's stupid hearing disorder" thread :D But I've gone through pretty much everything short of letting Elon Musk put an electrode into my brain, and while theories to the cause are plentiful, solutions to the problem are prominently absent 😉 

 

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@jeffpeng, I'm not talking about excluding anyone either... I mean a player doesn't really need to be able to tell north from south, or even be aware of the sun in order to learn their way around a region (those are just other helpful things, if a player has the wherewithal to pick up on it).  All a player has to do is be able to remember/recognize a few basic shapes (landmarks for example) and have the presence of mind to identify whether those points of reference are in front of them, or behind them. :) It's really not much more complicated than that.  Each region is discrete, and given even just a little bit of exploration are not difficult to get familiar with (I mean, for goodness' sake... there are even helpful "Pointer Trees" that are basically cleverly disguised road signs aiming players to points of interest).

This is kind of starting to go round in circles, so I'll take one more crack at it and then I'm going to have to put the topic to bed (I'm generally not a fan of repeating myself, at least not in the same conversation :D).

 

On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 9:33 PM, ManicManiac said:

One can't make a difficult/challenging experience that's easy for everyone. ¬¬ Those are incongruous ideas.

I still stand by this statement.
 

On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 9:33 PM, ManicManiac said:

Accessibility Features: game options ostensibly meant to assist people with physical limitations use technology more easily - limited mobility, fine motor control, or equilibrium type issues... etcetera... etcetera.

[^referencing the context from my previous post]
I'm all for accessibility (for all the reasons I already stated in the previous posts on this thread), but when it comes down to hand-holding and safety netting... I say no.  To me there is a difference between a game assisting folks with physical limitations to more easily use technology, and a game compensating for a player's failure to pay attention, to learn, and apply rudimentary problem solving skills.


Speaking directly to what you have most recently proposed (about those types of things being "optional settings"), I'd be fine with that.  Like I said previously:

On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 9:33 PM, ManicManiac said:

if Hinterland wanted to sink the time and resources to make a thousand different "accessibility options" then I'd be in support of that; just as long as I can still opt-out.

 

:coffee::fire::coffee:
I can very much appreciate your new outlook, and I most sincerely do. 

 

--- on another note ---
This part is just something in general for anyone reading this, and meant to perhaps again try to help convey where my point of view is coming from...  I did obscure the text for those who don't want to look at such a long post :D 
-----------------------------

 

I think, people also need to take responsibility for themselves and the media they choose to consume:

I think a concept that is very difficult for folks in this day and age to realize is...
Not every piece of media is suitable for everyone. 
*To clarify* while everyone can consume any media they wish; not everything can suit everyone.
People need to seek out things that are right for them (it's a personal responsibility).

I think it would be silly for folks to knowingly go see a horror movie, and then go complaining to the production company about the gore (and then try to get them to change their movie to suit those individual's taste)...

Just like I think it's silly for folks to knowingly play a survival game, and then complain to the devs that it's difficult (and then try to get them to change their game to suit those individual's taste).     ***(once again, I'm not talking about "accessibility options" or "optional settings"... I'm talking about folks who want to change the game for everyone just to suit them)***

Of the video games out there that are made to be "easy for everyone"... I think it's safe to say they tend to be very bland, and present no real challenge for anyone.  So I say again to reiterate - not everything can be made to suit everyone.  This is why we have variety in our media.  If people don't like a certain thing, then they should exercise their purgative to go and seek out other things that better suit them.

The television equivalent is "viewer discretion" - meaning if a viewer doesn't like the thing that's on screen... it's up to the viewer to watch something else.  The same concept applies to video games. :) 

I think this is a game that is meant to be challenging... challenge implies difficulty... difficulty implies struggle... and for folks to want to water that down (I think) would be to undermine the experience that Hinterland has built.  Which is why I speak up when I see things on the forum that are leaning in that direction...

*Take for example: Ecco Jr. this is a game where it's virtually impossible to fail.  All one has to do is point their little dolphin at things and press the buttons... eventually they will beat the game (because it's so watered down that there is no other choice).  Some might remember this game and think to themselves, "I remember Ecco Jr... it was made for little kids!"  Correct! ...and that's the point. 

Ecco Jr. is a game that is perfectly easy for everyone (over the age of say... 6), and there is no challenge at all beyond a couple of rudimentary puzzles that can honestly be solved by accident (a.k.a. random button mashing).  There are no consequences for failure and literally anyone can experience the "full story" because all a person needs to invest in the game is the time it takes for the story to be played on their screen.

I just wouldn't ever want to see this game down the same road as Ecco Jr.  This is why when folks start wanting to add things that I think would start down that slippery slope, I speak up about it... because I love this game.  I love the working through the difficulties and the challenges (of gameplay in this context).  For me the struggle is what keeps me invested... if that went away, then I would likely just leave this game in my Steam Library along with all the others and seek out the "next thing."  I just don't want that to happen, I adore what this game/experience is... so I speak my point of view in the interests of protecting what I love about it.  :) 

Alright, all done now.  I didn't mean to be long winded... but, there it is.

Edited by ManicManiac
Obscured Personal Context
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Guest jeffpeng
5 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

I speak up about it... because I love this game.

And in that - devided we stand together, I guess 😉 

Funny how you and I can argue over pages while essentially voting for the same solution :D Not that we arrived at it from the same angle. 

 

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@jeffpeng
Well I didn't see it as an argument, I really just saw it as a discussion emergent from differing perspectives (regardless of the solution coming to more or less the same place - most would probably just call that a successful or productive discussion :D).

When you expressed you wanted to approach the topic from a other point of view (based on your thoughtful contemplations) I was happy to continue discussing it.  I very much enjoy good conversation.  You and I, by my estimations had a great conversation and I appreciate it.

:coffee::fire::coffee:

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