Episode 5 ??

[Leeanda]

600 days in and I've still got plenty of lantern fuel,without having had to fish..   torches are mostly free and they don't have to be great ones just to search a house quickly or go through the dam..or cave..

If I don't have a light source at all, I just pass time until it's light enough or waste a match but that is very rare.    But some places do seem to be too dark when they shouldn't really..   I find it harder seeing outdoors at night in poor conditions which is why I stay indoors and sleep .

I can't use mods but I know they can cause bugs,as can having multiple saves so maybe they should be checked before blaming hinterland ..?

 

 

[Leeanda]

8 minutes ago, AdamvR said:

I'm sorry to hear that - it must be awful to get headaches from the game we like so much...
it only shows up automatically after first installing, so it is easy to forget about, but there is a setting/brightness where one can play with the slider to find the right balance for them - maybe you can find a setting that is more comfortable, but still challenging.
(as I continue to believe, that in addition to realism, the indoors are also darker on purpose, so that one cannot find all loot/move around in caves without using torch or lantern)
Hope it can help you.

I've tried adjusting brightness both in game and on my TV and it seems to affect the picture.. plus when you get very sunny days it can really hurt the eyes..   whether that's the Xbox or just me I don't know..     possiblity me lol...  but I hope it helps @UpUpAway95  and others.

 

[UpUpAway95]

4 hours ago, AdamvR said:

I'm sorry to hear that - it must be awful to get headaches from the game we like so much...
it only shows up automatically after first installing, so it is easy to forget about, but there is a setting/brightness where one can play with the slider to find the right balance for them - maybe you can find a setting that is more comfortable, but still challenging.
(as I continue to believe, that in addition to realism, the indoors are also darker on purpose, so that one cannot find all loot/move around in caves without using torch or lantern)
Hope it can help you.

I have fiddled with the brightness settings a bunch and I even change them a bit as I'm playing to give my eyes a "different" view and rest them a bit.  The issue is more about the different between the high gain and low gain atmospheres; that is, continually moving from the whiteness of the scenes outside into the total blackness of most of the interiors.

I do pull torches from fires to use as I search.  I still burn through more supplies than  others because torches blow out between buildings (requiring more matches overall).  For that reason, I do use my lanterns and fuel whenever and wherever I find them.  In other words, I do get by; but it would be nicer and more comfortable on my eyes if the games lighting were more friendly.

Please also note, as I've aged, my eyes have gotten worse (pupils are very much slower to adjust to lighting changes) and I get headaches.   It's just a part of growing old.  Eventually, I'll hit a point where I'll probably have to stop gaming altogether - but I'm not at that point yet; and I'm grateful for that.😀Growing old is really just an exercise in Perseverence (Mills).  Can't wait for Episode 5.

[LostRealist]

5 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

continually moving from the whiteness of the scenes outside into the total blackness of most of the interiors.

While it's definitely not nice that it's giving you outright headaches when playing the game, my instant thought on that is "Try that in real life then"... so long as we're talking about dipping in and out of Townhomes or something on a loot run, it's pretty spot on. Without artificial lighting, coming indoors after spending hours surrounded by white is very hard on human eyes.

I honestly never thought much about the darkness of interior locations in TLD. Yeah, many times you can't see jack, but light sources are available and I always considered "conservation of resources vs. ability to see things" as part of the balancing of this game. But that's just my two cents. I'm obviously far from pleased to hear that it causes physical symptoms for you, that's nasty.

I just don't see an easy way to fix it. The stark contrast between the snowy outdoors and the mostly wooden, brown or dark grey interiors would always remain...

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, LostRealist said:

While it's definitely not nice that it's giving you outright headaches when playing the game, my instant thought on that is "Try that in real life then"... so long as we're talking about dipping in and out of Townhomes or something on a loot run, it's pretty spot on. Without artificial lighting, coming indoors after spending hours surrounded by white is very hard on human eyes.

