Relative Difficulty of 3 game modes

[Dagnarok]

Hello all,

I picked up this game recently and I have to say that I love it. I've tried all 3 difficulty levels, and I think that there is a lot missing.

The easy mode is just too easy. You really don't die unless you want to. I like the idea of a mode where animals are not your main enemy, but the problem is I feel like I get cold less quickly, hungry less quickly and just am less affected by everything.

The jump up to voyageur is a pretty big jump. There are wolves everywhere, just literally everywhere. I understand a lot of the veteran players here have no problems with them, but as a newer player the jump in difficulty between easy and voyageur is intense. I can't go anywhere without getting killed by a wolf, and honestly stealthing everywhere is not interesting gameplay to me. Just takes longer with no risk unless the weather changes suddenly

Stalker is almost the same difficulty for me. The weather is a bit harsher, but there are even more wolves, really solidifying the fact that I need to stealth almost exclusively, but it doesn't really add much.

I guess the TL;DR here is that the transition between difficulty modes is not at all linear and a bit punishing for a new player like me.

Suggestion: As some have mentioned, some sort of "sliders" would be great. I would love to have a world where the animals are more scarce and I'm fighting more against harsh weather and limited supplies, and also be able to have a game where animals are more aggressive/more dangerous but scavenging is more rewarding, or anything in between.

Anyway, loving the game overall, it's one of the most immersive games I've played in recent history.

[LucidFugue]

I really recommend sticking with voyageur - it's not a matter of stealthing, but being aware of the options open to you. A flare will let you travel safely. You can drop food as a distraction. If the Wolf is only stalking you (not barking and chasing) you can usually sprint away safely.

You absolutely must start using these tactics to travel safe in the early game, before you have the equipment and supplies to combat wolves. You are right, the environment isn't very dangerous in Pilgrim, but flares and torches will see you through a large number of wolf encounters once you a used to relying on them.

[cactus]

The game does need something in between Voyageur and Pilgrim, although I thought more of the opposite, "pilgrim with wolves". In any case, a "custom" difficulty, where one could tweak all the subcondition drop & item decay rates, willife agressiveness, etc, would be welcome and fitting, if "sandbox" actually says something.

[Foxen]

I've suggested the 'slider-system' too...several times...but no answer from the Devs on that...yet.

And I think I know one Reason for not implementing a System like that (just my opinion):

I think there're too many players out there who don't play the game for fun...but for 'being on Top of the list'.

But that list only works 'properly' if you have a standart to compare to.

By now it's relatively easy to compare the survival times because these standarts differ only by the three modes of 'difficulty'.

If they would implement this 'slider-System' there wouldn't be these standarts anymore...and therefor the list would be just useless (as it is right now too, because of all the bugs ).

As I explained earlier it would be the only option to make the game interesting (in terms of difficulty and 'joy of playing again and again') to every Player if they would implement this kind of 'changeability' to the game (at least for the sandbox mode...as said earlier too).

[Killjoy]

I've suggested the 'slider-system' too...several times...but no answer from the Devs on that...yet.

And I think I know one Reason for not implementing a System like that (just my opinion):

I think there're too many players out there who don't play the game for fun...but for 'being on Top of the list'.

But that list only works 'properly' if you have a standart to compare to.

By now it's relatively easy to compare the survival times because these standarts differ only by the three modes of 'difficulty'.

If they would implement this 'slider-System' there wouldn't be these standarts anymore...and therefor the list would be just useless (as it is right now too, because of all the bugs ).

As I explained earlier it would be the only option to make the game interesting (in terms of difficulty and 'joy of playing again and again') to every Player if they would implement this kind of 'changeability' to the game (at least for the sandbox mode...as said earlier too).

Disqualify custom games from the leader boards...easy peasy. Personally I would love sliders to be able to tweak various settings.

That being said I do think that Pilgrim is a bit too easy. Personally the only difference between Pilgrim & Voyager I would make is having wildlife only be hostile when wounded or defending a kill.

[bethany]

I've suggested the 'slider-system' too...several times...but no answer from the Devs on that...yet.

