about the current state of Stalker

[pulkmees]

lol, the amount of humble bragging in this thread is crazy.

You must be mentally ill to go for 2500 days or anyone who plays it over 100.

WTF are you doing grinding in a SP game for godsakes, go play an mmorpg like a ''normal'' gamer.

Still cannot wrap my mind around why anyone would abuse clearly abusable mechanics in this game and then complain its too easy.

I get bored on day 27 when I'm in a house with 30kg of meat.Literally stops me from playing.That and the fact that i have to run from wolves each time I exit a house or generally do anything.

[bethany]

You must be mentally ill to go for 2500 days or anyone who plays it over 100.

WTF are you doing grinding in a SP game for godsakes, go play an mmorpg like a ''normal'' gamer.

Please curb comments like this in the future, or I'll be removing posts. Civility is a large part of the foundation of this community and is required to participate in discussion.

Thanks!

[ChillPlayer]

I must say it again, ML really safes Stalker and there's much fun to have there - and many near death experiences Reached somewhere around day 270 today and had a very close call when I attacked a wolf stupidly near Clear Cut, not realizing that I had neither bandages nor antiseptic on me. Luckily I managed to kill the other two wolves that attacked me on the way to the dam...

Later on I went for a wolf genocide on the lake with my bow, killed about 5 or 6 of them plus a deer (I really love the bow & arrow, great job @hinterland) and while I tried to harvest them I found myself at 33% condition in a blizzard, searching my way to the next fishing hut that was guarded by a fluffy trying to revenge it's brothers. Really good stuff today, very intense.

So after all I just have to follow what I tell others when they claim they get bored: it's up to you how you play the game and what you make out of it. I'm not taking back my arguments about too many loot and prey - I still believe they are true and I hope this will be adjusted in the future - but I found a way around the bordom and simply ignore bears now most of the times. The bugged Exploration Game achievement also helped in a way lol, because I revisited most places in ML again which put me in several difficult situations

[rw28]

You must be mentally ill to go for 2500 days or anyone who plays it over 100.

WTF are you doing grinding in a SP game for godsakes, go play an mmorpg like a ''normal'' gamer.

First of all, I simply enjoy the game. It is one of my favorite games of all time. I was especially interested at the time that I did that run, to the point where I would be watching a TLD stream on my other monitor at the same time that I was playing. Secondly, it's not like I just died and started all over again and that's all I do. That run ended 3 months ago and I haven't touched the game since. It was just something that began and I saw it through to the end. It was highly satisfying to explore and discover optimal strategies and tactics and then refine them further and further. Thirdly, the fact that you actually get worked up enough over how I spend my time to make the comments that you did, you may have some issues of your own to consider.

Still cannot wrap my mind around why anyone would abuse clearly abusable mechanics in this game and then complain its too easy.

It's not that difficult to understand. I'm complaining because 1) it IS too easy, and 2) I want that abuse eliminated from the game. I assume that you're mainly speaking of hibernation when you say "abusable mechanics" and it is my opinion that drastically reducing the amount of loot in the game will go a long way towards putting an end to hibernation. There would be no efficiency in hibernation if you actually needed to go outside or move to a different map more often in order to find supplies. This is the point I'm trying to get across, and exactly why I got involved in this thread. Trust me, I want the game to be as difficult and legit as possible.

I will only assume( and not claim!!),that your long term survival achievement was made with method of hibernation.In that case,if that so,your oppinion is adopted,but no relevant.Here we talk about abundant resources and easy game for actual active playing,with outdoor and indoor activities

Really? My opinion is not even relevant? Do you honestly think that in a run that spanned 2600 days that I didn't spend an inordinate amount of time playing actively? Sigh.

And...well...something will be done,that is for sure. Devs will make very,very hard to reach your achievement of long term of survival and hibernation as well some other clear abuses of game mechanics will be removed.I hope that will happen soon,so we will have again pure challenge of survival. And then you will be only dreaming about 10,000 days of survival. :lol: :lol:

I hope you are right, but I doubt you will get exactly what you are looking for. Some of you seem to forget that we are playing a GAME here, not a real-life simulator. If you think that there will come a time where there are absolutely no mechanics that can be abused, I think you'll be disappointed. And once again, believe me, I want that "pure challenge of survival" that you speak of just as much as you do.

