A Few Questions for Hinterlands regarding Interloper

[cowboymrh]

It's been awhile now since the "Interloper" update has been released. I think it's safe to say from both the compliments and the frustration of players at it's difficulty, that Interloper has been a huge success! In fact, the release of Interloper is almost like the release of a new game all in itself. Hinterlands has successfully now made the Long Dark so it appeals to every style of play, from peaceful and relaxing exploration, to intense and unrelenting struggle for daily survival!! Hats off to all of you at Hinterlands!!

Now I don't expect the developers to drop everything and come answer this post, but it would be nice for the community to hear a little of their insight in the development of the Interloper update when they have a chance.

My question is: Did you know at the time you came up with the ideas, and testing the game play, that INTERLOPER would have such a huge impact on the overall game?? Was that your initial intention? Or did it start out primarily as just another update to add more game content?

And how long did it take to create and test before you decided to post the update?

And once again, Thanks Hinterlands!!

[Hotzn]

In case the Hinterland team are currently busy, let me enlighten you a bit from the perspective of a long-time forum user...

When the game came out in Steam's Early Access department, it was hellishly difficult. People would not survive longer than a few of days. Soon, some found ways and means to survive for 10 days, 20 days or even more. But they were few. There was but one region to toil in, and the resources contained in it were scarce and soon consumed. After that, it was inevitable death.

Later updates brought more regions, more resources, more wildlife (seeing rabbits and bears still feels a bit weird to me). At some point nearly endless survival was possible. Some players started to complain on these forums that the original feel of the game had been lost, the grim and gritty feeling of impending and inevitable doom (I was one of them). As a response, Hinterland provided information according to which only a comparatively small fraction of players were regularly playing on stalker (at the time the "hardest" difficulty setting). I think it was about 10% of the regular players. However, this group of players was fairly active on the forums, so they appeared almost as a majority. But in reality they weren't. That was interesting.

In the end, I think there were valid arguments for introducing interloper, even if only a small minority of players might be interested in actually playing that mode (at least judging from player data of the time before interloper): Firstly, the hardcore-difficulty-craving players are quite active on forums, and activity on the forums may draw attention and interest from passive users, thus generating a marketing effect for the game overall. Secondly, for the same reason I think it does a game generally good if it has a "legendary" difficulty level, as far as more casual players also find satisfaction in it on another diffculty setting. Who wouldn't be interested in a game that is rumoured to have such a super-duper-difficult difficulty setting?

If the Hinterland team reads this - I would be very interested to know what percentage of regular players now play mainly interloper. Any statistics available on this?

[MueckE]

I think Raphael gave the answer in the podcast. Interloper is kind of a gift for the "long time" players who play the game for a challenge. A gift, because indeed there are not so many of them. Some play the game to relax, some want to constantly play "on the edge" and most of all play something inbetween.

For me, it has always been the pure struggle. When i played for the first time, the question was: "How long can you survive?". Since then, i always played with that narrative. After a while, you know everything to survive and you know the answer is, you can surive infinitely. This hasn't changed with Interloper, but now it is way more a struggle to survive again.

More important is, that after all the possibility to chose diffrent experience modes has turned out to be very good. The truth is, Interloper has basicly no impact what so ever because only a handful of people play that mode. So i really appriciate that Hinterland still acknowledged that and gave us Interloper.

[DragonXIII]

I'm a very new user to forums, but I am a long-time player of the game, so I thought I might take a moment to provide my feelings on this subject.

From my understanding of the way development of the game progressed, the Sandbox mode was never originally intended to be anything more than a test platform for the mechanics of the game. It was only the response from the community that caused the development to include improvement and expansion of the Sandbox experience. I, for one, am incredibly grateful for that fact, because playing in Sandbox mode has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me. I tend to take a highly varied approach to how I play. Sometimes I just want to get into a Sandbox on Pilgrim or Voyageur and just relax with the stunning visuals and music. Sometimes I want a more challenging experience, so I load up a new Stalker Sandbox and try to survive as long as I can. I have not played Interloper yet, because I plan to do so for the first time as part of my new YouTube series of Let's Play videos, but I can tell you that I am seriously looking forward to it.

[togg]

I would also like to know more about the dev process behind interloper, even if it's already pretty clear. Stats would be interesting as well. I'd say 5% of active players play interloper?

[SteveP]

Frankly, I'm surprised that Interlooper is survivable for so many days. What is the record for survival at now?

I like that Interloper is inevitable death. I think it definitely fulfills are desired niche; the true contest of wills, man against the environment.

Things should randomly break in Interloper. You should misplace things at times when you are starving. Random punishments for starvation mode. More failures at fire-making, repair and other skill related activities. Really punish those gamers who use the starvation exploit.

What happened to all the forum emoticons? There seems to have been an update and now the evil smirk isn't there anymore.

[MueckE]

You can survive forever and it's not harder, just more boring All you need is the magnifying lens.

[Ruruwawa]

3 hours ago, MueckE said:

You can survive forever and it's not harder, just more boring All you need is the magnifying lens.

I agree.  Once you are comfy it's oddly more boring than Voyageur or Stalker where your clothes are equal to the weather so you can explore, or just do something spontaneous.

[Patrick Carlson]

On 3/12/2017 at 7:37 AM, togg said:

I would also like to know more about the dev process behind interloper, even if it's already pretty clear. Stats would be interesting as well. I'd say 5% of active players play interloper?

