Wintermute (story mode) seems quite unpopular.

[SysGhost]

I've played through the Wintermute now, and I love the story so far. Well thought out characters. Superb voice acting. Very well done cut scenes (In the gaming world, this is hard to do right).
I got a load of achievements for it too. But I do notice one worrying thing about the achievements: All of the achievements that comes from the story mode are all super-rare. This tells me a lot of players do play this game, but less than 5% of all players have even touched Wintermute. Even the very first achievement which anyone playing story mode even for the 10 first minutes will get is super rare.

I'm surprised that so few actually don't even touch the story mode (Wintermute). A lot of players miss out on a lot of content, tips and tricks that one learn through it. Especially a lot of well hidden points of interest that is super helpful in the challenge mode.

How come? Are TLD players really skipping out on wintermute? If you're one of them who skipped out on Wintermute, please do share with us why.
Almost seem the developers put a lot of effort into it and less than 5% of the TLD players even care.

[Leeanda]

Not sure if you get as many  achievements on other consoles compared to pc . I did notice a low percentage when I did story mode,but I've had similar experiences on other games which I knew weren't true. Not sure why they did that, maybe  some psychological  reason.? I know not everyone has completed it or done any story at all but  whether that percentage is accurate ,I highly doubt it.  I got achievements for completing the side missions ,I think. Which I didn't even do. Perhaps they're just never updated ,who knows.!?

[SysGhost]

7 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

Not sure if you get as many  achievements on other consoles compared to pc . I did notice a low percentage when I did story mode,but I've had similar experiences on other games which I knew weren't true. Not sure why they did that, maybe  some psychological  reason.? I know not everyone has completed it or done any story at all but  whether that percentage is accurate ,I highly doubt it.  I got achievements for completing the side missions ,I think. Which I didn't even do. Perhaps they're just never updated ,who knows.!?

I might be wrong here, but take the very first achievement where one survive the very first night after the plane crash. Anyone getting at least that far will get that achievement. Steam tells me less than 5% of all players who own TLD on steam have it. The other upcoming achievements one get for simply finishing the chapters in the story are even rarer. That tells me some of those 5% who did get past the first night in Wintermute never finished the first chapter.

These are achievements one get no matter what as long as one simply follow the story no matter how bad or if one never engage in side quests. They're "earned" simply for going through the story. They can't be missed unless one never play the story mode altogether.

Edited December 30, 2021 by SysGhost

[Leeanda]

2 hours ago, SysGhost said:

I might be wrong here, but take the very first achievement where one survive the very first night after the plane crash. Anyone getting at least that far will get that achievement. Steam tells me less than 5% of all players who own TLD on steam have it. The other upcoming achievements one get for simply finishing the chapters in the story are even rarer. That tells me some of those 5% who did get past the first night in Wintermute never finished the first chapter.

These are achievements one get no matter what as long as one simply follow the story no matter how bad or if one never engage in side quests. They're "earned" simply for going through the story. They can't be missed unless one never play the story mode altogether.

I take your point but as I said I've had some games telling me more or less the same thing when I know it's not remotely likely. I personally think they just never get updated .  Having said that Steam does tend to give the game away for free or a ridiculously low price quite often,so I should imagine that They get it cos it's free then they either play it for a bit of it sits there untouched ,sadly.  This is just my opinion and I may be wrong but I have spoken to a few people before who do get all these games for free and then they never play them.

[APixelatedLemon]

From someone that thinks Wintermute is just decent I can say the reason as to why I don't like it is because I find survival mode to be so much better. The Long Dark is one of my favourite game ever, being one of two of my favourite survival games ever made, and it is because of mainly survival mode. I don't hate Wintermute but I don't see myself replaying them after I'm done playing them for the first time. However survival mode I think I will be replaying for many years to come. 

As to the specific reason is because Wintermute has a set in stone story line. Now some people like that, and sometimes I do to depending on the game. But for TLD I think it's better when I make up my own story, rather then just following the story of Will and Astrid.

Overall though I do like parts of Wintermute, but I like to stay in survival mode a lot more.

[Morrick]

8 hours ago, SysGhost said:

If you're one of them who skipped out on Wintermute, please do share with us why.
Almost seem the developers put a lot of effort into it and less than 5% of the TLD players even care.

I'm simply waiting for all the episodes to be released. I've played a bit of Episode 1, just to get a feel of how Wintermute plays as opposed to Survival Mode, but I wouldn't like to finish an episode on a possible cliffhanger to then wait months before a new one is released. I know it's been a long wait, but Survival Mode has successfully kept me busy and entertained. 

