Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #11


Raphael van Lierop

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Hello fans,

Here's Dispatch #11! Thanks for your patience with me in skipping last week's instalment. Enjoy!

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Question from @Rusty_Old_F250:

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Some time ago, there was mention made of crafting for safehouse customization, and it was hinted that items (like the toy tractor) *might* become collectable, is that still in the works or....?

I'd still like to get some kind of safehouse customization into the game, yes. One of the things we'd let you do would be to craft or collect decorative items like wooden figures, rag rugs, mounted fish and antlers (like the props you see in the Camp Office, for example), and so on. We've even talked about letting you make simple, rustic furniture items, which could be good in the case that you had to bust up all the regular chairs and tables for firewood and feel like your favourite safehouse is looking a bit empty.

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Question from @PlayerPawn:

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Who picks the music for your trailers?  Is it a single person or is it more of a collective effort?  I loved "The Curse" by Agnes Obel used in the Wintermute Launch trailer and I loved the most recent "Hollow Talk" by Choir of Young Believers used in the retail launch trailer.  Any chance of making a list available of 'contenders' that were considered but ultimately didn't make the cut?  I love discovering new music and would love to see what was pitched around.

I usually have a list of ideas and then I poll a few people on the team to see what they think -- particularly Aaron Hildebrandt, who edits all our trailers -- they throw some ideas into the mix, we shortlist, and then reach out to the various labels to see what terms are like -- ex. cost, licensing duration (1 year, 2 years, infinity, etc.) etc. The labels talk to the bands to make sure they are happy having their music used to promote our game. We've been fortunate to have some truly amazing musicians agree to have their work associated with ours. It's really flattering. 

I'm loathe to share the list of songs we didn't use, mostly because we may end up using them in the future. Also, I don't want you to think the songs we end up using were our "runner up" choices. We've been super fortunate to be able to get access to the music we really wanted to use for our trailers.

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Question from @Snake Doctor:

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In the last update, you guys released something the community had on their wishlist for a long time: manual cooking. I, and I think it's fair to say a lot of other players, love this addition and feel it was a real game-changer for TLD. With that being said, are you considering introducing a similar mechanic for the manual breaking down of branches, logs, carcasses, and other harvestable items in the game?

I think we still have some work to do to make the Manual Cooking overhaul a complete success. Once we get that right, yes, I'd like to take the same approach to improving other core systems like how we handle Firemaking, and this would include fuel. Adding better FP presence to harvesting has been on our list for a while. Currently all our animation resources are tied up in Episode Three NPCs and cinematics, but we'll get back to some of those other FP presence tasks in the future.

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Question from @BESt:

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How is the work with the bear spear going?

It needs more tuning work but I think it's off to a good start and feeling pretty good already.

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Question from @Dawnshift:

Have you considered a foraging skill - as in finding edible herbs, roots and plants unter the ice and snow?
(I could see finding maybe acorns, cranberries, bearberries or burdock under the snow with a shovel or watercress, mussels, kelp and seaweed in water if you can break the ice. Maybe some plants are slightly fluorescent in the aurora light.) *[I realize the effort would be immense but maybe you are already working on this to a degree.]

Have you ever considered malnutrition as a possible affliction? *[also a possible counterpart for foraging]
(For example, if you only consume meat - i cannot image eating only meat for a year to be healthy .. gameplay. )

edit: spelling & *[ ]

 

Foraging is really a player action, not a character action, so I'd be concerned that adding a Foraging Skill would take away from something that should not be abstracted further for the player. Yes, we've discussed Malnutrition as an affliction, as well as the opposite "Well Fed" as a buff. Both could find their way into the game at some point. Hunger/starvation is still not 100% where it should be in the game.

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Question from @Pillock:

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How do you feel, as a developer and creator, about "exploits" that players find in the survival mechanics?

Do you regard them as undermining the experience you're trying to create and feel the urge to code them out of the game? Or do you regard the world of TLD as having it's own "science" separate from reality, and are happy for players to explore its limits? Do you enjoy hearing about players pushing these limits, or does it annoy you that aspects of the survival system are pushed to the point where they run contrary to real-world intuition or possibilities? Or a bit of both? Is there a line somewhere?  Or are you indifferent to it?

 

If players find ways to manipulate the systems to their advantage and they are not subverting the intended experience, then we love it -- this is what we want, as it makes players feel clever and increases their sense of ownership over their experience. Example: luring wolves towards deer so the wolves kill the deer, you then kill the wolf. One bullet, two kills. Brilliant.

If players exploit bugs or flaws in the mechanics to their advantage, these feel like imperfections in the design that should be fixed. So we try to fix those because we want players to receive our intended experience.

