Captcavey

2 hours ago, Admin said:

Hello everyone.

We’re nearing the mid-way point of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, our paid expansion pass campaign for Survival Mode, and this seems like a good time to talk about how things have gone so far.

In my opinion, they haven’t gone that well. 

Certainly not how we want them to go. Certainly not how *I* want them to go.

When we originally discussed the idea of doing an expansion pass for THE LONG DARK, we did so recognizing that in the years we’ve been working on getting the WINTERMUTE Episodes out, we’d naturally had less time to focus on Survival. We wanted to give Survival some love, but also wanted to see if we could do so in a more financially sustainable way, that might set a path for the future.

You see, Hinterland is an independent studio, and THE LONG DARK is a self-funded, self-published project. This means we get to keep our revenue and don’t have to share it with a publisher, and we can work without external interference. But it also means that we carry all the costs and risks for the project ourselves. 

This is how we like it, and our independence is paramount to who we are and what we make. But for a large and complex game like THE LONG DARK, one we’ve been updating for years without asking for any more money from our players, we wanted to experiment with the idea of creating a new revenue stream that would help us continue updating the game well into the future, in a financially sustainable fashion. 

To a large degree, the ongoing financial health of THE LONG DARK, which we’ve built an entire company around, also determines what we can make in the future. So while this is a passionate endeavour for us, it’s also a business, and we’re focused on running it ethically and sustainably, and taking good care of our people. That means finding the right way to generate revenue from it, one that is fair to our players that doesn’t burn out the team. We believed TALES would be one way to do that.

Because we knew that charging for updates would come with greater expectations than when people were getting them “for free”, we wanted to provide some assurances of what you would get, and when, so that we weren’t just saying, “hey, here’s a thing, give us some money even though most of it isn’t made yet”. That’s maybe fine for Early Access, but we graduated from Early Access in 2017, and we felt that we needed to do better for this. 
And in wanting that, I made some decisions that led us to the present challenges around the Expansion:

• We committed to a specific roadmap of features and content, which we knew we’d have to produce to a quality level exceeding what we’d included in the game as free updates over the years.
• We committed to a specific number of Parts that we’d release as part of the Expansion Pass campaign.
• We committed to a specific cadence; we’d aim to release a Part every 8-10 weeks, to try to recapture that “buzzy” feeling from the Early Access days, and see if we could boost player engagement with more frequent updates.
• We committed to a specific timeline; we’d release all six Parts in a year. 

Why did we do this? Well, honestly, I felt that despite being able to hit this release cadence years ago in Early Access, we’d lost some of that muscle memory over the years. We’d also lost a bit of that excitement that comes from frequent game releases, and I wanted to find a way to get some of that back. Also, the COVID years of 2020-2022 had been such a struggle. I hoped that this ambitious project would be healthy for the team, and give them some exciting new features to work on, to see the game refreshed and the community excited. So, after plenty of internal discussions and everyone signing on to deliver this, we rolled up our sleeves and jumped in. We launched Part One in December.

And we ran into issues almost immediately. You’ve experienced some of these yourselves, and some have been behind the scenes. But the reality is that, we’ve failed to hit the 8-10 week release target for any of the Parts so far, and we’re not going to be able to achieve it for Part Three either. 

With each Part release, there have been issues that have forced the team into a hotfixing cycle which has taken away from the progress around the next Part. That’s created pressure that has led to mistakes being made, that then force more hotfixes, and the cycle continues. This has been a cascading issue for the past six months or so, since the December release of Part One. It’s put an enormous amount of pressure on the team, not just the development team working on THE LONG DARK, but the other teams in the studio that support our launches: test, releasing, marketing, community, and so on.

This is my studio and my responsibility. I stepped away from the project to focus on new things, and the issues around timing, delivery, quality...these all roll up to me. 

I’m sorry I’ve let you down.

I can’t change the past but I can try to fix the future. I’m painfully aware that you’ve heard some of this from me before, with the early WINTERMUTE episodes. I’m painfully aware that there are people out there, reading these words right now, feeling gleeful that we failed to deliver. I know there are a lot of “I told you they couldn’t hit this cadence” posts about to hit our forums and other channels. Those comments are entirely deserved. I take them on myself.

