November 2023 Dev Diary

[chrislacruz]

1 hour ago, Mistral said:

Yes indeed. Some of these items can already be tweaked through mods thankfully, but the problem with mods is that they can get broken anytime there's update. Or they get broken when mixed up with other mods. Or they get abandoned. And they only work on PC

The other option (for some of these) is to pretend they don't exist, but that's not that fun either 

I agree, in many games it just doesn't matter, but when you want your characters to last for potentially hundreds of days, it's just nice to set it up the way you wanted, as sometimes ignoring it isn't an option...

[JMK]

On 11/22/2023 at 5:06 PM, Mistral said:

- Beachcombing ON/OFF

- Bunkers ON/OFF

- Indoor temperature changes ON/OFF

- Minimum Temperature range at end game X celcius

- Glimmer fog ON/OFF

- Tales ON/OFF

- Poison gas ON/OFF

- Scurvy ON/OFF

- Toxicity animal behaviour ON/OFF

- Aurora animal behaviour ON/OFF

- Aurora electricity effect ON/OFF

- Ptarmigan OFF/LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH/VERYHIGH

- Cougar OFF/LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH/ VERYHIGH

- Trader ON/OFF

- Healing repices ON/OFF

- Torch pulling from fires ON/OFF

- Minimum skill level for harvesting Deer (etc) 1/2/3/4/5

- Renewable coal spawns ON/OFF

Etc etc etc badly needed!

A long time ago, to a guy who asked me why don't you make a software where everything is configurable (talking about ERP here (Enterprise Ressource Planning)) ... I replied "sure here it is" while showing the shelve where was all the system/programming manuals of the IBM AS/400 😉

Nope, I don't care to somewhat design my own game by tweaking everything and I'd rather have the team focus going onward with new regions and core mechanisms

[James Hickok]

19 hours ago, Abenico said:

I hope Trader will come soon, I ran out of potatoes for my fav recipe 😁

Dang. Im a hoarder. I used only one potatoe in all of my runs till now. I baked it lol. 

Rest of the ingredients are stored in my main bases in all of the saves. Waiting there for master chef edition or sth  

Along with rest of the cans and food that i could find in the world. My kitchen is loaded bcoz i tend to not use the human food i find if i can. 

[James Hickok]

2 hours ago, Abenico said:

You son of a 😁while I am dying for just a two potatoes at least. Been in HRV yesrerday just as I though I had some there and didn't have it the notes hahah fun fun fun but carrots - I could feed rabbit grove for a month 😄

👍😁

Ill make some screenshots of the kitchens. Looks so nice. 

[Asinine]

On 11/10/2023 at 8:01 PM, odium said:

this may be an unpopular opinion here but i dont like the direction of this update.  i think we suspend belief quite enough already with aurora wolves etc.  now we have zombie poison wolves and specific gear to only combat that?  i was hoping this would go a more primitive direction that the game built its success on.  more crafting options and bush craft.  the graphical stuff sounds great but this update further alienates a 2015 player 

I'm going to dredge this up because I completely agree with this sentiment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm super thrilled that the devs are still putting out new and exciting content, but I also feel they've completely taken a different fork in the road than what I feel the original game presented.

I suspect that they've swapped over to "keep putting out new and different and extraneous stuff to keep the people with 100 games in their libraries playing regularly or at least having them check back in", which I understand from a business perspective. But I'm siding 110% with @odium on this one. (And, I'm newisher... only been playing since mid '16 :))

[Enigmaecho]

53 minutes ago, Asinine said:

I'm going to dredge this up because I completely agree with this sentiment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm super thrilled that the devs are still putting out new and exciting content, but I also feel they've completely taken a different fork in the road than what I feel the original game presented.

