TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, PART FOUR IS HERE!

[Laika Ivanova]

7 minutes ago, Nalliah said:

I think the point about the sheer amount of variety offered in the game is important. The game can be played at different levels or in different styles, depending on the player and what experience they want in the game. I myself play at the lowest easy level (Pilgrim) and do not like industrial landscapes. There is still so much area for me to play in-- I have no complaints at all. Its not necessary to play in industrial landscapes--and I don't. I even limit being in the Hydroelectric plant in Mystery Lake--not my cup of tea. I think that the Long Dark is an amazing, unique and creative game. There is nothing else like it out there.

It definitely is one of its kind. I still remember being new. I started off on Pilgrim and got lost in the left part of Mystery Lake, genuinely scared that I might not make it. There was already so much to learn and experience back then, it's crazy. I like how all the maps are so unique in how they are built. Makes me wonder how the last FT map will look like.

[Honest]

van Lierop's answer to the community reads like he feels emotionally offended by the reaction of parts of the community and he shows it through his words. In my perception his statement lacks some sort of professionalism because of that. But that just as a site note

Scurvy: Key part that I take from his statement is that there are no plans to add an option to activate scurvy in existing games. I think introducing new gameplay additions, which only get active by starting a new run is just like a half-way implementation of it. Also that you can't separately opt-in/out scurvy in custom games is a sign of that. TLD is not a match based game, where you play a 5-10 minute match, won or lost, next game, but you play a run for days / weeks / months. HL should take this aspect serious, because it will be a recurring issue.

Scurvy workaround: That I can't hope for that HL brings a patch that allows existing games to opt-in scurvy; is there a mod / savegame editor that can enable scurvy on existing runs?

[chrislacruz]

15 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 Nothing comes for free. We make these choices and trade-offs all the time. The only easy thing here is posting in forums.

Nothing comes for free is such a good phrase.

I have spent my life as an animator and editor (not for games I should point out), mostly for very large clients and agencies, who still think eveything is just a quick change.  sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but very often by the time the change has been noted, fedback on, agreed, changed, viewed, revised again and finally signed off, a 'five minute job' is half a day... and there are 20 quick changes, which invariably take days...

I am just dealing with animation, not as complex as an interactive development like a game...

So I take him at his word. For me, I'd rather they spend their development time (which is finite) making a great, rock solid game, than one that is infinitely customisable.

I think Raph also makes a very important point about the voices on here, as opposed the the many many thousands of players, who just play, or have just started playing. We are not typical, we are more engaged and obsessed I guess.  I always think of political parties, whose actual members are WAY more extreme than the voting public, of course they have to have a voice, but it's often a hugely passionate voice that isn't representative of the wider voter.. so has to be taken with that caveat.  That should never stop us venting our spleens so to speak, but we should do it with some humility in realising we do not speak more 'most' or even a signficant minority of players.

That said, apart from the grumbling, I've always found this a very good natured forum and there are some really nice, supportive and knowledgeable people on here!
 

[Leeanda]

You can please some of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time.... 

An adage that I was brought up hearing..    no two people are the same so why would everyone expect to like the same things... it'd be a damn boring world if we were all the same...

I get Ralph being upset, I would if something I'd created was continuously being picked at and faulted.. he's a human being and he,and the Devs have worked damn hard to create this truly beautiful game..

Thank you hinterland and I hope you all have a very happy holiday break,it's well deserved.

[Laika Ivanova]

34 minutes ago, Honest said:

van Lierop's answer to the community reads like he feels emotionally offended by the reaction of parts of the community and he shows it through his words. In my perception his statement lacks some sort of professionalism because of that. But that just as a site note

Scurvy: Key part that I take from his statement is that there are no plans to add an option to activate scurvy in existing games. I think introducing new gameplay additions, which only get active by starting a new run is just like a half-way implementation of it. Also that you can't separately opt-in/out scurvy in custom games is a sign of that. TLD is not a match based game, where you play a 5-10 minute match, won or lost, next game, but you play a run for days / weeks / months. HL should take this aspect serious, because it will be a recurring issue.