Sorry! We've answered this question quite a few times actually, but I apologize for not catching it on one of your posts. We have no plans to implement a slider system or custom sandbox mode for several reasons. Here's the answer Raphael gave to this question during his Reddit AMA a while back:

We're always tuning the game, so nothing is static and how it feels now is not how it will feel a month from now. I don't think we'll go for a "sliders" solution as I feel it's our job to provide an experience, not a toolbox for experiences. It's a balance between authoring something and creating the opportunity for players to bring their own creativity to the experience.

Thanks to everyone else for the thoughtful feedback. Even though we don't plan on moving to a customized experience, I still take notes on your gameplay/experience mode feedback and will certainly pass it along.

[Naut]

I've suggested the 'slider-system' too...several times...but no answer from the Devs on that...yet.

Sorry! We've answered this question quite a few times actually, but I apologize for not catching it on one of your posts. We have no plans to implement a slider system or custom sandbox mode for several reasons. Here's the answer Raphael gave to this question during his Reddit AMA a while back:

We're always tuning the game, so nothing is static and how it feels now is not how it will feel a month from now. I don't think we'll go for a "sliders" solution as I feel it's our job to provide an experience, not a toolbox for experiences. It's a balance between authoring something and creating the opportunity for players to bring their own creativity to the experience.

Thanks to everyone else for the thoughtful feedback. Even though we don't plan on moving to a customized experience, I still take notes on your gameplay/experience mode feedback and will certainly pass it along.

Even the hardest difficulty is repeating and boring after the first few days. If you feel that its your job to provide the experience for us, i really hope you listen and understand the feedback in this section of the forum.

Of couse if you do not intend to provide more than a few hours of gameplay, then i maybe had false hope for this game from the beginning.

Its amazing how much love and detail you put in the atmosphere of the game, and this is all going to waste because no one will play this game for longer than a few hours.

[Hesha]

I agree. Deciding against sliders would be a very bad idea. Maybe not commercially, but definitely in terms of the value the game can provide. Just having those sliders could instantly remedy most of the issues people raise here (item decay, time lapse, wolf attacks, calorie intake, etc.)...

[Drifter Man]

This is an interesting discussion about the essence of the game and it is worth bumping up.

I believe I understand Hinterland's standpoint on 'sliders'. Looking at the game as their creation, a 'work of art', if you like, they naturally want to be in control of the final product. This does not mean they do not listen to the feedback, but at the end of the process, they offer a singular experience: we take it or we leave it. It is a sign that they 'know what they are doing' rather than being mainly preoccupied with the commercial success the game may bring.

Looking at the it as a commercial product, on the other hand, the 'customer satisfaction' aspect would benefit greatly from sliders. Some people complain there are too many wolves, others think item degradation rate is too high, others aren't happy with calorie consumption rates. Some want maximum realism at any cost, others argue this would kill all fun. Sliders would make everyone happy.

Eventually, Hinterland will decide where between these two poles they stand. I do not think they already have, if I interpret Raphael's words correctly. Note that by offering three difficulty levels, the game is a (crude) toolbox for experiences - there already is a slider! If they are 100% certain about what their creation should be like, there will only be one difficulty level in the end.

[LucidFugue]

There's also a degree of perspective you need to take on. After you've played the game for hours and understand all the mechanics, all the interactions, and you can hypothesise on the impact of adjusting one facet of the experience, you might think it would be great to tinker under the hood.

But for a player coming at the game fresh, sliders and options to tweak their experience aren't at all helpful, because they don't know what they are getting into. This is why there absolutely must be a "default" experience, and it has to be tailored broadly to people playing the game for the first time.

Pilgrim is very much a casual difficulty level for people who probably don't want to die, lose progress, and have to repeat content. That's commonplace for games where people want to experience the story, rather than overcome lots of challenges. Stalker is the other extreme, where the challenge is ratcheted up. Voyager sits as probably the best balanced mode.

The game does get easier the more you play, and the longer you survive, to the point where experienced players are quite able to drop into Timberwolf Mountain on Stalker and get a foothold for themselves (I haven't tried yet, but I'm keen to). Once you're established, the threat level is a lot lower in general than those first few days.

