Demetrious

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  1. Requiring a trip to Bleak Inlet or Blackrock to use the milling machine/repair facilities there would seem to be a good balance of risk vs. reward for this. We already have the mechanic; may as well make use of it.
  2. If you haven't mentioned this on the modding forum yet, be sure to do so. The mad lads who get their mods updated within a week or two of a new release will likely have the melonloader issue fixed just as fast.
  3. This is what "roadmaps" are for (scroll down on this page to find the roadmap for the DLC) and they're mandatory if you're asking for money up-front - you have to tell the customer what they're paying for! Roadmaps will typically be sequential, as well; they tell you what content will be dropped next. Lack of this organization on the extant roadmap is due to Hinterland themselves probably not knowing yet - note the mention on the linked page that the roadmap might change, but they'll endeavor to substitute comparable amounts of content in that situation. That's because you can never predict the future with 100% certainty; some features may prove difficult to balance, or the early-access beta players hate a particular mechanic and it has to be reworked, a few devs catch the flu at the same time, negative space wedgies, etc. Generally, however, this just impacts particulars; the "roadmap" itself is drawn straight from the actual design documents; the plans the developers use to actually guide their working process. "Tell the customer what they're paying for" is also why the DLC release trailer did just that - once Hinterland actually had a product on the Steam Store with a price tag attached, they had to tell people in direct and concrete terms what they'd be getting. And they did it then because it's quite likely they didn't know themselves what would be ready until shortly before the product launch - there's always another feature or two that's 90% done but got held up because of stubborn bugs, or uncertainty from a gameplay design perspective that can only be resolved with actual beta-tester (i.e. customer) feedback, etc. And as a project nears a release, someone in charge has to make some decisions, re-assigning people from some features to focus on others to ensure X number of features are ready for release. Doing this every 8-10 weeks is a pain in the rear end, compared to just taking six months to get everything done nice and proper, every dev sticking with their assigned project till it's done. But that's the price if they want to ask for your money up-front and thus avoid paying interest on a business loan. The other effect is the studio gets prompt and voluminous beta tester feedback. You can't pay for that kind of feedback. You can pay for professional testers, who are very good at breaking games and finding bugs, but not for direct feedback from your customer base as to what they do and don't like. That works both ways, by the way - by paying up-front you get the chance to comment on the product and influence its final form. You've already got a forum account, so you're all set in that regard. 🙂 Splitting story mode off into its own game is going to help a lot with accelerating updates for that. Story content is time-consuming because you have 3D animations to do, and voice actors to pay, and the voice actors can't record lines until the writers have finalized the script. A lot of game dev is tied up not in making the product, but finalizing the entire product - every piece interacts with every other piece - so if you change one thing you have to change others (script changes == re-recorded voice lines,) or part of the project has to wait on others (script must be done before voice acting,) and even if a studio is really good about nailing down the first part of a process before doing the second and avoiding unforeseen conflicts that force plans to change, there's always going to be some revision required. tl;dr story games like Wintermute are surprisingly resource-intensive! Fortunately the bifurcation of the codebase should reduce much of that as there won't be mandatory changes to Survival Mode maps because Story Mode needs a customization for story purposes (e.g., addition of the passenger plane to Pleasant Valley,) but they can still import individual features' code between branches (e.g. Story Mode timberwolves added to Survival Mode too.) You'd have to ask a Hinterland dev to get a detailed rundown of how game development works in its particulars, though. Unsurprising, because communication is actually pretty hard! Anyone who has ever griped about meetings only existing because people cannot read e-mails understands that point. It's precisely why there are entire four-year college degrees concerned just with how to communicate better. ... maybe I'll send that application into Hinterland after all. This definitely checks out - typically I'd expect code-heavy and asset-light features (gameplay mechanics) to come first, and asset-heavy ones (art and entire region maps) to roll out later. Having to split the codebase probably took up a lot of time and pinched them between lack of dev-hours and a December holiday release. However, the eventual price increases are going to be attached to overall value of the product; they're not tied to a timetable. Customers' aren't getting hurt, in other words - but some of the PR "splash" has been squandered. But they can fix this - since the early-buy was always communicated as episodic in nature, they can hype the next content drop instead. "The DLC" with its entire (unordered) roadmap is pretty nebulous. Compare that to, for instance, !!THE COUGAR UPDATE!! With actual content, you just have to hype... well, the content. The PR writes itself. Fortunately this isn't hard to do.