[octavian]

I assume that you're mainly speaking of hibernation when you say "abusable mechanics" and it is my opinion that drastically reducing the amount of loot in the game will go a long way towards putting an end to hibernation. There would be no efficiency in hibernation if you actually needed to go outside or move to a different map more often in order to find supplies.

Imagine a scenario where on spawn everything you can loot, from all maps, warps at your feet. Making the pile smaller has no effect on hibernation, hibernation is players using game mechanics in a way not predicted by developers, not by the size of the pile.

Even killing a bear allows for hibernation; it gives tons of meat, you can make water out of thin air, cold is not an issue inside, and so on.

Just because you can hibernate on a bear for x amount of days and then you can't any longer, doesn't mean you can't hibernate, then go do something else, then hibernate. And I don't see how tweaking the amount of loot would change this.

If you think that there will come a time where there are absolutely no mechanics that can be abused, I think you'll be disappointed.

Yeah, no game is perfect, whoever thinks a game - any - can't be abused, they should ask a speedrunner, or simply watch the WR run of their favorite games; they'll be amazed how broken they are. Regardless of what their favorite games are.

[Alvinius]

The game continues to be very fresh for me but I do find myself shunning much of what is offered. I find myself artificially limiting many items and opportunities. My ideal play is very active and this is how I would like to see Stalker pushed. I think most players and developers would appreciate an active reward system in the end product.

Challenges like Pacifist, shun the gun etc... sleep outside, only two matches, should have their own reward.

I have played Stalker from my very first play through. I do not remember the version number but it was close to the time of the introduction of CH. I have been to a few of the main spots on that map, and only just in my last play through did I find my way to PV and Maple. My longest is under 40 days. Over 200 hr. .

Really I am not a bad player!

I

[Hotzn]

short respawn times of animals and loot in abundance everywhere.

I agree with this. For those of you who don't know, I am currently and have been for about 3 months, the #1 ranked Stalker player on the leaderboards. For anyone that is in doubt as to how incredibly easy Stalker mode is and has progressively become, let me offer you some interesting perspective from my run.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, I think this is a valuable addition to the discussion.

[rw28]

@Octavian - I went back and read through your posts in this thread more carefully as I had only skimmed through before now. You made some good points and I do agree with a lot of the things you said, but not everything.

The game world is small, and Hinterland decided for the world to be wide instead of tall, so it really does feel small. But, more to the point, items do not respawn. Maybe they will, indirectly, by way of AIs. But, until then, if you lower the number of items on stalker, all you’re doing is lowering the maximum possible survival time.

Yes, lowering the maximum survival time is the biggest effect that would occur from reducing the amount of items in the game world, but not the only one. Depending on the extent to which you reduce the amount of items, you will be forced to go out more often and further and further from your home base. The amount of items could even be lowered to such an extent that setting up a home base would not even be optimal anymore. When I say items, I'm speaking broadly about all resources in the game, including harvesting animals. I think that the amount of meat, skins and guts you get per animal needs to be heavily reduced, even if it wouldn't make perfect sense in real life. The more you are forced to stay active, the more you will be forced to expose yourself to the main threats in this game. Those threats can also be tweaked to become harsher if need be.

Your point about the game world being small is true, but we don't know what the final size will be. I have heard rumors that there might be up to 10 maps by the time the game is finished, but I have no idea if there is any truth to that. World size is important, because even if you reduce resources to the point of having to stay on the move all the time, you can still pretty well travel through the entire world in a single day right now. That's a problem that could be helped by a much larger world, or by speeding up time. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the time sped up, making it harder to travel far in a single day and making some of the progress bars in the game go by faster. There's probably a lot of factors that would be affected by speeding up time that I'm not even considering though, so I don't know.

Also, simply reducing the amount of maximum survival time is not a bad way to increase difficulty all by itself, providing that it's reduced by a very, very significant amount from what it is now. Consider if the front page of the leaderboards was currently full of survival times around 100 days. Now people actually have something manageable to compete over, because it's not such a large real-life time investment anymore. The game could actually get really interesting in figuring out all the different ways you can min/max to get the most out your resources. It becomes a matter of figuring out how to squeeze out an extra day instead of an extra 1000 days, which is going to be a lot more fun for everyone. I don't expect this to happen, but I know I would enjoy it.

