Feedback before the update

[Deseoso]

Hey Devs,

I just wanted to say that I have just finished part one and two of Wintermute in preparation for the upcoming release. I really enjoyed playing it. I had stopped playing the game for about a year prior to my current play-through and I really like all the new changes. I wasn't to excited about the old bear part of the game because, in my opinion, it is the one part of the game where things become extremely unrealistic. The rest of the game feels very realistic with all the survival elements. The bear however.......not so much. My main problem with the old bear is that you made it so the bear cannot be killed in the first fight, which would not have been a problem if the fight was handled differently. If you set the spear and the bear stayed out of reach trying to get past the spear and eventually runs off, then it would have felt realistic.

In the game I got mauled I think 3 or 4 times before finally taking down the bear. That is the one part that I feel lets that whole part of the story down. People have survived encounters with a bear in real life. Very few of them, if any, end up in a state where they could physically take on a bear a second time, let alone survive 3 bear maulings and still be able to kill it. And on the bear's side, I managed to bury the entire head of a winged spear into the chest of the bear 3 times and each time it ran off and came back again later? Sorry, that just wouldn't happen.

As for every other aspect of the game, top notch. This is by far my favourite survival game. For me it is, The Long Dark when I want arctic survival, Subnautica for marine survival and Green Hell for tropical survival.

Keep up the amazing work and I look forward to the next chapter in a few days.

[Raphael van Lierop]

9 hours ago, Deseoso said:

Hey Devs,

I just wanted to say that I have just finished part one and two of Wintermute in preparation for the upcoming release. I really enjoyed playing it. I had stopped playing the game for about a year prior to my current play-through and I really like all the new changes. I wasn't to excited about the old bear part of the game because, in my opinion, it is the one part of the game where things become extremely unrealistic. The rest of the game feels very realistic with all the survival elements. The bear however.......not so much. My main problem with the old bear is that you made it so the bear cannot be killed in the first fight, which would not have been a problem if the fight was handled differently. If you set the spear and the bear stayed out of reach trying to get past the spear and eventually runs off, then it would have felt realistic.

In the game I got mauled I think 3 or 4 times before finally taking down the bear. That is the one part that I feel lets that whole part of the story down. People have survived encounters with a bear in real life. Very few of them, if any, end up in a state where they could physically take on a bear a second time, let alone survive 3 bear maulings and still be able to kill it. And on the bear's side, I managed to bury the entire head of a winged spear into the chest of the bear 3 times and each time it ran off and came back again later? Sorry, that just wouldn't happen.

As for every other aspect of the game, top notch. This is by far my favourite survival game. For me it is, The Long Dark when I want arctic survival, Subnautica for marine survival and Green Hell for tropical survival.

Keep up the amazing work and I look forward to the next chapter in a few days.

Thanks for your feedback. Realism isn't really a goal or focus of the game, and if you think about it, there are a lot of other things that happen in WINTERMUTE (or even in Survival) that don't line up perfectly with reality. The challenge with building the encounter around the Bear and Bear Spear is that we need to give the player opportunities to learn how to use the new tools before it "really matters". I think with the legend of Spence, the story that Jeremiah tells Mackenzie over the fire, helps set the tone of the encounter and establishes that this isn't entirely about what is real. There's some wilderness mythology mixed in there, which keeps it interesting.

[ManicManiac]

@Deseoso
There is an episode of Sequelitits that expounds on some of what Raph is talking about.  Check it out if you like, it's funny and informative  

Sequelitis - Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X

 

I mean it's not a perfect match (contextually)... but it's still a good video essay about conveyance and certain elements of game design.
[Addendum]
oh... it does have (kind of a lot) of swearing so if you don't like that kind of stuff, then never mind I guess.   

Edited October 21, 2019 by ManicManiac
Edited for clarity

[MarrowStone]

4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I think with the legend of Spence, the story that Jeremiah tells Mackenzie over the fire, helps set the tone of the encounter and establishes that this isn't entirely about what is real. There's some wilderness mythology mixed in there, which keeps it interesting.

That's what I really loved about the Redux, it highlighted how the rules have changed in the Quiet Apocalypse and that this post-digital world is free to be a bit more mysterious. In a world full of science and technology we have stepped away from telling ghost stories and the like, but it's human nature to be compelled by the unknown.

