Anyone feeling a bit let down?

[Thrasador]

40 minutes ago, Mel Guille said:

No offence, taken @Tbone555-- feedback about how the game made you feel is appreciated, and among the most valuable type of criticism we can get!

My post was simply meant to address a misconception that seems to be floating around. Hinterland does have full-time professional testers who work on both consoles and PC and before a big release everyone on the team jumps in to help, so it's a little frustrating to see comments that suggest testing didn't happen.

Well, I am sure you can at least see how one could formulate that misconception based on the inability to continue from Episode 1 to Episode 2 on Xbox with your gear from Episode 1, and the inability to finish the final quest in the dam with the aurora not appearing in game for that quest....

I'm sure you found and fixed numerous bugs before the release on August 1st, but obviously quite a bit was missed as well....since many quests in both episodes have required patching for many people across all platforms to be able to finish them. 

After releasing several patches for all platforms already, things still need patching. The most serious one currently in my opinion is items disappearing when placed on the floor in several houses. This apparently is occurring in Sandbox mode as well, at least in the Farmhouse in Pleasant Valley. In a game where resources are scarce, and needed for survival, every bit counts. Having your gear disappear is very frustrating in a game like this with a finite amount of gear....

[Tbone555]

Nobody get me wrong. I mentioned above that I absolutely love this game. And I never said that hinterland did a bad job, rather that there are a lot of things that need to be approved upon. us long time players had our bars set high with the mentions that hinterland made in the past, which sadly never came to be. and as this is no longer in alpha and is a fully fledged game, we have to assume that what we have is what we are now stuck with. That's how most games work, that is. And that's a disappointment to me. the time for adding things in and taking things away and changing game mechanics is now over, we have the finished product and the finished product didn't meet expectations of long time players. That's always disappointing. there's no hate nor negativity coming from me, just honesty. this game holds a dear place in my heart and it probably always will.

[Monsarona]

We have to keep in mind that in game development there are a lot of features that the community want, that the devs themselves want, but do not ever get implemented. Features get cut all the time in game development. We were lucky enough to be involved in this process but the downside of this to us, and to the devs, is that now we feel disappointed when if they never shared that part of the development process with us we wouldn't feel this way. I am not saying it was wrong either way, it was awesome, we just need to keep in mind that they didn't have to share all of this with us to begin with.

And I don't think anyone said that this is the end of new content or features. I believe they can make this game even better with all the feedback they are getting, as long as the feedback is constructive.

[Thrasador]

I don't have any issues with the Story in of itself. I think the initial cave tutorial bit was smart, but perhaps needs the ability to skip to day 5 after having completed it as many times as some of us probably have. I'm still waiting for the Wintermute change log that we never received though, with the changes to things like making rosehip tea for example.

I would like to see the new areas connected to Sandbox at some point and the inclusion of a few NPCs with sandbox to interact with, maybe trade with and learn special recipes or blueprints ftom.

Hopefully at some point in the future the remainder of the dialogue will get voice over work too. I enjoy the voiced cut scenes, but don't enjoy switching to silent and reading after watching them....

Mostly I just want the bugs patched, so I don't live in constant fear of losing all my precious supplies....

[MueckE]

Misconception? Professional Testers?

Did Hinterland learn anything over the years? 90% of the bugs are old bugs that have been reported multible times and either haven't been fixed or reappeared - like a few of them did. Items disappearing in specific locations happend almost every second patch or the rifle-bug when crouching that has been fixed after resolute outfitter but now reappeared. If i know that this can happen, i'll make sure that they don't reappear in the final release. The same for crashes regarding ram-leaks (aka entering a building) and what not.

If i know that after every patch lots and lots of bugs are found by the community, so that all dev's have a few sleeples nights to fix them, than i will prepare a solution that this is not going to happen in the final release.

If it takes several months of changing and tweaking to get a working, bug-free UI, but than decide to change it completly right before the release without having time to make it perfect, than i shouldn't wonder about the result.

