ArcherAC3

About 4 or 5 years ago, for an unknown reason as far as I can see, the developers decided it would be a good idea to change how the searching mechanic works in TLD. Before, while you were searching a container, a completion bar would start filling up and items you'd find would pop up mid-search - like if you were actually searching through a container and finding stuff as you're searching around - creating a fun suspense of finding a useful item before the search completed, especially when you were in dire situations and badly needed that one food item or matches for example. After such update, the searching mechanic simply completes showing the player only at the end of the search which items have been found while the player holds a button and a circle fills up on the screen. It's boring, takes away all that excitement and suspense and is too dragged on. It may seem like a small thing by the two paragraphs I've typed here, so I'll leave you with an article by PC Gamer, praising this mechanic and explaining it's importance much better than I could, really worth a read: Why I love The Long Dark's painstaking search mechanic | PC Gamer A reddit user a while ago also created a discussion thread around this same change and issue, mentioning the same article, showing how important it was to the players: The Long Dark (reddit.com) Could we, therefore, at least have an option of having this mechanic back? Thanks!

Damn, the old journal looked so much better than what we have now, it was one of those things they had no reason at all to change and only made it worse. Same goes for the old first aid screen and many other small changes, such as the old bars showing stats and the wind indicator (which actually looked like a shield deflecting wind, instead of whatever it's meant to be now). I've saw people commenting about the old journal UI though that it was changed to please console players. Well, coming from a console players, I'd change back to that old UI without giving a second though.

As I said, it's the sense of progress and accomplishment, not the reward. Otherwise, achievements in general - Steam, Xbox or PS Thropies - would also mean nothing, but for some reason they're still out there.

I've made a thread and asked this before over an year ago and I ask it again. Why can we not unlock feats during Custom playthrough if feats can be just as easily exploited in Pilgrim and Interloper just the same? The default game modes are flawed from my point of view, as in they don't feel realistic and enjoyable enough. The closest one to my liking would be Voyageur, but God knows why you can't get many negative afflictions from that game mode, meaning I can eat raw meat without a care and will be woken up if I'm freezing to death. Jump one level up, to Stalker, and you have a much more unrealistic and personally unpleasant experience due to artificial difficulty increase, much more unrealistic animal behaviour and unrealistically higher calories and fluid consumption, making it not at all enjoyable at all for me. Yet now, I'm forbidden of progressing feats and feeling that sense of accomplishment by playing a game mode exactly like Voyageur except with all afflictions turned on (making the game HARDER...). Come on, why forcing such limitations to players that won't change a single thing on how you yourself may play the game? It's silly and dull to say the least.

This post did drag on for a bit, eh? Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have been loud enough for it to get the attention of a Dev. I've read through the thread again, glad to see more people feel the same way with this senseless limitation. I still find the "argument" of feats only progressing in a standard playthrough because, supposedly, that's what the Devs want (aka: "because, yes"), extremely weak. We aren't fundamentally altering the game by choosing to play in custom mode. Custom is not a game modification. The Devs allowed us to choose and change a set of predefined limited options, they didn't give us full control over every detail of gameplay. We can't fundamentally change the game simply by changing the available options custom allows for. Besides. Interloper wasn't originally in the game, should feat progression be disabled there? I could use an equally shallow argument to justify it being disabled. Hushed River wasn't originally in the game, should feat progression not be allowed to happen there? Why isn't the argument of "this region was not originally in the game, therefore feats progress shouldn't be allowed there" equally plausible? Shouldn't achievements be also locked out from custom mode if that's not the experience Devs wanted us to have? The argument is just as strong / weak. Perhaps too, feats already unlocked should not be allowed to be used in custom mode, for it is custom and not the way Devs intended us to play - therefore this limitation must be enforced, because yes...

That also doesn't work, check this video: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/archerac3/video/114940501 The problem doesn't lie in the DW being attracted to the lure, but in how the game handles NPCs (or more specifically, the DW's) position based on where the player is. With an active lure or not, the moment you step into the cave and transition to another zone - while the DW is on your tail - he will literally "spawn" in front of you because the game doesn't know where to place it once the player leaves the region.