  4. I know what you mean - sometimes, from an objective standpoint, it feels like gameplay development has been slow. In fairness we've gotten several new regions in the last few years and there is much to be said for not over-complicating an already solved problem (vis a vis gameplay) but a lot of the forbearance of the customer came from the fact that most of us only paid 20-30 USD and were still getting free updates. Now that Hinterland is selling a new product, value-for-money calculations will begin anew. However, the devs have told us flat-out that much of the productivity drag was due to Story Mode - not because Story Mode was hogging too many dev-hours, but rather because making both Survival and Story Mode work off the same map assets and codebase created a lot of code conflicts that in turn required a lot of busywork to sort out. In turn, bifurcating those codebases itself must have taken quite a bit of work; effort that otherwise would have been put into the first content drop for the DLC. If that wasn't enough, Story Mode is now it's own separate game, meaning Story Mode will have its own separate revenue stream and that is going to enable more paid dev hours and thus end any lingering "competition" between each branch for dev resources. Basically, it seems to me that Hinterland has paid the price to get over that hurdle, and now they've got free room to sprint. Hence the 8-10 week cycle for new content drops. This is also why the payment scheme is important - the DLC is effectively being sold as an old-school "expansion pack." Even at the same price they came at in the Good Old Days (~30 bucks USD or so.) You pays your money, you gets your content in a lump sum add-on. The "Season Pass" option isn't; it's just a pre-order that comes with beta access; very much like Early Access. You give Hinterland money up-front, so they can spend it on dev costs now, and in exchange you get a discount on the product and immediate access to every new beta as features are added. Except unlike Early Access, you're not taking a risk because the game is already very well established and the product is just more content for that solid existing game. So much of this industry - and/or the consumer perception of the industry - seems to orient around "hype" these days. And if there isn't enough hype or the results do not match the hype, people get worried that it'll negatively impact the fortunes of the product and studio they like. I get that! But we should keep in mind that Hinterland and The Long Dark are solid, established entities now and thus Hinterland doesn't need hype to get off the ground, like a plucky indie studio with their first EA release does. They're already in orbit. So it's perfectly OK if people want to wait for the actual product launch and buy the new goodies all in one basket - people who buy in early will keep the lights on at Hinterland for people who don't. 🙂 ... I should check Hinterland's career pages and see if they need a PR writer. I've got the degree. 🤔
  5. Now that Story Mode and Survival Mode are on separate code-bases, would it be possible to get the mid-map path accessed via the vine climb back in Mountain Town? Specifically, the little ravine that leads from the large bridge north of Milton to a vine-climb cliff a short walk north of Old Mother's house in Milton. It was removed by blocking the north end with a rock and removing the vine climb from the south end. With the bifurcation of codebases there is no need for this anymore due to story mode progression concerns and it made the map a little more interesting. Thanks for your consideration. 🙂
  6. Yep, this has been a thing for years - when you are in accelerated time while performing an activity, wildlife just follows its usual movement scripts and do not respect the fire. And proc'ing the wolf/bear attack seems to happen when they physically touch the player's hitbox, so if they're too close when you exit the accelerated time, you're SOL. You can even hear wolves growling at you as they path past you - but they can't actually attack you in accelerated time. It's definitely an oversight in the AI and one that ought to be addressed.
