MarrowStone

On 10/27/2019 at 10:43 AM, Ruruwawa said:

The side quests felt more organic to the region, and more rewarding.  Just stumble over a clue and follow it's trail to some light lore and useful items.

The best part about TLD's story sidequests is that they'd work perfectly in survival mode as well. They'd encourage new survivors to learn new locations off the beaten path. The reading itself would have to give hints as to where to look however, which brings me to:

On 10/26/2019 at 8:59 AM, tulkawen said:

It would be an utter nightmare not having these quest spots marked on the map.

While I don't think the map should be removed, I agree with @MueckE in the fact that the game misses an opportunity here, maybe a survivor says they split up from the main group somewhere around *insert landmark here* etc. Then it'd perfectly be acceptable to have that area be put on the map for reference since its knowledge your character has.

I believe quest markers and good maps are necessary for a modern and accessible game; however, there are other ways developers have lead players through quests:

Take Oblivion and Morrow-wind for example: The journals and characters gave you all the information you needed, environments hold clues and are designed to guide player's with lights, colors etc, these techniques allow people to stay in the game world and not the game UI.

Then Skyrim comes: Everything is just a floating quest marker you chase, your journal says next to nothing important, and the town guards don't even give you directions anymore. When you check your journal you feel like you're completing your medieval grocery list instead of reading clues and critically thinking where you need to go. 

I'm not against the map, it's story mode after all, I get frustrated and just want to be told what to do as well. But quests feel much more organic and less "gamey" when you can get actually usable information other than "Here, I'll mark it on your map."

3 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

Indeed, in the US State I live in, if you get caught baiting deer or (other wildlife), with corn, or apple piles, or grain piles, ect., you will get a hefty fine, and possibly jail time. Even just having a huge pile of apples on your property, that obviously did not fall naturally can get you pretty big fines. 

In my State it's ok in the off-season. In States particularly high in chronic wasting disease (CWD/"Zombie Deer") it can increase the rate the illness spreads, it also artificially raises the carrying capacity of the environment which can have other detrimental effects. 

I never really used the bait as a hunting technique in the game. By the time I have cooking level 5, bear is a much more reliable and efficient food source than wolf. If you want the pelts before x days you can also use a knife, revolver, or find guaranteed wolf carcasses on the map. I haven't observed how far the range they can grab the meat is so I can't really form my own opinion other than it won't affect (me in particular) that much.

@Raphael van Lierop, did our breath move in 3D space before this hot-fix? If not, I somehow just noticed it and I've gotta say it is both convenient and looks great! Thanks for implementing it!

15 minutes ago, kristaok said:

I mean that's kind of what hunters do right? many hunters for instance feed deer corn or whatever just to shoot them. 

It's not legal in quite a few states, idk about Canada's baiting laws but in my state all feed must be gone by hunting season. 

No no, this is a good question! Morally grey things like these are what the world of The Long Dark bring to "Light". 

@Ice Hole did a terrific job enlightening me on why logical decisions aren't always good for the long run. We can min/max and use every resource to its fullest in survival mode, but in Wintermute everyone's actually human and this does not simply work anymore. 

From a character perspective, no one knows the true scope of this quiet apocalypse. Maybe if this individual makes it to the mainland there's a chance. Is it just the island? Why didn't all planes fall out of the sky at the same time then? Astrid seems to have crashed days before the airliner did, doesnt that seem odd if it was a global event?

Type 1 diabetes is hereditary, healthy individuals develop it simply from their genetics, so it's not the survivor's fault they have it either. 

Insulin was first used to treat diabetes in 1922, and for a while it was purified from animal pancreas. Now it can be made from vats of genetically modified bacteria. I don't know it how was harvested from pigs and purified but considering it was a hundered years ago there's a good chance it could be made without electronics. As long as someone with the knowledge survives....

40 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

That's a thing? Can't confirm

I can confirm, I think it has to do with clicking the UI but having to click and hold for the ignition.

17 minutes ago, DarkTreader said:

I believe the climbing rope is still in roughly the same place as it previously was.