These "professional full-time bugtesters" didn't even found crucial bugs regarding the linear story - how is that even possible? It's not that we are discussing wether you could know, we know that you did know because we gave feedback and reported these bugs already: Either Hinterland is completly disconnected from it's community and ignorant or is doing this intentionally. Either way, a game release after so long time like this confirmes all negative preconceptions about early access - and that's a real shame because nobody would expect that from Hinterland.

[Patrick Carlson]

@MueckE We take on-board your critique of the game, acknowledging  the issues some players are running into, of course. But please don't question our motives - that's unfair, unhelpful, and just plain unfriendly. We're doing everything we can to improve the situation right now. Thank you. 

[LucidFugue]

45 minutes ago, Tbone555 said:

And as this is no longer in alpha and is a fully fledged game, we have to assume that what we have is what we are now stuck with. That's how most games work, that is. And that's a disappointment to me. the time for adding things in and taking things away and changing game mechanics is now over, we have the finished product and the finished product didn't meet expectations of long time players. 

As Monsarona says, this is not strictly true. Story mode has 3 more episodes and while Hinterland were very clear at the start of the year that they were focusing on story mode, changes and improvements were still made. 

Furthermore, the long term vision is to create a second season. That's dependent upon the success of season 1. Their success so far is phenomenal. Not many independent developers strike it this big on their first release. 

[The Wanderer]

Well I don't think I've been let down at all. I'm still having fun even though I'm beginning to think the wolves in this have been specifically programmed to piss me off. There are bugs and glitches that just plain happen in all the games I've ever played. I have noticed some differences though. I've had HUGE problems with other games. Fallout: New Vegas is at the top of that list and without doubt will remain there until the day I cease to be. There wasn't one glitch in that game that I didn't have. Like a sucker I bought all the DLC for it and figured that eventually they'd fix the game. I reported bugs and glitches galore and received no support, no help, not even a goddamn "sorry." 

My first time here I was helped in under an hour by a staff member and his solution. When I was pleading for help on Bethesda forums, all I had were trolls ripping me apart for being disloyal to there little cult. I'm a person, and choose who I'm going to be loyal to. I'm guessing I'm not going to be disappointed with Hinterland. I've had interaction with staff members, with forum members, and with the exception of Mr. Bringsnothinghelpful, ( not his real forum name,) I'm having fun. That's all I wanted, fun. 

[SteveP]

17 hours ago, ChillPlayer said:

On 8/9/2017 at 1:18 PM, Mel Guille said:

Yes, we did do play testing before release.

I believe that you did, there's a Testing team in the credits mentioned too. But the feeling I've got from playing through both episodes is that you probably haven't tested enough what happens when players are trying to be clever and veer off the path you expected the player to go.

Testing can be a laborious job with all the permutations that are possible. That's when having early involvement from players helps to find the bugs.

There is a tremendous advantage to a well designed software system; code is compartmentalized and factored. Making the program data driven makes it robust but at the same time, introduces the problem of completeness testing. It is even more difficult to achieve completeness testing where program behaviour is scattered throughout many modules. Ideally objects behaviour should be data defined and data driven; I assume they are using state machines for those.

If you use automated testing, say to validate the maps you can save a lot of time. I find that having lots of unguided people testers does not replace a good automated test system. On the other hand, automated testing takes some effort to construct however for a data driven system, it's almost essential. The random testing of real players however will find bugs that an automated testing system is not designed to find. You will limit the scope of what is tested with automation.

The next step is the use of a state driven system; I'm not sure if @Raphael van Lierop has used that for TLD. In such a case you would have text configuration files to define all of the objects in the game. I'd heartily recommend this approach for the next iteration or at least for an experimental rig.

[SnowWalker]

9 hours ago, hoppyfrog324 said:

The Big Decision about the gas station has no discernible effect on the story. The side quest in part 2 where you can choose the take the ammo or not, no discernible effect on the story. It makes me feel like what I do has a player doesn't really matter. If the tagline is, "How far will you go?" I expect it to actually matter.