Imagine a scenario where on spawn everything you can loot, from all maps, warps at your feet. Making the pile smaller has no effect on hibernation, hibernation is players using game mechanics in a way not predicted by developers, not by the size of the pile.

It's not just the size of the pile that is the problem, but also how easy it is for you to acquire a pile. With the way things are right now, there is so much stuff in such a small proximity, that I can build a pile in one location very easily and very quickly. You're asking me to imagine this scenario as if it's something hypothetical, but it's actually closer to the reality of the situation than you realize.

Yes, any pile at all can induce hibernation, but if we can't eliminate hibernation completely, at the very least we can reduce it as much as possible. I don't know what the exact solution is, but I do think lowering resources is a good move.

Even killing a bear allows for hibernation; it gives tons of meat, you can make water out of thin air, cold is not an issue inside, and so on.

You can make water out of thin air? You need wood and something to start a fire with to make water. The fact that you even refer to making water as such a trivially easy thing is a great example of how overly easy it is to find those resources right now. Those are things that need to require more time and active playing to collect, which is good if it gives you something to do other than hibernate. Imagine if matches or firestrikers were extremely rare and maybe you even have to travel to different maps in search of them. Maybe you finally find a pack of matches, and there's only 3 inside the pack. What a difference that would make.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, I think this is a valuable addition to the discussion.

And to Denyo and all others - let's not be negative towards people who try out all mechanics and look for exploits as long as their Intention is to explore, discuss and improve the game. To me everything rw28 says seems completely legit, I feel kind of bad how he (or she?) was welcomed here. This community can do better.

Thanks! It is nice of you to say that, and I appreciate it. Between this and past threads, it does sometimes feel like quite a few people are against me simply because of where I am on the leaderboards and how they feel about hibernation and other exploits. I knew my introduction in this thread would come off like a brag, but I wanted to be clear about my experience in the game. I have spent a lot of time playing around with the mechanics in the game and I feel like it has given me a good understanding of how they might be fixed or changed. This doesn't mean that I think I'm above anyone else, in fact there are two streamers that I often watched play while I played at the same time (LMG and PocketsLLP), who I know could both survive for as long or longer than I did IF they actually wanted to. The not wanting to being the main issue that I am personally interested in having fixed. I think this game has a lot of potential for replay value and competitiveness, only if it can be made more difficult and single runs less time consuming so that people actually want to do it.

[Scyzara]

Also, simply reducing the amount of maximum survival time is not a bad way to increase difficulty all by itself, providing that it's reduced by a very, very significant amount from what it is now. Consider if the front page of the leaderboards was currently full of survival times around 100 days. Now people actually have something manageable to compete over, because it's not such a large real-life time investment anymore. The game could actually get really interesting in figuring out all the different ways you can min/max to get the most out your resources. It becomes a matter of figuring out how to squeeze out an extra day instead of an extra 1000 days, which is going to be a lot more fun for everyone. I don't expect this to happen, but I know I would enjoy it.

Yeah, I completely agree with your assessment. I'm a person who has outgrown playing MMOs on a high-end level because of their immense time sink, yet a part of me still likes playing in a challenging and competitive way. The ideal TLD game mode for me would probably be as you describe it: very high difficulty combined with extreme item & prey scarcity, thus low overall survival times and thus not too much real life time requirement per run.

My longest run took me more than 240hours real life time and even though I challenged myself by doing various rather reckless activities, I'm sure I would have had much more fun if I had played 5 or 10 shorter runs instead.

Not to mention that it feels really odd to be on the same savegame for more than four months although you play the game almost every evening for a few hours. People who lack the time to play for more than 3 or 4 hours per week couldn't even try a leaderboard run because it would most likely take them years to finish it. :?

Thanks! It is nice of you to say that, and I appreciate it. Between this and past threads, it does sometimes feel like quite a few people are against me simply because of where I am on the leaderboards and how they feel about hibernation and other exploits. I knew my introduction in this thread would come off like a brag, but I wanted to be clear about my experience in the game.

Sometimes it's a bit hard to differentiate between a person's attitudes regarding different topics, I guess that's why Denyo overstated the case a little. I don't think he meant any harm.^^

You and me had a discussion about hibernation before, thus I know that you know that I'm strongly opposing hibernation myself (and thus dislike your personal decision to make use of it), but this doesn't mean that I wouldn't agree with everything you wrote here in this thread. It's quite clear that you want the game to become as challenging and much fun to play as possible, after all that's what matters most.