I honestly never thought much about the darkness of interior locations in TLD. Yeah, many times you can't see jack, but light sources are available and I always considered "conservation of resources vs. ability to see things" as part of the balancing of this game. But that's just my two cents. I'm obviously far from pleased to hear that it causes physical symptoms for you, that's nasty.

I just don't see an easy way to fix it. The stark contrast between the snowy outdoors and the mostly wooden, brown or dark grey interiors would always remain...

Agree - there is no easy way to fix it.  This game has white exteriors due to snow and dark interiors due to their being no electricity and a requirement, on some maps, to jump between those two lighting conditions rapidly.  I don't have as much discomfort with games that have more evenly lit environments.

In addition, when I started playing, some interiors were more lit than they are now.  I could, for example, see without a torch to at least walk through the Carter Dam.  Now, it's impossible for me to walk even just beyond the entrance doors without getting stuck on the furniture along the way or walk right into a wall.  If it's not that they've made the interior darker than years ago and it's just my old eyes, I'm more concerned because it means I'm losing vision rather quickly and I can look forward to a white cane in my near future.  Hopefully, it is just that they decided to make the interiors darker than before.

[LostRealist]

1 minute ago, UpUpAway95 said:

If it's not that they've made the interior darker than years ago and it's just my old eyes, I'm more concerned because it means I'm losing vision rather quickly and I can look forward to a white cane in my near future.  Hopefully, it is just that they decided to make the interiors darker than before.

While I can't say this for myself - having played this game very on and off for many years now, I usually take breaks from it long enough to miss a good handful of updates, so I can't compare - I have heard multiple mentions of this. I think it's almost consensus that the indoor lighting conditions have seen their fair share of tinkering over the years, so you probably needn't worry over your eyesight because of the game.

[Leeanda]

14 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Agree - there is no easy way to fix it.  This game has white exteriors due to snow and dark interiors due to their being no electricity and a requirement, on some maps, to jump between those two lighting conditions rapidly.  I don't have as much discomfort with games that have more evenly lit environments.

In addition, when I started playing, some interiors were more lit than they are now.  I could, for example, see without a torch to at least walk through the Carter Dam.  Now, it's impossible for me to walk even just beyond the entrance doors without getting stuck on the furniture along the way or walk right into a wall.  If it's not that they've made the interior darker than years ago and it's just my old eyes, I'm more concerned because it means I'm losing vision rather quickly and I can look forward to a white cane in my near future.  Hopefully, it is just that they decided to make the interiors darker than before.

It isn't your eyesight... Places  like the dam have got a lot darker .  Maybe something in the accessibility section could be implemented..

[UpUpAway95]

3 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

It isn't your eyesight... Places  like the dam have got a lot darker .  Maybe something in the accessibility section could be implemented..

An accessibility option to adjust interior/exterior contrast in lighting would be a wonderful thing for me.  Not sure whether they'll ever do it, but it would extend my ability to play by quite a bit.

[Leeanda]

4 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

An accessibility option to adjust interior/exterior contrast in lighting would be a wonderful thing for me.  Not sure whether they'll ever do it, but it would extend my ability to play by quite a bit.

There's no harm in asking though..  you're not the only one who has issues with their eyesight,or the lighting in the game..  

Sometimes I have to hide indoors or even switch the game off because the bright snow is just too much.

[hozz1235]

For as long as I can remember, first thing I do when entering a building or cave, strike up the lantern.  Not only does it help the eyes (mine are old also!) but it also helps find those sneaky hidden items.

[LostRealist]

45 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

For as long as I can remember, first thing I do when entering a building or cave, strike up the lantern.  Not only does it help the eyes (mine are old also!) but it also helps find those sneaky hidden items.

True. First visit to a potentially lootworthy location, never without a light source, even if it's bright enough to see.

[KingFuzz]

On 10/29/2023 at 1:56 PM, peteloud said:

I can only assume that you are relatively new to the game.