I must've been lost, lol

I noticed that early morning  outdoor/cave lighting has REALLY high contrast to the point everything looks either white or navy blue. 

21 hours ago, DarkTreader said:

then can head up the new path to Burned Ridge Cave

Did they move the climbing rope? I can't seem to find my way up the ridge without going around.

13 hours ago, GothSkunk said:

Father Thomas makes a number of references to 'his flock' -- Catholic parlance for one's congregation -- but where are they?

They all died in the snow looking for the lost artifact.

All joking aside I did find this detail strange and I just wrote it off as they're busy gathering firewood for the infinite fire. I think you're right where it just wasn't necessary to add NPCs you cant interact with or offer nothing to the story. Or maybe they got sick along with the survivors. Thomas never mentions them leaving/abandoning him does he?

Concerning timberwolves, implementing them into survival mode seems like the next best thing but they are very likely to upset the game in quite a few ways. Timberwolf packs require you to use resources, which can be both fun or annoying depending on the rate they spawn in survival. What do you do in interloper with just torches on a windy day? Throw rocks to save a match? how many kg of dedicated rocks should an interloper player carry just in case? etc. I think they should be very rare and not in all regions.

Another thread suggested that they start in the region in a heavy loot area and you can drive them off for a long time after killing them all or scaring them off x amount of times. Imagine fighting a pack of 5, then 4 etc down to 2 before they leave for 20+ until they form back up?

3 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Hopefully we'll get some good participation here and then we can figure out about doing some more activities like this in the future.

@Raphael van Lierop, on Instagram I saw something your team posted about submitting films of our own quiet apocalypses. It was accompanied with an example of Stacy's work (It's her grape soda! :D). Could we get more information on that? Is there a deadline? Does it have to be snowy?

8 hours ago, ThePancakeLady said:

The wolves you encounter at the blizzard line at the beginning, going to Molly's barn are regular "blackie" wolves. At least in my capable Survivor game they were. The struggle animation when I got nailed by one of them on the first try was the black "regular" wolf face. Not the grey, furrier Timber Wolf face. And it was daylight out (though a blizzard) and I could clearly see they had black pelts not grey ones, and were not as big as the Timbers I met later on in the Episode. And they looked nothing like the dead wolf Molly killed inside the barn.

Hey, you're right, for some reason I couldve sworn I got the timber wolf morale mechanic tip the moment i was charged by those two normal wolves. But now that I remember there was no morale bar when attacked I realized they were just normal ones with an odd timing for the tutorial? I didnt get into a struggle with them to have a closer look and i didnt record it so I cant fully remember if I got that morale tip or not either. Thanks for correcting me and my occasionally terrible memory lol. 

5 minutes ago, Paphalophagus said:

Also, don't forget the piece of orange cloth. That might lead one to consider an inmate might have come into play somehow.

Spoilers.

She was hunting them for sport. If you do the BlackRock prison sidequest, the prisoners are actually desperately trying to get out of the valley cause they are being hunted by "somethin'"

However, it could suggest her husband was a prisoner as well. 

She also ignores a man frozen in a car that looked way less far gone than Astrid. His skin was still pink, most corpses you find in the game looked a lot more like Astrid.  

Lady might be a misandrist but her killing the prisoners might be the only reason Astrid was able to survive Pleasant Valley long enough to didcover how to get to Perseveremce Mills. Besides from saving her from hypothermia of course.

3 hours ago, Ape88 said:

As they don't appear to be present until after you talk to the priest/father. It's a little cheaty but I'm a wuss.

That's not the case in my experience, I was confronted by them at the blizzard line from the very beginning! They didn't show up after that until after I talked to the priest however. 

Just now, RegentRelic said:

I would win this if was a lady.

What's stopping you from trying?

Not gonna lie, I was thinking the same thing as you, lol. Someone's already done the best Will cosplay. I'm excited to see if people will incorporate the painterly artstyle again with her. 

2 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Thanks. We still have a lot of work to do and big plans for how to improve their AI. This was a first step.

A very big first step.  

