Raphael van Lierop

I suggest you do some research into how Insulated Flasks work in real life, and what happens when the vacuum seal is damaged, or in the older models, when the glass vacuum flask is broken.

Confirmed that this is how it works.

re: Insulated Flask Condition loss -- will double/triple-check the implementation, but the design was for the Flask to only lose Condition from Falls and potentially Struggles. It should not decay naturally, or at least not noticeably.

This is very important. I can't really say how important this is, because it 100% informs our design decisions and also seems to be the source of a lot of confusion/upset in the player community, because the Survival side of the game is Permadeath. The premise is that you *will die*, often and frequently. The premise isn't that you will routinely survive 1000s of days or keep the same save going for years. In order to design for the "one save" players, we would have to remove Permadeath from the game, which would fundamentally change the game we have made. Death is part of the cycle of learning and experiencing the world anew. Embrace it!

It's simply that I sometimes need to step in and remind this community of some facts. I feel no personal offense as most of the comments are subjective and everyone is entitled to them. I merely wish to point out that the community is vast with varied tastes, so some amount of personal awareness of this fact by each player is useful in order to have a thoughtful and welcoming community. Beyond that, of course I feel protective of the team's hard work and will speak out in their support, which is part of my role and my remit. If you think this is unprofessional, I encourage you to spend your time playing many other games produced by faceless corporations who will happily spoon-feed you some kind of sanctioned PR messaging, as that might be your preference.

Lot's of interesting comments and theorycrafting here. I don't want to spend too much time on it, because a lot of it is subjective feedback and opinions and everyone can believe what they believe, but just a couple of quick notes (for what it's worth): * This comes up a lot, with every update really, and it's kinda frustrating to always see it. It's just not possible to make everything in the game an option for you, just because you might not like it. Also, we are crafting a specific experience with intention behind it, and (apart from bugs which obviously do happen), limitations are purposeful. Even when we do make something optional, it doesn't happen without a bunch of work. So please stop saying "it'd be so easy to make this an option, they've done it before" etc. etc. It's just not the case. Every variation creates, at the very least, the need for significant additional testing, as well as dev work and often more UI, tuning, etc. Nothing comes for free. We make these choices and trade-offs all the time. The only easy thing here is posting in forums. * The world of GBI and the Far Territory is huge now. We try to give every region a theme. Some regions will be more interesting to certain types of players. We have 10M players and some of you have been playing the game for coming up to 10 years. We also get around an additional ~500k-1M players per year who are new to the game. And everyone in between. We're making a game for everyone, not just for one group or sub-group of players. The only way to do that is to add variety and to continue pushing ourselves to try new things. And, if you find you don't like a thing, that's ok because there are probably lots of other things for you to like, and I promise you some other player really loves the thing you dislike. It's 100% ok if not every region is to your specific tastes. I have favourites too and some I rarely go to. Pretty sure my list is probably different from yours. Re: Scurvy -- I mean this is our problem and not yours, but this is a damned if you do and damned if you don't sort of scenario, and, as per my first bullet above, making something optional isn't always that easy or the best solution for implementation. So it's fine -- if you want to play with Scurvy, start a new game. Easy. If you want to continue your long-standing save and not worry about ending up in a situation where you annoyingly have to do a bunch of stuff you didn't ask for because of a mechanic that was freshly introduced, or maybe it's super hard for you to continue surviving because you've already used up a ton of the existing resources that have Vit-C, great, you can do that. Nobody is forcing you to do one or the other, you can make that choice for yourself. So, like, stop complaining. 🤣

This is exactly what is meant. If the Carcass is already ravaged (i.e. partially eaten by something), you can Harvest it by hand as it's already been cut open essentially. If the Carcass has been partly harvested using a Tool, it's then "cut open" as well and can be harvested by hand afterwards. You just can't tear animals apart by hand anymore. Any cutting tool will do the trick -- Knife, Hatchet, Hacksaw, and the improvised versions of Knives and Hatchets. After cutting a bit, feel free to tear away if you like. Hope that helps clarify.

This is a silly thread. There's nothing 'going on' with our support tickets. Some people seem very desperate to make drama!