I started playing around 2017 or 2018, I think with version 1.37, or something like that.  In my first few years of playing some interiors were terrible, almost as black as the ace of spades. Some were OK.  I would bet that there were faults in the algorithms to cause it.  But that is not the point.  Even if it was an accurate reproduction of illumination levels inside a room with small windows it ruined the gameplay and needed changing.   It steadily improved over the years. 

In my recent test of the game I was quite impressed with the lighting when going through a cave.  In a long cave or tunnel there would be no light whatsoever so everything would be full black if represented accurately.  That would be no good in a game. In my recent test I found that there was just enough to see a little, but not much.  As I went through that cave I thought to myself, how well the developers had chosen the level of illumination.

Games are meant to be enjoyable.  They must make things difficult so that one has a feeling of satisfaction when one conquers that difficulty.  To make make something unneccesarily and unreasonably difficult makes a bad game.

As I sat writing the comment, with a couple of stubbie beers, I could not help but to reflect on the earlier comment about Mods.  I suspect that the addition of the capabilities of some well chosen mods would add more enjoyment to the game than all stuff about acorns and baking pancakes.

You get that this game isn’t meant to be easy, right? Bugs are one thing but having to light a torch in a dark room is part of the game. It seems like you just don’t like the core game. No slight towards you. Makes sense why you want to use mods. But calling a game bad because you don’t like it is far from constructive. 

[peteloud]

11 hours ago, KingFuzz said:

You get that this game isn’t meant to be easy, right? Bugs are one thing but having to light a torch in a dark room is part of the game. It seems like you just don’t like the core game. No slight towards you. Makes sense why you want to use mods. But calling a game bad because you don’t like it is far from constructive. 

I have played the game for over 6,000 hours.  This suggests that I like the game and understand the problems better than most.

There is difference between making the game difficult and problems due to having errors in the code.

[AdamvR]

12 minutes ago, peteloud said:

understand the problems better than most.

I found that when someone does not appear to share my viewpoint, it is better to try to figure out why, than call them stupid/inexperienced - this I find to help in multiple areas of life (and yes, my eyes are also getting older...)
So, let me try to understand your standpoint : are you saying, that the indoors are dark, not because they were meant to make you decide whether you use resources to light them up, but because of a mistake in the code? Or something else?
 

[peteloud]

1 hour ago, AdamvR said:

So, let me try to understand your standpoint : are you saying, that the indoors are dark, not because they were meant to make you decide whether you use resources to light them up, but because of a mistake in the code? Or something else?
 

Yes.  That  certainly was the case in earlier years. I've not been playing much recently  so it, might be better now.

[UpUpAway95]

18 hours ago, KingFuzz said:

You get that this game isn’t meant to be easy, right? Bugs are one thing but having to light a torch in a dark room is part of the game. It seems like you just don’t like the core game. No slight towards you. Makes sense why you want to use mods. But calling a game bad because you don’t like it is far from constructive. 

Making the game more annoying or tedious is not necessarily improving it in terms of it being challenging.  (I find that a number of games seem to confuse this difference, resulting in games with things like menial and repetitive fetch quests or enemies that just take more and more bullets (or arrows) to kill, etc.)

Yes there are errors in the lighting code - mostly in lighting in areas not updating correctly or, if you will, consistently.  Some of those issues have been persistent and some of the efforts to fix them is, I'm convinced, why we have some much darker interiors than they used to be previously.  Many of the lighting changes occurred in conjunction with the "split" between survival and Wintermute (not sure, then, if the changes were by intent or coincidence or lingering errors or new errors in the code).

I don't think @peteloud is necessarily trying to make the game "easy."  I'm sure he does uses torches, etc.  Hopefully, there are still adjustments they can make to make the game more comfortable on the eyes (so I can play for longer periods of time and without undue eye strain).  I also don't feel that players should have to fall back on using mods.  They should be able to expect that the devs will deliver to them the best game they can without relying on modders to fix such issues for them  I have nothing against mods, but feel they should be for "fun additions" rather than for fixing problems in the game.

Edited November 1, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[peteloud]

3 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

. . . . . .

