Community Feedback


MarrowStone

Recommended Posts

I think most people found it boring because everyone is playing it safe to avoid badge lose. Obviously it could of been better and maybe make us travel around and find certain items or travel to certain locations or even try to survive 8 real time hours on interloper. 

I am happy with the event and that it didn't affect our usual play with anything. You had the choice to either play the event or don't and besides day 1, you could just sit it out for two hours everyday and you had the choice to pick your play style, sit it out or make it more fun for yourself. I think the dev's wanted to make it easy because not everyone is experienced to survive in more harsh conditions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I enjoyed the first three days.... I didn't stay put any of the days...was moving and collecting.. and never even needed to use the rifle... I'm honestly not used to having it anyway. I have yet to play day 4... but I will tonight after the candy goblins stop coming to the door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll be playing the 4th day on my livestream tonight, but therein lies a problem for those of us on the east side of the Atlantic (especially streamers and content creators) as our clocks are 8, 9, 10 hours ahead of PST and each day in the event starts at breakfast time for us, but most of us can't play until mid to late evening.  This means we lose out on audience numbers and video views because the western half of the USA and Canada always have the beginning of each event day during their prime late night slots, meaning there's nothing "new" for us to add into our content. My average viewer count has plummeted because most of them watched west coast streamers play each day a good 12 to 15 hours before I could even launch the game.


Have no idea what can be done about it, but mentioning it as it was the only spoiler in the event for me.  Beyond that it's been a fairly easy but enjoyable event - well done Hinterland.  If timing stay the same next year, I guess I'll have to stream a different game during the event.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I said this in the Day 4 thread, but I loved the first three days. They were fun, they were interesting, and the second and third days were incredibly tense. Finding a JOL was exciting, and I loved having to scan the horizon, hoping for that shock of orange somewhere. Managing the wolves was tense, especially since I usually don't use a rifle, so that was a pretty new experience.  And I've never used the flashlight before, ever, so that was fun, too.  I loved stocking up and prepping for the fourth day (Whiteout is my favorite challenge, by far).

But the fourth day was awful. I was so bored. I loaded up my fire with coal, got to a feels-like temp of 67 C (152 F), and just left the game open while playing on my tablet. I nibbled on a pie to see if the buff was any different from coffee, and then I just put it in the center of my cave as decoration.

So next year, I really hope they mix it up and change stuff, and especially the last day. It was a very disappointing end to a tense, fun three days.

Also, two possible bugs I ran into - first, I am not 100% positive, but I think the flashlight JOL that matches the rifle JOL in Silent Clearing in CH was missing. I looked everywhere I possibly could, spending hours on the first day, trying to find it. I wasn't the only one with this problem, either. I didn't see a single person who got the Silent Clearing JOL find the matching JOL elsewhere.  If it did spawn, I think it was in a too obscure location.

Second, the JOLs in Pleasant Valley were buggy, I think. I found 5 JOLs in that area, and one of them definitely spawned after the first day, because it wasn't there on the first day (the one at the Radio Tower). I'm wondering if every possible JOL ended up spawning in PV, instead of just one "set", like in the other areas.

So thanks to Hinterland for the event - I did have a ton of fun! I'm really thrilled that it was mixed up every day - I didn't participate last year because honestly, it didn't sound that exciting. I really loved getting badges (badges are always a good motivation for me, haha). I look forward to next year, and I hope there's an event before then!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some thoughts about the event.
The first three days were great. The rush for supplies and search for a shelter, and then the wolves prowling the endless night. The fourth day (or night) was rather disappointing. Maybe we got too anxious and ended up with such a hoard of supplies that nobody had a reason to go out, but it seems everybody just stood put sewing clothes, sharpening knives and cleaning rifles to pass time. At least that's what I'm doing, probably at the end of the two hours I'll dare the blizzard and try moving elsewhere.
The continuous blizzard is bothersome, having some moments of calm weather could have encouraged travel.

So it seems our beloved Hinterland just ran out of ideas for the conclusion of the event.

I enjoyed the gameplay and the atmosphere, but I think the latter could have been more horror oriented.
I personally found two skulls. One in a fishing hut, one in the forestry lookout. Those were the only "themed" additions (apart from Jack o'Lanterns). And that's it. Not enough to think "hey, when did I end up in a horror movie"?
Of course throwing skulls all over the place would have been silly. But...
Pictures. There are photographs on furniture, and paintings on walls. Some creepy details could have been added. Blood tears in family portraits, victims near wolves...
Sounds. Laughter echoing in the distance when you're walking in the open. Running footsteps and the sound of a slamming door when you enter a two-door building.
Notes! Heck, I found four notes, and as sad as they usually are they didn't add much. How about a Lovecraft quote?
Scary stuff. Finding corpses with the "harvested carcass" puddle of blood nearby. Exiting a house and finding WAY oversized wolf traces in front of it, leaving you wondering just what could have left them while you weren't looking.
Just some random ideas.