I ate all four of Jeremiah's cans of beans and his chocolate bar and lost zero trust doing it If you open a cabinet though, boom -5 trust.

[MueckE]

@Patrick Carlson

I didn't want question Hinterlands motives. I think you worked hard on the game with passion. You didn't make any promises that weren't delivered or scammed the customer. I think you truely want to make a good game and your intentions are completly fine.  That's not it. 

I think what happened with the countdown and now with storymode is because of a disconnection between the community and Hinterland. Otherwise it's not possible that known issues appear in the final release. I mean, if neither feedback nor bugs found by the community had any impact on the release, why was there two years of development with an active community in the first place? How do you expect us to react? And i don't mean that someone asking for a second rifle and you have to implement it (community-driven) - i mean that there are bugs, feedback about gameplay/ui and a consence about what makes sandbox great, that hasn't been acknowledged in storymode (community informed).

I will wait a little bit longer to write a review of story mode to minimize the personal view - especially as a long time player. The game has it's moments. For example did the level designer a great job. Also the Aurora and visuals are just amazing. I don't mind the "pilgrim based" difficulty because it fits to story mode. It's other things that you have to critizise. You can not deny for example, that an absolut no-no is to release a game with bugs, for any developer and especially for a game that has ressources to avoid that, that a major studio doesn't have. From a customer point of view this is simply unexceptable, even though we like Hinterland and your work.

[Monsarona]

3 hours ago, MueckE said:

You can not deny for example, that an absolut no-no is to release a game with bugs, for any developer and especially for a game that has ressources to avoid that, that a major studio doesn't have.

While all game developers aim to have software that is bug free, it is almost impossible to release ANY software that doesn't have bugs. Web browsers have bugs, Windows OS has bugs, and of course games have bugs. If you can get anywhere close to only 15-50 bugs per 1000 lines of code you are doing really well. You cannot expect any software, no matter who makes it, to not have bugs.

I am not saying that the bugs people are experiencing are not frustrating, I totally understand it even if I haven't run into any yet myself. However, the comments here just show a lack of understanding of how software development works. The best thing to do is just be patient. They are squashing bugs as fast as they can, and they are also humans who have to eat, shower, and sleep. I am sure they love this game 100x more than you do, so saying they don't care or aren't trying is just messed up.

[Biohazardprincess]

Do you not recall Mass Effect Andromeda's recent release? That was a mess. Meanwhile,  what about Fallout 4? Skyrim? Speaking of Bethesda, it's a running joke that their launches are riddled with bugs. Releasing a game with bugs is regrettable and theoretically avoidable, but I can't think of a release, even one with an early access crowd, that worked every time on every platform. Everyone has a different motherboard running different software and different hardware. Consoles are more uniform but bugs may not happen on every system the same way. 

It is not fair to just up and decide hinterland didn't try hard enough. 

[JAFO]

On 8/11/2017 at 6:43 AM, Mel Guille said:

Hinterland does have full-time professional testers who work on both consoles and PC and before a big release everyone on the team jumps in to help, so it's a little frustrating to see comments that suggest testing didn't happen.

Thanks Mel.. I do appreciate everything the team has been doing.. and particularly Raphael's explanation of what's going on.. And I love TLD, which is why the last week has been so frustrating as a player. For everyone on the team, it has to have been far worse.

If you're wondering how we might have thought the testing was, shall we say, casual in approach, here's a single example. (I could point to quite a few others)

The Phantom Wolf at the Church. You find the Church, and there's a wolf there, munching on a deer. You avoid the wolf, get to Milton, and things get busy. There are at least 2 separate missions that send you back to the Church, one optional, one required. Every single playtester had to have been back to that location several times.. yet apparently NOT ONE of them noticed that when you go back to the Church, you can hear a wolf eating and growling, even though the wolf is long gone.

How on earth does something so in-your-face get missed? How on earth did several other in-your-face bugs get missed?

