4DON: Post-Mortem

[TheEldritchGod]

Well, 4DoN is effectively over (except for a few stragglers) and it's time to dissect this sucker. Yes, I am a TLD Superfan, but that just means I'm going to be extra brutal on the game. I expect nothing short of perfection. I wanted 4DoN to make the planets align and end world hunger. I wanted my whites to be whiter. My brights to be BRIGHTER. I wanted blue flavor crystals. I wanted to learn the meaning of life. Finally, I wanted my Bowel movements to be both smooth AND regular.

So, with my expectations laid out, what is my summary?

On a scale of Mass Effect: Andromida to Portal 2, I give it a solid MEH.

Clearly this was built as less of an Adventure For the Ages that will spark Memes for generations to come (The Cake is a LIE) and more of a "flavor". I can see that they learned from previous versions of 4DoN and they took the safe path. Nothing wrong with taking the safe path. I get the impression that HLG was avoiding the big risks. I cannot fault them for that.

It's solid. Worth a play through. I think I might want to play it a second time, but that's about it. It certainly gave me the opportunity to cut loose. (SO. MANY. BULLETS.) and do something I wouldn't do in a normal play through, which is to just walk out onto the Coastal Highway ice, put my back to the sea, then use my 118 bullets, 22 flare shells, and 11 arrows to go to town on demon wolves.

The problem would be, they played it safe for the noobs, because they don't want to drive away customers by making it too hard. In the process, they made it too easy for the regulars. Very quickly people figured out that by playing with your computer's internal clock, and just setting your computer to idle, you could get the 2 hours of playing time per "day" fairly easily in a safe location. I saw people getting both patches within 24 hours of the start of the event.

Which is fine.

The badges were clearly participation trophies and there should be participation trophies. But that was it. Nothing else. There were no other achievements. Nothing. Just the badges. This is where the problem was.

Because they didn't want to be too challenging, they failed to make at all challenging. Unless you were bored, there was no reason to leave your base after the first day. I messed with my clock for a second play through. I managed to survive 2 hours a day by Hitting Rabbit Island, Misanthrope, then looted around Quonset, before camping out in Quonset for all four days. Didn't even need to leave. I could have skipped all the other stops and just gone to quonset.

So it was fun, but not, "I'm going to take 4 days off of work" fun. While I might want every game to be like that, it would be insane to expect it. Still, it is a bar to reach for. A game developer should SHOOT for making people want to take time off of work to play your game. You should try to make a game so awesome people plan vacations around it. Did 4DoN reach this bar?

Nope. Not even close.

Still, it was nice. Worth the time spent. If you like the game, you'll like 4DoN. It did what it set out to do, give you a Halloween "Flavor". But that was it. It gave you a taste of Halloween. It also didn't fail. By playing it safe, they didn't screw it up. It would be easy to screw this up, but they managed to avoid any bad choices. The failure of the event would be in what they didn't do, not what they DID do. I'd have done it differently. I would have changed up some things, but I can't say anything they DID was bad. It was more an absence of things that was the problem. So many missed opportunities.

I can't fault the developers. This was something new for them and one has to be careful about trying something new. If they took a risk and screwed it up, then I assure you, I'd be much more hostile. Better to bunt and get on base then swing for the fences, fall short, and have the outfield catch the ball for an easy out.

That said, I expect next year to be a substantial improvement.

If you take the safe road your first time, I expect you to take bigger risks next year. So, with any luck, we'll see this become an annual event, and each time they can try new things.

This is where I move onto the Suggestion portion:

1. For some reason the aurora sounds keeps overloading my sound card and it periodically loses all sound until I quit and restart. Never did it before. Might be my crappy sound card. Heard there were a few people who had map problems. Might want to look at any glitch complaints. That sort of thing will happen, so not a big deal.

2. The Main problem is that it's easy to "win". (ie just idle for 2 hours RL.). I would have liked more sub-plots/quests. Something that was optional, but forced you to leave the safety of your base. The ability to change the difficulty setting, so I can crank it up to 11.

3. Sequential Map Access - I think the problem is that too much of the map was available too soon. Day 1 CH, Ravine, ML only. Day 2: Open up Milton and Pleasant Valley. Day 3: TWM and HRV. Day 4: The whole island, let people go to town. it's the fourth day, you should be able to do whatever you want.