The only issues I noticed  is them occassionally being slow to react to thrown flares/torches and one of them disappeared once but they did an awesome job flanking/surrounding the player in several varying environments! 

A wishlist I have to make them seem even smarter is maybe have them glance at other members of the pack occasionally. Just to sell the fact theyre working together even more. 

Seeing 4 sets of glowing eyes surround my tiny blue flare bubble at night was so thrilling! 

11 hours ago, peteloud said:

I am playing Ep.3 at the most difficult level, and at the moment finding those wolves too difficult☹️

I have reached a point in the story where I have been killed by the wolves four or five times.  They are very different to the wolves I experience Survival Stalker level.   In Survival a pack of wolves attack one after the other with predictable behaviour.  I am not finding that in Ep. 3.    In Ep.3 the attack behaviour of wolves is unpredictable and the attack is not sequential.  They come at you from all sides and more than one at a time.  I suspect that is more like the real behaviour of a pack of wolves.  They don't give me time to look around, aim my revolver and shoot them, and trying to re-load my revolver is sure to lead to my death.

It might be that it just takes me a while to learn how they behave and to adopt a better defence strategy, but for the moment they find me easy meat.

You don't even have to hit them with the revolver to scare them, if you are really in a pinch and have a few bullets to spare, whizzing them in their general direction works just fine. I don't know how many more bullets it'd take since pack moral is proportionate to how many are there but it still does substantial damage. 

A lot of text here, my apologies:

I really liked your observation with the Greek mythology! While I understand your stance on flipping episode 2 and 3 since it works well for film, I think its up to writing style when in games. I'd like to play devil's advocate and suggest that maybe it was written in a way to make characters go, "oh!" when looking back. If we knew about the phones when playing as Mackenzie, and we knew Astrid was on that radio, it doesn't put the player truly in the player character's perspective. The phone in the lodge starts as a curiosity, then becomes cathartic on the second play-through. Actually, a lot of the stuff in TLD's story mode carries much more weight when playing through it a second time. Molly's whole conversation about Astrid's "Friend" tells you everything once you've figured out the context by playing beforehand. Molly was disappointed when she learned Astrid's friend was a male but also simultaneously concerned she might have already killed him and made enemies with the doctor...

14 minutes ago, TheEldritchGod said:

"I won't tell you why I'm going to Perseverance Mills or what's in the case." thing as annoying. You are supposed to start revealing clues to maguffins by act 2. You can't keep blue balling your audience. I understand WHY, because this is an Act 1 Episode, it's just in the wrong order of reveal.

There's a cutscene with Astrid in the research facility on a phone with an unknown woman at Perseverance Mills. There's some clues it reveals: It suggests whatever is in that case was stolen by Astrid, someone on Great Bear knows about it, and maybe people on the island alive might not take her stealing it and bringing it there too kindly... If she stole it, that also completely explains why Astrid was so desperate to meet up with Will after so many years instead of hiring any other pilot, and was impatient with him when he wanted to talk things out and wait out the storm before flying. Perseverance Mills suggests the town runs on logging, or used to, and it may just be the "castle" our forest talker friends wanted to siege before things went to frozen hell. She might be in some trouble when she gets there... Or maybe its just a CSGO hunting knife lootbox she really wants to open!

I'd also like to add that every episode doesn't have to raise in stakes every time, this is what causes so many series to make weird jumps into outer space/the future etc. I thought the stakes were pretty high with the plane crash victims and timber wolves combined, the survivors had a condition that I was too afraid to get to zero (although it was terribly easy to keep them alive since none had any real injuries to impede your progress). 

The whole survivor thing was a terrific idea but I agree it felt off, kind of half implemented and repetitive.  Only two of the survivors I had to move were memorable (the closest one and the furthest one) one was a multi day struggle to keep both of us alive, and the other was in constant view of the community hall chimney smoke so it was really cool walking towards that glowing hall at night getting ever closer while being chased by wolves. 