The not wanting to being the main issue that I am personally interested in having fixed. I think this game has a lot of potential for replay value and competitiveness, only if it can be made more difficult and single runs less time consuming so that people actually want to do it.

Yeah, I'd certainly love to compete with the best TLD players under ultra-hardmode conditions - like probably everyone else who posted in this thread. TLD definitely has the potential to attract people who love extremely challenging games, I only wish it would concentrate a little more on this strong point instead of decreasing the difficulty in Stalker mode evermore with every patch.

Right now there's simply no way to tell who's "the very best" because many people who might be extremely capable long-term survivors never finish their runs out of boredom or limit their possible survival time by not using exploits (whatever they personally might consider an exploit*) or they don't even try serious leaderboard runs because they shun the massive real life time requirements.

*ask ten people about it and you probably get 10 different answers, ranging in severity anywhere between "only hibernation-starvation" and "foraging wood in an ice fishing shack".

[Denyo]

I appologize for my negative approach to some members in this as well other threads.I realised,that I sometimes do things and act as well just like I don`t want others do things,act and write.I do like this communitiy and I like to be friendly,so in my over the top enthusiasm for community and game,I admit,do sometimes wrong things and overreacting.

I will try to keep everything in this community in friendly manners and act,as it should be proper.I hope my appology will be accepted.As good man and man of honour,I also without hesitation admit,if I am wrong and make mistake.

Peace,love & respect.

[octavian]

You cannot, and will not, have any kind of serious competition and fun in a game that’s immovable, that simply has things you can do and not doing them provides no benefit other than being able to say you did it without them. As it stands all TLD does is play the world-class developers, monolithic game design, this-is-how-we-see-it-and-there’s-no-advantage-to-playing-a-different-way card. I hope it’s not some Levine type BS Infinity hubris.

One of the reasons we – me and friends – ran Bingo on voyageur is because of the time window of no aggressive wildlife. How you choose to take advantage of it is a big part of the strategy you bring to the challenge. Stalker doesn’t have that, and is one of the many reasons I – and we – feel the design of stalker is dumbing down the game. You’d be forgiven to think stalker is harder because of the constant “threat” but that’s not the case, most people don’t know just how fast you can have a very bad time on voyageur when you try to make the best of the first day. Not only stalker is artificial difficulty, the eternal plight of video gaming, but it’s not even decent artificial. I feel that whoever is in charge of it simply doesn’t get what’s in fact hard. Not less cans, more wolf, that's for sure.

To name just one out of hundreds – I feel there’s no point in even mentioning any of them because interest and feedback is woefully low, especially on the developer side, because they’re just sticking to their vision – if there was a game-wide mechanic that made wildlife a non-threat for a certain amount of time, then we’d be beginning to see the light at the end of both the competitive tunnel and the fun tunnel. Because in a case where, for example, one entire day and night of fog where wildlife disappears from the game, how Scyzara, rw28 and Octavian choose to approach it, take advantage of it, is different, this the kind of thing we as players can bring to the game and which is unique to us.

This is just one example of what I’m saying over and over again. Difficulty doesn’t matter, loot doesn’t matter, numbers don’t matter, game design/mechanics is what’s creating the deadlock. If they do not address this there will be a way to do it, and you do that. Even if this that and the other are changed, and it’s “ultra-hardcore” now, there would be a generally accepted, best practice kind of thing, the Duden of TLD. So what you’re essentially doing is speedrunning. There’s a “route”, and you do that. And while that can be fun too I don’t think it’s what most mean when they say competitive.

Thinking is what TLD should make us do, because thinking is what makes us different, not grind, we all grind the same even if what we grind is “ultra-hardcore” stalker, if we grind for 3 matches instead of 300 it makes no difference whatsoever.

[ChillPlayer]

As I mentioned before, the game was in quite an ok state pre-v211 when we only had 4 bears in PV that didn't respawn and where you could search all ML and CH to find only one Sewing Kit - if you were lucky. Pre-PV was even more harsh, it felt like real survival and there's a reason why the highest achievement you've got was for 50 days survival, because only a few could get past this mark and you needed to get creative and lucky to survive, IIRC the leader of the LB then had around 200 days - my 148 days survival got me on the first page back then.