The notion of "realism" and how much is right for TLD has been a topic going on 10 years now, and I'm really not sure what to say about it other than...then entire premise of the game world is that a mysterious geomagnetic disaster has basically wiped out technology, but then again sometimes it operates based on inexplicable rules -- which gives you things like Buffer Memories, electrical hazards, Glimmer Fog, aurora-affected wildlife, and a host of things in WINTERMUTE that you have and have not seen yet. I understand that maybe you thought TLD was going to be this super realistic survival sim, but that's never been the goal or the premise. I think I've said that for 10 years now. Everything in the game is meant to be in the game. You can dislike it, but you can't say it doesn't belong. The IP has always had some sense of mystery and surreality to it and that's always been part of the tone of the game, and it's what keeps it interesting for me. And with TALES, we deliberately created some distance (metaphorically and physically) so that'd we'd have a palette to play with that's a bit different from the stuff you typically see in the rest of Great Bear. A sense of mystery, abandoned projects, the wrecked environment, etc. These are all ideas that exist in other aspects of TLD as well (not just WINTERMUTE, but Survival too). Beyond that, there's all the typical jumping to conclusions about how different mechanics might work (mainly all the ways in which people fear they might not work the way they hope), which I guess I will just respond with: I guess it's good you have something new to talk/argue about. 😅

You can know what you like, and you can dislike what you see, but I don't think you can claim to know what has made the game successful.

Re: Switch -- we haven't forgotten about it, we just don't have anything definite to share re: release dates for TALES on Switch. When we have certainty around the date, we'll share more info. To clarify a point above -- the delays in this case are not due to anything on the Nintendo side (well, apart from making a console that's more challenging to get content on 😅). When we have news to share, we'll post it either along with a Dev Diary or in its own stand-alone communication.

Hey! We communicate when we have something to say. As it happens, this year we've posted either a Release, a Dev Diary, or communications around Hotfixes or Quality of Life more than 20 times since January, including 10 major news items on thelongdark.com. The last major news item was posted before the Sept 13th communication was July 19th, less than 2 months before. I'm not quite sure what amount of transparency/frequency you are looking for or think is reasonable, but I don't think it's accurate to suggest that we "could have communicated better".

I disagree. This community belongs to Hinterland (the studio) as much as it belongs to the player community, we finance it and operate it as part of the functioning of our studio, and how people behave on it (and what we accept) also communicates something about our values as a company. So I think it's entirely appropriate for me to step in and make corrections or express my own dissatisfaction with how things are being framed about our work (ex. we don't work hard, we're money-grabbers, dishonest, etc.) We're the ones setting the tone for what is acceptable in this community, including moderation sure, but also just generally how people talk and feel about the game and how they interact with each other. I was very clear in saying that it's very fine to express your unhappiness with what we have made or how we make it, but then it's also reasonable to move on and not make a thing about it. Just because there is overwhelming support for the game, doesn't mean we should ignore this other stuff. That's a very simplistic way of thinking about community, and the work we do.

Yes, 100% -- the team is behind in updating these but they are working on it. I agree it's very important that the store pages and our site are an accurate source of truth for people who are about to buy the Expansion Pass. For players that already own it and are already brought into the update stream, we try to rely on other tools to supplement that in a more active way: dev diaries, mailing list, social posts, forum updates, and the in-game Messaging system (in the main menu).

Hey all, Those of you who are frustrated by our development progress -- it's duly noted. We hear it, have heard it, and I don't think it's that helpful or useful to continue to talk about it over and over. Make your complaint, then move on. For TALES specifically and the abandonment of the 10-12 week cycle: I outlined reasoning in this dev diary. It was forthcoming and honest and I'm not sure what else you want. Complaining about it more isn't going to bring the updates out any faster. In terms of TALES, Part Four. The full list of features and content is deeper than the few things I mentioned in the last dev diary, so the OP's frustration with what they felt is a short list of things, is misplaced. This is par for the course with us -- we never reveal the full list of features until we launch the update, because it's fun to surprise people. Wait until you see the update and then you can complain if you aren't happy. There's a lot in there. In terms of the sniping about the "No Crunch" disclaimer at the beginning of the game. It's super sad to me how some people have chosen to weaponize this. If you knew anything about the game industry, you would know how poorly it generally treats its employees. A lot of people come to Hinterland from triple-A after having been horribly mistreated by other studios -- we're talking work that scarred people with physical and mental health issues they are still dealing with. I did 12 years in triple-A before starting Hinterland, so I understand what crunch is. You throw it around like it's a good thing, "a bit of crunch is sometimes helpful". You don't know what you are talking about. My team's health is more important than your misplaced sense of entitlement. With our "no crunch" disclaimer, we're trying to set a precedent for saying that it's not healthy to crunch people, it should be possible to make good games without doing that, and I felt it was important to put our values right out there at the beginning of the game. You don't have to like our values, but don't feel we owe you "crunch" and harming our health just because you feel upset you won't get an update when you thought you were entitled to it. To me, it's no different from seeing a "free range" or "organic" or "union made" type label on a product you buy in a store. You then have some idea of the environment and philosophy that drove its creation, and how the people around it were treated. I think it's important to put our values into the world, which is why I added that statement. I hope more game studios choose to do that, and more players choose to specifically buy games from developers who prioritize the health and wellbeing of their employees, vs. the sickening crunch culture that is part of the industrial game development process that destroys people for better quarterly earnings. If you don't care about people or understand the importance of managing your health and resources, you really haven't learned anything from playing THE LONG DARK. The rest of you who continue to support our work, and give us the "benefit of the doubt" about deadlines and deliveries -- thank you for that. I'll be the first to say we haven't had a good track record of delivering things when we thought we would, and that's mostly my fault, but also the way things sometimes go, and ultimately we do deliver what we say we will deliver, we always have. That's what we're focused on. We appreciate you, because you have always understood that how we make things at Hinterland is a big part of what makes them special. - Raph

