I have given up with v1.33

[peteloud]

I have been playing TLD for about 6 months. I am retired so I have a lot of time for playing it. I have played many sandbox games that are not full of zombies and sci-fi monsters. Previously my favourite games were AC Black Flag and Far Cry 3. Until v1.33, TLD was my clear favourite.

I completed Wintermute at Voyager level, have well over 500 hours of custom Survival at around Voyager level.  I am currently at 130 hours of Survival at Stalker level. I have good stocks of deer skins, wolf skins, and forged arrowheads, knives and axes. I frequently save while playing Survival.

Two or three days ago I converted from v1.30 to v1.33. The last 10-15 game days are with v1.33.  With v1.33 it has stopped being enjoyable.  My main complaints are,

* I now spend about a third of my time cooking. It is a tediously boring task.

* I lose about three quarters of my arrows. Losing so many arrows means that I can't defend myself from wolves and hunting food is much more difficult.

* There seems to be many more very aggressive wolves.

* Poisoning myself due to bad keying operations.

Not a solely v1.33 issue is saving in Survival mode. I do not wish to have to restart from the beginning when I die.

The game is no longer fun for me.  It might be easy for hard-core Interloper players who comment here, but they are an extremely small proportion of the players.  The great majority of players will probably find these issues spoil the game for them, this could affect recommendations and sales.

I think that Hinterland needs to rethink v1.33

 

[TerribleSurvivor]

In terms of cooking i would recommend you to check this out. It should be perfectly adaptable even for casual players:

http://www.hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/19770-theory-crafting-cooking-efficiently/

 

[Pillock]

7 hours ago, peteloud said:

* I now spend about a third of my time cooking. It is a tediously boring task.

* I lose about three quarters of my arrows. Losing so many arrows means that I can't defend myself from wolves and hunting food is much more difficult.

* There seems to be many more very aggressive wolves.

* Poisoning myself due to bad keying operations.

Not a solely v1.33 issue is saving in Survival mode. I do not wish to have to restart from the beginning when I die.

I agree that cooking times are a bit long. But you can fast-forward time while things cook so that you're not spending much actual real time doing it; you can also set your fire burning time to match the cooking time and then just go off and do something else, so you don't have to spend any time just waiting.

Disappearing arrows is a big problem, which I'm sure the devs are aware of and will fix soon.

Haven't noticed a difference in wolves myself, but OK.

Streamlining the interface so that specific actions like "Eat", "Wear" or "Equip" are replaced by the generic "Use" command is a very strange design choice, in my opinion, and just makes the UI more confusing and the game overall slightly worse. I don't understand why they've done this either. But they do listen to feedback, and hopefully they'll change it back.

As for the final point, I can't agree with you. The only objective you have in Survival Mode is to survive. The whole point is to see how long you can go without dying. If you remove this, then that game mode loses all its purpose. It's a "survival game": if you don't survive, it's Game Over. That's what the game is for.

[peteloud]

46 minutes ago, Pillock said:

The only objective you have in Survival Mode is to survive. The whole point is to see how long you can go without dying. If you remove this, then that game mode loses all its purpose. It's a "survival game": if you don't survive, it's Game Over. That's what the game is for.

I accept the point that you are making, but if I had to start from the beginning every time I was killed I would have given up Survival ages ago.  Perhaps what is needed is some sort of scoring system that takes into negative account your deaths/saves/whatever. 

Today, in a comment to The Guardian about 'gaming addiction', I spoke very highly of TLD. One reply to my comment said, " Fecking wolves! I wanted to like it. My husband has put many hours into. I just suck at being stealthy. After being killed by wolves for the umpteenth time I gave up! "

If Hinterland want to maximise sales, (and still keep it a serious game), it needs to consider the game enjoyment of the ordinary player.

 

[Cr41g]

I consider myself an ordinary player.....I cant even count the number of times I have had to restart... I have frozen to death, bled to death, fallen to my death, starved, been killed by bears, wolves and racked heavily by a moose... starting over is the fun part for me... and like already mentioned its survival... permadeath..

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

Today, in a comment to The Guardian about 'gaming addiction', I spoke very highly of TLD.

Is it on their website? I had a look for it just now and couldn't find it - would be interested to see what you said!