Hibernation was always an issue since I play the game and probably forever. For some (used to be many) wolves were mainly a thread and not a food source. But once people figured out how relatively easy the deer/wolf combo was to get with a rifle, thinks started to change and so did the leader board.

Moving forward, let's speculate why the devs in all their wisdom decided to make bears, deer and wolves readily available all the time everywhere and why there's so much loot.

1. They are simply trying something out and will re-adjust this in the future or,

2. because of the xbox launch the devs fear that if the game is too hard it won't attract the kids or,

3. there's a missing link.

Given all I think to know about hinterland, I can and will not believe in 2 - but it's a possibility. 1 might be true but I highly doubt the devs will rewind the past 3-4 months and go back to how it was. So my bet is on 3, they will introduce something to the game where "too much stuff" won't be an issue anymore and even make long time hibernation impossible.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, a vitamin mechanic would pretty much solve all the problems and it's what I mean by "missing link". You only get it from plants, some from raw meat and - as in the real world - they decay very fast. Spinach for example looses 90% of it's vitamin C in about 2-3 days after it got plucked from the field. So yes you could have the fridge full of meat but you need to discover places where you can get plants that provide you with vitamins and minerals, you cannot store them for long times and once you've plucked all the plants in a single spot, you need to find another one soon.

In a sense it would replace the "searching for sewing kit or bullets" we had in the early stages, while providing more realism and more drama, eradicating the need to re-adjust spawning issues and actually achieve the goal the devs might have had in mind when they introduced the recent changes: predators become a thread again and only secondly a food source, because you don't want to spend several bullets or arrows every time you go looking for plants.

And then we can have a real competition again, hibernating until your fridge is empty would be practically impossible, camping forever in the same place would be very unwise, killing all the predators would be a waste and you will need to make use of your brain much more than right now - which from what I've read so far, is what most in this thread are really longing for

[Bill Tarling]

@Octavian - you keep repeatedly (over and over and over and over...) putting down they devs because they won't heed your expert advice and recommendations -- but if you're so disgruntled about it, and continuously post how ignored you feel because they won't abide and change things the way you say -- then why do you keep harping on it every day in the forums?

Just very confused because you keep putting the devs down, as well as other users here, but also seem to enjoy the game (at times) a lot - so just very hard to decipher whether you actually enjoy the game or not, or whether there's something that's been done to make you upset. :?

[rw28]

I appologize for my negative approach to some members in this as well other threads.I realised,that I sometimes do things and act as well just like I don`t want others do things,act and write.I do like this communitiy and I like to be friendly,so in my over the top enthusiasm for community and game,I admit,do sometimes wrong things and overreacting.

I will try to keep everything in this community in friendly manners and act,as it should be proper.I hope my appology will be accepted.As good man and man of honour,I also without hesitation admit,if I am wrong and make mistake.

Peace,love & respect.

Thanks for such a nice and respectful apology! It's so good that I feel bad that I was even irritated with you in the first place.

very high difficulty combined with extreme item & prey scarcity, thus low overall survival times and thus not too much real life time requirement per run.

Yeah, I don't know about reducing wildlife or their respawn timers though. I would be fine with the amount of deer and rabbits being reduced, but wolves are the biggest threat in the game right now. It would even make sense that deer and rabbit would be extremely scarce considering the wolf population is eating them all the time.

Not to mention that it feels really odd to be on the same savegame for more than four months although you play the game almost every evening for a few hours. People who lack the time to play for more than 3 or 4 hours per week couldn't even try a leaderboard run because it would most likely take them years to finish it. :?

Yeah, and on top of all that, there is no way of knowing for sure if your huge time investment will even show up on the leaderboards when you die. Who knows if a patch that occurred halfway through your run might have broken it, or if they might wipe the boards and render old saves ineligible. These were all things that ran through my mind during my run.

And just as an aside thought, the way the leaderboards work is really boring. It would be so much more interesting if it updated in real time, alive or dead. Then players would know for sure that their run was actively being counted, and also how they stack up to everyone else at any given moment.

Right now there's simply no way to tell who's "the very best" because many people who might be extremely capable long-term survivors never finish their runs out of boredom or limit their possible survival time by not using exploits (whatever they personally might consider an exploit*) or they don't even try serious leaderboard runs because they shun the massive real life time requirements.

