Demetrious

Requiring a trip to Bleak Inlet or Blackrock to use the milling machine/repair facilities there would seem to be a good balance of risk vs. reward for this. We already have the mechanic; may as well make use of it.

If you haven't mentioned this on the modding forum yet, be sure to do so. The mad lads who get their mods updated within a week or two of a new release will likely have the melonloader issue fixed just as fast.

This is what "roadmaps" are for (scroll down on this page to find the roadmap for the DLC) and they're mandatory if you're asking for money up-front - you have to tell the customer what they're paying for! Roadmaps will typically be sequential, as well; they tell you what content will be dropped next. Lack of this organization on the extant roadmap is due to Hinterland themselves probably not knowing yet - note the mention on the linked page that the roadmap might change, but they'll endeavor to substitute comparable amounts of content in that situation. That's because you can never predict the future with 100% certainty; some features may prove difficult to balance, or the early-access beta players hate a particular mechanic and it has to be reworked, a few devs catch the flu at the same time, negative space wedgies, etc. Generally, however, this just impacts particulars; the "roadmap" itself is drawn straight from the actual design documents; the plans the developers use to actually guide their working process. "Tell the customer what they're paying for" is also why the DLC release trailer did just that - once Hinterland actually had a product on the Steam Store with a price tag attached, they had to tell people in direct and concrete terms what they'd be getting. And they did it then because it's quite likely they didn't know themselves what would be ready until shortly before the product launch - there's always another feature or two that's 90% done but got held up because of stubborn bugs, or uncertainty from a gameplay design perspective that can only be resolved with actual beta-tester (i.e. customer) feedback, etc. And as a project nears a release, someone in charge has to make some decisions, re-assigning people from some features to focus on others to ensure X number of features are ready for release. Doing this every 8-10 weeks is a pain in the rear end, compared to just taking six months to get everything done nice and proper, every dev sticking with their assigned project till it's done. But that's the price if they want to ask for your money up-front and thus avoid paying interest on a business loan. The other effect is the studio gets prompt and voluminous beta tester feedback. You can't pay for that kind of feedback. You can pay for professional testers, who are very good at breaking games and finding bugs, but not for direct feedback from your customer base as to what they do and don't like. That works both ways, by the way - by paying up-front you get the chance to comment on the product and influence its final form. You've already got a forum account, so you're all set in that regard. 🙂 Splitting story mode off into its own game is going to help a lot with accelerating updates for that. Story content is time-consuming because you have 3D animations to do, and voice actors to pay, and the voice actors can't record lines until the writers have finalized the script. A lot of game dev is tied up not in making the product, but finalizing the entire product - every piece interacts with every other piece - so if you change one thing you have to change others (script changes == re-recorded voice lines,) or part of the project has to wait on others (script must be done before voice acting,) and even if a studio is really good about nailing down the first part of a process before doing the second and avoiding unforeseen conflicts that force plans to change, there's always going to be some revision required. tl;dr story games like Wintermute are surprisingly resource-intensive! Fortunately the bifurcation of the codebase should reduce much of that as there won't be mandatory changes to Survival Mode maps because Story Mode needs a customization for story purposes (e.g., addition of the passenger plane to Pleasant Valley,) but they can still import individual features' code between branches (e.g. Story Mode timberwolves added to Survival Mode too.) You'd have to ask a Hinterland dev to get a detailed rundown of how game development works in its particulars, though. Unsurprising, because communication is actually pretty hard! Anyone who has ever griped about meetings only existing because people cannot read e-mails understands that point. It's precisely why there are entire four-year college degrees concerned just with how to communicate better. ... maybe I'll send that application into Hinterland after all. This definitely checks out - typically I'd expect code-heavy and asset-light features (gameplay mechanics) to come first, and asset-heavy ones (art and entire region maps) to roll out later. Having to split the codebase probably took up a lot of time and pinched them between lack of dev-hours and a December holiday release. However, the eventual price increases are going to be attached to overall value of the product; they're not tied to a timetable. Customers' aren't getting hurt, in other words - but some of the PR "splash" has been squandered. But they can fix this - since the early-buy was always communicated as episodic in nature, they can hype the next content drop instead. "The DLC" with its entire (unordered) roadmap is pretty nebulous. Compare that to, for instance, !!THE COUGAR UPDATE!! With actual content, you just have to hype... well, the content. The PR writes itself. Fortunately this isn't hard to do.