We won’t be able to hit the 8-10 week cadence for the Expansion Part releases. I’m not going to provide a new number, even though we have an internal one, because ultimately we need to focus on quality and team health, and build the timeline around that. There’s no sense in shipping Parts on a schedule if the experience you get when you play is disappointing. There’s no sense in shipping on a schedule if it burns out the team. There’s no point in promising dates that we fail to hit. Yes, we already knew this going in. We’ve faced these constraints before. I should have known better. I applaud the teams out there that are able to put out significant updates to their games every 8 weeks or so. We don’t seem able to do it.

We’re still going to deliver the full roadmap we’ve promised. We probably won’t get it all done before the end of this year, but we’ll still deliver the six Parts, and we’ll get them in your hands as soon as we can.

The team is going to catch their breath, get Part Three done and out the door, and my hope is that with a little bit of extra time now, we’ll be able to get you a better quality update that doesn’t require so many fixes after the fact. After that, we’ll dig in to Part Four and continue the work.

The 60FPS fix that the team has been working on for the past few weeks will also now be delayed so that we can release it along with Part Three. This will save us from doing an additional release in between now and Part Three, allowing the team to focus on getting that content finished and tested. (Remember, every time we release an update -- no matter how small -- it comes with an amount of overhead for testing and releasing.) So the 60FPS fixes for Xbox and PlayStation should be part of the Part Three launch.

Many of you have asked about the status of the Switch version of TALES. As you know, we had originally planned to have this out earlier this year. When both the Xbox and PlayStation versions came in late, this pushed out the work on the Switch as well. I can’t promise you a date for Switch yet. There’s a fair amount of work we need to get done before we can ship it, and I’m not sure how we will fit it in on top of the other work we are doing for the Parts. We’re looking into some options, including bringing on some more dev help to get that done. At this point, I would say we’ll do our best to get TALES up and running for the end of the year, and if we can get it done sooner, we will. I’m really sorry about that delay. It absolutely sucks if you are a Switch TLD player right now.

I completely understand if any of you feel burned by this situation and want to have TALES refunded. We can’t issue refunds ourselves, but you can request them from the platform you purchased the game on. We hope you won’t do that, but again, I understand if you feel that you’ve had enough. My hope is that by the time the Expansion is finished, you’ll choose to come back and give it another chance.

In addition to giving the team more time and breathing room to get the Parts out, I’m also going to be stepping back in to focus the TLD team and get development back on track. I’m going to dive back into the design as well and make sure the systems we’re delivering to you are as good as they can be. I’ll be there “in the trenches” with the team, so to speak, to guide them through this. That’s my promise to you.

My goal now is to make sure that when you look back at the end of this campaign, and see all that we’ve added to both TALES (paid) and THE LONG DARK (free updates), you’ll find that on the whole it’s been a great addition to the game and really refreshed the sandbox. I’m excited about the new features we’re adding in Part Three, and in the rest of the roadmap.

Regarding Episode Five. A lot of you have been asking about it. As mentioned several times, but I’ll say it again here, we won’t be saying anything about Episode Five release dates until we’re close to shipping it, which won’t be this year. I do promise some kind of update with some non-spoilery details around what to expect in Episode Five later this year, so you won’t go the whole year without hearing any news. But for now, we don’t have anything more to say, except that there are a lot of story threads to tie up in Episode Five, and it’s going to be a big one.

The last six months have been tough on the team, and we appreciate your ongoing support and patience. Thanks for reading, and I hope to have better news for you next time you hear from me. 

- Raphael
 

Superb update as usual but I can't help feeling like your self deprecation is excessive. You're delivering a superb gaming experience and we're all fans who are behind you. Yes, there will be those who moan but you'll never stop that.

Please don't stop being hinterland. Every time you get to work you build another intricate part of the joy that eminate's from either my Mac or PS4. I want to hear Astrid or Mackenzie moaning about the cold and how they're "going to die out here". We hear you! We're trying our best to save those forlorn avatars. Help us help them Hinterland.

