Ugh...this game.

[Sunwolf]

This is not the game I bought so many years ago.

I bought a survival game, with minimal civilization intrusions, that let me wander around and interact with the world on my terms.  There were no quests or objectives or anything pressing to do.  It was, despite the difficulty and constant sense of menace from the environment, peaceful.

After an extended break, I returned to find all kinds of new and frankly unwelcome additions.  Most of the new zones are heavily focused around human activity/facilities.  New mechanics are mostly based on new human-constructed items.  There are now fetch and deliver quests, of a sort, involving electrical equipment and radio towers and some such, and in my opinion the whole Blackrock access thing is godawful.  I appreciate that many of you may enjoy this kind of thing.  But I'm not speaking for you.  I'm speaking for me, and I do not.

Is there any way to download and play an older version of the game?  Pre-Bleak Inlet perhaps?

[SpanishMoss]

In fact there is! If you have the steam versions you can use the Time Capsule feature, and play the game at most version levels! There's a link on the forums home page that shows you how to use it

[ManicManiac]

13 minutes ago, SpanishMoss said:

If you have the steam versions you can use the Time Capsule feature

Yes indeed. 👆

For the other platforms that can't support that feature (specifically because it was a feature available to Hinterland on the Steam platform)... Another solution is to just simply choose to keep to the regions one likes best.  Just because a region is there, doesn't mean we have to anything more than maybe pass through it on the way to places we like better.

If there are pieces of gear or items we don't like... we can also simply choose not to use them.

The point is, just because an update introduces us to something we may not like... we can still exercise player choice, and just choose to avoid those things/places.

Edited October 14, 2023 by ManicManiac

[stapeliad]

On infrequent occasion I get nostalgic and go back to the second version of the game, which is what I started on.
It's fun to stroll through the old graphics, meet Fluffy in the dam, marvel at the empty space in the dam and Camp Office which I was once so disoriented to see filled up with junk, I still haven't figured out the old bow mechanics but I'm very deadly with the current system.....

It's fun, then after a while feels limited.

Fetch quests are tedious and finishing Signal Void was indeed a grind, but it did get me moving out of my familiar routines and as a result expanded my scope and overall enjoyment of the game. I enjoy the challenges as well.  In my current sandbox, at 502 days now, Signal Void completed and all regions mostly mapped except Blackrock, I haven't even been there yet on this run.  It's not my favorite place either.  (Milton is also not my favorite.)

The first three maps have a lot of human infrastructure.

There really is plenty in the game you can just avoid without it affecting your game too much, until you run out of a particular resource that can't be found in the wild. Even with all the additions, IMHO, it still retains that peaceful solitude.

Edited October 15, 2023 by stapeliad

[Mistral]

I loved Hushed River Valley especially for the reason that it was completely empty of human presence (other than the odd ruined snowshelter and rope here and there). I always wished for more maps like that, true wilderness where you had to sleep under the stars isolated, not sleeping in luxury preheated mansions. But the new updates gear towards ever more civilization, more and more items to already overloaded item list, "guests", "traders", more beachcombing, bunkers. They've now even added bunker to HRV. You can't eliminate any of that with Custom settings, which is a shame. Playing with pretending they don't exist is exhausting.

How about, in the Custom settings, you had options for

* Beachcombing (ON/OFF)
* Bunkers (ON/OFF)
* Trader (ON/OFF)
* Narrative tales (ON/OFF)
* Aurora turns electricity on (ON/OFF)
* Glimmer fog (ON/OFF)
* Static temperatures indoors (ON/OFF)
* Guaranteed item spawns (ON/OFF)
* Skill level when animal crafting possible (L1/L2/L3/L4/L5)
Etc etc etc

Edited October 15, 2023 by Mistral