But that aside, I don't think I really agree with your point about maximizing sales and keeping it accessible to 'ordinary players'. What is an 'ordinary player', anyway? And why should a small, independent game developer like Hinterland want to maximise sales at the expense of sacrificing the gameplay experience that they envision? It's not necessarily all about satisfying the widest possible market.

The Long Dark is a brilliant game, hamstrung slightly  (I think) by a pretty obnoxious User Interface. For example, your Guardian commenter said that they gave up because they kept getting killed by wolves: well, it's perfectly possible, especially with the new custom settings, to create a game where the wolves are not a threat at all, while still have a meaningful challenge from the other 'survival' aspects - or you can scale the threat according to your preference. The problem is, the game menu doesn't make it particularly obvious that you can do this (the "Custom" option is almost greyed-out in the Experience Mode selection, as if the developers don't really want you to use it!); and the custom settings themselves can seem pretty daunting in their scale and are very far from being easy to understand unless you have a lot of experience in the game. The in-game UI and inventory are similarly oblique, and always have been. The new cooking mechanic, I think, does make that aspect of the game feel more tactile and immersive in terms of your interaction with the environment, and I love it for that - I think it's a huge improvement overall; but it's still pretty fiddly to work out how get things out of the inventory and into the 'world' in front of you so that you can make use of them, without accidentally doing something you didn't intend. And it can be frustrating before you get used to it.

Perseverance on the part of the player does help and is rewarded, but better UI design would help a lot more! And I mean that in terms of not being off-putting to 'ordinary' people.

[Mixxut]

2 hours ago, Cr41g said:

I consider myself an ordinary player.....I cant even count the number of times I have had to restart... I have frozen to death, bled to death, fallen to my death, starved, been killed by bears, wolves and racked heavily by a moose... starting over is the fun part for me... and like already mentioned its survival... permadeath..

Yeah, I enjoy the parts in this game the most when i'm near death. Adrealine is pumping, you're giving 110% of your focus to the game, the mixed feel of fear and panic is awesome and if you die you can start a new game and know a little more about the game. 

Note to self: Trhowing a stone at a bear won't do sh*t

[Cr41g]

what you said... very much agree... also the 110% when you have to start again with nothing

[Pillock]

Good news!

Quote

Hotfix to v1.34 [37910] -- Release Notes

*[All] Updated "Use" verbs to better reflect player activity in the game. Verbs should now more accurately reflect intended use. 
*[All] Pass Time Until Ready when Melting snow now stops when snow is melted. Boiling to Purify melted snow is now a separate Cooking action, as before.
*[All] Cooking times for partial-unit food items now scale correctly. I.e. 0.5 Kg of meat now takes half the full-unit time cost.
*[All] Wildlife will no longer attack players during accelerated time, unless they were already detected prior to beginning an activity. This addresses an issue where players were being ambushed by predators during accelerated time actions.

And this one:

Quote

*[Survival Mode] Fixed issue causing arrows to become invisible after firing them.

 

[Blinkin]

I've managed to make some free time, happy to test the new version but quickly ran into a disappointment. The wolves difference is the first thing I noticed.
I've setup a few custom games with low wolf population and being able to scare them quickly.
Result: I played 5 of these custom games where I got attacked within the first 3 hours (ingame time) after starting by serveral wolves. None of them got scared... I got more attacks than I normally ever have had on voyager on the first week. Something is broken here.

[TerribleSurvivor]

@Pillock It was about time!

For all of you that are dissatisfied with the wolves (like me) but would like to have a challenge that is kind of compelling i created this set of custom settings. It mainly features most aspects of Interloper except for the complete lack of wolves and a little friendlier weather. The weather and the lack of resources are your primary enemies but do not neglect wildlife flippantly! Bears, especially since they are affected by time compression, can and potentially will get you faster than you would think. Feel free to tune it to your needs!

Quote

I played with those settings and had a bad feeling about it when i started the game at first! But boy is it relieving when you can come around a corner and do not have to expect a wolf to ruin your plans! You still have to watch out for bears what makes these gameplay settings more interesting than i thought earlier! I hope i was able to help!