I know what you mean - sometimes, from an objective standpoint, it feels like gameplay development has been slow. In fairness we've gotten several new regions in the last few years and there is much to be said for not over-complicating an already solved problem (vis a vis gameplay) but a lot of the forbearance of the customer came from the fact that most of us only paid 20-30 USD and were still getting free updates. Now that Hinterland is selling a new product, value-for-money calculations will begin anew. However, the devs have told us flat-out that much of the productivity drag was due to Story Mode - not because Story Mode was hogging too many dev-hours, but rather because making both Survival and Story Mode work off the same map assets and codebase created a lot of code conflicts that in turn required a lot of busywork to sort out. In turn, bifurcating those codebases itself must have taken quite a bit of work; effort that otherwise would have been put into the first content drop for the DLC. If that wasn't enough, Story Mode is now it's own separate game, meaning Story Mode will have its own separate revenue stream and that is going to enable more paid dev hours and thus end any lingering "competition" between each branch for dev resources. Basically, it seems to me that Hinterland has paid the price to get over that hurdle, and now they've got free room to sprint. Hence the 8-10 week cycle for new content drops. This is also why the payment scheme is important - the DLC is effectively being sold as an old-school "expansion pack." Even at the same price they came at in the Good Old Days (~30 bucks USD or so.) You pays your money, you gets your content in a lump sum add-on. The "Season Pass" option isn't; it's just a pre-order that comes with beta access; very much like Early Access. You give Hinterland money up-front, so they can spend it on dev costs now, and in exchange you get a discount on the product and immediate access to every new beta as features are added. Except unlike Early Access, you're not taking a risk because the game is already very well established and the product is just more content for that solid existing game. So much of this industry - and/or the consumer perception of the industry - seems to orient around "hype" these days. And if there isn't enough hype or the results do not match the hype, people get worried that it'll negatively impact the fortunes of the product and studio they like. I get that! But we should keep in mind that Hinterland and The Long Dark are solid, established entities now and thus Hinterland doesn't need hype to get off the ground, like a plucky indie studio with their first EA release does. They're already in orbit. So it's perfectly OK if people want to wait for the actual product launch and buy the new goodies all in one basket - people who buy in early will keep the lights on at Hinterland for people who don't. 🙂 ... I should check Hinterland's career pages and see if they need a PR writer. I've got the degree. 🤔

Now that Story Mode and Survival Mode are on separate code-bases, would it be possible to get the mid-map path accessed via the vine climb back in Mountain Town? Specifically, the little ravine that leads from the large bridge north of Milton to a vine-climb cliff a short walk north of Old Mother's house in Milton. It was removed by blocking the north end with a rock and removing the vine climb from the south end. With the bifurcation of codebases there is no need for this anymore due to story mode progression concerns and it made the map a little more interesting. Thanks for your consideration. 🙂

Yep, this has been a thing for years - when you are in accelerated time while performing an activity, wildlife just follows its usual movement scripts and do not respect the fire. And proc'ing the wolf/bear attack seems to happen when they physically touch the player's hitbox, so if they're too close when you exit the accelerated time, you're SOL. You can even hear wolves growling at you as they path past you - but they can't actually attack you in accelerated time. It's definitely an oversight in the AI and one that ought to be addressed.