I suspect that they've swapped over to "keep putting out new and different and extraneous stuff to keep the people with 100 games in their libraries playing regularly or at least having them check back in", which I understand from a business perspective. But I'm siding 110% with @odium on this one. (And, I'm newisher... only been playing since mid '16 :))

I think this is a misrepresentation of the facts, this is not out of the ordinary for Great bear rather an extension of themes central to the game’s identity. The story of great bear is in two parts one of desecration and exploitation of the natural world and the consequences of it and the other a scientific phenomena either studied or caused on the island, to the first point from the very beginning we had learned of the mainland’s consumption of the island from carter dam, to the logging, to ash canyon the signs are there this new region being a quarry mine it makes total sense there will be run off pits which are highly toxic in reality and anything drinking that or eating things that have will carry all measure of contamination/disease and their bite and scratch’s will surely infect/poison you so it’s silly to call them zombie wolves, these areas would require safety gear to operate in but I suspect this will be more like the muskeg with sporadic thin ice pools of toxic water than the entire region requiring that gear, the same to be said of  the respirator there will be specific mines or sections of mine that have “dead air” and need the respirator but these items don’t prohibit exploration rather present means to meter progress so we don’t fly through the region i think everything about the region is cool it’ll be a plethora of new challenges for the vets and something to work at for the fresh players my only concern is the respirator or mining clothing will have spawn issues for existing saves if they don’t have them be like non variant items with a bunch of spawns and duplicates, just my thoughts 

[Asinine]

21 hours ago, Enigmaecho said:

I think this is a misrepresentation of the facts, this is not out of the ordinary for Great bear rather an extension of themes central to the game’s identity. The story of great bear is in two parts one of desecration and exploitation of the natural world and the consequences of it and the other a scientific phenomena either studied or caused on the island [...]

I completely understand what you're saying (but seriously, that is one epic run-on sentence!).
But, 5 years ago, the game was 99% natural. It was a survival game that they had to put the disclaimer on, because I suspect it actually could make people think "this could happen in real life, and this could happen to me too!"

I am saying, that was the appeal to the game. Even the Wintermute storymode additions did not challenge that -- the survival mode's auroras gave no explanation, but it wasn't exactly unthinkable as to why the critters went wonky/feral, especially during auroras.

But, add in zombie wolves and try to justify superfund-esque sites, which have been around for years (sketchy superfund sites, not zombie wolves) and yeah, bad things have happened from them. But I did not originally fall in love with this game because it was a "left 4 dead" base-building crapshoot with zombies. Most of those superfund sites are still around irl, and no one's all wonky crazy about them these days (aside from the activists and politicians, and anyone trying to tie this to the Simpsons episode with Blinky). Plus, that whole concept wasn't around for the game until about a year or year+ish ago when they were hyping the TFTFT. (Correct me if I'm wrong, as I haven't been keeping up with the Milton Mailbag for about 2 years now.)

So, no, I do not buy your posited explanation for a game that should have been a survival game, and one I fell in love with for being mostly realistic, instead of basing itself off of some fantasy type of genre. I'd say apocalyptic, but it was a perfect apocalyptic game (for survival mode) from the start, but now we're beefing up the cryptids and weird unrealistic stuff... to appeal to folks who can't just appreciate strolling around and dying to bears and wolves and cold, and okay maybe the aurora made them a little crazy...

Edited November 26, 2023 by Asinine

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Asinine said:

I completely understand what you're saying (but seriously, that is one epic run-on sentence!).
But, 5 years ago, the game was 99% natural. It was a survival game that they had to put the disclaimer on, because I suspect it actually could make people think "this could happen in real life, and this could happen to me too!"

I am saying, that was the appeal to the game. Even the Wintermute storymode additions did not challenge that -- the survival mode's auroras gave no explanation, but it wasn't exactly unthinkable as to why the critters went wonky/feral, especially during auroras.