Hard-to-spot difficult bugs are one thing, but when the blindingly obvious gets missed, well.. one tends to lose faith in both the process, and in those doing the checking. Raphael promised an investigation/review into how it all went wrong. I hope he posts the results, though I can understand if he chooses not to. Regardless, I know that a much tighter system of testing will come out of this, and for that I'm thankful.

[Thrasador]

46 minutes ago, JAFO said:

Thanks Mel.. I do appreciate everything the team has been doing.. and particularly Raphael's explanation of what's going on.. And I love TLD, which is why the last week has been so frustrating as a player. For everyone on the team, it has to have been far worse.

If you're wondering how we might have thought the testing was, shall we say, casual in approach, here's a single example. (I could point to quite a few others)

The Phantom Wolf at the Church. You find the Church, and there's a wolf there, munching on a deer. You avoid the wolf, get to Milton, and things get busy. There are at least 2 separate missions that send you back to the Church, one optional, one required. Every single playtester had to have been back to that location several times.. yet apparently NOT ONE of them noticed that when you go back to the Church, you can hear a wolf eating and growling, even though the wolf is long gone.

How on earth does something so in-your-face get missed? How on earth did several other in-your-face bugs get missed?

Hard-to-spot difficult bugs are one thing, but when the blindingly obvious gets missed, well.. one tends to lose faith in both the process, and in those doing the checking. Raphael promised an investigation/review into how it all went wrong. I hope he posts the results, though I can understand if he chooses not to. Regardless, I know that a much tighter system of testing will come out of this, and for that I'm thankful.

It would be interesting if all the blatantly obvious bugs trace back to one outside tester, who isn't really part of the team, didn't care about the project, and didn't actually do any of the testing assigned to him/her. He/she just went to work every day to play Farmville (does anyone still play that) on Facebook and eat cheetoes....

The slob with the orange cheese dust on his mouse is always the culprit....

[Rusty_Old_F250]

I don't have the time to read all of these posts, but, I'd really like to put my 2 cents in here. I currently work for a very small company (I am the only employee) and we work with/around a lot of other small companies. A buddy of mine has a small company. You can't judge a small company by the same standards you judge a large one by, it just doesn't work. Large companies are exactly that, large. If something needs to be taken care of immediately, they can throw money/equipment/personnel at it to solve it. A small company can do the exact same job just as good a large one, but not in the same amount of time that it takes the big ones. Unexpected expenses, setbacks, etc makes meeting deadlines brutal, I've been there, no matter how much you think you know, there's always those few variables that can send the whole thing sideways. I suspect this is why there have been so many bugs, they just plain ran out of time to fix them.

All things considered, I am a bit disappointed by a few things in the game (really nitpicky things to be honest, lol ), but the storyline and the characters are top notch. IMO, they spent the time where it was needed most. You can tell the writing was done by someone who understood the fine details of the characters they were trying to portray, just in the little things they say, or don't say, or the way they say them. 

But if I had to give the team one piece of advice, it would be a lesson I have learned the hard way. Make sure the customer knows what's being delivered, people have very vivid imaginations, but if they aren't channeled in the right direction, you can set yourself up for failure. It's very important that people get excited about what they're going to get, not just what they THINK they're going to get, because those can be two very different things. Case in point: I was once working on a truck, someone else diagnosed it as a bad MAP sensor (another hard lesson I have learned, especially with cars, DON'T TRUST THE GUY THAT WORKED ON IT BEFORE! lol, it's bitten me more than once) The customer approached me, asked me to replace it. So I went out, got a new MAP sensor, replaced it. The new MAP sensor was working perfectly, I had fulfilled the terms of our agreement. The problem is, the truck didn't run any better, it actually ran worse. The explanation gets very technical but basically now that the computer was actually getting good data from the new MAP sensor it was no longer masking several other issues the truck had. Issues I would have caught if I had done the diagnosis myself.  Point being, in my head, I was going to replace a MAP sensor, end of story. In the customer's head, I was going to make his truck run perfectly again. If we had had the conversation beforehand of "hey, this will fix the MAP sensor, but there might be other stuff wrong" things would have gone a lot smoother.