I'll keep playing for a long time, waiting for the next event.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was my first event as I'm only playing since about 11 months. I liked it very much especially because I was able to apply what I have learnt in the past months: avoid stupid decisions. I liked Day1 - although in my main save I try to avoid walking around in the darkness and bad weather. Day2 & 3 were o.k., I knew it's better to stay away from the wolf packs and aurora wolfes. The huge tension what's going to happen on Day4 (fire, cabin feaver, will the wolfs go away as usual during bilzzards?), all the thoughts while sitting put cooking tea & coffiee.  Day4 was fun again, as I was able to walk around again and take security measures to make it through the blizzard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm mad, honestly. I stocked up day 1, which was Sunday. Real life on Monday didn't let me play but about two hours. I died with ten minutes to go by a pack of wolves. I simply did not have time to play 2 more hours, as I had to go on to bed. Oh well......no badges for me. I just tried to play day 4 from the start, thinking I might go for the one badge. Nope, good luck starting on day 4. I got inside a house only to find that the feels like was 1 degree F. Got hypo then frostbite quickly, so yea. Forget it. The thing that makes me mad is that when you work insane hours, you really don't get to take part in this like others do. I guess I'm just mad at my own schedule. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Event was great, everybody had an opportunity to get his badges regardless of playstyle or in-game experience.

But...

Navigating through a darkness strongly depends on how familiar with maps players are - which promotes the experienced ones, to whom the challenge's difficulty is lower than expected. I think that would be nice to diversify difficulty level, maybe by opening more areas for such type of event gameplay, for example by limiting playable zones accordingly to difficulty level set - just imagine the 4DON limited to HRV... wouldn't be so boring for "interloopers" I suppose ;)

I think that amount of candy bars was too high. If devs wanted us to go out and hunt some wolves at day 2 and 3 (and to prepare a stash of food for the blizzard at day 4), the fear of starvation should be this factor. I'm not sure how many candy bars I've found - I think it was roughly 50 pieces, even with PV barely visited, which gave me ~125.000 kcal. For assumed 2h of gameplay per day, it was way too much in my feeling. Of course, I've spent much more than 2h of gameplay day 1, nevertheless... I'm not sure if anybody needed to hunt wolves for food - which could be a bit challenging (or just fun) even for more experienced players.


EDIT: And maybe switching the day rotation could be fine: 1->4->3->2. Gather items (clothing, weapons), (a few...) candys, cattails and firewood -> survive blizzard  -> kill aurora wolves for food -> face the deamons in less favourable weather conditions. Accordingly to Halloween.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Much colder than day 3, though. I tried going up to the house on jackrabbit. It felt like 1 F which is -17.2 C. With better clothes and moving to other places, even bed warmth wouldn't get me to a positive. Also, it started getting even colder then. Oh well. The main negative is that there will always be 2 missing badges that can't be obtained anytime I go through those badges. Too bad you can't just get rid of the slots .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

tl;dr: 4DON was thrilling; the 4th day could have held more challenge, or rewarded ultra-planning in a more satisfying way.

I'm a 150+ Voyager player that just started Stalker.  So, I know the game, but am not an expert.  I note this because I think events like this are quite the challenge to make so they are fun for everyone from Pilgrim to Deadman players.

  1. The start of the event was brilliantly conceived in most respects -- poor visibility is a danger that can accommodate Pilgrims and Deadmen alike.  It's still dangerous, but in a very passive way that planning and experience can help avoid.  However, in no way is it "easy".
  2. The 2hr Realtime obligations was interesting, as TLD doesn't usually care about "real time".  This a bit of a personal difficulty, as adults tend to have more obligations than can usually accommodate 2hrs for 4 days in a row.  A bit more flexibility would be appreciated in the future.
  3. My favorite part of the 4DON experience was trying to anticipate how to survive the next and final days.  Speculation on what "Yet" might mean was titillating in the best of ways.  Sure, I over-prepared, but I had a wonderful time trying to game out scenarios you might throw at us and how I might adapt if my planning was wrong. 
  4. With much prep on the first day, I was able to enjoy the wolves to a level of my liking.  I blazed a safe trail with my rifle to the final essential resources I still needed.  However, because my prep was pretty good to begin with, I could play it rather safe (which was appreciated on days that I really didn't have much time to play).
  5. Thank you for closing certain regions.  The smaller play-area made me feel less compelled to go everywhere on the first day just to prepare for what was to come.
  6. The late change to allow 2-hrs/day, but not on the same run, was welcomed.  It allowed people to be a bit less risk adverse during a confined temporal event.