That's why I suggest sticking with Voyageur, as it forces you to learn and use the survival skills you could otherwise ignore in Pilgrim. I'd be happy with some mod tools or sliders down the track, post-release, but I absolutely think it's not something you want ot introduce while you're testing, adding new mechanics, and tuning balance for release. Otherwise half the feedback you get might be useless, because someone has been fiddling with their sliders before playing, and comments on an experience that isn't standard.

[Drifter Man]

I fully agree with that, LucidFugue. Standardized difficulty levels are probably necessary for testing and evaluating feedback, as well as for initial player experience. At the same time, it would be nice to have more control down the road, once the product is finished.

[Renegade30]

The three difficulty settings could still be implemented as standard difficulties with custom difficulties being a non standard option a player can elect to try. Unfortunately I kind of think its a bit of a cop out for the devs to state that a custom difficulty to not fit within their vision, particularly when modding is not properly supported.

Games from command and conquer red alert through to half life were so long lived because they provided easy modding and custom games, I've always thought these two things were essential for a game to stay popular for a long period of time.

I know I would get so much more fun out of this game if I could try playing it with practically no resources available and barely any wildlife, forcing me to constantly be on the move looking for food, or any other custom scenario I could dream up.

I think I speak for many when I say I really hope the devs change their mind on this, if they do I can see people still playing this game 5-10 years from now...

[ThresholdSeven]

There are valid arguments for full mod support/dev tools and the current authoring vision of Raphael. But it's my opinion that if a developer is going to have a lengthy open alpha/beta that the testers have funded to participate in, then the authoring is really being done by all of us equally as much if not more than the devs depending on how much they consider and implement our suggestions. To take suggestions seriously on one hand and implement them into the final game and then dismiss suggestions on the other hand because they encroach too much on the authoring vision is hard to comprehend. (Edit: After reflecting on this post I just wanted to clarify my intended meaning. The Devs can do whatever the hell they want and we're not obliged to have any of our suggestions considered or implemented. It's that the line between author and player is blurred in an interactive medium that is shaped by play testing. I have no problem with Hinterland making the game that they want to make. I just have a hard time with the word authorship in a public alpha. I don't think individuals in the player community deserves personal credit for shaping the game, but the game wouldn't be the same if it wasn't for player testing and feedback and that external shaping of the game should be recognized as a type of co-authorship between the devs and the testing community. But that doesn't give anyone the right to be salty if something that the community suggests doesn't end up in the final game. They have the right to take or leave whatever suggestion they want regardless of if they are paying us to test or if we are paying them to let us in on the alpha. I simply wanted to try to put this in perspective because I'm pretty tired of reading posts by people (in this game and others) who think they are entitled to have the developers consider and implement game suggestions.)

If sliders are really never going to be implemented no matter how much the community wants them or how much profit it could bring Hinterland, then I have to give props to the devs for creating something they really want to create regardless of profit or feedback, but then I wonder why these forums even exist?

If Don't Starve Together can happen, maybe a loud enough public outcry can make TLD sliders happen. If it gets popular enough I'm sure the modding community will just put the sliders in anyway.

What's even more confusing is that I love 7DtD, another survival game that is arguably similar to TLD except it has sliders. I love the hell out of that game and largely because of the sliders...but I love TLD more. There's just no logic in love or video games.

[Killjoy]

I would agree that sliders during the current development phase would muddy the waters as far as feedback goes. However I also agree that a slider system would make the game much more popular in the long run. Don't Starve has an extensive slider system and its that feature alone that will keep it on my HD for years.

[Hatchet]

I've suggested the 'slider-system' too...several times...but no answer from the Devs on that...yet.

Sorry! We've answered this question quite a few times actually, but I apologize for not catching it on one of your posts. We have no plans to implement a slider system or custom sandbox mode for several reasons. Here's the answer Raphael gave to this question during his Reddit AMA a while back:

We're always tuning the game, so nothing is static and how it feels now is not how it will feel a month from now. I don't think we'll go for a "sliders" solution as I feel it's our job to provide an experience, not a toolbox for experiences. It's a balance between authoring something and creating the opportunity for players to bring their own creativity to the experience.