I don't think anyone deserves anything but the best game we can make, and that's what we're focused on. You've been around long enough to know what our announcement and info sharing philosophy is. Not sure why you keep asking when you already know the answer?

Thank you for everything you do to support and maintain the wiki! 🫶

I'll comment on a few of your statements, @The Riddler, because I think plenty of folks in this community would like to know more, and then you're going to take a little break to give this community a breather. *** Re: the notion that "TLD is dying": The real test of the game's health is in the active player count (CCUs). Across all platforms, the active player counts are as high as they have ever been. The release of TALES has given some new life for a core group of Survival players, and the free updates to Survival that we've included with each Part have also helped. We have work to do to get our Switch players in the fold, as noted in the dev diary. A certain amount of churn is entirely expected of a 10-year old game, and I would argue the longevity and vibrancy of this community is staggering for an offline game. *** Re: the notion we "abandoned reddit": Years back, around the "countdown" fiasco, we had a very rough time on Reddit. The dev team in general was attacked, and I personally received a lot of hatred, including death threats. At the time, this was very surreal. It helped illustrated how toxic unmoderated communities can be at times. We decided then, that we would not give our time to platforms that we couldn't moderate ourselves, and so we don't spend much time on Reddit. We also chose not to set up a community on Discord when it was growing at the time either, because of its reputation for having a generally toxic community base (that has probably since changed). Reddit has rules as part of their "reddiquette" that strongly discourages companies from moderating their own communities. Moderation by "outsiders" is strongly frowned upon. This partly explains the above issue. That said, the fact that the TLD reddit community is large and thriving (growing) is a direct outcome of the game's growth. Exactly the opposite of a game that is dying. The TLD subreddit is also managed extremely well by the mods there -- they have done a fantastic job over the years. We are not as siloed from them as you might think. I'm in regular contact with the moderating team there, and they with us. And recently, I've even dipped my toes back in there to respond to some comments about TALES. But they are self-sufficient, self-managed, and are handling things on their own, which is how Reddit prefers it. But it's not a community that we (as Hinterland) will generally participate heavily in, for the reasons I mentioned above. We can't protect our players when they are in there, because we can't moderate it. So we won't put our (limited) resources into growing it. We can't help much there (and it doesn't seem we are needed, anyway). In general, I will say that it's absolutely silly to look at Reddit as a whole and not see that it's one of the biggest online communities in the world and that people join it for a million different reasons, then filter down into sub communities around things they like. So of course as Reddit grows, the TLD subreddit will also grow, because our player base is always growing too. And not to put too fine a point on it, but since we DO moderate our Steam community, and we moderate this community, it also happens that folks who are "moderated out" of those communities, largely for being jerks, may end up finding their way to one of the unmoderated communities. So some of the growth of those platforms is due to our moderation decisions, which we undertake (generally) with a light touch but mostly to, honestly, move the haters and toxic people out. That doesn't mean reddit is full of jerks and haters. It just means that we would prefer to have a smaller community that is full of quality people, then allow noisy jerks to make life unpleasant for other people. And, it may come as a surprise, but there are folks out there who do not want to be moderated. They are "chaos agents" and just want to create drama and be toxic to people -- that's how they get energy and meaning in their lives. But we won't let them do that here. *** Re: the notion that other TLD communities are dying: I can't speak to this, but for the same reasons as I think it's obvious why Reddit would be growing, I also assume other TLD communities are growing, because the active player base is vibrant. I can't speak to why some sites may have been taken down (if they have?), but perhaps this is part of a game that has been live for nearly 10 years now. I know for myself, I still think about people who were super active in the community in the early years (around Kickstarter, for example), who are not longer really playing the game. It's sad, but people move on, they find new games to love, new hobbies, or they decide they don't want to be online anymore. I do know our Steam community is as active as it has ever been. It's tougher for console players to find community since it doesn't really exist on the console platforms, and I hope many of them have found their way here, but it's equally likely many of them have found their way into the TLD subreddit, or other places. And that's ok. Just because we don't actively moderate those places, doesn't mean they aren't still part of the TLD community. *** As a general note on our view on community, and what it means for us (Hinterland), I think you'll find most of the info you need in this recent job posting for a community manager. We're making some internal moves/promotions and that has created a spot in the community team. We're also thinking a lot about our next games and how those will impact the community here, which is is the only community hub that will be for ALL Hinterland games and ALL Hinterland players across all platforms. I think the third paragraph in particular is probably relevant to this discussion: https://hinterlandgames.com/careers/community-manager So, perhaps you will see some changes here over the next months and years? *** As a general comment about this place -- I've always seen these forums as "our" forums. Our approach has been to try to create a safe, positive, inclusive space for folks to share their love of TLD, and hopefully other things too, and to be supportive of each other, which I have often seen. I've seen friendships form, people call out others when they are falling down, people stepping in to pick others up when they are in trouble and need help, and people keeping each other honest. We've always measured the success of this particular part of the community, the "official community", as being about quality, not quantity. And we've always seen it as a kind of safe haven, quiet corner, for people who don't feel they can face the often raucous and not always pleasant communities that exist on Steam, Reddit, elsewhere. So we're fine if things are a little more quiet over here. Those places can be the wild stadium with screaming fans, and this place can be your favourite quiet coffee shop, where you can have a real deep chat with someone else, and you can actually hear them. 😇 You can come back, become a regular, see familiar faces, and feel a connection as time passes. Isn't that what a community is?