If people use unofficial mods to manipulate the experience -- for example, to fly into areas of the world they are not meant to access -- this is frustrating b/c we set up boundaries for a reason and sometimes the out of bounds areas are intentionally barren/unfinished, and if screenshots of those areas are shared, for example, it reflects poorly on the craft and care that goes into our game.

Beyond that, we've provided a sort of "toolbox" in the Custom Experience settings so we're happy for players to use those to push the boundaries and experiment with what they think would be interesting parameters for their survival experience. Once we get proper official mod support up and running, I'm sure the community will discover all kinds of new experiences as well!

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Question from @Jendo:

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Hey Raph (and team!),

I love the game so much I bought it twice, but do you think the framerate on console will ever be improved upon?

Thanks, and much love from Scotland ❤

 

Thanks for your support of our efforts! We're actually working on a bunch of optimizations right now that should help the game run better on all consoles, not sure how soon we'll be able to get those out though, but we are working on it. One issue we constantly run into is the fact that we started building The Long Dark on Unity 4, over 5 years ago, so some of the architectural decisions we made about how we build our world and content are now limiters to how performant we can make the game. Short of re-building the entire game from scratch, we're ultimately kind of limited in what we can do on console. We'll keep working on performance but I don't know if we'll ever hit like 60FPS on Xbox and PS4, for example, at least, not in some of our really big open regions (indoors would be fine). 

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Question from @JAFO:

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I have a question about the scent and wind mechanics.

We know that wind can carry your scent further in that direction, extending the range at which wolves can detect you.. but is the detection range upwind of the player concomitantly reduced, as would logically be expected in that situation?

Thanks to both you and the team, for making the most addictive and absorbing game ever!

 

Yes, wind direction does matter as it relates to scent.

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Question from @ajb1978:

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This is half question, half feedback.  I know you briefly touched on this in Mailbag 3, but are there any intentions to expand fishing into a more involved user experience?  The hunting experience is pretty well fleshed out already, and remains a modest challenge even at high levels, especially if you hunt big game.  Fishing in its current state it's kinda like making a trip to the supermarket once you hit level 5.  I for one would enjoy a "minigame" experience.

We'd love to make Fishing more interesting, more active. I think there's tons we could do here, yeah. But, to be fair, we could really improve Hunting as well. :) 

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Question from @epower:

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Is walking pace slower with a weapon in hand?  I've not tested this but it does seem that I walk just a little bit faster when I don't have a rifle at the ready.

No, it shouldn't be.

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Looks like that's all the question for this week's Mailbag! Hope you enjoyed them. 

And if you haven't already had the chance to see them, I highly recommend you check out these great narrated player diaries produced by Skybound, our distribution partner for the physical version of The Long Dark. They started with some community-created diary posts, added professional voice actors and some screenshots from the game, and turned the diaries into something really special! The most exciting part of this project, for us, is that these words came directly from our community members. 

If you want to be automatically notified of things like this, sign up for our mailing list, and follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks for your time, and until the next Dispatch, stay warm and keep an eye on the horizon.

- Raph

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Thanks for another insightful Mailbag Dispatch. My personal highlights this time were safehouse customization (looking forward to what Hinterland comes up with) and the question about 'exploits' and how RvL feels about them, since much of what we discuss here on the forums could be considered as such. Keep it coming!

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On 9/21/2018 at 5:17 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

If players exploit bugs or flaws in the mechanics to their advantage, these feel like imperfections in the design that should be fixed. So we try to fix those because we want players to receive our intended experience.

 

On 9/21/2018 at 5:17 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

we've discussed Malnutrition as an affliction, as well as the opposite "Well Fed" as a buff. Both could find their way into the game at some point. Hunger/starvation is still not 100% where it should be in the game.

 

On 9/21/2018 at 5:17 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

I think we still have some work to do to make the Manual Cooking overhaul a complete success. Once we get that right, yes, I'd like to take the same approach to improving other core systems like how we handle Firemaking, and this would include fuel.

 

On 9/21/2018 at 5:17 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

We'd love to make Fishing more interesting, more active. I think there's tons we could do here, yeah. But, to be fair, we could really improve Hunting as well. :)

These things are my highlights. Really encouraged by this, and hopefully we can see some of it making it's way into the game some time after the Wintermute redux is out. Personally, I'd like to see a general pass on more minor niggles and exploits in existing mechanics before whole new systems are introduced, but it's great that such improvements are being kept in mind for the duration of TLD's development. Can't wait to see how far you can take this!

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2 hours ago, Pillock said:

 

 

 

These things are my highlights. Really encouraged by this, and hopefully we can see some of it making it's way into the game some time after the Wintermute redux is out. Personally, I'd like to see a general pass on more minor niggles and exploits in existing mechanics before whole new systems are introduced, but it's great that such improvements are being kept in mind for the duration of TLD's development. Can't wait to see how far you can take this!

@Pillock -- you took the words right out of my mouth.  This was a really interesting mailbag.

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