Copy and Paste to make using these settings more convienient:

8oH4-Xx8P-Pw9X-UWVN-BQEA

[Stone]

I get the OP's frustration. It's a significant change to how the game plays. I am an interloper player and recognise I'm after a different experience. That said the cooking changes mean I now have good reason to run three fires at once (on different sides of the camp office) - it's no longer fuel inefficient and it means whichever direction the weather arrives from, at least one fire will be sheltered. Even fending three fires with water and meat I'm able to do some sewing so I'm pretty happy.

 Wolves never give me problems but I stick to three rules: avoid areas with bad sightlines; avoid carrying meat; be ready to start a fire the moment you hear a bark you weren't expecting. With a magnifier that last one can be spamed as needed on sunny days. 

[TerribleSurvivor]

The thing about wolves is that they are SO exploitable that it isn´t funny anymore. They are too strong at the start of the game but at the same time way too predictable and exploitable once you have decent hunting equipment! The problem with wolves that certain players (like me) have since practically release is that they are technically zombies.

Nothing comparable to the real wolves who share attributes like mindful decision making or the ability to coordinate hunting in packs. In the game it feels like they are exclusivly the "starving loner"-type of wolves. And they are locked to a certain area doing nothing else but mindlessly walking around hunting the occasional deer/rabbit/player that crosses their line of sight! Not compelling at all.

Not the strength of the wolves but their behavior needs a significant amount of love to make them a fun part of the game!

[Blinkin]

@TerribleSurvivorI think your version of a custom game might be a great idea.
I'm going to try it as soon as I can. Thank you for sharing!

[Ruruwawa]

@TerribleSurvivor I like it!  I'm already playing a game similar to this, except I set the wolves to Low and spawn distance when you exit a shelter to Far.  I still see them but more rarely.  It's kind of nice having to be being on your toes where you might find a wolf even when they aren't there most of the time.

[arkitex]

I'm in agreement with peteloud - V 1.33 has made the game tedious - its almost boring.

I'm an ordinary player that has enjoyed TLD for a long time (1181 hours). At times the game came close to being tedious but it was always enjoyable and challenging. Getting killed by wildlife was expected. Spending a third of my time cooking isn't. Please don't add washing pots and pans as part of the cooking/eating process.

Maybe provide cooking options in the custom game menu - quick or tedious.

[Kaisentlaia]

I'm playing at a custom difficulty similar to the one @TerribleSurvivor posted, no more snacks on legs running at me all the time! Gotta love those custom settings.

Regarding cooking, I'm finding the new system extremely enjoyable even if the cooking times are longer. I was a bit put off by the amount of time it took until I moved to PV, then I fell in love with it at the farmhouse after I found 3 pots and 3 cans. Being able to melt and boil several liters of water at the same time was a blast, and the same goes for cooking 6 pieces of meat in 1 hour! With the old cooking system, 6 pieces of meat took 2 hours to cook, 20 minutes each. And I can even do something else while the cooking happens!

I really like that now cooking places have different amounts of cooking spots, it's another factor that goes in the decision making process when you have to choose a place to set up camp.

[Blinkin]

Love the custom game mode you created TerribleSurvivor! I'm enjoying the game al lot more now.
I'm so happy that the custom game option has been implemented.
Thanks a lot!

Cooking time feels shorter for me. I mean I cook several things ahead now which means that every time I make a fire the fire has to burn longer but the total time I spend on cooking has actually reduced as I don't need to cook as much as I used to.
This also results in burning less wood and even having time to do gather or learn during the cooking. Last night I harvested two rabbit pelts while cooking 2 cans of water. 40 mins works perfectly here.

[MarrowStone]

if only it were possible to create a custom game that actually has less wolves with more fear. The lowest settings except for "off" and "passive wildlife" do nothing meaningful.

[Kaisentlaia]

I think I've read somewhere that the wolf amount setting is borked: if you set it to low it will be high, and the other way around. Never had time to test it properly tho, so I just went for 0 wolves and regular amount of bear. 

[Ruruwawa]

2 hours ago, Kaisentlaia said:

I think I've read somewhere that the wolf amount setting is borked: if you set it to low it will be high, and the other way around. Never had time to test it properly tho, so I just went for 0 wolves and regular amount of bear. 

My current game has Wolf Spawn Chance set to Low and the amount is definitely feels low, not high.  For example, I looted Milton after a HRV start and didn't meet a single wolf in town.