[Mistral]

They are okay for what they are, but the dialogue and melodramatic characters are too cringe worthy for me. Also the gameplay is way too easy even on the hardest level. I guess they work well in producing optional bonus content to Survival just like the Challenges do. Sometimes when watching Youtube Lets Plays I wonder though, do many of the people who try out Wintermute but never touch Survival (there seem to be quite few) really get much of a real sense of the game at all...

Edited December 31, 2021 by Mistral

[Dr. S.]

On 12/30/2021 at 7:48 AM, SysGhost said:

I might be wrong here, but take the very first achievement where one survive the very first night after the plane crash. Anyone getting at least that far will get that achievement. Steam tells me less than 5% of all players who own TLD on steam have it. The other upcoming achievements one get for simply finishing the chapters in the story are even rarer. That tells me some of those 5% who did get past the first night in Wintermute never finished the first chapter.

These are achievements one get no matter what as long as one simply follow the story no matter how bad or if one never engage in side quests. They're "earned" simply for going through the story. They can't be missed unless one never play the story mode altogether.

What platform are you on? When I look at the global steam achievements on my Mac, I see the following:

Your Journey Begins (Escape the ravine after your crash.) Completed by 53.6% of players. This is the most common achievement.

Leaving the Old World Behind (Leave Milton. Complete Episode One.) Completed by 21.8% of players. (6th most common achievement.)

You'll Be With Her Soon (Leave Mystery Lake. Complete Episode Two.) Completed by 9.5% of players.

So that's a lot more than 5%. For comparison, I see that 49.8% of players are reported to have survived one night in survival mode.

FWIW, I played about 500 hours of survival mode before I even attempted Wintermute. (This was when there were only two episodes.) Having now played all 4 that are out, I'm not super impressed. I don't feel like the player has much freedom to make decisions or affect the storyline. As a point of comparison, Firewatch is a very different game (but similar in some ways) that I thought was much more compelling from a story-telling POV.

 

[Kranium]

IMO, story mode is best experienced as your first experience with the game.

[odizzido]

I am waiting for the game to come out of early access before I play it. I would much rather play the story mode when it's done and patched up but I still purchased the game early so I could help fund development. Story mode is what I really care about even though time wise it looks like I don't care.

[SpitztheGreat]

This is something that I commented on a few weeks ago; if the stats are accurate then Wintermute is all but dead with players. I play on PS4, and the achievements for Episode 4 are all listed as "Ultra Rare". Just like you said, even the very first achievement in the episode which should take like 30 minutes to unlock is "Ultra Rare". If that's the case then no one who downloads the game is even bothering with Wintermute.

To me it's pretty clear that Wintermute in its current form was a mistake. The devs have poured their hearts and souls into it, and I think it's a very respectable product, but from the time they announced their plans for a story mode, to when episodes 1 and 2 were released, years passed. And then they went back and remade the episodes with a new engine, and that cost another 12+ months. In all of that time, the community gravitated towards survival mode and stayed there. Hinterland caught lightning in a bottle with survival mode, and they've done a fantastic job of supporting and nurturing it for years. Meanwhile, Wintermute feels like a niche passion project. They put a ton of effort into it, even though it doesn't seem to be what 95% of players care about. The wait for Episode 4 pretty much broke any interest I have in the mode, I'll happily play Episode 5 but another 12 to 15 month wait for the episode pretty much kills any momentum Wintermute built.

On 1/1/2022 at 6:59 PM, odizzido said:

I am waiting for the game to come out of early access before I play it. I would much rather play the story mode when it's done and patched up but I still purchased the game early so I could help fund development. Story mode is what I really care about even though time wise it looks like I don't care.

To each their own, but this feels like a really odd choice. You bought a game, and are going to wait years to play it, even survival mode? Just in case you aren't aware, this game is NOT a buggy mess, if your afraid that the game is unplayable until it's finished because of bugs you're badly mistaken. But meanwhile you're totally missing out on the awesome survival mode. I'll admit, I came for the story mode too. I didn't think survival would interest me at all, and when I saw this game had a story mode I figured "Ok, that's what I want." But survival mode is really great and it's the core of the game. If you can do some role playing in your head, it becomes a really compelling game mode. Once you get into survival mode, Wintermute feels like the kiddie's pool.

[SysGhost]

I've looked through my achievements now again. and the numbers have updated to something much more realistic.
A friend of mine told me that the achievement percentages can sometimes be very misrepresenting due to various factors. One can erase the local steam client folder in linux to force steam to update and re-cache everything. (Erasing /home/username/.local/share/Steam and then relaunch the distribution packaged steam client)
afaik, the steam client is a glorified web browser specialized towards one specific service. Erasing the mentioned folder clear out the "browsers" cache files. One could probably deep-dive and erase these cache-files individually, but I didn't bother with that tedious task. Erasing and having it redownload the latest update was much easier.