I don't doubt it; the point of the thread through is pointing out that there IS a problem with how the game handles NPC positions, so it doesn't matter if you didn't have any problems yourself or if you think a blatant bug (proved with DVR footage) is not a bad mechanic just because it made the game harder. 😉

I've had the same, both full lure and full ward at random moments. It didn't seem to break anything in the game, but it shows there's a bug or bad code somewhere.

Clip uploaded: https://gamerdvr.com/gamer/archerac3/video/114940501 Explain this then. If the reason, like you say, for the DW to be appearing in front of me when I get into the cave is due to it going through the walls "because it can", then the Lure is clearly broken; because it wouldn't have gone after me, through the walls, into the caves with the lure is still back there. Otherwise, and totally obvious while you may not want to acknowledge, the game can't handle NPCs positions when the player changes region and is artificially and wrongly placing the DW in an incorrect position when the player transitions from one place to another. But imagine pointing out there's a problem in this game...

It only ignores the player presence, it doesn't stop teleporting based on where the player is / when the player changes region, blatantly showing that it's a problem in how the game handles NPC movement. I even recorded this while playing, I set a lure outside the cave in Hushed River with the Darkwalker further into the region, and then I got back into the cave. When inside the cave, the DW also appeared inside and in front of me. The game doesn't "remember" the DW was back there in Hushed River when I change regions, even though it was and kept going for the lure the same way.

Then it ought' just teleport directly to the player position when it first spawns and be done with it - wouldn't be a bad mechanic, it'd just and only be "teleporting" by your logic... It going through walls doesn't justify it appearing in front of you - even if the cave takes a U Turn. Besides, it NEVER goes through walls when it's in the cave with you, but instead it walks through the open area just like you; so it's a at least cheap excuse to try ans justify it literally appearing somewhere else (and not simply moving through an obstacle) because it can "go through walls". The game clearly can't handle NPCs positions while the player is transitioning zones - if the cave from HRV to Mountain Town was a seamless zone, this bug would surely not happen, because the Darkwalker would just continue to go directly towards you like it does the whole time since it spawns. It's not only a bad mechanic, but a clearly unintended error in how the game works, even if you try to defend it with any general excuse.

The exact same thing happened to me. I had a direct path to get all the 10 pages but the Darkwalker trapped me coming out of the Hushed River region. It would be both outside behind me when in Hushed River, and inside the cave towards Mountain Town when I stepped in. That was so frustrating, I'm not even wasting time replaying this.

True, the issue is that I didn't know you'd lose condition by having the Darkwalker too close. I got trapped a while before and used the same lure tactic to escape, but hadn't noticed my condition dropping as he was within 50m of me. So I didn't have enough to do it again (had about 15%). Anyhow, this doesn't justify a bad mechanic. If the Darkwalker is coming after me, he should have been behind me, not in front of me once I step into the cave. This can't have been missed during test play as the Devs must have a way to tell where exactly the Darkwalker is for debugging purposes...

So, I just died on my way to collecting all the 10 pages because of a frustating and seriously broken game mechanic. When coming out of Hushed River into the cave towards Mountain Town, if you have the Darkwalker on your back he will "spawn" in front of you once you get into the cave (instead of remaining behind you, towards the entrance you just came in). I had him about 150m behind me when leaving Hushed River, but couldn't move further into the cave because he would also be 150m in front of me the moment I got into the cave, therefore trapping me there, with low condition, unable to lure him anywhere else because transition zones in this game are always as narrow as possible, with the toxic clouds coming in... So much time wasted, I'm not even replaying this again.

Again, I don't want to waste time grinding to progress with the feats - not to say that there are no mods in the Xbox version (neither time capsule). I just want to enjoy the game and play seriously while progressing, however slowly. The preset modes are way too limited and imperfect in many ways. Stalker does a fair job on wildlife behaviour and by enabling intestinal parasites, but is way too much in terms of cold and hunger; voyager fixes these last points, but you can get so close to wildlife it becomes boring.

That's a massive logical leap I can't make sense of and simply too shallow to be a reason. "We won't allow you feat progression because you changed the experience, however slightly, within allowed options we GAVE you". It's just silly. We could go further and say achievements should not be achievable because the experience is not as "intended", yet that's not the case and it wouldn't make any more sense.