4. Quest Idea: Day 3 - Aurora Quest - You need to get an item from both ends of the Hydro dam. Because of the aurora, you would need to get one item from one side, then go the LONG WAY AROUND for the other.

5. Day one needed more punch. I would suggest Ghost bears. Transparent bears that will ignore everything, hunt you down at max sprint, and jump you, but they cause no damage. You just get the crap scared out of you. Something that kicks in after 2 hours of play so you get used to the idea of nothing around to harm you. Get those players to relax before scaring the crap out of them. When it catches you, there is a cut scene where you fall down, it raises a paw, then fades away.

6. MORE. PIE. - What I mean is, more items to find and collect. Unique items that we could play with. The Pumpkin Caches were nice... for day one. But some of us looted all of them on day 1. Pumpkins should be dribbled out as the days go by to encourage you to leave the safety of your base. I have long said that we need Aurora Wolf Pelts that make Aurora Wolf Coats. Extra warm coats that decay quickly and need more aurora wolf pelts to keep going. Wearing a glowing coat would be so cool. Stuff like that.

7. Do something with the skulls. The skulls were nice, but a nice skull hunt would have been more nice. Let us drink things out of the skulls. When can you go wrong with a skull keg party? Let us eat Nachos out of the skull as a reference to BL2. So much potential gone to waste. All we got to do is say the word "skull". Which, I admit, is fun in and of itself. ... "Skull", heh.

8. Leaderboards - Keep track of how many wolves killed. How many Aurora Wolves should be tracked separately. A few other achievements based on "how many" should be nice.

9. Burn Down The Buildings. - Day 4, you shouldn't have made it cold inside. You should have burned down all the buildings. ALL of them. EVERY STRUCTURE ON EVERY MAP. Why? Because it would be terrifying. Day 3 was nothing but Aurora, so the surging aurora caused fires in any structure with electricity.

10. Wind Tunnels - What I mean is, when the super blizzard hits, all tunnels, mines and explorable caves become filled with WIND. -17 wind, to be exact. Enough wind to blow out any fires. No shelter anywhere in the caves. JUST. WIND. The wind is so bad it's blowing through the air access shafts. Don't care the IC reason, just DO IT.

11. Ordinary caves retain their wind resistance, but the "back" of the cave needs to go to +0 degrees. The "super blizzard" should be just that Nasty.

12. Include the Moose, but re-skin it as the headless horseman.

Well, that's off the top of my head. What do you guys think? What suggestions would you make for next year?

[cullam]

I think we can all agree that more stuff to go looking for in the world is good! I also like the idea of wolf kill leader boards (or even candy bars eaten!). Also, that ghost bear idea is gold! And even a relatively small change, codewise. But I think that the easiest small tweak would be to get rid of the badges. Encourage people to go out exploring, rather than offering prizes for staying home where it's safe. 

[Morrick]

I love the ghost bears idea too. It's certainly fitting in a Halloween themed event such as this. I enjoyed 4DON overall. I'm neither a veteran nor a novice, and I appreciated the parts where the experience was forgiving. I want to enjoy a game, not to be punished by it. There's life for that.

Still, I agree that some things could have been done to spice the experience up a bit. Sometimes the structure of each Day felt static. Day 1 could have started without wildlife, but after a grace period, it could have slowly appeared. That could have added another urgency factor. Wolves' behaviour could have been randomised each time you resumed your game, so that you would have never known if a wolf would run away as soon as you approached (like on Pilgrim mode), or be more aggressive. There could have been mini-quests, like finding specific collectibles. Or things like: to kill an Aurora Wolf, you need to get out and find the Special Aurora Rifle Ammo. I also agree on unlocking the regions as days passed, so that players couldn't accumulate huge amounts of loot quickly.

But again, overall I can't complain. I enjoyed this event a lot, and this forum was part of the fun, as it felt we were all playing together in a way — sharing stories, passing advice. I loved the camaraderie!

–Rick

[codfish107]

All of that sounds good. The mini quests sounds the best, as i often have in game motivation issues.

My problem is i work at nights during the week and i never have the desire to play TLD during the day, so Day 1 was the only day that i actually played the 2 hours. I wish they would make it last the whole week, or atleast make it the weekend closest to Halloween.

 

[NardoLoopa]

After 4DON, going back to my Stalker run:

OMG, IT'S SO BRIGHT OUT HERE!

