Raphael, please explain why customizability is disallowed.


Cicerho

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EDIT: Raphael did respond to this and it appears that customizability would be a complicated feature to add. Therefore, much of the frustration I expressed was unwarranted and I am happy to admit that my attitude about this issue has shifted drastically. Thanks again, Raphael.

Raphael's response: http://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/com ... ws/crd9eh2

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Hello other survivors. Below is a message that I posted on reddit. It is to Raphael as well as the dev team for TLD. I made a few edits from the reddit version for clarification, but it is mostly the same (link here: http://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/com ... disallows/). Although the message is to the dev team, it is also intended to spark discussion, so please comment on my thoughts as well! I'm only addressing it to Raphael because it is his quote that I am referring to specifically.

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Dear Raphael,

In the AMA a few months ago, someone asked you about the ability to adjust the parameters of things like weather, resource spawning, and animal aggression. Your response was effectively "we know better than you do how to make a game you'll enjoy". Although I agree that you are much better situated to make decisions about the direction of game development, I have a problem with the restriction of features that are already built into the game that have nothing to do with things like performance, dev team resource allocation, or cheat-prevention. Generally, I believe that restricting the choices of others needs very sound justification and I am not convinced by the response that your job is to withhold the ability to adjust parameters for the sake of my experience. Here are my reasons:

1) Some people really want the ability to correct for their own unique dispositions. I, personally, have habituated to all the wolves in the hardest setting and would like to change one thing about them. What I want to change is not important. What is important is that many people would disagree with me about how I want to change them. Some people would say my preference is in the wrong direction, others would say that no change is needed at all. That is exactly my point. Your customers vary and we ought to have the ability to correct for our own dispositions. I'll also add that my wife will not even consider playing the game unless wolves can be completely turned off. But, she also would like a challenge, so making her use easy-mode is not going to address the problem.

2) It's easy for you to include (if this is not true then please discount this point). The ability to adjust parameters is built into games as a necessary tool for the developers to make tweaks and balance the game. It is sometimes easy to allow the common user to access these settings (e.g., "debug mode") and some programmers go out of their way to create an easy-to-use version of debug mode (e.g., "custom mode" as Klei did with Don't Starve). I assume that some sort of debug settings would be very easy to open up to us. If my assumption is true, then it really is fair to categorize your decision as a restriction of a feature that already exists rather than a refusal to create the feature. This is an important distinction because the former takes relatively little time to correct for and the latter could be immensely costly. I'd be OK if part of your reasoning for excluding a customizability option were too few resources.

3) It does not have to interfere with your philosophy or your vision for the game. For example, customizability could be an unlockable feature (making it hard to get initial access) and using this feature could "taint" your save file by having the word "CUSTOMIZED" always appear with the "Days survived" stat. The unlockable feature forces 100% of users to get the experience you intended, then decide after if they would like to change it up. The tainting feature makes it so that, when someone survives to day 500, people can easily identify if this was done using the default settings or if it was done because the user changed settings to match his or her preferences. Another way to allow customizability would be forcing us to use a config file that takes a little googling to find and learn to use. Doing this would mean that only the most motivated users can get around the experience you intended and it can still be accompanied by a save file tainting label.

Please remember that I am not asking you or your fellow developers to start a new project (beyond what I presume to be a few minor changes to give us access to a debug mode). If debug mode would require a new project and months of person-hours, then this entire post is a waste of time because I completely understand that you need to have priorities. I'm only disappointed insofar as adding customizability of some sort is easy for you to do and that you aren't adding it because of the belief that I should not be able to correct for my own dispositions. Also, I don't think anyone's opinion about the realism of wolves or whether I should find a dense/sparse wolf population immersive is relevant to this conversation. I do think that you know better than I do about making a game. However, what if I play your game all the way through and decide that I personally would like one little thing changed?

EDIT: Link to AMA - http://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/com ... at/coroxyx

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Hello other survivors. Below is a message that I posted on reddit. It is to Raphael as well as the dev team for TLD. I made a few edits from the reddit version for clarification, but it is mostly the same (link here: http://www.reddit.com/r/thelongdark/com ... disallows/). Although the message is to the dev team, it is also intended to spark discussion, so please comment on my thoughts as well! I'm only addressing it to Raphael because it is his quote that I am referring to specifically.

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Dear Raphael,

In the AMA a few months ago, someone asked you about the ability to adjust the parameters of things like weather, resource spawning, and animal aggression. Your response was effectively "we know better than you do how to make a game you'll enjoy" (Link to comment). Although I agree that you are much better situated to make decisions about the direction of game development, I have a problem with the restriction of features that are already built into the game that have nothing to do with things like performance, dev team resource allocation, or cheat-prevention. Generally, I believe that restricting the choices of others needs very sound justification and I am not convinced by the response that your job is to withhold the ability to adjust parameters for the sake of my experience. ?

Excellent request. You've clearly put a lot of thought into your post, and I'm all for suggestions that help the developers see what the community wants. But, I feel you do Hinterland a disservice by the 'we know better than you...'' quip. This was not their response, and I did not take it that way.