Suggestions for the future:

  1. Whether by design or not, having a hint of what was in store for the next three days allowed people to extensively prepare and bunker.  It should be said, this is completely thematic with TLD; if you prepare ahead of time, you don't have to take drastic measures for your survival.  However, it did allow some to take the "challenge" out of it for themselves (this is completely self-inflicted, but also a known problem of successful game design).  Here might be a few ways to mitigate this;
    1. Only hint what tomorrow brings.  That way people can't prep for tomorrow+1.
    2. Create some important resource to fetch, that is only known the day before and only make it available the day of.  Therefore, people can prep for what they'll need, but can't actually get it until the new dangers are online.  Maybe flashlight only available on day-2, and rad-Wolves are immune to bullets.  So you have to find the flashlight among the demon wolves.
    3. Move them from their base; either by incentivising them to leave (need to reach some destination), or by pushing them out (can't stay here).
    4. Maybe lock regions until certain days.  Perhaps making the old region gradually inhospitable.  Or just incentivising leaving.
  2. There are a lot of good suggestions in the 4DON speculation threads -- especially how to handle Day 4.
  3. Add a bit more flex to the time/date requirements
  4. On Day-4, inside temps I found (Lake Cabin and Cave near there) only got to -20C.  This made a fire unnecessary with very good clothing.  -40C would have been a better choice, so that a fire was necessary, no matter where you were.

Again, I loved this event.  Thank you so much for putting it together.  I hope it was a wonderful success.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Things I would have liked to see.

  1. Cabin fever on days 2-4 believe it or not. I was prepared enough to sit inside all day. Maybe a mechanic like cabin fever, and maybe it could have incorporated a mission to go outside or travel to a specific location by a certain time. I didn't want to leave the Quonset garage during the aurora Day 3, and there was no reason to. I messed around a little with the flashlight on Day 3 and mostly sat inside and let the clock run. During the blizzard on Day 4 I went hunting for pies in a blizzard and found this was more interesting than Day 3. I played this really cautiously as I didn't want to miss out on the badges.. My badges, I gotta have my badges!
  2. Wolf behavior more extreme. Maybe no baiting?
  3. The event could have been more difficult. I understand they don't want to scare off new players because of this, and that this is an event in all good fun. It needs another element to keep the player on their toes. I thought with the insane amount of good loot that it was going to be difficult, and everyone was going to get wrecked! I like that idea.
  4. Sasquatch or sounds when traveling that we've never heard before
  5. The ghost of grey mother
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I definitely enjoyed the event overall. First and foremost, it helps to give us a reason to vary our playstyle. Using resources willy nilly is a weird feeling for most experienced players, so I highly appreciated that. 
As many people have pointed out, there was a bit of a issue with the "best" strategy for getting through this event was to simply hole up and do nothing. I love that you had the day 4 challenge be to drop indoor temps enough that one could only do nothing if they had very good clothing. But I think that the best solution for next time would be to drop the badges all together. Or make some other kind of goal. But as it stood, the design of the challenge was such that the best move was to try and experience very little of it. I think that without the lure of the badges, people would have been a lot more willing to just try everything, since they wouldn't have to risk multiple hours of realtime by taking going out into this new world. 
This was still by far the best 4DoN event so far, and I really like that you're pushing it further into new design spaces. I love any push to new challenge modes! If next year kept optimum strategies and engaging experiences from pulling in very different directions, I think it would be a huge improvement. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would personally like to see more objective based tasks for the badges, rather than placing it solely on real-time hours since some of us may not have that amount if time. If you design the task to take roughly two hours then if we're skilled enough we could cut enough corners to complete the objective a little quicker.

Achievements working through multiple saves was welcomed by me as well, it took the fun out of taking all the calculated risks that make this game so compelling.

More themed changes! The moon should be orange! A bit more spooky props and changed assets (not too over the top but enough to remind you of the event).