  7. Reading these devblogs are always interesting. "We realized really fast that Survival Mode was where all the enthusiasm was, but we made a promise to deliver Story Mode, and-" It must be very difficult for devs, who have to carefully pick any words they say as it can create tides in their fanbase and cause unnecessary backlash. For you know, there is always "that guy," who doesn't get it, and others who do, but just misunderstand due to the ambiguities of human communication. Because I'd love to hear the unvarnished truth about how you guys feel about your creation, about years of your unstinting hard work; how you feel about The Long Dark as a story (in Story Mode) and as a story generator (in Survival Mode.) What it means to you. What frustrates you. What makes you want to hug fans and what makes you want to kick them. I'm a writer myself, and sometimes I look at others and think - man, I wish I could know what's going on in there. I bet I could learn from them. Well, I can't have that. But what I can do is throw more money at people who've proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will not waste my time. The last game I spent big bucks on was Far Cry 5, and it was a heart-rending tragedy to me. Because the mechanics, the game, had achieved perfection. Through many iterations, the game had reached a zenith of design... ... but a nadir of "story." Far Cry 3 was a fun game. I liked it. But I loathed having to do the story missions, because while I didn't mind the story on its own merits - it was serviceable, it was fine - the missions had awful and frustrating gameplay. And Far Cry 5 drove this to a maddened fever pitch. Never before have I seen a game that will literally kidnap you from the core gameplay loop to force-feed you "story" that resembles the crayon scrawlings of a coked-out hobo, and do it repeatedly with the same content. I never finished Far Cry 5, because the game literally wouldn't let me play the game; it insisted on interrupting my fun every chance it got to force-feed me absolute trash. That game cost sixty dollars. Sixty dollars, in big bad Yew-Nited-States Benjamins, not those plastic dollars y'all use just over the bridge there in Windsor. And what you get for it, is contempt for your intelligence. I don't know what, exactly, goes through the minds of your hard-working team. I don't know how they relate to their work - and it is work, mind you. Anyone who thinks Shakespeare didn't have days where he wanted to stab people with his quill and burn every scrap of paper in his house knows nothing. But I do know this - I know they give a damn about what they are working on. They care about the soul of this thing, that they've poured so much effort into; years of their life into. I know these people will not waste my time. I don't care what you do, at this point. More regions? Cool. Uber-neato mechanics? Cool. Wolf-mode, where you play as a wolf that is constantly pursued by angry Mackenzie's with bear spears, but since you don't have opposable thumbs you need to bait them into building fires for you? Sounds good. But I'm willing to go on faith at this point. Lead on.
  8. You: "We need more money to continue development." Me: TAKE MY MONEY The amount of content I have access to due to a single late-Early Access purchase of $20 USD is phenomenal. It'd still be phenomenal at full retail. One of the single best ROIs of any game I've ever bought. And then came the magic words "mod support." Lads I'm ready to shell out dosh.
  9. So I finally found the time to play my first survival game after the Errant Pilgrim update dropped, and set up a Custom mode game with my usual settings - i.e. mostly Stalker default settings with a few tweaks here and there for my personal preferences, none of which involve wildlife or wolves (aside from turning down the clothing damage modifier from "low" to none.) I spawned in Mountain Town and noted that while wolf behavior had definitely been tweaked from what I'd known, Milton was still Milton; i.e. wolves under every other snowbank. It wasn't until I escaped Wolftown, population Yes, and hustled to the Mystery Lake camp office that I noticed something seemed... awry. As in "the wolf I just stabbed died out on the lake, and as I try to go out there to collect him, I see FOUR other wolves all visible patrolling the lake." Four. I tried to visit the rabbit area across the railroad tracks and instead met a fifth. I remember raising an eyebrow when I saw what the Stalker default settings were for wolf spawns when setting up the game, but I assumed I'd simply had a lapse in memory on that count. Now, I am not so sure. Has Stalker's default wolf spawns been turned up to balance out the Revolver being added to the game? Am I expected to blaze away with the Revolver far more often than my TLD instincts, honed in the rifle-only, pre-ammo-spawn-increase-tweak days are comfortable with? Or is there another way to deal with the wolves? They don't react to bait the way they used to, nor fires (they seem to stand at bay from a campfire now, instead of alternately spooking/running then re-approaching,) so maybe there's further behavior tweaks I haven't encountered yet. Perhaps torches more reliably hold them off than they used to? I don't know. Given the average damage a wolf inflicts in Stalker's default mode is surprisingly moderate (esp. if you're rested,) it's starting to feel like I've entered the Wolf Thunderdome, where stripping naked and struggle-knifing several wolves in a row is the new normal. This seems unusual. Please tell me what the "New Normal" is because I've got a sneaking suspicion that I'm missing something.