But, add in zombie wolves and try to justify superfund-esque sites, which have been around for years (sketchy superfund sites, not zombie wolves) and yeah, bad things have happened from them. But I did not originally fall in love with this game because it was a "left 4 dead" base-building crapshoot with zombies. Most of those superfund sites are still around irl, and no one's all wonky crazy about them these days (aside from the activists and politicians, and anyone trying to tie this to the Simpsons episode with Blinky). Plus, that whole concept wasn't around for the game until about a year or year+ish ago when they were hyping the TFTFT. (Correct me if I'm wrong, as I haven't been keeping up with the Milton Mailbag for about 2 years now.)

So, no, I do not buy your posited explanation for a game that should have been a survival game, and one I fell in love with for being mostly realistic, instead of basing itself off of some fantasy type of genre. I'd say apocalyptic, but it was a perfect apocalyptic game (for survival mode) from the start, but now we're beefing up the cryptids and weird unrealistic stuff... to appeal to folks who can't just appreciate strolling around and dying to bears and wolves and cold, and okay maybe the aurora made them a little crazy...

I think 99% natural is a stretch considering Will's plane crashes within a short walking distance to the game's largest town where you're chasing a group of prison inmates who've kidnapped your ex-wife.  Then, you encounter a mysterious stranger who seems to never fail to be wherever you're going, as the auroras mysteriously cause lights all over town to flicker and the "urban" wildlife (i.e. wolves in the streets of Milton) to become crazed.  Even in survival mode, the settings for these events remain evident.  Mystery Lake is also filled with ample signs of civilization including the camp office, the dam, fishing huts and several cabins, logging trailers, lookout towers, and rail cars.  Even the reshi mushrooms are a product of the industrial activity since we only see them growing on the stumps of trees that have been cut down.

We don't yet know the details about the "poisoned affliction."  The wolves themselves have been poisoned by a perfectly logical and realistic cause (heavy metals found in the water from the tailings ponds), not some mysterious "zombie" virus brought to earth by aliens.  It's actually far more realistic than the auroras.

[chrislacruz]

On 11/26/2023 at 3:34 AM, Asinine said:

to appeal to folks who can't just appreciate strolling around and dying to bears and wolves and cold, and okay maybe the aurora made them a little crazy...

But we already appreciate them?  They are not being taken away, the new region is just that, a new region, different, and if it is not your thing, avoid it.

As I said earlier, I don't tend to enjoy HRV as it is so barren, but, to misuse a phrase Vive le Difference!  Surely the Great Bear is big enough for everything?

[fbr]

Are we going to be able to start a new game directly in the new map? Some of my best gaming experiences were being thrown in an unknown TLD map (so much that I basically started a new game in every possible map before travelling around too much, and even waited patiently to experience Blackrock in survival before playing Chapter 4).

Also, please make this possible for custom games. I'm quite disappointed that still isn't possible to have a random start in Forskaken Airfield.

The update looks amazing, anyway.

Edited November 28, 2023 by fbr

[Mistral]

2 hours ago, fbr said:

Also, please make this possible for custom games. I'm quite disappointed that still isn't possible to have a random start in Forskaken Airfield.

I'm constantly getting spawns to FA in Custom? In fact, more than any other region I'd say.

The one that is actually criminally still neglegted in starts is Bleak Inlet.

[UpUpAway95]

41 minutes ago, Mistral said:

I'm constantly getting spawns to FA in Custom? In fact, more than any other region I'd say.

The one that is actually criminally still neglegted in starts is Bleak Inlet.

Agreed.  I'd love to be able to select a start in Upper Bleak Inlet from the custom menu, which would enable me to open up the entire zone within the confines of a one-zone challenge run.  As it is, I have to fudge the start in Mystery Lake and make a rule to only collect the rope (if needed) to climb down into Upper Bleak Inlet, which just seems to spoil the spirit of a one-zone challenge.

[fbr]

5 hours ago, Mistral said:

I'm constantly getting spawns to FA in Custom? In fact, more than any other region I'd say.

The one that is actually criminally still neglegted in starts is Bleak Inlet.