Thanks to everyone else for the thoughtful feedback. Even though we don't plan on moving to a customized experience, I still take notes on your gameplay/experience mode feedback and will certainly pass it along.

Even the hardest difficulty is repeating and boring after the first few days. If you feel that its your job to provide the experience for us, i really hope you listen and understand the feedback in this section of the forum.

Of couse if you do not intend to provide more than a few hours of gameplay, then i maybe had false hope for this game from the beginning.

Its amazing how much love and detail you put in the atmosphere of the game, and this is all going to waste because no one will play this game for longer than a few hours.

Let me be very honest here, i will play the game for longer than a few hours, would i enjoy it more if TLD offered players a true sandbox experience (sliders)? Yes i would and i would probably play it double the amount of time i otherwise would should TLD not offer a true sandbox experience.

I also don't understand why they would not implement it because i do not understand the mind set of the developers and certainly i cannot comprehend the above developer quote.

As you stated, why would they want to give us an experience, by saying 'an' i mean a predefined exprience right, otherwise they would not have used the word "an", but rather said something along the lines of; 'give players their own experience' because tweak it all you want as much as you want, custom difficulty would not ruin it for those who would not want it while not having it would ruin it for those who do want it.

Like that other developer said when replying to a guy who didn't want all maps to be unlocked from the start, i vagualy quote; "Nothing has stopped you from playing it the old way"

Custom difficulty and TLD go hand in hand, because to be frank stalker difficulty is too easy, and 101 wolf encounters in 23 days isn't hard, it's annyoying and repetitive.

There's a lot that's too hard or too easy in certain difficulty modes for certain people, you could ofcourse continue to tweak that untill the day that beef jerky finally spoils or you could continue to tweak that untill the day that beef jerky finally spoiled and implement a custom difficulty that scales automatically with any kind of tweaks you would implement to give long lasting players their own long lasting experience.

I don't want to sound harsh because i can only congratulate all of you on your excellent work, however when fans shout out something this important it's most of the times a very bad idea to go against it.

Ofcourse there's other several reasons why you the developers would not implement it as stated a few posts back in this topic and i would be glad to hear them, just to be able to share my opinion on it and perhaps get some other opinions in as well as i think they are very important and maybe in a different lifetime the fans will not by persuasion but by talking sence and logic change the mind set of the developers on this issue because it wouldn't work if they did it without actually wanting it.

And one thing is straight though, unless you ban anyone from ever speaking about sliders again on this forum, you'll all hear it untill....the....end....of....days, and that's a fact.

That last bit is a joke, about it being a fact that is, cause who knows, right! :lol:

[LucidFugue]

If it helps any.. The game's original vision was to be focused on the story mode... The sandbox was just for testing purposes, and there were no plans to make endless survival modes "the main game". So if the developer had a clear idea in their head, and suddenly the playerbase wants something very different, at what point do you say "No, that would be a totally different game to what I always intended to create"?

[stray_cur]

After long having settled back from the edge of my seat, I find myself being drawn to bears in the secret hope they might release me from the exploration for the sake of exploration purgatory (albeit heavenly) the game quickly becomes after having established oneself.

Yes,,, and on the topic of motivation and difficulty, how about a reason to move on and/or fish -- most simply implemented with wildlife not respawning so regularly.

I agree sliders are a kind of cop-out for visionless, indecisive designers, but in this case it might be the only way to pull the game out of the zombie wolf / exploration for the sake of exploration mode, and back into the realistic, challenging survival mode it is so close to being, and that so many of us want.

[Beepstar]

The problem imho is not the wolves per se. It is, as the op suggested, that the current modes are; mindlessly easy/tutorial mode, hard and very hard. Like all games eventually even the very hard becomes easy.

But the real issue is the jump from tutorial mode (pilgrim) to voyager is massive. This could simply be resolved (imho) with some simple changes to the Pilgrim modes without sliders.

Pilgrim - Wolves should simply have perhaps a 30-50% smaller range for attack etc. There are already many fewer wolves in Pilgrim anyway. This would allow new players to learn some basic wolf management in a less demanding environment. It would add a little to the pilgrim experience whilst making Wolves avoidable if desired.

Bears should act the same in all modes imho.