I think a lot of issues people had with the repeating bear fight was that it wasn't clear you couldn't kill the bear until after it brought you into its lair, leading to some unnecessary fighting. But I don't know any way to get around this without spoiling the bear had a lair in the first place (which was a nice surprise!). 

[RegentRelic]

4 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Thanks for your feedback. Realism isn't really a goal or focus of the game, and if you think about it, there are a lot of other things that happen in WINTERMUTE (or even in Survival) that don't line up perfectly with reality. The challenge with building the encounter around the Bear and Bear Spear is that we need to give the player opportunities to learn how to use the new tools before it "really matters". I think with the legend of Spence, the story that Jeremiah tells Mackenzie over the fire, helps set the tone of the encounter and establishes that this isn't entirely about what is real. There's some wilderness mythology mixed in there, which keeps it interesting.

I have a complaint about the Bear fight that obviously doesn’t need to be addressed any time soon but, if you fight him without taking any damage (which is shockingly easy even on hardens survivor) there is only one animation. It felt weird for the expect same thing to happen all nine time on my recent re-playing.

[ManicManiac]

1 hour ago, MarrowStone said:

it wasn't clear you couldn't kill the bear until after it brought you into its lair

I don't know, I thought it was pretty clear.   After each encounter at the radio towers it ran off faster that I could generally catch it... after that repeated two more times I thought, "alright old bear... practice for the boss fight, huh?"

...and sure enough.   

 

1 hour ago, RegentRelic said:

there is only one animation

It didn't seem to me that unique animations for each encounter was nessisarry. 

Edited October 21, 2019 by ManicManiac

[RegentRelic]

Like I said it’s not to important, but I would like one or two new animations that play randomly.

[ManicManiac]

@RegentRelic
Fair enough, I wasn't trying to insinuate anything... just weighing in. 

[ThePancakeLady]

I enjoyed dealing with the Old Bear, in all of my playthroughs of Wintermute Redux. 

Even the first playthrough, when Redux first dropped, The first conversation with Jeremiah about the bear, and the cutscene that went int the Spence Legend, it was clear t me that dealing with the bear was not going to be easy, and I would be dealing with a unicorn... a mythological creature, not a "normal" one. And yeah, I died 5 or 6 times while figuring out how to deal with him. (Yay autosaves, manual saves and checkpoints!) It was a puzzle I had to figure out and solve, especially the path I needed to take through the cave. And all of the bodies there... made it clear this was not going to be "easy". 

Honestly, I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed the original Predux Episode Old Bear fights. (Fog is my nemesis in the game, in Survival mode, Challenge Modes and in Wintemute... and I wonder if The Fog is going to get me killed a number of times in Episode 3. **Likely**)

I did find the Accessibility Option of "Click & Hold for struggles" helped greatly. Both because my hands hurt (arthritis and tendonitis) if I have to try to click rapidly and rhythmically, and on my old rig (a toaster) I always had what felt like input lag or missed input from clicking due to lower fps. So, it solves both an accessibility concern, and it solves a technical issue for people playing on lower end rigs, or using an older non-gaming mouse. It was a wonderful solution for me, and several other people I have talked to about it, and recommended they try it. (Much better even than the voice command/voice control SW I wrote to allow me to play piano builds in some of my favorite aRPG hack & slash games without clicking a ton and "breaking" my mouse hand, and that I got working for this game before the Accessibility Options were added to it. Huge thanks to Hinterland for adding these!)

This last playthrough, since I knew where I needed to go, and what I needed to do in Ep 1 and Ep 2, I concentrated on the actual story, and lore. The notes and pamphlets we find, the dialogues with the NPCs (subtitles on so I did not miss a word). Many screenshots taken. Time spent in the game, and after finishing Ep2 again, spent tying to place the lore notes and pamphlets in order, reading and re-reading them, and seeing connections I missed in previous playthroughs. I feel like I know the story better, and have a better feel for the "mythology", the religious and political tie-ins and views, (the pamphlet on The History Of the Collapse have some really good info, if you read them all in order, and take a bit to let the information sink in, and see how it relates to life on GBI, IMHO). I fully intend on scouring the world in Ep 3, looking for more, all of it. And going back to trying to place it all in order with what I found in Ep 1 & 2. I think skipping over reading all of the notes and pamphlets, and not paying attention to the dialogue with NPCs means you miss a great deal of the developing story, and the history of the island and the "Outside World" that Will and Astrid came from.