I don't think @peteloud is necessarily trying to make the game "easy."  . . . .

Thanks for explaining that more fully.

Having been disappointed with the DLC,  I have given mods a bit more thought.  For years I was against Mods, not all mods, mods that I regarded a cheats. Before someone says it, the House Lights mod that I have used for about my last year of playing, makes it easier so that is a cheat too.

My thoughts have been on incorporating some of the Mods into the standard game. This could have created much more enjoyable gameplay than the acorn & pancake stuff.  But a bigger advantage is that it could have resulted in an improved game very quickly and asuming that HTL paid some sort of royalty to the mod developer,  it could have been much cheaper than using a full devlopment team to create new material.

I have used very few mods and only in relatively recent days, House Lights, another for clearing up rubbish, and another for removing corpses.  I think I used one for saving anything time I wanted.   I think Permadeath is a very bad aspect of the game.  I always back up my saves, which I agree is a cheat. I think anyone who doesn't is not wise.  To lose a game after 500 days due to a surprise bear attack, or due to some bug in the game, and have to start again from Day 1, is plain silly.  I regard this is the biggest fault in the game.

There are many other Mods that appear to be interesting, amusing and would improve the game greatly, far more than acorns & pancakes.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by peteloud

[Leeanda]

10 minutes ago, peteloud said:

Thanks for explaining that more fully.

Having been disappointed with the DLC,  I have given mods a bit more thought.  For years I was against Mods, not all mods, mods that I regarded a cheats. Before someone says it, the House Lights mod that I have used for about my last year of playing, makes it easier so that is a cheat too.

My thoughts have been on incorporating some of the Mods into the standard game. This could have created much more enjoyable gameplay than the acorn & pancake stuff.  But a bigger advantage is that it could have resulted in an improved game very quickly and asuming that HTL paid some sort of royalty to the mod developer,  it could have been much cheaper than using a full devlopment team to create new material.

I have used very few mods and only in relatively recent days, House Lights, another for clearing up rubbish, and another for removing corpses.  I think I used one for saving anything time I wanted.   I think Permadeath is a very bad aspect of the game.  I always back up my saves, which I agree is a cheat. I think anyone who doesn't is not wise.  To lose a game after 500 days due to a surprise bear attack, or due to some bug in the game, and have to start again from Day 1, is plain silly.  I regard this is the biggest fault in the game.

There are many other Mods that appear to be interesting, amusing and would improve the game greatly, far more than acorns & pancakes.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of us don't have the option to back up saves... Does that mean we're silly?  

Just because permadeath is only in survival it doesn't make it wrong or bad. It's part of the game ,that's why it's called survival..

It just sounds to me that you want all the rules of wintermute in survival ,but why not just play story or try and choose custom settings and mods that will give you that..

It's better than blaming htl for bad game design.  Which in my opinion is not remotely true.

[UpUpAway95]

53 minutes ago, Leeanda said:

Some of us don't have the option to back up saves... Does that mean we're silly?  

Just because permadeath is only in survival it doesn't make it wrong or bad. It's part of the game ,that's why it's called survival..

It just sounds to me that you want all the rules of wintermute in survival ,but why not just play story or try and choose custom settings and mods that will give you that..

It's better than blaming htl for bad game design.  Which in my opinion is not remotely true.

I would absolutely love it if HL would give us the option to play with saves or without them.  Currently, the option to play with them is the one that is missing.  I play a lot of games that don't arbitrarily delete my save file as "permadeath" games and have no problems starting over when that's the way I intend to play it.  In those other games, I don't feel that having an option to not play every run as a permadeath one detracts from the suspense and challenge of my permadeath ones.  Non-permadeath survival is still different than playing a story mode, so I can understand the "why not" for just playing the story.  I think adding the ability to save would make TLD a better game; whereas others feel that it would detract from their permadeath experience.  That's why I would favor it as a toggle one selects when starting a new run.  If one opts to play with saves off, then they would still have no option to change it mid-run.  The default can even be to have saves off so that it becomes the conscious decision of the player to change it to allow for saving.  Why not allow the ability to make the choice at the start of each run without having to resort to mods?