I also have Wolf Fear set to High @MarrowStone, but while I heard one wolf yip and run away I can't say I've really noticed a difference yet -- not enough wolf encounters yet.  A really powerful "less annoying wolves" setting seems to be Wolf Spawn Distance.  I set that to Far and I never run into one while leaving a shelter now.  You can also tone down the amount of damage suffered to you and your clothes in the Wildlife Struggle section.

One more possibility: set Passive Wildlife to Yes.   Bears and wolves will flee, but moose will still charge if you get too close.

Two reasons I don't want wolves completely out of my game:  wolfskin coat, and letting wolves kill deer for me.   I play with interloper loot settings so a pre-archery option for a coat and another tactic for getting food are both very welcome.

[Kaisentlaia]

Thanks @Ruruwawa for letting me know! I play with interloper loot as well, I will probably try the extremely rare but deadly wolves on my next run.

1 hour ago, Ruruwawa said:

Two reasons I don't want wolves completely out of my game:  wolfskin coat, and letting wolves kill deer for me.

Yes that's exactly why I wanted to try turning them off completely: without that coat life is much harder, and I didn't want to have the possibility to "use" them for deer hunting.  I've set wildlife perception range to high and now I'm working to make a bow, but even then hunting will be extremely hard since wildlife start running when I'm still far from them.

[Ruruwawa]

1 minute ago, Kaisentlaia said:

Yes that's exactly why I wanted to try turning them off completely

Fair enough, turning off wolves definitely makes the first days of 'loper much harder in some ways.   I'm not that hardcore, and besides I find the threat of bumping into a deadly wolf keeps me more engaged throughout my game.   I just don't like lots of them, because (once you hit cooking 5) stepping outside a whistling up a wolf for dinner becomes as easy as ordering a pizza.

[Kaisentlaia]

9 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

(once you hit cooking 5) stepping outside a whistling up a wolf for dinner becomes as easy as ordering a pizza

Exactly, and even before cooking 5 if you don't mind taking some risks of parasites (and you have plenty of food in case of bad luck, ofc). It's nice to have wolfburgers delivered, but it gets a bit boring after a while. 

OT: I remember ages ago, I was still playing voyageur I think, and while on PV I couldn't find a rifle anywhere and I stumbled into that bug that prevented wolves respawn. The main threats in that run, until the bug was fixed, were the weather and the constant hunger (no stone-throwing at that time): I loved it! I still remember looking at the deer peacefully strolling around my base, unable to hunt them in any way, desperately searching for saplings to make a bow.
 Since then I always wanted some way to tune down or completely off wolves and see how hard it gets. I'm so glad we have custom setting now to satisfy our most masochistic desires 

[WheresMyBuns]

On 6/20/2018 at 4:01 AM, peteloud said:

I have been playing TLD for about 6 months. I am retired so I have a lot of time for playing it. I have played many sandbox games that are not full of zombies and sci-fi monsters. Previously my favourite games were AC Black Flag and Far Cry 3. Until v1.33, TLD was my clear favourite.

I completed Wintermute at Voyager level, have well over 500 hours of custom Survival at around Voyager level.  I am currently at 130 hours of Survival at Stalker level. I have good stocks of deer skins, wolf skins, and forged arrowheads, knives and axes. I frequently save while playing Survival.

Two or three days ago I converted from v1.30 to v1.33. The last 10-15 game days are with v1.33.  With v1.33 it has stopped being enjoyable.  My main complaints are,

* I now spend about a third of my time cooking. It is a tediously boring task.

* I lose about three quarters of my arrows. Losing so many arrows means that I can't defend myself from wolves and hunting food is much more difficult.

* There seems to be many more very aggressive wolves.

* Poisoning myself due to bad keying operations.

Not a solely v1.33 issue is saving in Survival mode. I do not wish to have to restart from the beginning when I die.

The game is no longer fun for me.  It might be easy for hard-core Interloper players who comment here, but they are an extremely small proportion of the players.  The great majority of players will probably find these issues spoil the game for them, this could affect recommendations and sales.

I think that Hinterland needs to rethink v1.33

 

Just pass the time.  When cooking.  Its not hard.