I also like your stance on Timberwolves in survival mode being specific to locations or regions. Not every region would work well for them, and not every place inside those regions really needs them either. I'd also like them to be much more rare than in story mode. 

7 hours ago, peteloud said:

Thanks for your feedback.  I shall investigate further as suggested by Raphael.

It was just such a puzzle. The sound in the Survival mode was extremely crisp and sharp, then a few minutes later so fuzzy.

I'm having issues where the player's footsteps are the loudest things on Great Bear and i can't hear unless I stop moving. The sound quality seems fine for me but the fires and harvesting old mans beard are really high pitched and tinny sounding now. 

1 hour ago, Bripea said:

Possible spoilers, don’t read further if you haven’t completed season 3 yet!

 

i need help with the task in the mines where you replace the fuses to get the elevator working. I swear I’m stuck at 2/3 of the fuses replaced. I cannot figure out how to get all 3! Does anyone have any tips for this part, I’m super confused. Thanks!

I had trouble with this too, remember that after you remove the fuses the water near them is "safe" except it's still really cold. Sorry I cant' help any more than that, i was super disoriented as well. 

@ManicManiac I'd like to say I'm having the same issue and I totally forgot to report it! It's like 5 whole seconds just to crouch and really choppy camera too! It makes looking under beds and stuff for loot a chore. 

@Admin I'd also like to add that anything with physics looks choppy, like throwing torches, rocks, and lanterns swinging. Even with 60fps it looks more on the 30-40 range. 

@lyttolI agree with everything said here. Wonderfully done, Hinterland, but there's room for improvement.

I particularly like the idea of Bonding with the survivors you carried (I understand theyre in shock but theres nothing functionally different between each one other than one mentions a father vs. a mother), and maybe hearing more about the people you found the ID's for. We could have a couple other survivors maybe even recover and be found cooking for the others etc. 

5 hours ago, lyttol said:

It ended for me when I got back to crossroads after getting bored and slogging it up to signal hill.. So yeah, it ends...

 

"left my rifle somewhere".... pray god you never have to say this while on army exercise... NCO wrath is real.

 

Leaving your rifle is the equivalent of leaving your own two feet behind somewhere. lol. 

It seems to end for an aurora, then come back after that for I don't know how much longer since I left Pleasant Valley ASAP after using the radio. 

7 hours ago, peepercreeper said:

i like episode three alot more  than the other episodes yet i fail to find repeatedly gathering resources and painfully walking across the reagion with a person on your back, the idea sounds great but i still think that having to go to the crash site and to thompsons crossing 4 times is annoying.

 

other than that its really great

SPOILERS

Carrying the first girl (which took two days for my freezing character and felt like a fight to keep both of us alive) and the closest survivor (which I did at night for fun and felt like a brief mad dash away from the wolves) was extremely cool and fun!

The other two became a little dull after that. I believe it was because there wasnt much need to stop often if you had good clothes. Or maybe there wasnt anything really special about those other two. Maybe one should be quite heavy so you have to take frequent breaks, or for one you have to heal them up from a severe injury first before you move them. Maybe a wound keeps opening. 

44 minutes ago, piddy3825 said:

I was expecting to see the wolf pack pull down this horse, but was surprised when the horse started rolling about in the snow.  The idea that the wolves had never seen a horse or anything bigger than themselves was an explanation that I'd never have thought possible.  Goes to show you how little we really know about wildlife behavior.

Yeah it subverted my expectations too, but it makes sense since predators usually will not put themselves at risk if they don't need to. An injury out there could mean death. The wolves most likely were unfamiliar with the animal and wanted to test its boundaries, the horse looked healthy and alert to me so I'm guessing the wolves saw it as not worth attacking (they usually attack large game when its weakened or too young to fight back). They must be not very desperate and have a safer, more reliable food supply.

I think it's a bigger mystery as to why the horse didn't run away, horses are usually scared by even the smallest things. Did it think they were just dogs? It standing its ground and rolling on its back may have actually saved its life, showing it is not prey and also not an active threat to the wolves. When animals show their exposed bellies it usually is done in order to defuse hostility and show they mean no harm.