Scurvy workaround: That I can't hope for that HL brings a patch that allows existing games to opt-in scurvy; is there a mod / savegame editor that can enable scurvy on existing runs?

I disagree that the game has to be played for weeks/months or even years. Personally I do that, but I know others do not and as Raphael said, they have a lot more new and generally less experienced players that either have to constantly start over because they are not as experienced, or it is just the way they play. The only issue I see here is that the players that are dedicated to one save are left out.

As I said, Hinterland definitely did think about this, otherwise there wouldn't have been statements from Raphael regarding Scurvy. But then again as I also said, Scurvy is really well designed, even for very long running saves that already used most finite resorces. There are other ways to easily deal with it which is why I hope they will consider enabling it in a future patch. And hopefully attempt to avoid such a decision in the future.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Laika Ivanova

[hozz1235]

17 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

So, like, stop complaining. 🤣

He was doing so well, up the the last statement. 

1 hour ago, Honest said:

van Lierop's answer to the community reads like he feels emotionally offended by the reaction of parts of the community and he shows it through his words. In my perception his statement lacks some sort of professionalism because of that.

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by hozz1235

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, Laika Ivanova said:

I disagree that the game has to be played for weeks/months or even years. Personally I do that, but I know others do not and as Raphael said, they have a lot more new and generally less experienced players that either have to constantly start over because they are not as experienced, or it is just the way they play. The only issue I see here is that the players that are dedicated to one save are left out.

As I said, Hinterland definitely did think about this, otherwise there wouldn't have been statements from Raphael regarding Scurvy. But then again as I also said, Scurvy is really well designed, even for very long running saves that already used most finite resorces. There are other ways to easily deal with it which is why I hope they will consider enabling it in a future patch. And hopefully attempt to avoid such a decision in the future.

There's also another "player group" involved here.  This is meant to be a permadeath game, which means that any save can and should end at any time and learning to lose them is "part of the game." - BUT some have gotten around that and found a way to backup their saves and, hence, have become, as a result, perhaps more "dedicated" to one save than they should be.  That said, I probably would have made the opposite choice - let scurvy loose on long-running saves and let the attrition happen as it may.  I doubt there would have been less gnashing of teeth here from it though.  HL was truly in a no win situation; and for what it is worth, I support their choice and I've come to agree with it.  Here's why:

Way back when, I put an option into the wish list for players to be able to change things mid-save (mostly because I wanted a way to increase the difficulty on the file as the player felt more competent at the game.  That suggestion was voted down by the players as being unfair because the player had already survived X days at the lower difficulty and surviving X+ days at a higher difficulty was not comparable to surviving from day one at the higher difficulty.

This is much the same - those long-term saves have survived those days without scurvy (in effect, at a lower difficulty than having to consider getting scurvy from day one).  Players with older saves can still play them at the same difficulty in which they started them (that is, without scurvy in the game).

Edited December 11, 2023 by UpUpAway95

[Sherri]

17 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

* The world of GBI and the Far Territory is huge now. We try to give every region a theme. Some regions will be more interesting to certain types of players. We have 10M players and some of you have been playing the game for coming up to 10 years. We also get around an additional ~500k-1M players per year who are new to the game. And everyone in between. We're making a game for everyone, not just for one group or sub-group of players. The only way to do that is to add variety and to continue pushing ourselves to try new things.

This bears extra repeating. 

It is extremely AWESOME that the new regions are so different. Jarringly different. Dangerous in new ways. Very few regions have reasons to come back to them after they have been fully looted and explored. With the exception of bullet crafting and forges. The thing that keeps a long run going and interesting (for me) is having places I haven't been to yet. Being out to the Far Territory and braving its unique dangers in the 2nd half of a run is a great thrill for a well equipped character. Something new and different is very welcome. Do we really want just more of the same?