  10. A revolver is going to be a HUGE boon. I've often found myself wishing for a classic .44 "bear gun" in TLD to complement the rifle; less useful for hunting, much more useful for self-defense. Lighter, with six rounds on tap. (Or five.) "No bear spear in the next update, sorry, but in the meantime, have a bear GUN." Yes. YES.
  11. I griped about this exact thing at length in the update thread. They don't! My primary complaint about the map change is that Milton was fairly well balanced difficulty-wise before. Like Coastal Highway, it offers a ton of loot in a fairly concentrated area, offset by being absolutely lousy with wolves. Milton is easier to get around safely because the cover is a lot closer together and there's cars well-distributed through all of Milton to use as bolt-holes - this is counterbalanced by the two rope climbs that are mandatory to get in and out, which makes packing your loot out to a safehouse in a more hospitable map pretty difficult. What made Milton worth a trip for me - aside from the loot - was the hunting opportunities. You had the moose spawn near the rope that was just behind Grey Mother's house, with a rock outcropping that you could perch on to shoot the moose while staying pretty safe from stomping. Likewise, all the cars on the bridge make it one of the easiest bear hunts in the game - shoot bear, dive into car, wait for him to bleed out. Not only did both locations offer great "safe" hunting opportunities, they also had relatively direct paths back to one of the few safehouses in the game with an excellent six slot stove to cook up that massive haul of meat with! Several things counterbalanced that, however. One, Milton is still lousy with wolves and coming home smelly easily pulls them in on you - I had at least two cannonball into me only steps away from the safety of my own front door. Two, the routes were direct in that they let you get most of the way home without dodging tons of wolves while smelly; but they were stamina taxing enough that if you overloaded yourself with meat and tired yourself out hauling it back, by the time you reached your own back porch that wolf cannonball would last a lot longer than you'd want (which was your own fault.) And third, actually using the hide from your kills was difficult, as the trailer's indoor crafting table wasn't far away, but doesn't have much wood around, and the closest rabbit areas (behind the church and pond over the waterfall where the moose tends to spawn) also host wolf spawns on or near them, so you're carrying your crafting materiel, food and water... up a rope. Or hiking there the long way 'round, which requires dodging the wolves near the bridge, then near the church, then the one on the road, etc. The table at the farm is much easier to reach (the wide-open farm lets you watch the wolves from a distance and time your dash, at least,) but its outdoors, so the wolves require you stock up many hours of firewood to craft, even if the cold doesn't. Or you could just pack the hides out, but then you're leaving that huge haul of meat behind, untapped. It also makes Milton less attractive as a long-term location in Survival games because it further constrains what is a fairly constrained map already. I often evaluate Survival mode in terms of "safe paths" versus "unsafe paths;" alternate routes and distances are very important due to heat loss (early game, or bad weather in difficult regions late game) and due to wolf spawns (always.) A lot of opportunity cost and choices are wrapped up in where you go that day - if a wolf is between you and your planned activities, you have to decide if you can risk sneaking around him, expend some resources to mitigate risk getting around him (using a torch, flare, etc.,) expend more resources to guarantee passage (shoot him with an arrow,) or just change your plans for that day because no wolf spawned on the lake, so it's a great day to go fishing instead. (For a concrete example: I think we've all done the Desperate One-Legged Hobble towards the pickup truck in front of the dam because we hiked along the hills parallel to the tracks to dodge the wolves, only to sprain an ankle just before reaching that final dash past the two spawns near the gate!) Mountain Town is pretty constrained (because of the Mountains, naturally;) about a third of the map (Milton Basin, depression between ML exit and Milton's plateau) is difficult to access due to rope climbs and/or distance (with two climbs counterbalancing the Farmhouse's relative proximity to the Basin, etc.) Thus the alternate routes up to the ridge-line above Mountain Town were pretty important in giving you options in the morning as of where to go, as well as access to fairly wolf-safe resource areas (rabbit groves/deer spawns + cattails.) The old map gave you rope-climb access to a rabbit/deer/cattail