Thank you.

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

When are we getting Episode 5? 

We have already paid for that.

That has already been discussed in other threads. 

7 hours ago, Admin said:

 

Hello Survivors,

We have a few updates about the development progress around TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, the paid Expansion Pass for Survival Mode, which we launched on Steam (Windows-only) on December 5th.

 

TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, Part One: Mac Version

We’re happy to announce that we were able to fix the issues that prevented the Mac build of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY from working. The Test Team is finalizing the build, and it is due for release on Wednesday, February 15th on Steam and the Epic Game Store. This will bring the Mac version to parity with Windows.

 

TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, Part One: Xbox and PlayStation Versions

The team is working hard on finalizing and testing these versions. We’ve encountered a few hiccups with the respective store setups, but we have found some workarounds. The current target date for Xbox and PlayStation releases of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY is Wednesday, March 15th. This will bring Steam, Epic Game store, Xbox, and PlayStation versions to parity. Please keep in mind, Xbox and PlayStation will need to approve these new versions, which may affect the release date. We will provide confirmation closer to launch. 

We’ll have more news on the Nintendo Switch version in the coming weeks.

 

SAVE SYSTEM OVERHAUL WITH TALES, PART ONE

As a reminder, as part of splitting the game between Story and Survival Modes, we have made some necessary changes to help future-proof the save system in THE LONG DARK, and to enable you to receive improvements to the game moving forward. 

As a result, unfortunately current Survival Mode saves will not work with the game once you download the Update for Part One of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY. This is true even if you do not purchase the Expansion Pass. 

This change will not impact Feats, Feats progress, Achievements, or WINTERMUTE saves. 

 

TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, Part Two: Launch Date & Features

We are currently targeting a launch for TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, PART TWO on Thursday, March 30th. This will be for the Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Epic Games Store versions. The work on Part Two is nearly complete, and will be entering the Testing phase soon. Please keep in mind that the release date may be impacted by development realities.

 

Prepper Bunker Overhaul - Available in Part Two of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY

 

The feature and content set for Part Two will include:

(For those who own TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY)

• Tale: “Signal Void” (estimated 5+ hours of play time to complete)
• Fire-Hardened Arrows
• Handheld Shortwave Radio
• Transponder Cache Gameplay
• New Bunkers
• Three new Clothing items

(For anyone that owns THE LONG DARK or SURVIVAL EDITION)

• Enhanced Prepper Bunkers
• Enhanced Beachcombing
• Acorns & Oak Trees 

We’ll share more details about each of the features going into Part Two as we get closer to release. If you’d like to review our plans for TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY, please review the Roadmap. If you’d like to see what is included in Part One, check out the launch video here.

 

Windows - Upcoming Hotfix

We continue to work toward resolving a number of issues on Windows, including: 

A couple of issues causing an infinite loading screen or failure to progress past the disclaimer screen after launching the game.
An issue in the Episode Four mission, "Lost Power Workers" that caused the game to hang when entering the trailer.

We appreciate your ongoing patience and support as we work to resolve these concerns, and we will share a date for the Hotfix in the near future as soon as more news is available. For all other technical issues, please reach out via our Support Portal.

 

Thank you, Survivors, and keep your eyes open for next week’s release of TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY on Mac (on Steam and Epic Game Store)!

 

- The Hinterland Team
 

Beautiful, thanks for the concise update. Looking forward to firing my Mac up!

I wanted to drop the Hinterland team and this community a quick message to wish you all a very prosperous new year. For the Hinterland team I thank you for bringing us new, exciting content. You are legends and we (the community) generally love you. Keep being you. Much love.

+1 for this issue. I'm on PS4.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the hardcore survivalists deal with no loot tables and more dynamic wildlife. I picked up TLD after watching streamers play the game on interloper. I dived straight in and of course died almost immediately. To make a long story short, I became a pilgrim to learn the maps and have got hooked on wandering around the maps, checking out all the nooks and crannies. I've put hundreds of hours into this new pastime! I recently dared to jump back into interloper (it's all or nothing with me) and I was pleasantly surprised to find I was actually surviving in interloper! However, a lot of that was down to knowing where all the Wolfie spawns are. If those become dynamic I'm going to become wildlife food again. I'm looking forward to the challenge!