[Argentex]

I used to avoid exploring at night on my custom game. That is no longer the case after playing 4DON.. 

[hozz1235]

Regarding making it too easy:  This applies to this argument most of the time = You have a choice to make it as hard as you want!  If it was too easy for you, set challenges for yourself.  There were countless ways to die, but most of us wanted those badges so we avoided risk - which is normal.

[Morrick]

3 hours ago, Argentex said:

I used to avoid exploring at night on my custom game. That is no longer the case after playing 4DON.. 

Same here. This is certainly a great side effect of this Halloween event!

[Raphael van Lierop]

@TheEldritchGod I think you need to learn to manage your expectations.  4DON was just meant as a fun, light-hearted experience, a nod to previous years' 4DON events, and an attempt to try something new (daly challenges). We weren't aiming to move the world with it. I think "playing it safe" is a pretty derogatory accusation. 

Player engagement was about 200% higher during this event than during "normal" non-event game days and we learned a lot in the process. We also saw tons of discussions in forums and social media about the event, and people were having so much fun. So as far as I'm concerned, the event was a huge success, and it 100% delivered on our goals for it.

[Ape88]

Or change the extent of the challenge. I would have loved it if I could have played the challenge on every day I had off in October...

[BareSkin]

Just now, Ape88 said:

Or change the extent of the challenge. I would have loved it if I could have played the challenge on every day I had off in October...

Many people would have love a more ego-centric-tailored version. A shame the event intrinsic nature is to be the same for everyone to allow community sharing.

[Ape88]

1 minute ago, BareSkin said:

Many people would have love a more ego-centric-tailored version. A shame the event intrinsic nature is to be the same for everyone to allow community sharing.

Yeah, so make the whole event happen through october and have the events happen on the weekly or tailor it to how many hours person has spent in the challenge thus far. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

15 minutes ago, Ape88 said:

Or change the extent of the challenge. I would have loved it if I could have played the challenge on every day I had off in October...

That wasn't within scope, or in line with our goals.

[ajb1978]

Personally I loved it.  Sure, there's room for improvement, but you can say that about pretty much everything.  And "improvement" is highly subjective anyway.  Some people would consider adding a machine gun to be an improvement.  Others, an abomination.

I'm looking forward to this next year.  And, hopefully, some additional limited-time events.  Yule, anyone?  St. Patty's Day?  Pots of gold rifle cartridges!

[BareSkin]

Just now, BareSkin said:

Many people would have love a more ego-centric-tailored version. A shame the event intrinsic nature is to be the same for everyone to allow community sharing.

I usually don't quote myself, but it appears my intention is not clear. It was meant to be some kind of cynicism about people who see mainly themselves and not the whole picture.

[morgellons]

I'm a veteran player and I really enjoyed the event, especially all the community activity on social media.

It was a big improvement over the previous ones and I'm looking forward to see if they make any tweaks next year.

[Wintermut]

3 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Player engagement was about 200% higher during this event than during "normal" non-event game days and we learned a lot in the process. We also saw tons of discussions in forums and social media about the event, and people were having so much fun. So as far as I'm concerned, the event was a huge success, and it 100% delivered on our goals for it.

While I wasn't present here during the event, I WAS present on Reddit each day. For months leading up to the event there was never many more people than 100 or so online in The Long Dark reddit each day, by nighttime this number often would drop to about 60. Each day I would consider myself lucky to have a post or two to read....some days there were no new threads started.

During this event there was over 200 people online in The Long Dark reddit almost continuously. There were 10+ threads started to be read and responded to each day. I enjoyed so many discussions to participate in, and I wish there was this type of activity to be a part of regularly.

Hopefully once the Story is finished, on top of possibly some potential DLC....Hopefully there will also be a few more annual events. I enjoyed this event immensely  (with maybe an exception of Day4). I'd love to see a future Christmas event, an Easter or Valentines Day event, and maybe a 4th of July event. I don't know exactly what each of these events should to pertain to as far as activities, but it would be nice to basically have a quarterly in game annual event.

Like @Raphael van Lierop said it had a great effect on overall player participation in the game, which in turn created various forums and posting participation all over the Internet. Both outcomes were fun, and it would be great if there was more of it. I could even see events lead to increases in sales, if the sales happened simultaneously with the events (Not that I am aware of how many gamers are left who haven't purchased the game yet...many probably have already).