area with a wolf spawn pretty close (they'll patrol right onto the ice sometimes) and two deer/rabbit areas with no wolf threat, at the cost of one of them being a fair hike (the one under the bridge; it's far enough that I had to use that little cave on the ravine path's midpoint to warm up if the weather soured on me.) With the new map, you have one rabbit/deer/cattail area that's about the same distance but even safer (because it's walled in from wolf spawns on both ends by vine climbs) and one that's more dangerous (the rabbit/deer/cattail area up by Mackenzie's crash-site has a wolf spawn close enough that it'll definitely be pulled down onto you by scent, and might catch you by surprise coming over that crest, but the terrain does offer some vantages to climb on to avoid it.) Even if you consider that a wash, it branches off on its own little isolated path now, further fracturing the map. You can no longer leave via the bridge to the church, do a "circuit" and return home via the rope or ravine; even if you're not hauling any kind of meat, there's six possible wolf spawns between you and Grey Mother's house heading from the bridge - and you'll have to dodge them twice to get up there and back. Which means that once you visit the bridge to check the trunks, you're probably never going back... nor are you visiting the river below, either. They're effectively dead space, now, that players are unlikely to see but once. Mountain Town is definitely more constrained than other maps, by design even, (again, Mountain town is Mountainous,) but compared to the design visible in all the rest of the game, and the previous iteration of the map, it's pretty clearly crimped now. You hit the nail right on the head, here. The introduction of any creative work - from novels to games - really has to stick the landing, (literally, in the case of Mackenzie's plane and the tree durrhurrhurr) and you have to introduce a lot of mechanics to the player in a relatively short time while not strapping them to a chair for an excruciating cutscene ride, if at all possible, but still keeping them constrained enough to guarantee they'll encounter your very carefully paced experience - until you can turn them loose with relative safety. That pretty much requires a constrained pathway in the opening... but in the case of Milton, the map also serves as a survival sandbox map, where dead-end single-use paths are The Sin Thou Shalt Not Put On Your Maps. Which kind of puts Hinterland in a bind, here. Ideally they'd simply use a different version of the map for Story Mode - which I'm sure was mentioned at a conference table somewhere before being dragged down and mauled to death by Design Considerations or Code Problems or something. So they had to balance out this fairly linear, dead-end path for Survival mode; in terms of resource accessibility, safety, distance, etc. And of course, there's the laws of unintended consequences and the sheer unfathomable vastness of individual player experience. For instance, that rocky outcropping over the icy rabbit area at one end of the possible Moose spawn area - did Hinterland know wildlife can't path to you if you stand on the very edge of that outcropping? Did they figure that convenience was a fair trade given the many drawbacks that attend a hunting trip to Mountain Town? Or did any of the drawbacks and advantages I listed above apply to many other players at all? Because it's quite possible that everything I just outlined above is absolutely alien to the vast majority of players, and none of it factored into the balancing decisions or was reported by their playtesters or whatever. I definitely know that it's far from a given that my experience is widespread, and even if it is the first chance Hinterland might have had to actually hear about it. Sometimes you just have to ship the product to find out who cares about what and how much before you can change it. It's not 1995 anymore; the next opportunity to tweak the game isn't a year and a $20 expansion distant. So even though I was able to write that massive textwall griping about how they changed Milton so it's terrible now bah humbug I'm definitely aware that my experience is subjective and even if I'm some sort of psychic savant who thinks exactly like the devs, that map has to optimally juggle mutually contradictory requirements for Survival and Story mode for the vast majority of players, and I've no idea how representative of that my take is. Given all that, I'm intensely curious as to how other people play Mountain Town's map and what they think of it in Survival Mode. Especially the bear/moose hunting - I've barely scratched the surface of that aspect of the game yet, so for all I know everyone knows about a great spot in CH or something and I'm off on a wild Canadian goose chase or something. Do tell!