In the end - as aforementioned here - TLD is not a multiplayer game, much less competitive; so why does it matter that much to you or to the Devs? You must spend a considerable amount of time to earn many of the feats (we are talking about hundreds to a thousand of in game days) - I got a real life so I would never spend that much time playing something I don't enjoy or in a way I don't enjoy for that long, even if for "grinding".

Sorry, but that still makes zero sense. Not allowing progression due to the players having a "custom experience", especially in a game such as TLD (with huge playthroughs and time spent) is extremely silly still - that's not even a proper reason. So I pretty much cannot have an exact Voyageur experience but with intestinal parasites, higher animal perception distance and harder struggle while progressing because it's not one of the 4 limited presets - although it's right in between Voyageur and Stalker difficulty-wise? Sorry, but just no, that was the worst dev decision in this game so far.

Custom games are in general much more difficult than Pilgrim, so I honestly do not see the point of not being able to progress my feats. Both Stalker and Voyager are much less immersive, fun and likely not as hard than what I have with my custom settings. It's simply silly to be forced to play those not as exciting modes just so you can progress. If the argument for this progression restriction is that Custom can make it too easy to progress, it makes zero sense that Pilgrim allows feat progression. Quite honestly, this is a broken "feature" (restriction) and shouldn't even have been added.

It's annoying when they do these so called "overhauls" or "improvements" but only end up making it worse - just like they done when they changed the searching progress-bar mechanic and the UI. With every update we seem to lose something iconic that differentiates TLD from every other game out there - making it become more of the dull same.

Hello. I decided to create this thread so I can give some feedback - mainly negative - about the new aiming mechanic that came with Steadfast Ranger and comparing it to the old mechanic. I'll also point some of the points that I liked about it and what could be changed a bit after the main text; and will finish with some video examples. So although pretty much every new feature added with Steadfast Ranger has been great, the new "overhaul" for the rifle aiming mechanic was a serious downgrade in my opinion, both in terms of realism and because it took away the lovely, challenging and iconic The Long Dark feeling we used to have when employing firearms. The problem with the overhaul is that it simply lowers the complexity of aiming a rifle with ironsights to a very dull and unrealistic level, coming close to how ironsights tend to "work" in every other arcade shooter out there. In real life your head does NOT sway perfectly with the weapon like if it was fixed to it (in fact, the head/viewpoint shouldn't even sway AT ALL) but only the weapon itself sways (due to involuntary muscle contractions, breathing, heartrate, and so on). Therefore, not only the aimpoint won't always be the center of the screen/your field of view, but the rear and forward sights WON'T always be aligned as well (perfectly exemplified by how it used to work before this update), requiring you to wait (and in real life "align" the weapon's front and rear sides) until you have a proper "sight picture". Now what we have with the "overhaul" is a always perfectly aligned sights (sight picture is always present even when the character is extremely tired) and an artificial, rather predictable and absolutely unrealistic sway that moves the weapon as a whole across the screen while your head magically and slightly sways with it. Before the video examples I'll leave below, I must say that there has been some pretty good additions to the aiming mechanic though. When the character is tired and heavily breaths out we can feel the effect it does on the aim, sharply swaying it vertically; and the fatigue that builds up while aiming the weapon is also pretty interesting - although I'd like the timer to be longer, as a person in real life could hold a rifle for a lot longer before tiring out, and also for the players to feel the fatigue building up and decide for themselves to let the character relax before being forced to do so. Now, for a visual example of a more realistic sway mechanic, especially when tired/under pressure - notice how the sights aren't always aligned, how the viewpoint seems to be stable and how even though the weapon feels very close to the character, we can feel it swaying around; while the background is in focus and the rear sight out of focus: For a reminder, notice how it used to work in TLD before the update - also notice how he waits for a sight picture to take the shot and how it feels only the weapon is swaying again. Indeed this could be improved, especially by implementing the breathing into the sway, but in general this felt a lot better and more realistic: The new aiming mechanic - notice how even when tired/shivering the character never loses sight picture, only the sway gets worse. It's like if his front arm is always in perfect synchrony with the rear one never allowing the sights to get unaligned:

RIP the great flaming branch

Amber

When it looks cold even with a fireplace lit.