I can accept that the developers have a vision for what they want the game to be--but there is also wiggle room within that vision and room to adopt new and good ideas. They respond to nearly every suggestion on this forum. :)

That being said, if they don't want the sandbox to be customizable that way, I'm okay with that (just like I'm okay with the wolves not acting realistically, or bears being out in winter, no jumping, permadeath etc etc etc.). The game is still in alpha, and I trust them enough to wait and see what their vision delivers.

Also, I personally don't want that level of customization-- for a variety of reasons. Certainly the majority of games do not allow 'custom' modes. Part of the challenge is playing and surviving in the game, the way it has been balanced by the developers.

I'll put this question to you .. If there were customization (and I have no idea whether it would be easy to add, but I suspect not), where does it end? How many things will need to be customizable to make everyone happy? What if they were to add customization, but you still couldn't turn off the wolves so that your wife could play, or so that you could change the one thing that you want to?

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I appreciate your response and I must admit that the way that I framed Raphael's response was negative. However, I believe it is a fair interpretation of what he said. By saying that he believes it is the devs responsibility to provide a specific experience, he is, in some sense, admitting that he believes the devs know better. Of course, he is right about that and I love what they are doing. The thing about customization specifically is that, by definition, it addresses all kinds of complaints that you see in these forums. These complaints are very much about the personal preferences and unique desires of each player. To be against customization is to be against letting people correct for their own little quirks after they have played the game and explored what they devs have created. Furthermore, if any individual player dislikes the idea of customization, then they don't have to use it! If you don't want it, use the default settings or leave the config file alone. Why does your preference for default mean that my wife has to tolerate wolves?

You pose a good challenge to the customization idea though: How far should it go? Well, I believe it should go precisely as far as would be easy for the developers. You suspect that it might not be easy and I was very careful to say that if this is a resource allocation problem, then I will abandon this topic and my annoyance will completely disappear. I am not so entitled as to assume that the devs should change their schedules and priorities around in any meaningful way to add a feature that takes months of work. I think they are the best people to decide how to use their time. But if it is easy to do... then my annoyance and disappointment will remain. If I bought a Maserati and it had a governer on it to keep me below 100Mph, I'd be frustrated that somebody else put a limitation on something I purchased. How do they know I won't use it responsibly? But, if I bought a fuel-efficient sedan, I couldn't be pissed about its speed performance because I know that the designers did the best that they could do. I am assuming that TLD is a Maserati with a restriction placed on its capabilities. If it turns out that TLD is actually an economy sedan and my requests would require a complete redisgn, then I'd retract my request immediately.

To directly address your question: If they simply opened up access to the same debug mode that they use to test things out for themselves I would be satisfied. As I indicated in the post, I'm not a fan of people dictating what other people should do, so for me to want anything more than what is already in the code would be a violation of that value. I can't imagine that it is hard to turn wolves off, but if it did turn out to be a monumentally challenging setting to create, then I'd have no reason to complain. At least then I could tell my wife that the reason she can't play is because we'd have to ask a team of top-notch developers to spend hours and hours punching keys. Unfortunately, it is quite possible that the reason she can't play is because the devs think that she would, in fact, love the wolves.

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Thanks for the thoughts. It's great to see that people enjoy the game enough to want to bring their own take to it -- we like that. But, to your request for us to expose our tunables to the community -- we see our responsibility being to craft a specific experience, based on our vision, vs. providing you with a toolbox to craft your own survival experience.

I don't think it's accurate (or fair?) to say we've "withheld" anything from customers. Full modability is not something we promised to offer at this point, nor is it easy for us to implement or support.

That said, we've also publicly stated that we see the value of game mods and would like to be able to support them in the future, likely some time after the game has been fully released.

Hopefully you can enjoy the game we're giving you! And hopefully you'll continue to enjoy the game as it continues to evolve.

I agree with wanting some modability with the game later at some point. The mod community has really brought some games to that next level and I think that this is one of those games that could benefit from it due to the popularity of TLD and the type of game it is..

While I do want to see it at one point I would love to have a config to tweak as to turn off the screen filter in high depth. It is utterly annoying to me but I refuse to run the game at anything other than maxed out..

Getting on to the threads intent. I see were he is coming from as well as the counter point and think that there is a middle ground in there for something to allow a bit more advanced tweaking without disrupting the intent of the devs or their vision of what they want the game to be. Ultimately it will be the end users who will move this franchise along as it grows and depending on what the devs do from here on out will make or break the game as it moves towards gold..

I have a bit of first hand experience with a really great game dieing due to the studio not embracing the community or listening to the very testers who helped to build and shape the game as it went though the testing stages. This is not the case here of course but it is a slippery slope, fickle fans that is, and something to be mindful of. Modding is pretty big these days and some truly wonderful mods have come along because of it as well as having spawning a game or two..

To the point..

I feel that modding for this game should be considered and not taken lightly by the devs. I have bought a game just to play a modded version of it never even playing it in it's original form. Being able to create maps for the sandbox would be outstanding as well as make the game one I would play for years instead of just a few times through the story and some sand-boxing. As it is now, I have already memorized the maps and can navigate in darkness, blizzards and whatnot.. To be honest, after a couple hundred hours now, I am a bit bored with the game and chomping at the bit to see the story mode..

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