[Its Saudade]

I really enjoyed the event and wish I had more time to play it through. I'm still pretty new to the game but I thought it made for a very welcome change and challenge to the normal survival mode; It even forced me out of Mystery Lake and exploring other regions for caches!

[Wintermut]

1 hour ago, Its Saudade said:

 It even forced me out of Mystery Lake and exploring other regions for caches!

Well the event was good for you then, if for no other reason than that!

I too started on ML first a couple years ago, on Voyager. I explored it's entirely over about a month in game. By then I had a rifle and bullets, decent clothes and crafted some too, I had a bow but only a couple arrows I fixed from the Dam. I wanted more arrows because the bow is much lighter than the rifle. This took me to CH and then to DP after exploring most of CH...so I could forge more arrowheads.

The other maps are all different and interesting. You should eventually explore them all. While experienced players can manage for a time on any map, several maps can be hard on newer players without decent clothes and gear, so it's safer to start someplace easier to get decent equipment and then explore the more difficult maps.

[NardoLoopa]

Also it pays dividends to milk a region before "discovering" a new one.  It's a thrilling experience to go from "Back of hand" to "Where the F am I?  Blizzard, coming.  Hope I wander into shelter soon!"  And you get that "new game feeling" every time you go to a new region.

On the other hand, discovering everything in Pilgrim is certainly safer . . . but much less fun if you like excitement.

[Doc Feral]

Post 4don effect: "Hey, aurora night in Forlorn Muskeg, perfect visibility, let's get out of this cave and march on!"

Let's see if I survive till morning...

Edit: a few minutes later I'm curled up in a corner of the train car in the Poachers' camp, hoping for a glowing bear to go away without noticing me...

[BareSkin]

8 hours ago, Wintermut said:

Valentines Day event

The one in which you can name your Hacksaw?

[Dan_]

Well, I liked it a lot. It was an opportunity to tour Great Bear in moonlight and searching for the lanterns was a really fun mind game of "If I were a Hinterland game designer were would I hide those things." I've got 500 hours of Interloping now and I can understand why the challenge was dull from a self testing perspective but, judging from the amount of posts of people having a hard time surviving I think it was fairly well balanced. 

The OP raised a lot of interesting changes that would impact gameplay positively for the veteran segment of the player base, but you can simulate most of them in a custom game and challenge yourself to not enter any buildings for example. If those were to be an integral part of the challenge I'm sure many people would've died and the amount of people playing the challenge would be reduced dramatically from day one.

TL;DR: It's not really fair if the challenge is dreadful and difficult for 95% of the other players. Good after-sales demand you to cater to the majority of your customers, even when you give a voice to the minority, hence the forums. All in all, I've enjoyed it, specially with the new big update coming out in December.  

[TheEldritchGod]

20 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

@TheEldritchGod I think you need to learn to manage your expectations.  4DON was just meant as a fun, light-hearted experience, a nod to previous years' 4DON events, and an attempt to try something new (daly challenges). We weren't aiming to move the world with it. I think "playing it safe" is a pretty derogatory accusation. 

Player engagement was about 200% higher during this event than during "normal" non-event game days and we learned a lot in the process. We also saw tons of discussions in forums and social media about the event, and people were having so much fun. So as far as I'm concerned, the event was a huge success, and it 100% delivered on our goals for it.

Oh. I agree whole-heartedly. I was going to make a whole section on how this was overhyped, until I actually went looking for the Hype from HLG. The truth is, you didn't hype this. You posted it. You were very low key about it. It was the fans who hyped the hell out of this. You stated what you were giving us, and you presented exactly what you said you would.

I hoped I had made it clear that that was fine by me.

The point would be, not that you failed in what you attempted, but that you could have framed it differently. I think it was quite solid. I liked it. My experience with game creation is that your players have certain expectations,  that when not met, appear like YOU are the one failing, not that they are expecting too much.

For example, I have noticed that you have fallen trees all over the map, but quite a number of them point towards locations of interest. This is part of that expectation. That the designer will include things in the game that "push" the character in certain directions.

The most famous of examples is in Left4Dead, where the use of light sources is what is used to direct the player through the map to the "end".