 

Episode 3... less than a day away! Onward!

[Ruruwawa]

10 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

I don't know, I thought it was pretty clear.   After each encounter at the radio towers it ran off faster that I could generally catch it... after that repeated two more times I thought, "alright old bear... practice for the boss fight, huh?"

It didn't click for me this way, despite playing plenty of fantasy games with boss fights.  In TLD you pick up a knife, or prybar, or rifle, then you discovered by doing when and where to use it -- anywhere in the world (even the story version of the world).  I thought the spear would be similar; I even tried it on a wolf.  During the "practice" fights, I just figured I was still not doing it right.   If I'd found the spear in the cave, the "this-is-a-special-boss-fight-mechanic" thing would have been obvious.

Like @ThePancakeLady I still prefer the new spear mechanic to the bear fight in the original Wintermute -- by a lot!  I died a couple times learning the new cave mechanics, especially (again) that I couldn't just use the spear on the bear anywhere in the cave.  But was definitely more engaging and fun.  Plus no fog.  Yeah, I get it, fog is one way to create suspense in TLD but (for me) fog also feels tedious.  Being trapped in the cave with a super bear was far more exciting.

[RegentRelic]

4 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

This last playthrough, since I knew where I needed to go, and what I needed to do in Ep 1 and Ep 2, I concentrated on the actual story, and lore. The notes and pamphlets we find, the dialogues with the NPCs (subtitles on so I did not miss a word). Many screenshots taken. Time spent in the game, and after finishing Ep2 again, spent tying to place the lore notes and pamphlets in order, reading and re-reading them, and seeing connections I missed in previous playthroughs. I feel like I know the story better, and have a better feel for the "mythology", the religious and political tie-ins and views, (the pamphlet on The History Of the Collapse have some really good info, if you read them all in order, and take a bit to let the information sink in, and see how it relates to life on GBI, IMHO). I fully intend on scouring the world in Ep 3, looking for more, all of it. And going back to trying to place it all in order with what I found in Ep 1 & 2. I think skipping over reading all of the notes and pamphlets, and not paying attention to the dialogue with NPCs means you miss a great deal of the developing story, and the history of the island and the "Outside World" that Will and Astrid came from.

 

Episode 3... less than a day away! Onward!

I have system that really forced me to pay attention to dialogue and notes. I didn't use the map. Granted I this was on my recent re-playing of wintermute but things like finding supply caches really forced me to get into the nitty gritty details of the game. I am excited do this with episode three because I want already know what I am supposed to do  and don't have the map memorized (all except Milton, I barley go there), so I will be working unfamiliar terrain. I am still working out how to make it more punishing. I want to do perma-death but is the episodes main story alone is four hours long with I am sure so moments you need to play just right to survive then I might be sitting there for days. Actually on second thought I did just bet episodes one and two without dyeing so maybe it is realistic.

Edited October 21, 2019 by RegentRelic

[ManicManiac]

8 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

I enjoyed dealing with the Old Bear...
...Honestly, I enjoyed it far more than I enjoyed the original Predux Episode Old Bear fights...

Absolutely, the Old Bear was the highlight of Episode 2.
 

Edited October 21, 2019 by ManicManiac

[LucidFugue]

Chiming in as I also just finished Redux Ep 2 and while the new Bear fight is a big improvement on the previous one, I found the sequence of recovering the spear through the cave to be particularly frustrating. The voice clips and text give an indication that I should be trying to stealth through. But crouched movement speed is slower than all wildlife and there is no grace period or indicator for detection. That's fine when you are the predator, but it is frustrating when you are the prey. Once detected, your only option is to run. The rear up and roar animation of the Bear is long enough that I eventually found myself better off just sprinting from cover to cover through this section. 

I felt misled by the 2nd cave section because the dead body is a clear point of interest as one enters the section. Icy running water is not something you want to expose yourself to under normal cicumstances. It was only in desperation after observing its patrols and looping back to the first section that I wound up risking the river cave entry. At this point the linear level design with one path for the Bear between sections and one path for the player became clear. 

I probably died 3-5 times through this level and it was the first time in redux where I felt frustrated by the design. The world was linear with only one route that meant success, every alternative resulted in death.