Hey @The Riddler -- you've been part of this community for a long time. You've probably never received the acknowledgement you feel you deserve; that seems to be behind a lot of your interactions with myself and other folks on the team and in the community. We see you. But you've always been more on the negative side, in a way that's not productive. As an example, I think your comments in this thread go beyond helpful criticism, and are more into just generally being a downer. This seems to be your standard MO. We get it, you don't like how we're handling things. That's fine. No need to get the whole community feeling down just because things aren't done exactly as you would like. It's not going to bring one more person in here. It's only going to actively alienate people who are looking for a friendly space to hang out. Maybe take a step back and decide if you want to be here. It's not healthy for you, or anyone else here, for you to be so negative all the time. People are just trying to have fun and enjoy the game.

It's an interesting discussion, and it should continue (civilly, as @Admin said), but just to be clear, we have no intention of adding a Save Anywhere option to Survival Mode, and making additional or other changes to the Save system is also not something we currently have any plans to do. And to the OP specifically -- *nothing* is easy about developing or modifying Save systems. It's one of the most complex things we have to deal with in the game, especially due to the need to preserve save compatibility with each update. So please don't tell us it's easy, or to "just do it". I assume you wouldn't go to a restaurant and tell the chef you don't like the food, to change it (because it's easy), and then get back into the kitchen to "just do it". Have a little respect for the team that makes this game.

@James Hickok Appreciate that. We're all doing our best, we all love TLD and want the best for the game, for all our players. Keep the balance feedback coming. In general, playtest feedback is most useful when it's communicated a bit dispassionately, and focuses on the player's experience (vs. them trying to suggest solutions). More often than not, the thing you think is going on with the game that may be causing it to feel a certain way, may not be the thing you think. So our job is to take the objective feedback, parse it, and figure out the best way to act on it (or, to not act on it, as the case may be). We'd rather spend our energy looking at feedback and making informed decisions that make the game better, than trying to parse through a bunch of arguments and infighting that don't do anything to make the game, or the community better. The best thing about TLD is how many different players and play styles it can support, so let's try to celebrate that rather than use it as a weapon against each other.