Essentially we had been hearing for a while about players wanting a Mode "beyond Stalker." Interloper was our way to provide that Sandbox option for players, while giving the new mode its own unique character or flavor in the game. It's honestly a pretty brutal way to approach the game world, but we've been heartened by the response to it, even if it isn't every player's cup of tea, so to speak.  Perhaps we'll dive deeper into it in another podcast. Thanks for your question. 

[GorillaDust]

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 6:02 PM, Hotzn said:

Hinterland provided information according to which only a comparatively small fraction of players were regularly playing on stalker (at the time the "hardest" difficulty setting). I think it was about 10% of the regular players. However, this group of players was fairly active on the forums, so they appeared almost as a majority. But in reality they weren't. That was interesting.

As somebody who has worked on the company side of these conversations for half a decade, this is refreshing to see, and something that almost every gaming forum poster doesn't realize. Organizations have to cater to the vocal minority, but arguably far more importantly you also have to cater to what your statistics tell you are the vast majority of the players ("the casuals"). It's a tough call who is more important to keep happy/playing.

[Patrick Carlson]

21 hours ago, GorillaDust said:

As somebody who has worked on the company side of these conversations for half a decade, this is refreshing to see, and something that almost every gaming forum poster doesn't realize. Organizations have to cater to the vocal minority, but arguably far more importantly you also have to cater to what your statistics tell you are the vast majority of the players ("the casuals"). It's a tough call who is more important to keep happy/playing.

In this case, it was also about our style of community-informed development. Feedback from players helped us build and refine on the existing Experience Modes to offer something new (Interloper). In the end it was still executed within the vision and framework of our existing Sandbox experience. And of course we had testing input from the community as well after the initial roll out (and we continue to).

[GorillaDust]

38 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

In this case, it was also about our style of community-informed development. Feedback from players helped us build and refine on the existing Experience Modes to offer something new (Interloper). In the end it was still executed within the vision and framework of our existing Sandbox experience. And of course we had testing input from the community as well after the initial roll out (and we continue to).

Ah yes, I forgot that TLD is an in-development product and feedback actively determines future development. A little different from my situation where we analyze usage versus user feedback of a finished product. Though I imagine you still have to determine the comparative importance of verbal feedback from the forum community minority with the statistical analysis of the overall player community.

[Tenasi Vol]

I would love to see someone post a video starting on Interloper, with the current version, (v.394) and survive more than 10 days.

In fact...its a DARE.  I DARE SOMEONE TO POST A VIDEO STARTING ON INTERLOPER IN THE CURRENT VERSION (v.394) AND SURVIVE MORE THAN 10 DAYS.  Cough (looking at especially you @MueckE and @SteveP) COUGH

Maybe its me.  I played interloper several versions ago (Vigilant Trespass I think) and LOVED it.  It was a challenge.  But either something drastic has changed, or I am having horrible luck.

As of this writing, 2 days and 8 hours is my longest survival in v .394 and its painful.  Ever hear a 45 yr old man scream with joy when finding a box of matches? lol

I love all of you talking about how easy it is.  lol

ARGH

Ten

EDIT:  Do not just start over and over till you get a good spawn, either.  Go with what you get.

EDIT EDIT:  BTW, I have no problem whatsoever from food.  Im dying from freezing to death, in combination from exhaustion from hypothermia.  Double damn.

[SteveP]

@Tenasi Vol check out GELtaz, dude. Sounds like you are getting crappy dice rolls. That's the game; it has randomness built in. I used to get crap starts but I could still play through but I used Voyageur and no starving; those are my rules for play; I stick with what I get and don't quit and I don't use the starvation exploit. You can also check out Graxter. Besides, Interloper is SUPPOSED to kill  you. There are simply people who play so much, they find the ways. It's not an accident. I can make it on the Hunted but the old bear always tracks me down; I make fires but he won't respect them and you can't get enough wood fast enough to sustain enough fires. It's cold. And that is random. Seriously, there are people who insist that Stalker is simply too easy. There is always a hump to get past; you need the basic tools and you need a weapon. Get stuck out in a blizzard and you die. Having good weather is vital. Interloper is for people who find Stalker a breeze. Why do people insist on playing at the hardest level? Is it an ego thing?

[DragonXIII]

4 minutes ago, SteveP said:

Why do people insist on playing at the hardest level? Is it an ego thing?

There's some ego involved, I am sure, and the desire to be good enough at something that you can say "yeah, I play it on the hardest difficulty". But more than that, there seems to be a general feeling among a lot of gamers I talk to that the hardest difficulty in a game is the way the game is "meant to be played", and if you can't play on that difficulty then you're wasting your time. I don't personally accept that philosophy, it's just something I have come up against a lot when talking to other gamers. If the hardest difficulty in a game was truly how a game was "meant to be played", it'd be the ONLY difficulty. The only reason to include multiple difficulty levels is because the developers accept that not everyone is going to want the same level of challenge.

Another thing that I've seen quite a bit is games penalizing players for choosing an easier difficulty. I haven't seen it with TLD thankfully, but how many games out there have achievements that can only be unlocked by playing on harder difficulty levels? Not just achievements either, in some games the game itself is unnecessarily punishing to people who play on easier difficulties (constantly making fun of you, not allowing you to progress pas a certain point, etc). This just reinforces this idea that many gamers seem to have that the hardest way is the only way.