The fact that people both love and hate the new regions, the fact that they are SO different is a feature not a bug. HL has a banger here with this DLC- it's not easy to keep things fresh and interesting on such a long running project. 

Differing preferences shouldn't be worded as complaints.

Quote

So, like, stop complaining. 🤣

 

[Sherri]

1 hour ago, hozz1235 said:

He was doing so well, up the the last statement. 

 

I'm reminded of when I started googling for info about a chronic illness I had just been diagnosed with. The vast lion's share of info online was very very dire. You eventually realize that happy people rarely post reviews, comments and long blog diatribes online. It's the unhappy people who seek out places to vent.

Even with the great community we have around TLD, this forum is still beholden to that reality. You will always have more unhappy players on the forums than contented players. It creates the impression that there is more complaining and more discontent than their really is. I imagine this feeling is painful for a creator who has put a huge chunk of their life into one major creation that is out in public, vulnerable to critique. I don't blame @Raphael van Lierop if he feels hurt. It sucks to see it. But I hope he keeps in mind that truism. The vast, vast, VAST majority of happy, content players are busy *playing* the game, not posting on the forums.

And I also hope that more happy players make a point to comment. I will definitely be doing so, once I make my way back to the Far Territory and check out the region. I'm very jazzed to do so because the Airfield was fantastic. 

[Lumiiyx]

3 hours ago, Honest said:

Scurvy: Key part that I take from his statement is that there are no plans to add an option to activate scurvy in existing games. I think introducing new gameplay additions, which only get active by starting a new run is just like a half-way implementation of it. Also that you can't separately opt-in/out scurvy in custom games is a sign of that. TLD is not a match based game, where you play a 5-10 minute match, won or lost, next game, but you play a run for days / weeks / months. HL should take this aspect serious, because it will be a recurring issue.

Scurvy workaround: That I can't hope for that HL brings a patch that allows existing games to opt-in scurvy; is there a mod / savegame editor that can enable scurvy on existing runs?

You can enable Scurvy on custom runs (even if you prefer Pilgrim) by your starting gear allocation. @Raphael van Lierop already mentioned that in the notes regarding the update.  If you don't want scurvy in your custom run, set it to very high. If you do want scurvy, choose any other option.  I think he also said they will update custom for adding the option for scurvy in the new year. The above is the work around.

Hinterland may never add scurvy to existing games, which I am ok with. They need to do what works for them and not always what we want. They could have a million reasons and we will never know all of them. Which is fine. 

Also Raph has always been brutally honest. It's what I respect most about him. It may seem "unprofessional". I see it as a man who takes pride in the start up game developing company he started ( and it is no small feat to get to where Hinterland is now) and sometimes, having to constantly defend a choice can be aggravating.  I don't fault him if he gets frustrated from time to time. He is only human after all.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Lumiiyx
Mobile fat fingers, can't spell lol

[bysinda]

16 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

With every update it does tend to be the same story.

It always seems as though we have several folks make a ruckus about things they don't like, or they want/demand changed (as though they themselves were personally commissioning the update ).

I didn't think that the top bras even reads forums tbh. Why would they, I wouldn't 

People have no patience or understanding what so ever,  especially in the gaming community and look what it does to every game recently released. Every studio is rushing the work, desperately trying to meet the release date just to stop a bunch of gamers from loosing their sh*t. 

Was it inconvenient when I had to start over? Twice? Yeah. Was it the end of the world? No

Everyone can offended an artist, not everyone can run away 😬

Btw, I admire cherry studio approach on situations like this. They change plans as they go, release date has been  TBA for years. Do they wipe snots of fans along the way ? Phah, the last blog post on their website was in 2019. It will be done when it's done. 