Sam

[RossBondReturns]

Having just completed Episode 2 I can say that I'm not disapointed in the slightest.

You have created an amazing game world...and I'll enjoy many multitudes of hours in the Hinterlands for a great many years to come.

[Vhalkyrie]

I bought the game in pre-release, and put in over 350 hours.  I eagerly waited for story mode.  From the trailers and the survival experience in Sandbox, I had high expectations.

I loved meeting Mackenzie and Astrid.  I didn't mind the tutorial mode (as an experienced 350+ hour veteran).  The wolf behavior surprised me, especially at the church.  They latched on to my presence without any discernable reason why, and made going in and out of the church hazardous (I did not agree with Mackenzie that it was a good shelter!).  I loved learning a new map that I was not familiar with.  Felt like the first day I played, exploring a map for the first time.

That said, story mode did leave me a bit disappointed.  I grimaced at the fetch quest for the Grey Mother.  The storyline itself was fine...but ugh...fetch quest.

Survival mode is still as awesome as I remember it.

[JAFO]

7 minutes ago, Vhalkyrie said:

The wolf behavior surprised me, especially at the church.  They latched on to my presence without any discernable reason why, and made going in and out of the church hazardous

The scripted wolf behaviour in Wintermute was one of the disappointing aspects, definitely..

[Thrasador]

32 minutes ago, JAFO said:

The scripted wolf behaviour in Wintermute was one of the disappointing aspects, definitely..

I don't think she just means the perma-eating wolf at the church. The one by the blue truck that makes a b-line for you every time you pop your head over the snow drift to see where he is, is the real problem in my opinion....he can even see you coming from up the road and starts walking twords you the second he is in view. It doesn't follow the wolf behavior we have become accustomed to in Sandbox....

[MueckE]

I thought that the wolves actually were one of the things i liked very much. I was attacked twice within my run. In general i had no problems to scare them away with flares and later the flaregun. I avoided the wolves at the church.

I liked the concept of a pilgrim-based-exploration-difficulty combined with that wolf behavior.  I didn't think there were too many wolves or that they were annoying like the ones at Quonset in sandbox.

[SquanderBot]

I loved Sandbox to death, really liked episode 1, got a little ways into episode 2 (completed rifle repair quest) and don't really feel like playing any more. I think for me it was more fun when survival was the only goal and I could approach it however I wanted. Now it feels like more of an annoyance to be dealt with as I complete the fetch quests. It's just a LOT of walking and starting and cancelling campfires. Also I'm not a fan of certain aspects of the game, like shooting wildlife, but Story Mode requires me to do it. Of course, any complaints about the game come with the caveat that Sandbox did and does give me one of the most enjoyable and memorable gaming experiences ever. I think it just may come down to the decision making of the game designers... they have created a great framework for a game, but maybe haven't quite nailed it yet in terms of what the game should be.

[stan_marsh]

I'm let down that my saves are disappearing on PS4 even after last update Aug 11.

[stapeliad]

I was thinking about the tutorial aspect and how it is too integrated into the story....

How freaking COOL would it have been for Will to find and read Survive the Outdoors!, Wilderness Kitchen, The Frozen Angler, Frontier Shooting Guide  and Guns! Guns! Guns! ? This would have been the ideal skippable tutorial that already ties into sandbox.

Those ARE tutorial books, why didn't he have a couple at the beginning (in the plane wreckage) and find some of the others the others later on?

[JAFO]

1 hour ago, SquanderBot said:

It's just a LOT of walking and starting and cancelling campfires. Also I'm not a fan of certain aspects of the game, like shooting wildlife, but Story Mode requires me to do it.

Huh? I've gotten almost as far as you.. (repaired the rifle, but not back with it yet) and I've yet to start a fire to scare a wolf, or kill anything except rabbits. The wolves aren't hard to avoid, and when you can't, you can almost always just employ the 'walk away' tactic on them.