 

[peteloud]

1 hour ago, Leeanda said:

Some of us don't have the option to back up saves... Does that mean we're silly?  

Just because permadeath is only in survival it doesn't make it wrong or bad. It's part of the game ,that's why it's called survival..

It just sounds to me that you want all the rules of wintermute in survival ,but why not just play story or try and choose custom settings and mods that will give you that..

It's better than blaming htl for bad game design.  Which in my opinion is not remotely true.

If you play on a system where you can't b ack up saves you might have point, otherwise,

I think that you spend more time posting comments than playing the game.

When you have passed 5,000 hours playing time and completed that cartographer challenge more than ten times I'll pay more attention to your comments.

 

[Leeanda]

3 minutes ago, peteloud said:

If you play on a system where you can't b ack up saves you might have point, otherwise,

I think that you spend more time posting comments than playing the game.

When you have passed 5,000 hours playing time and completed that cartographer challenge more than ten times I'll pay more attention to your comments.

 

Yes I post a lot on here..  some are just me having fun.with good people.. but I also have over 6500 hours on this game.  True I've only had it for four years and I've mostly played survival but I'm happy to admit I still don't know everything,not by a long shot..  but i still love the game and just dont get some of the gripes that people have..     or why they blame hinterland .

You also seem to say things that rub people up the wrong way, and assume that some of us have no experience,like @AdamvR therefore aren't worth listening to..  and been proven wrong  ..  we're all entitled to our opinion and its ok to disagree but theres no need to make it personal. 

 

@UpUpAway95    I'm all for more custom settings..  I do think though that I still wouldn't remove permadeath..  instakills I definitely would. But the option would be fairer as consoles don't have either multisaves or mods .

 

[KingFuzz]

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

If you play on a system where you can't b ack up saves you might have point, otherwise,

I think that you spend more time posting comments than playing the game.

When you have passed 5,000 hours playing time and completed that cartographer challenge more than ten times I'll pay more attention to your comments.

 

Are you intentionally trying to be antagonistic? If people don’t agree with your assessment are their opinions just invalid? @Leeanda has done an excellent job at helping foster a sense of community here. Why degrade them just because you don’t like the valid points they’ve been making?
 

You play with mods to change the base game more to your liking, but then complain about the base game when it doesn’t perform to your liking? What exactly is your point? 
 

Just today I was playing and my game bugged out. (PS4) I had to reload the game 3 different times. But I kept reloading it. Care to guess why? Because this game is an amazing game despite its bugs and because Hinterland seems to have a pretty good track record of fixing the bugs in due time. 
 

The eyesight thing is possibly a good point that @UpUpAway95 is making but conflating removing permadeath and fixing lighting glitches is ridiculous. Permadeath is literally the point of the game. Your decisions are made to matter. It’s part of what makes this game as amazing as it is.

[Leeanda]

@KingFuzz thank you for the support and kind words..  

 Sadly he and I have disagreed on several occasions in the past .  I doubt it'll be the last.

I'm sorry you're having issues with the game,but I'm glad you haven't given up on it 😊

[KingFuzz]

@Leeanda it was my pleasure! I’m not super vocal on these kinds of forums but this guy is just being rude and none of us deserve that kind of behavior. It’s unbecoming of this community. 
 

No worries about the issues! They get my blood going in the moment but I chalk that up to being eager to play 😃

[Leeanda]

4 minutes ago, KingFuzz said:

@Leeanda it was my pleasure! I’m not super vocal on these kinds of forums but this guy is just being rude and none of us deserve that kind of behavior. It’s unbecoming of this community. 
 

No worries about the issues! They get my blood going in the moment but I chalk that up to being eager to play 😃

Very true but still I appreciate it.

Lol.. I know what you mean..  it'd take a lot to stop me playing😊.  I hope the problem gets sorted though.