I cal also say that other games have achievements updated properly, thanks to this.

WARNING: If you haven't manually set a different game storage folder elsewhere, this will also erase all your games, forcing you to redownload them again. Most games should have save data stored in the cloud, but there's  chance even saves are erased if the steam cloud sync is turned off.

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by SysGhost
Warning added.

[SysGhost]

On 1/1/2022 at 8:23 PM, Dr. S. said:

FWIW, I played about 500 hours of survival mode before I even attempted Wintermute. (This was when there were only two episodes.) Having now played all 4 that are out, I'm not super impressed. I don't feel like the player has much freedom to make decisions or affect the storyline. As a point of comparison, Firewatch is a very different game (but similar in some ways) that I thought was much more compelling from a story-telling POV.

 

I beg to differ on the "has much freedom" part to some degree.
One can play the game "as intended" with most of the freedom during Wintermute episodes. Some areas might be cordoned off due to storyline progression reasons, but other than that there's not much hindering one to do whatever one would like to between the cut scenes.

I took this to heart during episode 4, where I just left the meanies in the blackrock prison for themselves while I just lived off the land like a regular survival game. I went for weeks hunting wolves, making wolfskin coats, rabbit mitts etc. Ran all the side quests with plenty of time in between too. Found most of the secret caches and bunkers. I even prepped out one of the bunkers for a long term survival.

I almost felt bad for leaving the the prison ward in the hands of the baddies for that long. Them living off mouldy snack bars and banged up dog food can, I lived the life with fresh grilled wolf steaks and tasty rabbit meat.
I did eventually get back to the main story with a "Ach screw this. Let's see where the story leads us next."

Edited January 3, 2022 by SysGhost

[Dr. S.]

1 hour ago, SysGhost said:

I beg to differ on the "has much freedom" part to some degree.
One can play the game "as intended" with most of the freedom during Wintermute episodes. Some areas might be cordoned off due to storyline progression reasons, but other than that there's not much hindering one to do whatever one would like to between the cut scenes.

I took this to heart during episode 4, where I just left the meanies in the blackrock prison for themselves while I just lived off the land like a regular survival game. I went for weeks hunting wolves, making wolfskin coats, rabbit mitts etc. Ran all the side quests with plenty of time in between too. Found most of the secret caches and bunkers. I even prepped out one of the bunkers for a long term survival.

But that's exactly my point. None of that had any effect on the storyline at all. A more immersive, less linear game would respond to player choices. This is especially true of the more time-critical missions, like saving the superintendent, or the trapper in Episode 2. If you can go live off the land for weeks during these missions, what's the point of the story or the missions? If you do that, you should come back to find them dead.

If you can go off for weeks with no effect on the story, that's not freedom of action, it's irrelevance of action.

[SysGhost]

1 minute ago, Dr. S. said:

But that's exactly my point. None of that had any effect on the storyline at all. A more immersive, less linear game would respond to player choices. This is especially true of the more time-critical missions, like saving the superintendent, or the trapper in Episode 2. If you can go live off the land for weeks during these missions, what's the point of the story or the missions? If you do that, you should come back to find them dead.

If you can go off for weeks with no effect on the story, that's not freedom of action, it's irrelevance of action.

Aha! Now I get you. Yeah I did find that a wee bit immersion breaking.

[dbmurph22]

I think a lot of people play and enjoy story mode.  I don't think it's unpopular at all.

There is a good slice of people who play survival and haven't played story mode, as you say.  However, you'll likely hear more from survival mode players if only because of the repetition and hours.  Many do both.  But those that play story mode and not much survival aren't likely to be heard from as much as the opposite (though it doesn't mean they didn't enjoy their experience or even that it was lukewarm).

[odizzido]

21 hours ago, SpitztheGreat said:

To each their own, but this feels like a really odd choice. You bought a game, and are going to wait years to play it, even survival mode? Just in case you aren't aware, this game is NOT a buggy mess, if your afraid that the game is unplayable until it's finished because of bugs you're badly mistaken. But meanwhile you're totally missing out on the awesome survival mode. I'll admit, I came for the story mode too. I didn't think survival would interest me at all, and when I saw this game had a story mode I figured "Ok, that's what I want." But survival mode is really great and it's the core of the game. If you can do some role playing in your head, it becomes a really compelling game mode. Once you get into survival mode, Wintermute feels like the kiddie's pool.

I am old and patient. I want to play at my own pace so I can remember what happens in the story best. I am also happy to wait for my experience to be as good as it can be, bug wise. I have tried survival for a while, but it's not really the experience I want. Once/if modding gets enough support I may look at it but until then I am not interested in playing TLD.