18 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

So, like, stop complaining. 🤣

Ps New meme is born 😬 and I love it

[Raphael van Lierop]

4 hours ago, Honest said:

van Lierop's answer to the community reads like he feels emotionally offended by the reaction of parts of the community and he shows it through his words. In my perception his statement lacks some sort of professionalism because of that. But that just as a site note

It's simply that I sometimes need to step in and remind this community of some facts. I feel no personal offense as most of the comments are subjective and everyone is entitled to them. I merely wish to point out that the community is vast with varied tastes, so some amount of personal awareness of this fact by each player is useful in order to have a thoughtful and welcoming community. Beyond that, of course I feel protective of the team's hard work and will speak out in their support, which is part of my role and my remit.

If you think this is unprofessional, I encourage you to spend your time playing many other games produced by faceless corporations who will happily spoon-feed you some kind of sanctioned PR messaging, as that might be your preference.

[Raphael van Lierop]

3 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

There's also another "player group" involved here.  This is meant to be a permadeath game, which means that any save can and should end at any time and learning to lose them is "part of the game." - BUT some have gotten around that and found a way to backup their saves and, hence, have become, as a result, perhaps more "dedicated" to one save than they should be. 

This is very important. I can't really say how important this is, because it 100% informs our design decisions and also seems to be the source of a lot of confusion/upset in the player community, because the Survival side of the game is Permadeath. The premise is that you *will die*, often and frequently. The premise isn't that you will routinely survive 1000s of days or keep the same save going for years. In order to design for the "one save" players, we would have to remove Permadeath from the game, which would fundamentally change the game we have made.

Death is part of the cycle of learning and experiencing the world anew. Embrace it!

[ChillPlayer]

45 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

This is very important. I can't really say how important this is, because it 100% informs our design decisions and also seems to be the source of a lot of confusion/upset in the player community, because the Survival side of the game is Permadeath.

Thats why I for one am very, utterly glad that Scurvy was NOT added to existing saves. I would've been quite frustrated if my 220 day old stalker would need to suddenly take care of this whilst probably having wasted a lot of vitamine C sources already.

I look forward to my next run to see how it plays with Scurvy enabled, when I have the chance to anticipate it and behave accordingly. But I'm pretty sure that if Scurvy would've been added to existing saves and people would start loosing them because they can't find enough vitamine C, the Echoes of the community would be much louder.

So thank you for doing the right choice.

/signed by probably all Stalker and Interloper players

[stratvox]

On 12/7/2023 at 10:09 AM, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

Looks like a Star Trek transporter accident.

Han Teddy!

[Laika Ivanova]

I feel like my suggestion of tweaking it and enabling it retroactively in the future is being actively ignored by both sides of the coin here. Oh well.

[Dan_]

Pivoting the conversation a bit, I'm still working through the ZoC but I have a question:

Spoiler

Jeremiah's knife was shown as a prop in Part 4 trailer. I'm always half expecting it will make another appearance as a tool variant. Has anybody found it? Or is it still an unobtainable item?

 

[Leeanda]

6 minutes ago, Dan_ said:

Pivoting the conversation a bit, I'm still working through the ZoC but I have a question:

  Hide contents

Jeremiah's knife was shown as a prop in Part 4 trailer. I'm always half expecting it will make another appearance as a tool variant. Has anybody found it? Or is it still an unobtainable item?

 

I believe someone has found it.. not sure who though.

[Ludwig_II]

I also don't like many people complaining about scurvy not being added to existing save games because it's the first new survival mechanic added for quite some time. It was really needed, and I'm very happy about it. I believe more survival mechanics are needed too. When people keep complaining about this, I'm worried it will negatively impact the design choices of the team and they might choose to not add more survival mechanics in the future, just to avoid a similar backlash. So, please don't just think about yourself and your 1000-days long game that you feel emotionally attached to. You've managed to play without scurvy for 1000+ days, I'm sure you'll survive without it going forward too, both in The Long Dark and in real life.

For example I always play with custom settings that are harder than Interloper. But I don't expect everyone to play the same way. And I don't feel upset and complain when there are new things added to the game which make it even easier (which is over %90 of the new additions). So even though I get very few new features that are suited for my playstyle, I don't complain about new features that are not relevant to me. My point is, nobody gets %100 of what they want or expect from this game, maybe except Raph. If you want every new feature to be designed based on your opinions, you need to create your own game. Simple as that. 