It could add an extra level of difficulty for those that have learned the loot locations. Also, I bet there would be LOADS of worlds where the new spawn lasted about 5 minutes in Interloper... like me 😵

You could make it so that a backpack appears where the deceased checked out which stores items that are crucial to the game (if they were carrying them). This would make finding that one item a potentially huge find. The chances of finding that one backpack would be mighty slim. Maybe a little note inside which details the past users locations so you can get an idea of what has/hasn't been looted.

It would be a great option if game worlds could be captured at the point of the players death and for there to be an option for new playthroughs to use a "used world". The new playthrough would then have the world from a random deceased player.

The random world that is captured would be from a pool of world's that the community give permission to be captured, not your own playthroughs.

1 hour ago, JaySovereign said:

It's still an issue because if I buy this pass for a bunch of money and then stop payments, all the money will be wasted and gone because all the content will be gone. This is really making me reconsider even buying this game to begin with, I can't believe you guys would decide to do something so...corporate and greedy. Not like you at all.

 

Edit: If I'm not understanding this correctly, please point out what's really going on here as I'm very confused over this.

You haven't bought the game yet? You are missing out. There's nothing in this genre that comes close. Dig deep and buy a copy, you'll see why current players such as the majority replying here, will be very happy to make sure Hinterland continues by supporting them, paying for DLC/season pass.

Nothing has been hammered out as fact yet by the sounds of it but let's face it, the sales alone would never support ongoing updates forever. We've had a lot of updates for our original outlay IMO.

Apologies if I've misunderstood.

Ps. Skis. I'd pay for skis. ⛷️

My introduction to TLD was back in 2017 where I watched survivors roaming around Great Bear island on YouTube. It fascinated me. The look of the game was the hook for me. Later that year, when story mode came out, I parted with my money and took my own flight into that cold desolate landscape. It's 5 years later and I still play this game on Mac and PlayStation (yes, I bought it twice).

Playing this game has been a journey. I started off in Wintermute which introduced the mechanics/crafting/etc. and I took what I'd learnt straight into Interloper...

After I almost immediately died in a blizzard, I realised I needed to learn the environment so I took baby steps, even playing pilgrim to learn the maps and locations of 'things' (I highly recommend this!) Now, 5 years later, I am comfortable entering Interloper but I always, without fail, get that feeling of 'how am I going to survive?' as the screen fades from black into a world that wants to kill me. It's epic every time. 

When I think of what I paid for both copies of the game, it feels like I robbed Hinterland. I think you've over delivered on your promise with this game which has been a great thing for the players. All too often it feels like game manufacturers are trying to find the sneakiest way of prising money out of people but with TLD it feels more symbiotic. It feels to me like I paid for something and I've been brought into the Hinterland world, nothing has been sneakily hidden (the Dev diary updates have been open, honest, and concise) and the game has given me days, weeks, (probably months now I come to think of it) of enjoyment. It's been an exceptionally good deal.

Hinterland/Raph, you have been good to your word. I thank you for that. It sometimes feels like honesty is a dying thing in our modern world but not here. Not in the Hinterland. That counts for a lot. I look forward to the evolution of TLD and will look out with great interest in your next project Raph.

Thank you.

Sanctuary

This is, by far, the best money I've spent on a game... Ever. Thanks for the update and good to see Jeremiah letting his hair down (Christmas party video?) 

Pleasant valley is a great EP3 location. I need the "why did Astrid abandon Will?" Question resolved (among other questions).

7 hours ago, DerpyLemon115 said:

Pretty excited for all this. Wonder what they mean by "fixing sprain system". Very unspecific but I guess we'll learn more as time passes.

I suspect that is a response to feedback about how you can sprain a wrist or ankle (or often both) on the most gentle of slopes. Seems to happen with ridiculous ease sometimes.