Pretty sure we've mentioned it in various places, but for anyone who didn't read it, see it, etc., when we did the major resource rebalance in the "base" game with the December update, we said we expected there to be issues and we'd keep an eye on the game and make multiple balance tweaks over time. It's not at all surprising to feel that the game has changed, since this is the first complete overhaul of the resources in several years. Also, the nature of how our resource and loot systems work allows for some variability in the experience -- it's not always going to feel the same. Add to that, our intention isn't for the game to feel "static". I know people have developed comfortable strategies over the years, and that some of these strategies have now been thrown out of whack. That was almost the entire point of the resource rebalance -- to freshen the game up. That's not to say we want it to be unbalanced, but rather, that we aren't trying to keep it 100% the same as it was. We put a lot of work into the rebalance, so if the game felt exactly the same afterwards, it would feel like a huge waste of effort. Keep in mind that we had some bugs that we hotfixed in...Jan and Feb I believe...where some items were appearing in Loot Tables that should have been excluded from Interloper. Still, it's possible we missed some, so if you encounter anything that you know shouldn't be in Interloper, please report it to our Support Portal (with specific details) so it can get looked at by the dev team: hinterlandgames.com/support It would be super helpful and kind-hearted to share your feedback in the spirit of "hey, this seems to have changed, was that intentional?" vs. turning it into a personal affront, and we certainly don't want to see pointless arguments about it. And really, this "we interloper players feel overlooked" stuff just has to stop. It's getting tiresome. Also: https://www.thelongdark.com/news/dev-diary-april-2023/ Anyone that can provide substantive, objective feedback on their Interloper experience -- thank you for that, it's all very helpful, and we will keep it in mind for future tuning changes. And please keep it civil in here, or else we'll institute a cooling off period around any discussion about Interloper stuff. - Raph

Hey @Glacia-- I know you mean well, but you don't have to "explain away" my comments or expectations about the community. Saying it's a minority or it's normal and just best be ignored, is not really the point. I know how online communities work, and what is typical, what is normal, etc. I'm saying, I expect better of my players. And that starts here.

Hey all, I don't usually post in here, but I'm not fond of some of the tone of the discussion and comments (including ones that are being reported). Let's keep it friendly. In all this situation around "Signal Void" and Interloper (which we've already explained and I won't spend more time on that b/c I don't think it's our job to justify our dev decisions to folks), it's been quite disappointing to see how heated, and how "coded" the language has been at times. From our perspective, people who choose to play the game using Interloper experience mode settings are just one of our many sub-groups of players. It might surprise you that there are many more that prefer to pay primarily Pilgrim (you just don't often hear from them, because they don't define themselves as "Pilgrims" or whatever). Or the other modes. I don't think it matters. Each of these modes is valid. The reason we included the Experience Modes was to give players some choices, from save to save, in how they might like to bias their experience along a spectrum (from exploration on one end, to survival on the other). There's no one right way to play, no Experience that is somehow superior to another. There's only how YOU choose to play, what is valuable to YOU, and what brings YOU enjoyment. They are all part of THE LONG DARK. You aren't somehow "better" or "more important" or "more valuable to Hinterland" because you play Interloper. The disappointing part -- for me -- isn't so much the anger and jibes that were pointed at us when we first launched Part Two of TALES -- sadly, we've become used to that. It was to hear stories from people who *don't* primarily play using Interloper settings, saying how they are being berated by "Interloper players" in the community, or while streaming, being told that if they don't play using Interloper they aren't really playing the game, they aren't good at it, they should try this or that strategy or they aren't doing it right, etc. etc. This is super disappointing to me personally, as it's 100% not what I wanted or foresaw for this Experience Mode. If I'd known it would create this occasionally toxic set of behaviours in our mostly generous and accepting community, I would never have added it to the game. That's never been what THE LONG DARK is about. I also think it's easy to forget that we've always made THE LONG DARK with a player community, and we've always kept our ears open to player feedback, because this game is a living, breathing thing, and so is the community -- it's not the same as it was when we first launched, and it won't be the same when we eventually close the door on the game. That's part of our job as developers -- to help guide the game along its life-cycle. It's easy to look at a change like bringing Signal Void to Interloper and behave like it's some victory of the players *over* the developers, or whatever. To me, that's super counter-productive. We don't "cave" to pressure and we've never made the game that way. Personally, I don't care how many of you yell at me at Twitter, if I don't agree with a thing, I'm not going to change it. But as stubborn as I may be, I also know that we can't see everything, no matter how careful, not matter how thoughtful we are in our approach. And sometimes with new info, we realize we want to change a decision we had made. So we change it. That's a healthy thing for a game, pretty sure? Setting up a dynamic of "we triumphed against the developer!" (those exact words weren't written here, I'm just talking about a general sentiment that often exists in our industry, and in player communities across all games) is really damaging, in my opinion. I hope we can be a little more self-aware in our interactions with each other, make space for players of all kinds with all kinds of tastes and looking for various different kinds of experiences in THE LONG DARK. That's what makes the game special. That's what makes this community special. Let's not lose sight of that, ok? - Raph

My comments re: trust aren't targeted at anyone in particular, so please don't make it about any individual and certainly don't make it about yourself. It's just a comment, and an opportunity for reflection about how you respond to developer updates. (Ducking back out now, so don't look for further responses from me.)