[mfuegemann]

Hi,
I just made it out of the Langston mine again, after exploring large parts of the levels. Having learnt the profession at a copper mine in my youth, I must say that the design and general feeling of the underground areas, the processing facilities and drainage pipelines are spot on. The underground rails and the supporting structures are looking just right. I was almost afraid to use a torch, expecting the poisonous gas to be explosive. 

Very well done. Thank You!

Edited December 11, 2023 by mfuegemann

[deviro_verity]

This conversation really reminds me of Tales P1 not being in Interloper, I feel very similar with scurvy. They are different in that one was about loot balancing/the team being under pressure and not having enough time to test it for Interloper and scurvy seems more about not wanting to ruin people's saves.

I personally want all the challenges Hinterland can throw at me - it would've been great if the scurvy mechanic started on any existing save just the way cabin fever is on new interloper saves (I saw others suggest this). I'm also one of those 1 save Andys and I'm not starting a new run for a new affliction, I would rather enable it with a mod.

I hope the team changes their mind on this, as dealing with scurvy doesn't seem that hard to deal with anyways (and it makes fishing more useful as opposed to just hunting every living creature in sight that has four legs).

Apart from that dissapointment the new region is great. It gave me some strong STALKER vibes, which Raph mentioned in the update video. The new underground mine is unlike anywhere in Great Bear, it's vast and confusing, as it should be. I went there with my 1100 day loper run, blind, and had some of the most fun ever in my 1000+ hours overall within TLD.

I was very surprised when the toxic wolves didn't have any meat in them, but it's immidietaly obvious how slim and starved they look. You can't mistake their appearance for normal wolves. Got in a few struggles througout my 20 hours of ZOC exploration but never got fully poisoned, not from the pollution either. Which was also a lot of fun to navigate in and around. Kind a wish some of it was some underground as well + a wolf thrown somewhere down there (just to enchanche the already very creepy and desolate atmosphere).

The tale was also very interesting, with some character closures and nice enviroments. Did not expect the time skip (iykyk). The unique tale reward is useful for a packrat like me, so that was nice to see, curious what will be the last one.

I can dissagree with a lot of what Raph may say here or on Twitter but the work he puts in in steering the Hinterland and TLD ship simoultaneously, I can never say he is not trying hard enough. I bought this game precisely for things like ZOC. And it's been crafted with such love and consideration, the team's continued passion is amazing to see.

Thank you for everything Hinterland, looking forward to the rest of the updates.

[Fuarian]

On 12/10/2023 at 4:21 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Lot's of interesting comments and theorycrafting here. I don't want to spend too much time on it, because a lot of it is subjective feedback and opinions and everyone can believe what they believe, but just a couple of quick notes (for what it's worth):

* This comes up a lot, with every update really, and it's kinda frustrating to always see it. It's just not possible to make everything in the game an option for you, just because you might not like it. Also, we are crafting a specific experience with intention behind it, and (apart from bugs which obviously do happen), limitations are purposeful. Even when we do make something optional, it doesn't happen without a bunch of work. So please stop saying "it'd be so easy to make this an option, they've done it before" etc. etc. It's just not the case. Every variation creates, at the very least, the need for significant additional testing, as well as dev work and often more UI, tuning, etc. Nothing comes for free. We make these choices and trade-offs all the time. The only easy thing here is posting in forums.

* The world of GBI and the Far Territory is huge now. We try to give every region a theme. Some regions will be more interesting to certain types of players. We have 10M players and some of you have been playing the game for coming up to 10 years. We also get around an additional ~500k-1M players per year who are new to the game. And everyone in between. We're making a game for everyone, not just for one group or sub-group of players. The only way to do that is to add variety and to continue pushing ourselves to try new things. And, if you find you don't like a thing, that's ok because there are probably lots of other things for you to like, and I promise you some other player really loves the thing you dislike. It's 100% ok if not every region is to your specific tastes. I have favourites too and some I rarely go to. Pretty sure my list is probably different from yours.