If you have time to launch an event this winter, we want to see christmas lights! (personally I want to see them on deer antlers for amusement). More themed sounds would be nice too, but still kind of rare, the increased the rate owls and loons calling was appreciated.

Overall, I think this event is a step in the right direction.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The event was too easy. After the first day I had only explored CH and I could have just sat on my mountain if supplies and beat the event. I didn't, and I got electrocuted (really anticlimactic death)  in the dam on the third night. 

I hope that they make the next 4don actually challenging so you actually have to go outside and explore! The exploring was fun, but not needed to survive...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Cr41g said:

I think cabin fever should have been instituted as well... a punishing nuclear level cabin fever... forcing everyone outside

Or... wolf spawns inside houses at random. Encouraging you to keep a fire going all the time so the wolf won't spawn in the home while you have a fire going!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, NardoLoopa said:

Suggestions for the future:

- Add a bit more flex to the time/date requirements

Was thinking about this a bit last night: one easy way to support this is to allow people to control the "Day" they are playing, after the day has begun.  For example, if you die on Day-2, you could start a "Day-1" run, put in your 2-hrs, save, exit, resume for "Day-2".  However, you couldn't go backward on the same run, and you could not advance past the current day (e.g. can't play "Day-4" until Day4).

This would serve several goals:

  • It allows people to be a bit riskier, as there is a fallback plan if they muff their run (start over)
  • It allows late-joins for people who didn't know the event was starting, or couldn't play the first day
  • It allows people who can't play on one of the 3 days leading to the final to adjust their personal schedules
  • It allows you to re-institute the "one save" policy for the ultimate reward (and allows people to work harder [play more] to overcome a mistake)
  • It allows the difficulty of the event to be harder, since one-death doesn't end your chances (just sets you back to square one)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, cullam said:

But as it stood, the design of the challenge was such that the best move was to try and experience very little of it. I think that without the lure of the badges, people would have been a lot more willing to just try everything, since they wouldn't have to risk multiple hours of realtime by taking going out into this new world. 

I agree with your take. I also think that perhaps what Hinterland had in mind was to essentially give all players a good amount of freedom of choice. Do you want to play 'Wolf Days' safe and stay put inside a building? It's your prerogative. I did it because I'm essentially a Pilgrim with a bit of wolphobia, but more daring and experienced players who couldn't stay still kept exploring and went hunting. I think the fun wasn't in the badge acquisition itself, but in how you chose to gain the badges. Sure, idling was the easiest option, but not the funnest. 

I would have welcomed more mini-quests too, by the way. At the same time, I've seen how experienced players who got bored waiting by a fire invented their own mini challenges (let's see if I find all the pies, let's see if I make it to another region, etc.) to make the most of the experience. Giving that it's very complicated to please such a varied player-base for a game like The Long Dark, I think Hinterland has done a more-than-decent job overall.

–Rick

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This will be more of a self-critique of how I played through 4DON. 

While I did survive, I wasted so much IRL time doing useless things or things that weren't as useful as in the normal game.  This would be:  Reading fishing books, crafting hooks and tackle, curing deer hides and crafting clothing.

I also set myself up, for a time, in the Quonset hut.  This was to pool my resources as I scrounged, while waiting for hides to cure.  I should have kept moving, as though I was on Interloper.  I could have taken a planned route to cover most of CH, without retracing my steps to the Quonset hut.   Had I done that, I would have probably had time to move up through PV and into ML.

Part of me also envies those of you who actively set out to thin out the wolf numbers.  I mostly holed up in the Lookout tower in ML.  The only two exceptions were to gather more wood on day 2 and to get to the JOL I spotted off by the ruins of the old Lookout tower.  That second venture also resulted in me shooting 2 demon wolves.   I totally chickened out on Day 3 and stayed inside or just outside the Lookout tower.

Now, for Day 4, I shamelessly stayed in the Lookout tower with a fire going.  My clothing was good enough to venture out and occasionally get a fire going in a sheltered area, but I just didn't have the time after taking the kids trick or treating. 

Hopefully Hinterland will do another 4DON next year.  I fully intend to take these lessons to heart for the next time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems like the 2 largest topics are 1) Difficulty and 2) Time constraint.  Perhaps to handle #1 in the future would be to allow us to choose a difficulty level (as in Survival mode)?

#2 If you extend the time, then those that are bored and ready to move to the next day are penalized while those with more RL commitments are rewarded.  You have to choose and balance and I think HL did pretty well at it.  After all, it is called 4DON - would be kind of silly to have it last 8 days...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.