Here, in 4DoN, you had 2 participation badges. That's standard. But there were no achievements. No special cut scenes only visible from certain locations. No special items to collect, save the pie. Yes, the pumpkins and the caches with them were interesting, but the gear they gave was standard. As for the pie, other than those completionist freaks, such as myself, there is no strong motivation to actually collect all the pie.

Now, is that YOUR fault?

No.

What happened is that there is an expectation among your players that you would follow accepted "gamer norms". They were expecting you to give them little rewards to direct them as to how they were supposed to have fun. All the other games do it, why didn't TLD?

Well, TLD isn't under any obligation to hold our hand.

I have made a point o reading everyone's complaints and compliments about the long dar 4DoN, and I believe that the complaint about it is this:

YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME A REASON TO DO ANYTHING.

That is a lousy complaint.

However, you do have a fan base and they do have expectations. So, I am suggesting that, for those who are poorly motivated, that maybe you should concede and include some Achievements and Quests for those who do not like collecting all the pies, just to collect all the pies.

So, to sum up:

I agree with your assessment. And congratulations of the success of the event!

 

[TheEldritchGod]

21 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

@TheEldritchGod We weren't aiming to move the world with it. I think "playing it safe" is a pretty derogatory accusation. 

I just noticed that I completely missed your point.

When I say “playing it safe” I come at this from a Win/Lose perspective.

For example, in a sport event where one side is so much better then the other, you may hear the phrase, “It is X’s fight to lose” Which means that one side is such a strong position, it is assumed they are going to win.

The event was HLG’s to lose.

It was going to be a success no matter what. They players were hyping it up so much among each other, that you were going to have a success no matter what. You were going to “win”. You could have screwed it up and “lost”, but that would have meant you took risks.

Side note: Even if this is the 3^rd 4DoN, because this is the first time it has been its own stand alone version of the game, and that it is the first roll out that affected all platforms, I consider the first two versions of 4DoN to be Alpha and Beta versions. This is the first “official” 4DoN, as far as I am concerned. The first version with all the kinks worked out.

So that said, let’s look at what risks you took in this, the first official 4DoN.

1.       You had a theme for each day of the event.

2.       You closed off certain maps to public access.

And that’s it.

Everything else was play tested before, it play tested well, and there was no real risk involved.

That’s what I mean by playing it safe. You used what was PROVEN to work, and stuck with it. Nothing wrong with that. This is the first OFFICIAL roll out of 4DoN. Everything before this was just for fun. You didn’t make any grand promises and what you did say you would give us, you gave us. WE, the PLAYERS, had expectations not met. And that is on US. Don’t for one INSTANT blame yourselves. That’s always going to happen.

As an example, of what I consider a risk, my idea for a Ghost bear on day one. It seems popular among those who I have shared the idea. Here is where it is a risk, it involves lying to the players.

So, you tell everyone no animals on day one. Around hour 2, you hear a growl, a ghost bear runs you down, you get attacked, and…

It fades away.

You technically didn’t lie to the players, but holy HELL it’s terrify the crap out of me!

And. I. Would. LOVE IT.

However, I can see a minority of players getting royally pissed off. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe most players wouldn’t LOVE getting scared half to death after being “lied” to. I would. People I talk to would. But I KNOW there will be some people who won’t lie it and in fact will HATE it.

So, if you included a ghost bear, you are taking a risk.

And let’s be honest, as much as a ghost bear would bring to the enjoyment of the game, you didn’t need it. None of my suggestions to you are NEEDED. You already won! This was in the BAG! You were going to have an awesome event, so why take chances?

And if I was in charge, I wouldn’t have taken any chances either. I noticed you coded up TWM for the event, then chose to seal it off. I would have done the same thing. Leaving TWM open would be a risk. The safe choice would be to seal it up, along with both forges. It was the safe choice and given that this is the first full roll out of the event, if I was in charge, I’d have done the EXACT SAME THING.

Why? Because I need to think about the company and the employees and the game’s reputation. A solid win is far better then doing something AMAZING and tripping at the finish line.

This was your event to lose, and I wouldn’t take any chances either. Next time, I know what to expect from players. Next time, I know what worked and what didn’t. Next time I have feedback and I’ll be more confident in what I try.

This time? Nope. I want to make sure this works for the vast majority of players and those on the fringes, well, I’d worry about them next time.

At least, that’d be what I would do.