Reading these devblogs are always interesting. "We realized really fast that Survival Mode was where all the enthusiasm was, but we made a promise to deliver Story Mode, and-" It must be very difficult for devs, who have to carefully pick any words they say as it can create tides in their fanbase and cause unnecessary backlash. For you know, there is always "that guy," who doesn't get it, and others who do, but just misunderstand due to the ambiguities of human communication. Because I'd love to hear the unvarnished truth about how you guys feel about your creation, about years of your unstinting hard work; how you feel about The Long Dark as a story (in Story Mode) and as a story generator (in Survival Mode.) What it means to you. What frustrates you. What makes you want to hug fans and what makes you want to kick them. I'm a writer myself, and sometimes I look at others and think - man, I wish I could know what's going on in there. I bet I could learn from them. Well, I can't have that. But what I can do is throw more money at people who've proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will not waste my time. The last game I spent big bucks on was Far Cry 5, and it was a heart-rending tragedy to me. Because the mechanics, the game, had achieved perfection. Through many iterations, the game had reached a zenith of design... ... but a nadir of "story." Far Cry 3 was a fun game. I liked it. But I loathed having to do the story missions, because while I didn't mind the story on its own merits - it was serviceable, it was fine - the missions had awful and frustrating gameplay. And Far Cry 5 drove this to a maddened fever pitch. Never before have I seen a game that will literally kidnap you from the core gameplay loop to force-feed you "story" that resembles the crayon scrawlings of a coked-out hobo, and do it repeatedly with the same content. I never finished Far Cry 5, because the game literally wouldn't let me play the game; it insisted on interrupting my fun every chance it got to force-feed me absolute trash. That game cost sixty dollars. Sixty dollars, in big bad Yew-Nited-States Benjamins, not those plastic dollars y'all use just over the bridge there in Windsor. And what you get for it, is contempt for your intelligence. I don't know what, exactly, goes through the minds of your hard-working team. I don't know how they relate to their work - and it is work, mind you. Anyone who thinks Shakespeare didn't have days where he wanted to stab people with his quill and burn every scrap of paper in his house knows nothing. But I do know this - I know they give a damn about what they are working on. They care about the soul of this thing, that they've poured so much effort into; years of their life into. I know these people will not waste my time. I don't care what you do, at this point. More regions? Cool. Uber-neato mechanics? Cool. Wolf-mode, where you play as a wolf that is constantly pursued by angry Mackenzie's with bear spears, but since you don't have opposable thumbs you need to bait them into building fires for you? Sounds good. But I'm willing to go on faith at this point. Lead on.

You: "We need more money to continue development." Me: TAKE MY MONEY The amount of content I have access to due to a single late-Early Access purchase of $20 USD is phenomenal. It'd still be phenomenal at full retail. One of the single best ROIs of any game I've ever bought. And then came the magic words "mod support." Lads I'm ready to shell out dosh.

So I finally found the time to play my first survival game after the Errant Pilgrim update dropped, and set up a Custom mode game with my usual settings - i.e. mostly Stalker default settings with a few tweaks here and there for my personal preferences, none of which involve wildlife or wolves (aside from turning down the clothing damage modifier from "low" to none.) I spawned in Mountain Town and noted that while wolf behavior had definitely been tweaked from what I'd known, Milton was still Milton; i.e. wolves under every other snowbank. It wasn't until I escaped Wolftown, population Yes, and hustled to the Mystery Lake camp office that I noticed something seemed... awry. As in "the wolf I just stabbed died out on the lake, and as I try to go out there to collect him, I see FOUR other wolves all visible patrolling the lake." Four. I tried to visit the rabbit area across the railroad tracks and instead met a fifth. I remember raising an eyebrow when I saw what the Stalker default settings were for wolf spawns when setting up the game, but I assumed I'd simply had a lapse in memory on that count. Now, I am not so sure. Has Stalker's default wolf spawns been turned up to balance out the Revolver being added to the game? Am I expected to blaze away with the Revolver far more often than my TLD instincts, honed in the rifle-only, pre-ammo-spawn-increase-tweak days are comfortable with? Or is there another way to deal with the wolves? They don't react to bait the way they used to, nor fires (they seem to stand at bay from a campfire now, instead of alternately spooking/running then re-approaching,) so maybe there's further behavior tweaks I haven't encountered yet. Perhaps torches more reliably hold them off than they used to? I don't know. Given the average damage a wolf inflicts in Stalker's default mode is surprisingly moderate (esp. if you're rested,) it's starting to feel like I've entered the Wolf Thunderdome, where stripping naked and struggle-knifing several wolves in a row is the new normal. This seems unusual. Please tell me what the "New Normal" is because I've got a sneaking suspicion that I'm missing something.

A revolver is going to be a HUGE boon. I've often found myself wishing for a classic .44 "bear gun" in TLD to complement the rifle; less useful for hunting, much more useful for self-defense. Lighter, with six rounds on tap. (Or five.) "No bear spear in the next update, sorry, but in the meantime, have a bear GUN." Yes. YES.