Did you notice if every time you spawned at exactly the same point (entrance of the map, from the transition areas)?

At least when you choose the map at the beginning  the run, the spawn is always there.

[fbr]

And yes, only in Custom. If you choose a default difficulty, the spawn is actually random. So, clearly a small (but annoying) bug.

[Leeanda]

Anyone else starting a hopeful countdown to the update?  😁

[Lumiiyx]

3 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Anyone else starting a hopeful countdown to the update?  😁

Yes. Patiently waiting while I play Raft after work.  I am very much looking forward to the new update announcement and playing it or course. One save is in FA (completed Signal Void) and ready to make the walk over to Langston Mine.

[xanna]

3 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Anyone else starting a hopeful countdown to the update?  😁

YES

[Leeanda]

6 minutes ago, LumiStylesTTV said:

Yes. Patiently waiting while I play Raft after work.  I am very much looking forward to the new update announcement and playing it or course. One save is in FA (completed Signal Void) and ready to make the walk over to Langston Mine.

I thought of going to transfer with my main run but not sure where the canisters are going to be so left her in pv for now.. my side run is doing the very slow overburdened walk with as much gear as possible😁

[RobotDino11]

On 11/11/2023 at 4:49 AM, ChillPlayer said:

Awesome update, thank you very much!

I was also very excited when I've read about the new scurvy affliction, I suggested something similar in the old forum back in 2015 and now it's finally implemented:

Now, can we get rid of Cabin Fever please?

 

I personally enjoy the mechanic as a balancing system for the benefits of being inside. 

if it bothers you that much, just turn off the feature through a custom game.

[chrislacruz]

4 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Anyone else starting a hopeful countdown to the update?  😁

I started it the day of the annoucement.. ferrying stuff backwards and forwards to the train station and stock piling things that might make a Travois!😃

[ManicManiac]

4 hours ago, Leeanda said:

Anyone else starting a hopeful countdown to the update?  😁

Yes, still waiting with bated breath...


In the meantime, looking to finish the last leg of my current chronicle ...Memory Lane...
Blackrock sucker punched me hard my first full day in the region, but I think I have a good foothold now.  

[Leeanda]

5 minutes ago, ManicManiac said:

Yes, still waiting with bated breath...


In the meantime, looking to finish the last leg of my current chronicle ...Memory Lane...
Blackrock sucker punched me hard my first full day in the region, but I think I have a good foothold now.  

Lol..  

You'll get there😊.  And plenty of chance to try the new recipes and fishing.

22 minutes ago, chrislacruz said:

I started it the day of the annoucement.. ferrying stuff backwards and forwards to the train station and stock piling things that might make a Travois!😃

I did that on my main run but the side one just wasn't ready enough til now😁

[hozz1235]

1 hour ago, LumiStylesTTV said:

Yes. Patiently waiting while I play Raft after work.  I am very much looking forward to the new update announcement and playing it or course. One save is in FA (completed Signal Void) and ready to make the walk over to Langston Mine.

I've been playing a new game recently:  Mr. Prepper.  Simple, but really enjoying it!

[RobotDino11]

On 11/11/2023 at 8:20 PM, rush247 said:

Don't know why everyone is so bummed about the toxic wolves.  They don't really sound like zombies to me.  Also I don't think they're a replacement for cougars like some are thinking, Raph would say so if they were I would think.

i agree. i feel that the toxic wolves are a new feature that is its own thing, not some cliché feature or a replacement for a highly requested one. even besides all that, what is there to be upset about? ITS. TOXIC. WOLVES.  Whats not to like?

[stratvox]

I'm waiting. I have a good long custom run fired up that's only been in Lower Great Bear. I'm in BRM now, and really enjoying being reminded how good this region is; it'd been a while since I spent any time there. When the new level drops, I'm going via Keeper's -> PV -> ML -> FM etc. Should be an epic trip.