You said it. This is exactly true.

[Denyo]

Confirming once again,what concluded ChillPlayer and I already: Mystery Lake is really hardest map currently. I didn`t get attacked by wolf for 80 days and I was in CH and PV map.Yesterday I went back to ML,to collect some stuff and I was attacked twice by wolves,almost freezed to death,got food poisoning and once dropped dangerously down with condition coz of exhaustement.Those were all my mistakes,as I took this map too easyly and was over self confident.But,I had really great fun and constant intension.

This was really good old stalker,as it used to be. At most of areas is just enough amount of wolves,weather is greatly messing with players decisions,mistakes are punished hard.

Other thing,I realised...as in other two maps things are really too easy,I decided for one simple solution,to see,how would that change experience.I just started to walk mostly,not run. Even in most dangerous areas,I just walk.Only,when I am in real danger,I start running.

And,you won`t believe,how much that simple difference changed wholle gaming experience! You spend more calories,many times you`re caught in dangerous situations,either coz of wildlife or weather,items are used faster,food is used faster,...and main factor cause here is time! You would think,that with running you spend more calories,than walking.But,difference is,that with running you pass from point A to B in very short time,so there is less chances to get caught by many obstacles.If you walk,you can get change of weather from point A to B more times.And if you are caught with blizzard,you must find shelter and wait for blizzard to stop.You lose time and calories are counting down,slowly,but constantly.And when weather gets better,and you continue your walk,it can be already that time of a day,when there is bear or wolf along path you take.And you must avoid him.You are loosing time again. And you`re loosing calories again.And many things can happen during your travel from point A to B.

To give you one example: I went from PV Farmstead to Rural Crossroads and up to Abandoned mine to pick up some stuff.On my way there,I was running.I reached Rural Crossroads in one and a half in game hours,no problem appeared on my way there.From there I went to Abandoned mine and it took me one hour.I had to avoid one wolf,but that took me only few in game minutes.

Then I went back to Farmstead,this time I was walking.Already from Mine to the road,I was caught by blizzard,so I had to spend 3 hrs in cave nearby.Then I continued towards RC and it took me half hour to get to town.There I met a wolf and a bear.As I decided to move only walking,it took me two in game hours of sneaking and waiting time.When I crossed bridge,it was already late afternoon,so i was forced to stay over night at shop.Next day i could move on arround noon.From shop to Farmstead I was caught by fog and blizzard.It took me 5 in game hours to finally arrive to Farmstead.

About spent food and water...I started from both side with my belly full and completely hidrated.When i reached Abandoned mine,I had to eat one steak and drink 0,30 l of water.On my return I needed 6 steaks and more than 2l of water.

That is comparrison,how walking can change game experience.Difference is quite huge,as you can notice.So,if you want to make your game more interesting,then use walking alot.You will be surprised,how that small change has such big influence on everything in game.

[Ruhroe]

In fairness, the basic problems the OP outlined have been around since this game came out on Steam. Chasing deer into wolves and using a mouse macro to kill the wolves barehanded, without getting diseased, completely trivialized hunting. You could simply take clothing off, to prevent any wear and tear, and that was it (you still can, at least until this new patch lands). A knife made it easier, and the durability wasn't an issue as matches were the limiting factor. The current 2100 day leader board could easily be beaten with all of the zones, matches, etc. that are available now. I have a character with almost 200 days, just testing out what's new, and I have explored almost nothing or used up hardly any resources. PV alone would sustain 1000 days. Even without using a macro I suspect this is possible, since there's so many resources for bows, arrows, rifles and ammo (again, matches are the limiting factor). Apparently, a magnifying glass without durability loss makes matches no longer relevant, but I haven't tested it.

One of the biggest new changes are structures that are so warm inside, with beds that provide +5-8 warmth, that they trivialize clothing. They make it so you can literally collect wood, eat, sleep, hunt and do whatever completely naked. Clothing is just a convenience now. At least before managing clothing was at least a little more important, though going naked most of the time was still the norm.

I'm excited to see the new changes, but I doubt they will change the core game much, which is fine. It's a great game.

[bethany]

I'm excited to see the new changes, but I doubt they will change the core game much, which is fine. It's a great game.

Oh boy, are you ever in for a surprise.