Re: Scurvy -- I mean this is our problem and not yours, but this is a damned if you do and damned if you don't sort of scenario, and, as per my first bullet above, making something optional isn't always that easy or the best solution for implementation. So it's fine -- if you want to play with Scurvy, start a new game. Easy. If you want to continue your long-standing save and not worry about ending up in a situation where you annoyingly have to do a bunch of stuff you didn't ask for because of a mechanic that was freshly introduced, or maybe it's super hard for you to continue surviving because you've already used up a ton of the existing resources that have Vit-C, great, you can do that. Nobody is forcing you to do one or the other, you can make that choice for yourself.

So, like, stop complaining. 🤣

Respectable points for the most part. But I would like to add that while making certain features optional may not always be possible, one such feature that I believe should be made optional is the Trader. A good majority of the playerbase enjoys the solitude that comes with The Long Dark and the addition of the Trader to the game may not be something that supports that. I don't claim to know how the feature will work nor am I suggesting how to go about implementing it, but I did want to drop my 2 cents.

I do have faith however that the Trader's implementation will be executed well and will not compromise the sense of loneliness in survival mode, but rather enhance it even more so. Looking forward to that feature.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Fuarian

[Laika Ivanova]

15 minutes ago, deviro_verity said:

This conversation really reminds me of Tales P1 not being in Interloper, I feel very similar with scurvy. They are different in that one was about loot balancing/the team being under pressure and not having enough time to test it for Interloper and scurvy seems more about not wanting to ruin people's saves.

I personally want all the challenges Hinterland can throw at me - it would've been great if the scurvy mechanic started on any existing save just the way cabin fever is on new interloper saves (I saw others suggest this). I'm also one of those 1 save Andys and I'm not starting a new run for a new affliction, I would rather enable it with a mod.

I hope the team changes their mind on this, as dealing with scurvy doesn't seem that hard to deal with anyways (and it makes fishing more useful as opposed to just hunting every living creature in sight that has four legs).

Apart from that dissapointment the new region is great. It gave me some strong STALKER vibes, which Raph mentioned in the update video. The new underground mine is unlike anywhere in Great Bear, it's vast and confusing, as it should be. I went there with my 1100 day loper run, blind, and had some of the most fun ever in my 1000+ hours overall within TLD.

I was very surprised when the toxic wolves didn't have any meat in them, but it's immidietaly obvious how slim and starved they look. You can't mistake their appearance for normal wolves. Got in a few struggles througout my 20 hours of ZOC exploration but never got fully poisoned, not from the pollution either. Which was also a lot of fun to navigate in and around. Kind a wish some of it was some underground as well + a wolf thrown somewhere down there (just to enchanche the already very creepy and desolate atmosphere).

The tale was also very interesting, with some character closures and nice enviroments. Did not expect the time skip (iykyk). The unique tale reward is useful for a packrat like me, so that was nice to see, curious what will be the last one.

I can dissagree with a lot of what Raph may say here or on Twitter but the work he puts in in steering the Hinterland and TLD ship simoultaneously, I can never say he is not trying hard enough. I bought this game precisely for things like ZOC. And it's been crafted with such love and consideration, the team's continued passion is amazing to see.

Thank you for everything Hinterland, looking forward to the rest of the updates.

Could not have said this better myself

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, deviro_verity said:

I personally want all the challenges Hinterland can throw at me - it would've been great if the scurvy mechanic started on any existing save just the way cabin fever is on new interloper saves (I saw others suggest this). I'm also one of those 1 save Andys and I'm not starting a new run for a new affliction, I would rather enable it with a mod.

There you go - you'll probably have the opportunity to use a mod to add it to your save - just like numerous players currently back up their saves.

[Leeanda]

Is there a moose in the zone?