The Long Dark Hotfixed to V1.49 [47860]

[Gazbeard]

1 hour ago, JohnDoe60 said:

"Deep survival simulation gameplay..." -- www.thelongdark.com

So, ya, unrealistic gameplay will get commented on, and since we don't really know what goes into making a game all we can do is point at the unrealistic simulation.

I have a solution -- MOD MODE

1. Give potential modders all the information they need to twist the game into whatever they want without breaking it or unnecessarily stepping on each others toes.
2. Set up a rating/ranking/review system for mods to engage the wider community.
3. Solicit gameplay improvements from the community in the form of mods. <legal stuff> to ensure Hinterland gets to use submissions how they see fit and creators get a guarantee of recognition.
4. Get back to work on your game...

...without worrying about what the hardcore or more adventurous players are doing.

Mod Mode seems like a win-win-win+ situation to me: players see the possibility to get what they want; Hinterland sees less pressure to accommodate novel features and mechanics; the devs get to see all kinds of wild ideas put into practice, along with both how the community and game responds.

 

A horse designed by comittee would be a camel.

Let Raph and the team control the development and design of their game on their own.

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, JohnDoe60 said:

"Deep survival simulation gameplay..." -- www.thelongdark.com

So, ya, unrealistic gameplay will get commented on, and since we don't really know what goes into making a game all we can do is point at the unrealistic simulation.

 

Show me where it says "realistic". Simulation speaks to gameplay approach, not to whether something is realistic or not. "The Sims" is a simulation. It is detailed, complex, layered, and rich in systems. It is not realistic.

[Raphael van Lierop]

2 hours ago, Grignard_TN said:

   

@Raphael van Lierop

  You sound frustrated, and you know as well as I do you'll never be able to please every player, even for a niche game such as this. Forgive me if I'm presumptuous, but in my minds eye I can see the 1000+ realism criticisms pulsing in your head like a migraine when you wrote that post. At the end of the day you have to make a design decision and sometimes that doesn't involve realism.

      Before I say anything that even suggests criticism of the game, let alone you and your team ( its not my intent anyhow here), I'll say yet one more time that I've simply never seen any game developer ( excepting *maybe* some early MMO titles like UO) respond so quickly and honestly to their players. Your forums are well moderated, and even if the mods choose to warn someone about their disruptive behavior, your team is professional and polite in my experience. 

     This said, I think there is a lot of value in some degree of realism, and I don't think you can say that you haven't made many concessions to realism ( the sprain mechanic in general. I like it, though I honestly think there are plenty of folks that would hate having such a mechanic at all, and I think the game would still be quite playable and fair without it ). After all, we aren't trying to fill our grickles and blerliwert meters while keeping our player pixel out of the red zone, which causes a loss of Kelvinators that can only be restored by moving into the turquoise zone or using the item caffieneglitterbomb. The very fact that you're using things we've seen and experienced in real life ( wolves, cold, jackets, medicine, etc. ) is a concession to realism and creates an expectation of *some* degree of lifelikeness.

    I love survival games. Take the games "Don't Starve" and "Subnautica" for instance. Both of these are excellent games IMHO which together I have put hundreds of hours into between them. One is far more supernatural and whimsical than realistic, and the other uses hypothetical technology in addition to somewhat realistic environments. They're both excellent games, just as TLD does what it does extremely well in its own way.

TL:DR I love your game, and we hope we're not driving you insane but some of us really enjoy the realistic parts of TLD.

If I sound frustrated, it's only because "realism" gets used as a cudgel to bludgeon any argument someone doesn't like the response to, or a mechanic or tuning decision that someone doesn't like. (After working on WW2, 40k, and now survival games, I've become familiar with how each of these audiences "wins arguments" using realism as the metric, and I've never seen it do any good.)

My goal by bringing it up is to excise "realistic" and "fun" from the discussion around The Long Dark, so that we can focus on useful feedback. Making the game realistic is NOT our intent. Making the game fun is NOT our focus. Making it interesting, compelling, full of thoughtful choices, memorable moments, close calls, and wonderful moments of serendipity -- and maybe sometimes poetry -- THIS is why we're here.

[stratvox]

The TL;DR on that is going to be a malapropism by way of Mark Twain: "Never let the facts realism get in the way of a good story game."

And yeah, while fun figures into what makes a good game, it's far from the only thing that does.

[JohnDoe60]

On 5/13/2019 at 5:16 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Show me where it says "realistic". Simulation speaks to gameplay approach, not to whether something is realistic or not. "The Sims" is a simulation. It is detailed, complex, layered, and rich in systems. It is not realistic.

Ya, you try checking out dictionaries and the like...

" A simulation video game describes a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities.^[1] " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_video_game

[Grignard_TN]

@Raphael van Lierop I hate to tell you if you're trying to make this game *not* fun, all I can say is epic fail

[Raphael van Lierop]

10 hours ago, JohnDoe60 said:

Ya, you try checking out dictionaries and the like...

" A simulation video game describes a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities.^[1] " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_video_game

You can quote the dictionary to me all you like. What I'm telling you is -- realism is not our goal. I'm not sure why you persist in this argument. It's not like I don't have some insight into the motivations behind the project. If you're looking for realism, you will not find it here, and continuously beating that drum is a waste of everyone's time.

[slvrsrfr]

It still hurts my heart to see the bunny life get ended, how's that for realism? Some get too much, some want too much. We all might get less, but we all want more. Great game, and great work Hinterland, everyone there putting in the hours to make a 'entertaining' game!

[Admin]

With yesterday's release of Hotfix v1.5 we're closing this thread. For details on that release please see this: