The biggest problem that I see with how the cougar was implemented is that it went against the basic ideas behind the design of the game. The game is supposed to be somewhat immersive, minimalistic HUD during gameplay and so on, right? And following that philosophy, most animals are quite "organic": you know there is a deer nearby if you hear them, you learn a bear spawns in a cave that has bones inside, you learn to identify moose spawns thanks to the scratch marks on some trees, etc. However, for whatever reason, when the cougar enters your region, the music changes, and the HUD notifies you. How is that immersive? Does my character see those HUD notifications as well or what? It just goes against the design of the game! I understand that their intention is to make an actual predator you need to be careful about, and yet they added these notifications that not only work against that feeling of uneasiness they tried to achieve, but just completely ignore the very base philosophy of the game.
you should know maybe by scratch marks on trees or the door of your cabin, or stuff like that, there are countless ideas that would make this both good and immersive
I agree, the cougar went against the game philosophy in 2 ways. First, to encounter the cougar, you need to make yourself a sitting duck. Which is quite contrary to the idea of 'surviving'. Deliberately letting yourself get mauled doesnt seem like something that is natural to the game. You could argue that the normal play should to try to avoid meeting the cougar.. but that means treating it like an affliction, not an animal that you want to harvast. Why add an animal to the game that you will never see if you play according to a survivalist agenda. Its just a complete waste of potential. Secondly, the music change and the HUD stuff is bad. "Cougar arrives in 5 days". Where did the lone survivor get this? The local 5PM news bulletin? Transmiting live from Great Bear?
Here's my thoughts on fixing the cougar: -remove the music and the countdown mechanic. The fear of a lion attack is that they can be stalking you and you not even know it, adding an extra level of tension to traveling outside. Maybe keep the occasional noise to keep the player on their toes and to let you know one spawned in -make the cougar an actual animal that spawns in. It'll hunt rabbits, fight wolves over territory, roam the map, and occasionally stalk the player. -make the cougar huntable; it's small, fast, and keeps its distance, only attacking when your back's turned, but can close a distance incredibly quickly and silently. It'll be a tough shot to make with the rifle and would justify carrying one around in the first place, as well as actually training that rifle skill
We wanted more wildlife, and cougar would add that to a degree. Instead we got an "event" that most people won't survive, and that isn't fun in the long run.
@@Financere425 It's not laziness, Its just a mechanic that was a miss for most, I personally was hoping you could see it stalking you or if you look up on a cliff edge you could see it ducking down and watching you from a distance till you overstayed your welcome and it started charging really fast and giving you only a few seconds to react
This is the biggest disappointment with the game overall for me. They added Timberwolves like 4 or 5 years ago, but they're only in a couple of regions you barely have any reason to pass through and mostly just function as an annoyance that stops you freely travelling the map, with absolutely no reason to seek them out. We could have had a game full of wildlife and harvestable flora/resources, which offer their own unique challenges and opportunities to enhance the environments you progress through, but it's just never happened. Community suggestions for years, like rats and other scavengers threatening your food supply, cougars that stalk you throughout the world much like the old bear in wintermute but less quick-timey, etc. Could have, should have, just haven't because the priorities are else where. I long await the day when a new developer will build on the subgenre of survival games Hinterland initially showed promise at creating 10 years ago.
@@ZerosiiniFIN I told my younger cousin that the small black beans they left around was the eggs. So he went around collecting them for an entire day until his mum discovered it... Me, the other cousins and my uncles were having a blast, him mum less so.
Yes. The way they implemented it was just plain lazy and people aren't dumb enough (yet) to overlook it.. Very little effort put into it instead of creating more engaging mechanics.
@@jacobsmalley616 true, had some good runs, or just general trips out to get wood stopped by blizzards, i think the only purpose they serve is spawning tree limbs/branches, and impeding the player
This never actually occurred to me from a gameplay perspective, but given that water purification tablets do exist in the game, there is a good argument for this implementation tbh. It seems like the type of thing a mod would already exist for (like candles) but I haven't checked. Could maybe reach out to people who know how to mod the game and see if they would put this in-game otherwise.
The Cougar? Makes perfect sense that one would stalk you and would almost certainly not be seen until it's attacking you. BUT it makes absolutely NO sense that it would attack you in the open, away from trees, ridges, etc. You should be able to "hold it at bay" by staying in the open, or frequently checking your surroundings. Should also be a chance that doing so long enough will get it to be impatient, and attack you without ideal conditions - allowing you a small window to hear it or otherwise catch it off guard as it runs at you. But walk around without a care, in the woods or under ridgelines? You're quite rightfully toast.
could be better if it spawned at one point in your region and stalked you for a couple of days before attacking, maybe having encounters along the way where it sizez you up and runs or something, keeping it at bay would make perfect sense too, and im guessing it wouldnt want to attack if you had a flare too ( it would give you time to get to a safe spot or leave the region) you made good points, if you posted this on twitter raph would rant about you at 2 am for hating him just because you critique his "perfect" addition 😂😂
I would've liked to see the cougar moving from one hiding place to another; going between trees on occasion if you're walking backwards to keep an eye out for it, or such - so it spawns in, you see it, but it probably gets out of sight before you can fire. If it disappeared after, in case you were trying to get an angle, would work too i think - almost more like a creature from a horror movie than a "normal" animal in the game like a wolf.
It's not supposed to though. If it ever attacked you in the open that's a bug. There are invisible areas in each region that designate where a cougar can attack and there aren't any in open areas.
@@Fuar11 assuming that is the case then yeah it would be a bug (I can't comment from personal experience, just what I've seen in UA-cam). Great if the intent to have it set up that way, but it probably needs the distance from objects tightened up a bit. NFI what a "strike range" of a cougar is, but I'm assuming that it wouldn't be too far especially in the snow.
Considering the cougar is the only paid animal in the game, I think it's fair to want more interaction and deeper mechanics. I would want it to be at least as detailed as the wolf. And the wolf has a ton of little interactions with stalking, fire, noises indicating aggression or losing your scent, attacking wildlife, ect
@@mythtaken6610 Mods (there are mods that let you build and relocate furniture), but yeah it would be nice to have the option to clear out rubbish and human cadavers from your personal domicile.
Yes Zak! As a Canadian, I can confirm that Cougars on the West coast will randomly teleport on top of you, and attack. Hardly anyone over here ever anticipate cougar attacks because they are so random and unpredictable. 🤦
it would be better if it was all the same but instead of teleporting on top on you it will spawn in a random portion of the region and begin tracking and hunting you
Ever since the beginning, every animal ever implemented in the game has been a physical entity that was existing in their world. Upon loading yourself in the region, the animals were spawned. Even the crows.
The temptation to be pedantic here and say that parasites are an affliction, also that fish are basically just items obtained through a menu. The darkwalker is invisible and many animals have a grace period before spawning. I agree though, I'm slightly disappointed I delayed (playing Elden Ring DLC) to try out the update, as I'll never get to experience and reasonably critique the cougar implementation as it was.
Cougar: The RDR2 mechanic, as someone mentioned earlier, is very good. In addition, the cougar could attack you when you sleep outside, and when you sleep inside, you will see paw prints in the snow outside of the door.
WIth how many accessories we have available to us these days (insulation, toolbelt, crampons, ballistic vest, moose satchel, etc) I would like Hinterland to increase the number of accessory slots we get from 2 to 4 but make it so we can no longer stack any kind of accessory item (insulation/ear wrap) in order to balance it out. That way we could, for example, use insulation, satchel, toolbelt, and ear wraps at the same time but could no longer use double insulation, etc What would you think of that?
A few months ago I was travelling between broken rail road and transfer pass, as i was in the long dark tunnel i though how exciting it would be if they planted the cougar there , where you see glowing eyes in the distance for a moment then they disappear, the idea itself turns my pants color into brown 😂
As a pilgrim player I really want a world that’s aimed at easy, pilgrim players with lots of buildings to loot. Every update seems to be “we made the game even harder!!” And like…. Some players like the easy mode.
Perfect model for the cougar is RDR2. The cougar in there is silent, fast, deadly. In fact if you have the radar off the chance you see it before it attacks is pretty much zero.
yeah, cougars in that game were genuinely scary. you can shoot it and kill it like any other animal but what made them so hard to fight is how quiet they were and how fucking fast they were, also one of the few animals in the game that insta-kills you. i fucking shit my pants and magdump in its general direction every time i saw one in that game
@@goodtime4345It wont instakill you, it will jump on you and you get promp to shake it off. If you hit R (or what is on console) you throw it on the ground and it runs away to charge you again, but this time no second chance, it will finish the job. But in rdr2 it always attacks you from the front, never from the back.
@@ExtremeMan10 you're wrong, it insta-kills you even if you're at full health. i even got up an old video of it happening to make sure i remembered right. ua-cam.com/video/en0jlH2UeMs/v-deo.html
I would like to raise that The RDR2 cougar has a much better chance of blending into the world. It's basically impossible for any animal to stealth in TLD when they're against a white background
@christopherjohnston6343 I get it. Different developer, Different game, different engine, different budget, however I still think it represents what most of the community envisioned when Hinterland said they were adding a cougar. Also, while super rare there are white cougars.
The two main issues I had with the Cougar, and I've said it many times before, is the over-reliance of the HUD elements in the game, and the sudden ambush mechanics with no counter-play inorder to obtain the items they drop The over-reliance on the HUD is the main issue i see going around, and the solution imo is to tone it back a lot, keep the music if you want, but get rid of the HUD telling you "oh, Cougar is encroaching on your territory". Best way to fix it is to give environmental clues, scratch marks that appear on doors in buildings you stay in, or when inside a building in a region with it to have loud cat-like noises coming from outside the house, etc.
For a long time I felt like devs don't like when players play in a way they (devs) don't like. Which is: devs want you to be nomadic. They introduced cabin fever, sleds and now the half baked predator that isnt even a physical being until it attacks you (LMAO). Meanwhile I and a lot of players like to settle. To mostly occupy their region of choice and have a chill game. Sad.
To be fair, though, you could from the start opt out of the cougar and now with the new badges from "Tales" you can even switch off cabin fever for the standard gamemodes, so you are now even more able to play the game as a cozy-cabin-simulator (which I totally will do :)). I look forward to the safehouse costumization for that exact reason.
@@tini243 Not looking forward to safehouse customization a specially, after parts 4 and 5... Travois still borked (falling through the terrain constantly), flask... collectible, cougar... would be ok-ish for Challenge scenarios, in survival... total crap. Last region look and feels rushed, unfinished, something like v0.7-v0.9. Already was disappointing they not doing proper expansion, but some buggy, clunky part by part drip feed...
@@frankjonesthenerd6841 The "Settled Mind" feat from beating all 3 Tales makes you research books 20% faster and renders you immune to cabin fever however it's mitigated by a car or snow shelter
Thank you Zak, this was nice to listen to, and would be a great addition towards the content you supply here. I understand time is tough to come by, but I can see you evolving this into something special, with interviews and comments from the community at large.
Basically, "they didn't want to make cougar like bear 2.0, so they made it like a cabin fever 2.0 (probably, most hated and nonsensical affliction already)"... And cougar was just bugged as heck. It is just not right to release something as bugged, so i guess bugs was at least half of the reason for temporary removal, not just community. And, btw, i'm kinda failing to connect "i don't like nogoa for being campfire simulator with no regen" (which has normal loper temps and you can make tons of healing food now) with "i like misery" (which has day 50 temps from the beginning and no regen and all)
I think psychologically, the initial cougar implementation also has a lot to do with the insanely tricky balance that is player control. The fastest way to alienate a player base is to take away control, make them feel like their actions don't matter and the game is just gonna do what it's gonna do to them. But paradoxically, players also want a certain amount of control taken away, to keep things exciting or challenging. To make it worse, the lines of where that lays vary from person to person.
The elephant in the room about all this cougar debate is that wildlife in the game is easy to cheat on. Just climb a rock or a tree stump and you're pretty much safe from gettin mauled and get free shots. Veteran players have almost no challenge against it. So it's understandable why Hinterland chose the cougar as an event rather than a real animal-npc -> no need to try to get the AI working properly (and to be honest it's probably almost impossible to achieve anyway unless you're willing to shovel $$$ at it). How imo all that could have been avoided - just turn the "event" upsite down. Give the player the possibility to react to the cougar attack rather than having a small chance after you're close to death.
If they had made the cougars attack when the player was near tall rocks or trees as if it was ambushing from them. It would be cool if you could catch a glimpse of it before you got close.
Yeah that's exactly what they need to do. That way you can't just hunt it like a wolf, but at least you'll have a few seconds if you are looking behind you to have a chance. The part that bugged me the most is you could out in the middle of an open field where there's no chance it could sneak up on you without being seen and it can still teleport on top of you. Make it only hunt in areas that make sense and have a small window where it exists before the pounce.
I spent many days pursuing the new Tale with my experienced Interloper character primarily because it was so difficult to get to one essential location safely. About a day after I finished it, there was an update reducing timber wolves. I don't know how many of them I killed, but they always respawned faster than I could eliminate them.
Zak I would love a video about why The Long Dark is the best game. I would absolutely watch a 5 hour review of the game with all of your thoughts. Additionally, I would enjoy hearing about your history of getting into the game and getting better. As well as things you would change!
My favourite thing about the Tales expansion so far has been the added recipes/cooking (especially simple ones like bannock and porridge early game, and the rose-hip pies, etc.), the fire-hardened arrows (a great way to practice archery), the ptarmigans, and the various improvised items (like the improved bedroll, and so on). I haven't built the travois yet, but am looking forward to trying it. Wish list: 1) candles you can read, sew, and craft with -- and are slow burning (i.e., last an entire night), but can't be used outdoors (except maybe a cave), or they will just blow out; 2) a two-handed woodsman's axe (which would allow you to cut fallen limbs in a third or even quarter of the time as a hatchet -- but is much heavier to carry, so would likely be left near your base); and 3) pine needle tea to help with the scurvy.
I really enjoyed this. (And yes, I listened to it rather than watching.) I particularly liked hearing your perspectives on Misery, Cheat Death, and the new region. I've only stuck my toe into Sundered Pass, but am really enjoying Punishme--, I mean, Misery. (Two attempts, max 11 days.) I also like the sound of the Cheat Death mechanic - and the Cougar, tho I wished the Cougar's indicators were less UI and more immersive. The 'far away' Cheat Death option has me wondering if the Trader might be responsible for your rescue (once they're added to the game.)
I think they made a big (and lazy) mistake with the cougar. I was about to buy the DLC for it, until I heard that it's just an invisible triggered mechanic.
i wish there was a way to treat the permeant afflictions in someway, like maybe having to do a very hard challange to get a first aid kit that gets rid of one of the afflictions
Just needs a better way of telling players their clothes are wet and start to freeze over. That is the only reason I loose fingers quite regularly...besides bugs Rarely check the cloth screen of the inventory for that either
@@nahoj.2569 this game veered dramatically away from any remote sense of realism with Glimmer Fog. So I say we have an option with the hacksaw to saw off the offending appendage and whittle new fingers from Fir limbs.
I think having the cougar wait in a tree for the player to unknowingly walk under it or if it used trees as a vantage point to spot the player then make its approach. As for stalking the player I feel like it should move slowly sticking to cover until it gets close enough. Running while it has sight of the player would cause it to charge. A low growl could act as the warning before it attacks but if it’s close enough and the player looks directly at it then I feel it should charge immediately. I don’t feel that it should be hunting for the player at all times and I feel like there should be ways for the player to hunt it without becoming prey. Utilizing wildlife carcasses as bait for example. I also think that it should only be in the more remote areas of the world.
To me it actually doesn't matter how challenging the cheat death mechanic is. It's about having a choice. This eat or die challenge is gone. If you die you can choose. That's what takes out 100% of the fun to me, so much I totally don't feel like playing this update. And I played long dark constantly since 2017. I liked how thrilling every dangerous situation was because you knew if you fail, you are dead. No matter what. Now you can just choose. That kills everything for me. I think choosing classic perma death or cheat death before starting the run is the ideal option.
100% with you. It's not the mechanic itself per se that I have an issue with. It's the 180 degree about-turn that Hinterland made on what was a basic principle since the game was born. You f-up, you die. Period. And I get that being revived from your death-bed has consequences, I do. I get it. But that's steering the game even further from the semi-realistic game we all (well, most of us) fell in love with, all those years ago.
CD is really hard, make no mistake there...as Zak mentioned, without regional bases, you are screwed regardless most of the time if you choose "far but save"..."closeby" isnt closeby either...
"Cougars typically kill prey by using their powerful jaws to drive their large canine teeth into the back of the neck of the prey animal. Their canine teeth are very sensitive. Cougars are able to take advantage of the strength and sensitivity of their jumbo canines to probe very rapidly for the spaces between the neck vertebrae as they quickly bite down and wedge the vertebrae apart. In this manner, the prey animal’s neck is immediately broken without the need for the cougar to crunch through heavy neck bones. The result is a quick and efficient kill". Sounds like the developer's got it right but it appears they may have followed it to precisely although you can survive if your specs are high enough. Maybe the cougar was meant to be avoided until you were able to get the best gear and then try to face it. 🤔
Logging in after the update, my technical backpack was missing, making me critically overweight, and was instantly afflicted with scurvy. Ty hinterland.
Yeah the Cougar is definitely the most hotly contested topic. I'm not a huge fan of how the Misery mode afflictions work, but I understand that mode isn't intended for me. I don't even touch interloper very often. As for the Cougar, I'm more of a fan of active mechanics versus passive mechanics. Like with wolves Active being shooting, stunning, scaring wolves. Versus the more passive 'struggle' mechanic. I always felt thats where the game was weak, when it uses menus and gui to interact with the world rather than the players POV. I love the concept of an animal stalking you after you become too complacent. Especially considering Cougars tend to try and attack prey from behind. Dropping one in the region of teleporting it into your vicinity might be best. While some people feel the original mechanic is lost... I feel like it will allow the feature to reach a better state that makes both unsatisfied people happy, and gives something even better to people who liked it. Great video 👍😀
Extremely territorial, nearly imperceptible environmental cues, could attack at any given time, rips you to shreds, high risk encounter, seems to spawn out of nowhere -- this is actually pretty accurate cougar behavior. The thing that makes them so dangerous IRL is you will never know they're near; if they do decide to attack you'll never see it coming. Certain mechanics should change though. Such as the likeliness of attack (should be far more rare and randomized), and as long as you're facing it it should be far less likely to attack. Maybe sew some eyes on the back of a cap as a precautionary, and the higher your hunting skills, the easier it should be to perceive them. Just a few ideas. I don't even have the game yet so clearly I only know what I see on YT. Can't wait to get it though. My current laptop is ancient and I can't get a new one until I sell my house so for me, the game has to wait.
Zak, I know you love tld and I do too. I also play fs and have for two games worth. I have to applaud hinterland for coming through. Maybe a little bit of a wait but with one game we've gotten so much content. Thanks for your introspective and understanding of the game. Love your videos.
I think that the biggest issue with TLD or Hinterland itself rather is that they don't have beta testing. Players don't know anything about whats coming until it is relesed. Take a look at other survival games. For example Minecraft, Valheim and so on... They all have beta testing / snapshots. Hinterland lives in a bubble. They change stuff only when it is already released. By having beta testing you know immediately what people think of it. And also you can sort out the bugs much easier and faster. I really think that it should not be like this. That four choosen one get to test the update before hand. I also understand the reason behind it. It creates great feeling by exploring something new. The immersion is on another level. BUT I think, it does not outweights the benefit of having beta testing. But players that would want to avoid spoilers could. Just don't play those snapshots or don't watch videos about it. I am software developer myself. And the way Hinterland releases the game should be changed in my opinion. This really should not be heit on the game by any means. I absolulutely love it. But this update really was not done. And the cougar was not executed well.
Just FYI, in case you're not an old-timer like myself, they USED to have a test branch, where players could join a beta testing crew for new builds. It was allowed with the STRICT understanding that it wasn't for "public" consumption. Then someone streamed a run in the test branch. And that put an end to that. Not more test branch, WAAAAY more bugs.
I think I just realised a major reason why the cougar was designed to spawn on top of the player. If the cougar were to spawn in like 15m behind you or something and the player is next to unpathable terrain or a hunters blind or something it wouldn't have the ability to reach the player, or it would have to run laps around the terrain like a bear. I think if this was the case then the whole challenge and intimidation of fighting cougar would be lost in the same way fighting the bear is to an experienced long dark player. Just from a pragmatic standpoint spawning the cougar right on top of the player eliminates a lot of the issues that could ruin your immersion of the cougar and the fantasy of a deadly adversary. Although I personally think that just spawning the cougar into the world a little ways away from the player would be a cool, giving you a chance to fight back. I know it would mean the optimal strategy would then be to cheese the cougar like every other predator the long dark has.
Good stuff, Zak. I like the longer-form, more free-flowing approach. Sometimes you just want to vibe and have some chill TLD chat. Could even have a guest for future such episodes if time zones and technology allow. As for the update, I'm generally positive but remain opposed to using Cheat Death myself (let others use it as they please). I am where you were on it: permadeath is a central part of TLD's appeal, and unexpected, sometimes unfair events turning life upside down (or ending it) is part of the survival experience. If Atheenon can watch Will "Eggy" McKenzie die to the gas in Blackrock and let him stay dead despite the game somehow not deleting the save, I can keep a stiff upper lip while losing a long run.
The cougar was a glorified QTE, that left us damaged, with ruined (or damaged) gear and with an affliction that was boring and annoying to deal with. When you take away the players agency then you remove the reasoning for why we should feel excited for it. And we had no ability to master the cougar, leaving us to just get hit, take damage and hope to kill it. It was immersion breaking, and if they had any testing with the playerbase, then they would have known it wasn't what we wanted, especially after years of waiting on it. It was horribly implemented with bad mechanics, and if I was really cynical then I could argue that they pushed it out before it was ready, to show they had "something" and to gauge what they needed to change. Using their playerbase as a public test, because they were late.
Wild to me that they already have a system for an enemy that will stalk you relentlessly through a region, including indicators when it starts gets closer. Darkwalker. The cougar could've recycled 70% or the darkwalker systems and been better than its release state.
This is honestly some of my favourite type content you make. I like to listen to your opinion to make some sense of what the community actually think of the updates and things. You just have that calm, thinking things through kind of energy, that makes your opinions feel genuine. Alot of comments seem to be just negative because they found it didn't live up to their hype, exactly as you said and looking at the poll you did was actually eye opening realizing that people actually thought the couger was a cool concept. Which is what I had thought but everyone seemed to bash it.
I think something that would be interesting is to have the cougar spawn in the region after x days but have a minimum distance it’ll keep from the player and over the course of the followings days it’s spawned have the distance reduced. the player character can have voice lines that progressively get more serious like “what was that noise?” To “feels like something might be watching me” then during bad weather have it target the player for an attack. If you get mauled you don’t get the last stand effect but the cougar will now run back out and reset its timer of stalking the player until another attack
I dont really care about the cougar or misery mode, im just upset with how often the game is crashing. I could handle it when it was just exiting a building but i went to transition zones and it crashed.
13:00 This is what the game still needs. The cougar in that state was a complete gamechanger for like literally everything you do. You couldnt stay in one Region anymore because of the high risk of an attack now that you cant prevent with anything. You cant use the Flaregun to protect yourself You have a very high chance on interloper to die against him because lets be fair the bowshot is very hard to do in that short time and not everyone is a pro player. I like the idea of the cougar itself to have something that hunts you but not in that current state.
On Voyageur latest patch, I used cheat death 3 times on day 14. The half health penalty last until I reached day 32. You can survive as long as you have enough resources to keep you alive and don't get attacked even though I was attacked by wolves twice and barley survived since I had good gear all at 100% and near a place to shelter and heal.
The old bear from hunted part 1 is what the cougar should be it spawn in the world and is silent does not spawn close but stalks and follows and when close enough then it charges
What is going on is simple if you look at it from business perspective. Over the last year we have seen the customer service/ community from hinterland change. Any complaints about new expansion was met with accusations of being ungrateful or just a complainer.People are being booted out of the forums and a content creator of tld was sent a nasty email by Raphael for making a complaint...is it coincidence that this downturn came at the same time Raphael announced moving on to new project? I think not. IMO they have crossed the threshold, think vanilla wow for those who were there. It was a close knit community, the game was challenging and then threshold was reached. What is a threshold? It's the point on which a business has cleared debt, making money and wants to appeal to a bigger audience leaving the old things behind. That is why , just like vanilla wow, new expansions came dumbing down game etc. in simpler terms it's a number games now. --- expect more of this in months to come. My guess is new team will be created to handle TLD whilst Raphael moves on.. This is not a personal criticism of him, but rather a realistic outlook of how businesses work. I could be wrong but I guess we'll find out in the future.
this is very accurate he doesn't allow discourse so he can be fat and lazy and just sit on his bum and do nothing at some point he has to get off his ass.
Along the same lines, I believe a major issue was the lack of communication from the developers from December 2023-May 2024. If you look at previous years, they always posted a dev diary on a steady basis. Six months of not a single update was extremely disappointing from fans.
Honestly, the game was never that good outside of being challenging and "simple". No pointless crafting systems, zombies, gunplay, base building, pvp or any of the other trappings of the survival sandbox genre, only a fight against scarce resources and a struggle to navigate a barren map where storms can kill you if you are unprepared. Everything that made the game good was already there and what has been added in the past 10 years (outside of new regions) has basically added no value to the core gameplay. I don't get why more survival games haven't appeared to take its place, given that Raph and his team do not value the original direction the game was supposed to go in. Now you just gather loot but the world itself feels empty and dead. The "primitive" aspects devolve down to stripping the world of sustenance and living off of wolf/bear meat forever. There has been very little meaningful expansion of the sandbox aspects. Permadeath means very little when survival was already a choice vs continue to subsist forever when you reach a state of overpreparedness. Scurvy was a step in the right direction, but it seems to be one step forward and three steps back these days.
I think you covered the issues with the cougar well. The first implementation resulted a game mechanic that a rational player wants nothing to do with. They added this cool animal… best you never see it. It’s not fun to have a feature meant not to be explored. There should be signs that it’s around. Prints, dead bunnies, etc. The player should glimpse it in the distance. I suppose the devs can give it a very small cross-section so it’s quite hard to hit from all but short range. And its run up could be very fast and erratic. Also, I think they should tweak the wolf behaviour to make the torch+stone thing a bit less viable. One way would be to make it initially successful with a given wolf (or pack?) like now, but the deterrence wears off if the player keeps doing it, and the wolf will eventually call the bluff, ignore it, and attack anyway. And a cool down on that so that the original behaviour returns after some time (a couple days).
The "Cougar" was in a word: Lame. It was easy to avoid altogether by just moving between 2 zones like CH and DP. It was easy to bait by just sitting in one zone until it "spawned" and then making sure you were actively "hunting" for it anytime outside by being ready to fight in throw away gear with ample meds and then counter attacking it. Destroying the den is just end game busy work as avoiding the "cougar affliction" is easy to maintain. Having 0 real recourse to managing the cougar once it "arrives" is so immersion breaking, even in-game, as every other animal is a real entity that you have to physically avoid or pursue. Looking around a barren lake one moment and then getting "pounced" upon feels like a weak and cheap mechanic; because it is. (This was my personal single biggest gripe) The whole thing feels like they found making an animal stalk the player, really, was a lot taller order than they first imagined and this was next best solution to simulating that experience as best they could envision.
Hinterland will mostly reconsider the balance between the Cougar being an easy threat to deal with versus the Cougar being a guaranteed maul down animal for a chance for it's rewards. Because if they don't reconsider the Cougar this way they end up releasing a filler animal unlike a true challenge animal. The rewards should be better for such risks of what the Cougar pressures the player with. Currently, the Moose, the Bear and even a Deer now has way better risk/reward ratio unlike the Cougar. You can craft +5 KG Satchel from a Moose, you can craft a Bear Bedroll from the Bear, you can craft a Travois from the Deers. These rewards are already versatile and tremendous in survival situations. The new Cougar Knife is only good for a reward if guarantees kills immediately after struggles against wolves or significantly faster bleedout from them so we can get craft materials more efficiently. The Cougar Head Wrap is just a warmer version of any warm headgear in the game which can be neglected for the reason that balaclavas, accessory headwraps, warm hats and other head covering clothing items in the game only serves with increased protection against wildlife if you don't know what you are doing and more protective layers against a slightly harsher weather than usual. That is something that you mostly won't ever craft in Interloper even if it's a must in most Misery plays.
I think the idea to have the cougar take time to gain interest in you is correct, although the way the show its interest isn't right. I feel the cougar could do something a bit more horrifying than just a hud notification. Say you went to bed in a house, you've been long enough in the region to peek it's interest and then one night/day when you go to bed, you just hear loud bangs on the doors and windows that wake up your character from sleep and give you the "fear" afliction, kind of like what dark Walker does to you. Then you gotta spend time awake in the house a bit and then the cougar goes away. Realising that you are absolutely dead if you stay, you have to leave right that instant. Now here is what can happen: If you leave immediately, 20% chance that the cougar spots you are one of the exits of the regions and intercepts you. If you stay 12 hours, 50% chance it shows up and blocks your exit. If you stay 24 hours, 100% chance it blocks your regional exit Any longer than that, you walk out of that building and it's on you because it's become impatient. An aurora version also could exist, just more aggressive and if you try to leave during an aurora, it just is on you, no matter how quick you try to leave. Wait out the aurora for the slim chance to avoid it
On my Interloper run I died in transfer pass & respawned in Blackrock, those far away spawns can be the whole other side of the game world. This is after two close spawns in ZoC with no chance of surviving. Managed to just edge it out from supplies left there
They could make some sort of guaranteed ending to Misery mode. Maybe by day 100 an unavoidable super blizzard hits the entire world, they could make a sad cutscene of your character slowly succumbing and freezing to death with sad music, mirroring the dead person they used for the mode's logo. That way it will still be incredibly difficult to reach day 100 but it will also avoid the scenario of players surviving longer than the mode intends
Big fan of the content patch, and I love that they added content for advanced players. Misery is unique because of the random affliction order and how every decision matters. Day 41 so far and I'm excited to see how far i can go!
I don’t know about everyone else, but when I decided to cheat death my game just decided to reset my entire run. I didn’t have the condition de-buff or anything. I also checked my journal and It reset to day one. Everyplace I had looted before also had their loot reset and plants that are non-renewable had reset again and I could pick them. This might’ve just been a bug but I don’t know for sure. (I play on console btw)
Tomisina is great to watch, I’ve been enjoying catching up with her TLD runs. Love Misery. I’ve done 6 runs. First run lasted 14 days, the next three lasted only a few days cuz I goated down mountains and that didn’t go well. 5th time went well. I got to day 57 (not dead yet probably could last til 80+ days with my current set up and no cougar) and if I would have done better food management, I could have lasted well past 100. Doing a 6th run now with my knowledge now but love how brutal this is. It’s not easy at all and I’ve had so many 1-3% moments where I thought for sure I was done just to barely come back swinging. Also I think we all love anything you create as fans of yours. This overview/update on everything was good to hear and I’m sure hinterland appreciates your support, candor, feedback and keeping everyone up to date with how things are going. Also I’d listen to your ideas on why TLD is a perfect game. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on this game and am still not bored
I think two simple fixes to the cougar would make it 1000% better. 1)zak's suggestion of it soawning kinda behind you but givijg you a chance to defend yourself works great. 2) rather then blowing up the cougar den you can track the cougar back to its den and hunt it. It may be in its den or near it hunting something, maybe even have it start hunting you if you get too close to its den.
i think my opinion is what summarise the cougar perfectly for the the idea is good but the execution is bad like yea it's a good idea to have like a apex predator stalking you forcing you to stay on the move but him just tp on you deleting like 60% of your health without being abble to fight back before it's attack you is very bad
It’s curious to me how steep the permanent condition loss is, when you choose a permanent debuff over a temporary one with cheat death. It might be more interesting to implement some misery afflictions as the permanent debuff, instead of permanent condition loss. Say, 1 random affliction for your first death, 2 for your second, 3 for your third. Broken body excluded, of course. Maybe that will make a permanent debuff a better choice, because as it stands the temporary debuff is just better.
Latest update removed Scurvy from my custom game of 555 days, a game I started because my last playthrough of 886 days, I couldn't just add the affliction into the game. Hoping they allow me to reintroduce it back to my playthrough like I'm suppose to be able to do. Noticed the Vitamin C missing from all my food items.
I was excited for misery and it was close to something I would had liked. Everything except the last affliction. Being unable to heal in anyway sets a hard cap on how long you can survive since being real no ones going to avoid taking any condition loss. I wouldnt mind a version that had everything but the last negative or a different final modifier that caps it off being brutal. I hope they let us have it in custom mode choosing which negatives we want. My main other complain is the final reward of the tales. The badge is great but is a one time ever thing and funny enough cant even be used on the run you get it. So doing it for that save or really any other since the badge is permanent is for a few pieces of meh equipment. They added a watch item make that the final prize being able to see the exact time in game. A small thing but a nice little touch that would had made maybe doing the tales again worth it if you plan on doing an extreme length playthrough.
Hey Zac,yep,great video chat, I think also they need to give us a map in wintermute and survival mode because realistically if your plane crashes most times there is a map, whether you download in a region or crash there,so a map would be so helpful,thanks😊😊.
great video, loved all the info and the straight up just talking about what you think and how you felt about the update/dlc. would listen to more of this about future updates. keep up the good work
I think the game could use long-term fire storage item. Tinder fungus would be a simple thing to implement, you'd have to craft a fire canister then you can light the canister at a fire then use it as firestarter, like oil-lamp you could refuel it with tinder fungus. Fully loaded canister could smoulder for like 12-20hrs, and would require like 4 tinder fungus? I'd leave numbers to balancing dpt.
One useful advice I've really grown to appreciate is that people are very good at detecting that something IS wrong but people are very bad at identifying what would rectify the issue. So all the critique is useful but community consensus on how to resolve the cougar is not necessarily the best advice to follow.
I'm also going to push back a little on the idea that the huge hype for the cougar caused expectations that couldn't have been met & that's why people were un happy. No... the cougar broke the main promise of the game - an immersive survival experience where we the player pit our skills against the threats. The cougar is un-huntable. No matter how carefully you watch your back & be cautious while outside - it just teleports onto you. And after a few seconds it vanishes. Feels like it doesn't exist in the game world. I was excited about the cougar but when I learned it was basically an event designed to force you to hop regions.... I had planned to just leave it disabled.
don't make cougar spawn behind my back. Make it use line of sight blockers while stalking and make it possible for me to see it from afar. Oh yeah, and cheat death should give random affliction from misery mode.
@@littlebirdy3545 Legendary All Skulls On (skulls are toggleable difficulty modifiers, ie one makes enemies have more health, another makes them throw grenades more, another makes less ammo drop, etc)
I think I'd prefer the cougar work something like this: 1) Spawning grace period at game start -- 20 days scaling by difficulty. 2) Player gets the anxiety debuff when the cougar is moving into their current region. It takes 1-2 days for the cougar to arrive. 3) It stays in the region for 7-8 days. 4) It has a # of camping locations in every region. It spawns at one of them and is respawned to another every 8-10 hours, provided the player isn't close to it. 5) The cougar is not visible from a long distance. It only renders when you get close. Distance scales with weather and light. 6) Other than that, handle it like any other animal. If the player stumbles close to where it is camping hidden, it stalks the PC. It doesn't bleed out. I think I'd probably also make a small chance the cougar leaves a claw stuck in the player after a struggle and make the cougar claw knife more of a consumable. Low durability weapon that is almost like a melee survival flare. Maybe even allow the player to shorten a bear struggle by spending one. Also make bombing the cougar's nest shut it off for a lot longer 60+ days at least.
Whether you like the cougar or not, I think it's a bit of an odd choice to remove it altogether. Especially since it was a toggle anyway, but now I needed to update the game again to REMOVE content.
Sundered pass felt the easiest..there was a path leading to everything and it was wayyy open enough to scout for wolves/path forward. I love the open vastness design adding a sense of distance and travel.
I bought the DLC but the disappearing item bug forced me back to the build just prior its release, Hesitant Prospector I think. Even if that bug has been fully squashed (again), I plan on waiting until after everything has been fully released and enough time has passed to where the inevitable bugs are patched out. The way they implemented the cougar was honestly really cool in my opinion, I like the idea that it is better at hunting you than you could ever possibly be, which is what the unavoidable attack feels like. However, I get that people don't like feeling their agency is being taken away and the argument that they should be able to outsmart the cougar in some manner, or counter it without being attacked, does make sense. If they do decide to make a counter against the cougar (aside from leaving the region/destroying the next/etc) where you can fight it before it catches you, I'd like it to be extremely difficult. Traps (aside from rabbits) intended to capture/kill or even delay/hamper predators would be one way to not only provide a possible counter to the cougar, but to also counter other animals. However, this does go against the idea that the character is not an expert in survival and the deck is supposed to be stacked against us. I look forward to seeing how Hinterland addresses the cougar in the future.
One of the most absurd thing about it is fact that they added misery because players figured out how to beat main point of interloper (every run will end with dead eventually). Yet at the same time they've added a cheat death mechanic, which is just huge blow to the permadeath. I don't get it, they want to go for two paths at the same time, eat cookie and have a cookie. Trying to make every type of player happy eventually leadsto lack of direction and character
Wish we could remove the cheat death without ruining achievement and badge progression. I don't like knowing that I can basically ignore deadly scenarios and I hate having useless icons on my screen.
its because the TLD community is not one entity or one person, but a myriad of people who play for different reasons. the cheat death system can simply be ignored if you want to keep permadeath. also the mechanic is not nearly as forgiving as one thinks; load up a new game and try the cheat death system out for yourself. if the world is older than a couple months it is extremely difficult to survive long enough to become stabilised. think of it less as a free revive and more of a final desperate stretch to keep the world alive. as for misery mode I'm a stalker main so I cant speak much for it. what I will say is keeping multiple communities happy with different rule types is commonplace in single player games and it doesn't tear them apart. examples are risk of rain, project zomboid, terraria, (debatably) stardew valley, and a million different others. maybe don't starve is the best example. point is, any change to the game that is optional is a change that by definition cannot be a bad change.
Regarding cheat death, I remember I once died due to changes to tree hitboxes. Previously I had a spot between a tree and some rocks where I'd cook, because I knew if I placed a campfire in the right place there was only one way wolves could get to me and they'd stop before the fire. However, after an update to hitboxes there were now two directions which the wolves could get to me from, and I lost my run when I was attacked from behind while fast-forwarding. I only figured out it was the hitbox after some testing. I feel like these sorts of situations where yes, I could've done things to prevent the death, but at the same time it was a meta reason why I died, are a good example of where cheat death wouldn't have felt "wrong" relative to maintaining permadeath.
I don't mind kitty warping into the reality directly on my back. I just didn't like those immersion-breaking icons and the fact that kitty mauled me twice in a row indoors, ending my interloper run that i prepped days prior, specifically to test new content
I personally think it would be really cool to have the cougar an in game predator but you cannot deter it or kill it with a critical hit that way you have a really high chance of getting mauled.
the part where you explain how people have mixed feelings about the cougar using psychology was awesome. especially since I've heard you are a professor in the subject. thats so cool!!! amazing video zak..
![Reviewing Old Long Dark Tips [30K SUB SPECIAL]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Rg93omGt5CY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Reviewing Old Long Dark Tips [30K SUB SPECIAL]](/img/tr.png)
The biggest problem that I see with how the cougar was implemented is that it went against the basic ideas behind the design of the game. The game is supposed to be somewhat immersive, minimalistic HUD during gameplay and so on, right? And following that philosophy, most animals are quite "organic": you know there is a deer nearby if you hear them, you learn a bear spawns in a cave that has bones inside, you learn to identify moose spawns thanks to the scratch marks on some trees, etc.
However, for whatever reason, when the cougar enters your region, the music changes, and the HUD notifies you. How is that immersive? Does my character see those HUD notifications as well or what? It just goes against the design of the game! I understand that their intention is to make an actual predator you need to be careful about, and yet they added these notifications that not only work against that feeling of uneasiness they tried to achieve, but just completely ignore the very base philosophy of the game.
you should know maybe by scratch marks on trees or the door of your cabin, or stuff like that, there are countless ideas that would make this both good and immersive
@@K3V0382 scratch marks on the POI's would be an amazing visual
I agree, the cougar went against the game philosophy in 2 ways. First, to encounter the cougar, you need to make yourself a sitting duck. Which is quite contrary to the idea of 'surviving'. Deliberately letting yourself get mauled doesnt seem like something that is natural to the game. You could argue that the normal play should to try to avoid meeting the cougar.. but that means treating it like an affliction, not an animal that you want to harvast. Why add an animal to the game that you will never see if you play according to a survivalist agenda. Its just a complete waste of potential.
Secondly, the music change and the HUD stuff is bad. "Cougar arrives in 5 days". Where did the lone survivor get this? The local 5PM news bulletin? Transmiting live from Great Bear?
@@darkwillow1451 radio announcements during an Arora obviously 😂
Your right tho I was expecting the cougar to be a anti-goating style animal.
Here's my thoughts on fixing the cougar:
-remove the music and the countdown mechanic. The fear of a lion attack is that they can be stalking you and you not even know it, adding an extra level of tension to traveling outside. Maybe keep the occasional noise to keep the player on their toes and to let you know one spawned in
-make the cougar an actual animal that spawns in. It'll hunt rabbits, fight wolves over territory, roam the map, and occasionally stalk the player.
-make the cougar huntable; it's small, fast, and keeps its distance, only attacking when your back's turned, but can close a distance incredibly quickly and silently. It'll be a tough shot to make with the rifle and would justify carrying one around in the first place, as well as actually training that rifle skill
We wanted more wildlife, and cougar would add that to a degree. Instead we got an "event" that most people won't survive, and that isn't fun in the long run.
no one ever wanted the event it was just pure laziness.
@@Financere425 It's not laziness, Its just a mechanic that was a miss for most, I personally was hoping you could see it stalking you or if you look up on a cliff edge you could see it ducking down and watching you from a distance till you overstayed your welcome and it started charging really fast and giving you only a few seconds to react
This is the biggest disappointment with the game overall for me. They added Timberwolves like 4 or 5 years ago, but they're only in a couple of regions you barely have any reason to pass through and mostly just function as an annoyance that stops you freely travelling the map, with absolutely no reason to seek them out.
We could have had a game full of wildlife and harvestable flora/resources, which offer their own unique challenges and opportunities to enhance the environments you progress through, but it's just never happened. Community suggestions for years, like rats and other scavengers threatening your food supply, cougars that stalk you throughout the world much like the old bear in wintermute but less quick-timey, etc.
Could have, should have, just haven't because the priorities are else where. I long await the day when a new developer will build on the subgenre of survival games Hinterland initially showed promise at creating 10 years ago.
@@Financere425 Oh, you must be an A+ game developer!?
@@FooLProoFMPLS is it wrong to want quality for a game you love?
The surviving the cougar attack, destroying the nest and not getting any delicious cougar eggs was a slap in in the face.
When I was a kid, my parents told me coconuts were cat eggs
@@ZerosiiniFIN I told my younger cousin that the small black beans they left around was the eggs. So he went around collecting them for an entire day until his mum discovered it...
Me, the other cousins and my uncles were having a blast, him mum less so.
this comment confuses me. cougars are mammals. they breed and give live birth. cougars do not lay eggs
@@goodtime4345That's just government propaganda. Cougar eggs are a delicacy they don't want the pubic to know about.
@@goodtime4345….? In Africa they lay eggs 🥚. I’m sure you know this?
The way the cougar was implemented was essentially an affliction and not an actual animal, I'm glad they are rethinking it
Yes, I don't know if they have a clear idea of what can be an affliction, challenge and game modes are. Everything got mixed up with Part 5.
Are blizzards an affliction? To me the cougar was exactly like a blizzard. Random and can end your run if caught in it
Yes. The way they implemented it was just plain lazy and people aren't dumb enough (yet) to overlook it.. Very little effort put into it instead of creating more engaging mechanics.
@@jacobsmalley616 true, had some good runs, or just general trips out to get wood stopped by blizzards, i think the only purpose they serve is spawning tree limbs/branches, and impeding the player
@@axious9613 that and blizzards tell me when to go beachcombing now
Not being able to get non-potable water from fishing holes is absolute nonsense. Nonsense I say.
Pin this holy shit
Only if it's freshwater but yes
This never actually occurred to me from a gameplay perspective, but given that water purification tablets do exist in the game, there is a good argument for this implementation tbh. It seems like the type of thing a mod would already exist for (like candles) but I haven't checked.
Could maybe reach out to people who know how to mod the game and see if they would put this in-game otherwise.
If it’s from the ocean then we should be able to boil the water to get salt
The Cougar? Makes perfect sense that one would stalk you and would almost certainly not be seen until it's attacking you. BUT it makes absolutely NO sense that it would attack you in the open, away from trees, ridges, etc. You should be able to "hold it at bay" by staying in the open, or frequently checking your surroundings. Should also be a chance that doing so long enough will get it to be impatient, and attack you without ideal conditions - allowing you a small window to hear it or otherwise catch it off guard as it runs at you. But walk around without a care, in the woods or under ridgelines? You're quite rightfully toast.
could be better if it spawned at one point in your region and stalked you for a couple of days before attacking, maybe having encounters along the way where it sizez you up and runs or something, keeping it at bay would make perfect sense too, and im guessing it wouldnt want to attack if you had a flare too ( it would give you time to get to a safe spot or leave the region) you made good points, if you posted this on twitter raph would rant about you at 2 am for hating him just because you critique his "perfect" addition 😂😂
I would've liked to see the cougar moving from one hiding place to another; going between trees on occasion if you're walking backwards to keep an eye out for it, or such - so it spawns in, you see it, but it probably gets out of sight before you can fire. If it disappeared after, in case you were trying to get an angle, would work too i think - almost more like a creature from a horror movie than a "normal" animal in the game like a wolf.
that actually sounds really cool - keeping it at bay by staying in the open further locks you into place. risk and reward.
It's not supposed to though. If it ever attacked you in the open that's a bug. There are invisible areas in each region that designate where a cougar can attack and there aren't any in open areas.
@@Fuar11 assuming that is the case then yeah it would be a bug (I can't comment from personal experience, just what I've seen in UA-cam). Great if the intent to have it set up that way, but it probably needs the distance from objects tightened up a bit. NFI what a "strike range" of a cougar is, but I'm assuming that it wouldn't be too far especially in the snow.
Considering the cougar is the only paid animal in the game, I think it's fair to want more interaction and deeper mechanics. I would want it to be at least as detailed as the wolf. And the wolf has a ton of little interactions with stalking, fire, noises indicating aggression or losing your scent, attacking wildlife, ect
technically the ptarmigan is also exclusive to the DLC, but i agree with you
The only update I ever really wanted was rendered gloves so I no longer had to look at those cold dead hands. Everything else is a bonus.
Most real comment on this video
The skinning animations were great too, although it’s sad that they implemented it in wintermute.
Haha! Agreed!
I've been the most excited about base customization (getting rid of garbage/corpses, possibly rearranging a few things). RIP me, I guess
@@mythtaken6610 Mods (there are mods that let you build and relocate furniture), but yeah it would be nice to have the option to clear out rubbish and human cadavers from your personal domicile.
Yes Zak! As a Canadian, I can confirm that Cougars on the West coast will randomly teleport on top of you, and attack. Hardly anyone over here ever anticipate cougar attacks because they are so random and unpredictable. 🤦
See! I knew the devs knew what they were doing. They are just trying to simulate real life :D
@@TheClockmister 🤣
That's just years and years of evolution for them to learn the amazing skill of teleportation that even us humans have not learned
it would be better if it was all the same but instead of teleporting on top on you it will spawn in a random portion of the region and begin tracking and hunting you
Like the dark walker, they already have the AI
Ever since the beginning, every animal ever implemented in the game has been a physical entity that was existing in their world. Upon loading yourself in the region, the animals were spawned.
Even the crows.
The temptation to be pedantic here and say that parasites are an affliction, also that fish are basically just items obtained through a menu. The darkwalker is invisible and many animals have a grace period before spawning.
I agree though, I'm slightly disappointed I delayed (playing Elden Ring DLC) to try out the update, as I'll never get to experience and reasonably critique the cougar implementation as it was.
@@WendingWind Don't be disappointed. Be grateful.
@@Macushini That I got to miss getting literally *teleports behind you* psst nothing personnel, kid'd by a cougar? I'm crestfallen.
"Tomasina's Tuna in Olive Oil" and "Zak's Snaks" is a DLC that I would pay actual money for.
Cougar:
The RDR2 mechanic, as someone mentioned earlier, is very good. In addition, the cougar could attack you when you sleep outside, and when you sleep inside, you will see paw prints in the snow outside of the door.
WIth how many accessories we have available to us these days (insulation, toolbelt, crampons, ballistic vest, moose satchel, etc) I would like Hinterland to increase the number of accessory slots we get from 2 to 4 but make it so we can no longer stack any kind of accessory item (insulation/ear wrap) in order to balance it out.
That way we could, for example, use insulation, satchel, toolbelt, and ear wraps at the same time but could no longer use double insulation, etc
What would you think of that?
I was thinking Misery mode seems more like a challenge mode rather than a regular play mode, awesome vid as usual, thanks Zak 💙
A few months ago I was travelling between broken rail road and transfer pass, as i was in the long dark tunnel i though how exciting it would be if they planted the cougar there , where you see glowing eyes in the distance for a moment then they disappear, the idea itself turns my pants color into brown 😂
As a pilgrim player I really want a world that’s aimed at easy, pilgrim players with lots of buildings to loot. Every update seems to be “we made the game even harder!!” And like…. Some players like the easy mode.
I’m a pilgrim player too and agree!
Perfect model for the cougar is RDR2. The cougar in there is silent, fast, deadly. In fact if you have the radar off the chance you see it before it attacks is pretty much zero.
yeah, cougars in that game were genuinely scary. you can shoot it and kill it like any other animal but what made them so hard to fight is how quiet they were and how fucking fast they were, also one of the few animals in the game that insta-kills you. i fucking shit my pants and magdump in its general direction every time i saw one in that game
@@goodtime4345It wont instakill you, it will jump on you and you get promp to shake it off. If you hit R (or what is on console) you throw it on the ground and it runs away to charge you again, but this time no second chance, it will finish the job.
But in rdr2 it always attacks you from the front, never from the back.
@@ExtremeMan10
you're wrong, it insta-kills you even if you're at full health. i even got up an old video of it happening to make sure i remembered right.
ua-cam.com/video/en0jlH2UeMs/v-deo.html
I would like to raise that The RDR2 cougar has a much better chance of blending into the world. It's basically impossible for any animal to stealth in TLD when they're against a white background
@christopherjohnston6343 I get it. Different developer, Different game, different engine, different budget, however I still think it represents what most of the community envisioned when Hinterland said they were adding a cougar. Also, while super rare there are white cougars.
What I really want is the "Zak's Snacks" update
Haha yes - hype!
Definitely overdue
Brooooo fr they already got Stacy's grape soda so wtf
The two main issues I had with the Cougar, and I've said it many times before, is the over-reliance of the HUD elements in the game, and the sudden ambush mechanics with no counter-play inorder to obtain the items they drop
The over-reliance on the HUD is the main issue i see going around, and the solution imo is to tone it back a lot, keep the music if you want, but get rid of the HUD telling you "oh, Cougar is encroaching on your territory". Best way to fix it is to give environmental clues, scratch marks that appear on doors in buildings you stay in, or when inside a building in a region with it to have loud cat-like noises coming from outside the house, etc.
Hear it walking around the cabin in the middle of the night and when you wake up the next day it's tracks are there to see.
@@kateferguson7705SO good!!
Have its noises wake you up if you sleep in a building
For a long time I felt like devs don't like when players play in a way they (devs) don't like. Which is: devs want you to be nomadic. They introduced cabin fever, sleds and now the half baked predator that isnt even a physical being until it attacks you (LMAO). Meanwhile I and a lot of players like to settle. To mostly occupy their region of choice and have a chill game. Sad.
To be fair, though, you could from the start opt out of the cougar and now with the new badges from "Tales" you can even switch off cabin fever for the standard gamemodes, so you are now even more able to play the game as a cozy-cabin-simulator (which I totally will do :)). I look forward to the safehouse costumization for that exact reason.
@@tini243i’m sorry what? You cured cabin fever AND DIDN’T TELL ANYONE???
@@tini243 Not looking forward to safehouse customization a specially, after parts 4 and 5... Travois still borked (falling through the terrain constantly), flask... collectible, cougar... would be ok-ish for Challenge scenarios, in survival... total crap. Last region look and feels rushed, unfinished, something like v0.7-v0.9.
Already was disappointing they not doing proper expansion, but some buggy, clunky part by part drip feed...
@@frankjonesthenerd6841 The "Settled Mind" feat from beating all 3 Tales makes you research books 20% faster and renders you immune to cabin fever
however it's mitigated by a car or snow shelter
@@axious9613 Thank you, this is going to be one of my defaults along with cold fusion now.
Thanks Zak for being level-headed , you are precious to the community and is always super appreciated to see your inputs ❤
Thank you Zak, this was nice to listen to, and would be a great addition towards the content you supply here. I understand time is tough to come by, but I can see you evolving this into something special, with interviews and comments from the community at large.
Basically, "they didn't want to make cougar like bear 2.0, so they made it like a cabin fever 2.0 (probably, most hated and nonsensical affliction already)"... And cougar was just bugged as heck. It is just not right to release something as bugged, so i guess bugs was at least half of the reason for temporary removal, not just community.
And, btw, i'm kinda failing to connect "i don't like nogoa for being campfire simulator with no regen" (which has normal loper temps and you can make tons of healing food now) with "i like misery" (which has day 50 temps from the beginning and no regen and all)
Zak, you absolute gem of a human. Closing out in support of Tomi is pure class. Cheers, brother.
I think psychologically, the initial cougar implementation also has a lot to do with the insanely tricky balance that is player control. The fastest way to alienate a player base is to take away control, make them feel like their actions don't matter and the game is just gonna do what it's gonna do to them. But paradoxically, players also want a certain amount of control taken away, to keep things exciting or challenging. To make it worse, the lines of where that lays vary from person to person.
The elephant in the room about all this cougar debate is that wildlife in the game is easy to cheat on. Just climb a rock or a tree stump and you're pretty much safe from gettin mauled and get free shots. Veteran players have almost no challenge against it. So it's understandable why Hinterland chose the cougar as an event rather than a real animal-npc -> no need to try to get the AI working properly (and to be honest it's probably almost impossible to achieve anyway unless you're willing to shovel $$$ at it).
How imo all that could have been avoided - just turn the "event" upsite down. Give the player the possibility to react to the cougar attack rather than having a small chance after you're close to death.
If they had made the cougars attack when the player was near tall rocks or trees as if it was ambushing from them. It would be cool if you could catch a glimpse of it before you got close.
Yeah that's exactly what they need to do. That way you can't just hunt it like a wolf, but at least you'll have a few seconds if you are looking behind you to have a chance. The part that bugged me the most is you could out in the middle of an open field where there's no chance it could sneak up on you without being seen and it can still teleport on top of you. Make it only hunt in areas that make sense and have a small window where it exists before the pounce.
Most of mystery lake and the Quonset would be death traps. I love it
The new zone had way too many timberwolf packs to a point of stupidity.
I spent many days pursuing the new Tale with my experienced Interloper character primarily because it was so difficult to get to one essential location safely. About a day after I finished it, there was an update reducing timber wolves. I don't know how many of them I killed, but they always respawned faster than I could eliminate them.
I purposely have not updated my game for this reason. I just want to experience the cougar attack before it’s changed forever.
More of this format on the odd occasion is a great treat to people like me who like listening to stuff in the background
Zak I would love a video about why The Long Dark is the best game. I would absolutely watch a 5 hour review of the game with all of your thoughts.
Additionally, I would enjoy hearing about your history of getting into the game and getting better. As well as things you would change!
Thank you! It would be a long video for sure, or be in parts.
My favourite thing about the Tales expansion so far has been the added recipes/cooking (especially simple ones like bannock and porridge early game, and the rose-hip pies, etc.), the fire-hardened arrows (a great way to practice archery), the ptarmigans, and the various improvised items (like the improved bedroll, and so on). I haven't built the travois yet, but am looking forward to trying it.
Wish list: 1) candles you can read, sew, and craft with -- and are slow burning (i.e., last an entire night), but can't be used outdoors (except maybe a cave), or they will just blow out;
2) a two-handed woodsman's axe (which would allow you to cut fallen limbs in a third or even quarter of the time as a hatchet -- but is much heavier to carry, so would likely be left near your base); and
3) pine needle tea to help with the scurvy.
I really enjoyed this. (And yes, I listened to it rather than watching.) I particularly liked hearing your perspectives on Misery, Cheat Death, and the new region. I've only stuck my toe into Sundered Pass, but am really enjoying Punishme--, I mean, Misery. (Two attempts, max 11 days.) I also like the sound of the Cheat Death mechanic - and the Cougar, tho I wished the Cougar's indicators were less UI and more immersive. The 'far away' Cheat Death option has me wondering if the Trader might be responsible for your rescue (once they're added to the game.)
Also... Tomasina is awesome!
I think they made a big (and lazy) mistake with the cougar. I was about to buy the DLC for it, until I heard that it's just an invisible triggered mechanic.
i wish there was a way to treat the permeant afflictions in someway, like maybe having to do a very hard challange to get a first aid kit that gets rid of one of the afflictions
You cant really un-necrose your hands though.
IRL they could legit eventually start falling off.
@@nahoj.2569 i know, but it seems more reasonable then after 30+ your just fucked
Just needs a better way of telling players their clothes are wet and start to freeze over. That is the only reason I loose fingers quite regularly...besides bugs
Rarely check the cloth screen of the inventory for that either
@@nahoj.2569 this game veered dramatically away from any remote sense of realism with Glimmer Fog. So I say we have an option with the hacksaw to saw off the offending appendage and whittle new fingers from Fir limbs.
@@Hunne2303 dosint help that clothes freezing is already a niche mechanic that is barely used unless your in a few areas
This game needs way more animals so any additional ones are always good
I think having the cougar wait in a tree for the player to unknowingly walk under it or if it used trees as a vantage point to spot the player then make its approach. As for stalking the player I feel like it should move slowly sticking to cover until it gets close enough. Running while it has sight of the player would cause it to charge. A low growl could act as the warning before it attacks but if it’s close enough and the player looks directly at it then I feel it should charge immediately. I don’t feel that it should be hunting for the player at all times and I feel like there should be ways for the player to hunt it without becoming prey. Utilizing wildlife carcasses as bait for example. I also think that it should only be in the more remote areas of the world.
Zak: I like misery.
gotmilkanot: hold my beer.
The guy is insane. Finds a mackinaw in his OuterMisery run and harvests it! Gotta love the pain.
To me it actually doesn't matter how challenging the cheat death mechanic is. It's about having a choice. This eat or die challenge is gone. If you die you can choose. That's what takes out 100% of the fun to me, so much I totally don't feel like playing this update. And I played long dark constantly since 2017.
I liked how thrilling every dangerous situation was because you knew if you fail, you are dead. No matter what. Now you can just choose. That kills everything for me.
I think choosing classic perma death or cheat death before starting the run is the ideal option.
100% with you. It's not the mechanic itself per se that I have an issue with. It's the 180 degree about-turn that Hinterland made on what was a basic principle since the game was born. You f-up, you die. Period. And I get that being revived from your death-bed has consequences, I do. I get it. But that's steering the game even further from the semi-realistic game we all (well, most of us) fell in love with, all those years ago.
CD is really hard, make no mistake there...as Zak mentioned, without regional bases, you are screwed regardless most of the time if you choose "far but save"..."closeby" isnt closeby either...
"Cougars typically kill prey by using their powerful jaws to drive their large canine teeth into the back of the neck of the prey animal. Their canine teeth are very sensitive. Cougars are able to take advantage of the strength and sensitivity of their jumbo canines to probe very rapidly for the spaces between the neck vertebrae as they quickly bite down and wedge the vertebrae apart. In this manner, the prey animal’s neck is immediately broken without the need for the cougar to crunch through heavy neck bones. The result is a quick and efficient kill". Sounds like the developer's got it right but it appears they may have followed it to precisely although you can survive if your specs are high enough. Maybe the cougar was meant to be avoided until you were able to get the best gear and then try to face it. 🤔
Logging in after the update, my technical backpack was missing, making me critically overweight, and was instantly afflicted with scurvy. Ty hinterland.
Yeah the Cougar is definitely the most hotly contested topic. I'm not a huge fan of how the Misery mode afflictions work, but I understand that mode isn't intended for me. I don't even touch interloper very often.
As for the Cougar, I'm more of a fan of active mechanics versus passive mechanics. Like with wolves Active being shooting, stunning, scaring wolves. Versus the more passive 'struggle' mechanic. I always felt thats where the game was weak, when it uses menus and gui to interact with the world rather than the players POV.
I love the concept of an animal stalking you after you become too complacent. Especially considering Cougars tend to try and attack prey from behind. Dropping one in the region of teleporting it into your vicinity might be best.
While some people feel the original mechanic is lost... I feel like it will allow the feature to reach a better state that makes both unsatisfied people happy, and gives something even better to people who liked it.
Great video 👍😀
i remember a video of Zak walking through eastern FA and saying "the area here looks like future cougar territory to me"...
Extremely territorial, nearly imperceptible environmental cues, could attack at any given time, rips you to shreds, high risk encounter, seems to spawn out of nowhere -- this is actually pretty accurate cougar behavior. The thing that makes them so dangerous IRL is you will never know they're near; if they do decide to attack you'll never see it coming.
Certain mechanics should change though. Such as the likeliness of attack (should be far more rare and randomized), and as long as you're facing it it should be far less likely to attack. Maybe sew some eyes on the back of a cap as a precautionary, and the higher your hunting skills, the easier it should be to perceive them.
Just a few ideas. I don't even have the game yet so clearly I only know what I see on YT. Can't wait to get it though. My current laptop is ancient and I can't get a new one until I sell my house so for me, the game has to wait.
Zak, I know you love tld and I do too. I also play fs and have for two games worth. I have to applaud hinterland for coming through. Maybe a little bit of a wait but with one game we've gotten so much content. Thanks for your introspective and understanding of the game. Love your videos.
I’m still waiting for them to change the animal spawns and pathing.
Love this format "podcast" and would love to see/ hear more of it in the future❤
Hinterland did a sharp left with this one. They did everything they promised , but implemented them in ways nobody expected them
I think that the biggest issue with TLD or Hinterland itself rather is that they don't have beta testing. Players don't know anything about whats coming until it is relesed. Take a look at other survival games. For example Minecraft, Valheim and so on... They all have beta testing / snapshots.
Hinterland lives in a bubble. They change stuff only when it is already released. By having beta testing you know immediately what people think of it. And also you can sort out the bugs much easier and faster. I really think that it should not be like this. That four choosen one get to test the update before hand.
I also understand the reason behind it. It creates great feeling by exploring something new. The immersion is on another level. BUT I think, it does not outweights the benefit of having beta testing. But players that would want to avoid spoilers could. Just don't play those snapshots or don't watch videos about it.
I am software developer myself. And the way Hinterland releases the game should be changed in my opinion.
This really should not be heit on the game by any means. I absolulutely love it. But this update really was not done. And the cougar was not executed well.
Just FYI, in case you're not an old-timer like myself, they USED to have a test branch, where players could join a beta testing crew for new builds. It was allowed with the STRICT understanding that it wasn't for "public" consumption. Then someone streamed a run in the test branch. And that put an end to that. Not more test branch, WAAAAY more bugs.
@@arupian666 Interesting. I didn't know. Still...
I don't see an issue with it being public.
@@paaleek Thems were just the rules.
I think I just realised a major reason why the cougar was designed to spawn on top of the player. If the cougar were to spawn in like 15m behind you or something and the player is next to unpathable terrain or a hunters blind or something it wouldn't have the ability to reach the player, or it would have to run laps around the terrain like a bear. I think if this was the case then the whole challenge and intimidation of fighting cougar would be lost in the same way fighting the bear is to an experienced long dark player. Just from a pragmatic standpoint spawning the cougar right on top of the player eliminates a lot of the issues that could ruin your immersion of the cougar and the fantasy of a deadly adversary. Although I personally think that just spawning the cougar into the world a little ways away from the player would be a cool, giving you a chance to fight back. I know it would mean the optimal strategy would then be to cheese the cougar like every other predator the long dark has.
how about they fix the shitty pathing then
Good stuff, Zak. I like the longer-form, more free-flowing approach. Sometimes you just want to vibe and have some chill TLD chat. Could even have a guest for future such episodes if time zones and technology allow. As for the update, I'm generally positive but remain opposed to using Cheat Death myself (let others use it as they please). I am where you were on it: permadeath is a central part of TLD's appeal, and unexpected, sometimes unfair events turning life upside down (or ending it) is part of the survival experience. If Atheenon can watch Will "Eggy" McKenzie die to the gas in Blackrock and let him stay dead despite the game somehow not deleting the save, I can keep a stiff upper lip while losing a long run.
The cougar was a glorified QTE, that left us damaged, with ruined (or damaged) gear and with an affliction that was boring and annoying to deal with.
When you take away the players agency then you remove the reasoning for why we should feel excited for it. And we had no ability to master the cougar, leaving us to just get hit, take damage and hope to kill it.
It was immersion breaking, and if they had any testing with the playerbase, then they would have known it wasn't what we wanted, especially after years of waiting on it.
It was horribly implemented with bad mechanics, and if I was really cynical then I could argue that they pushed it out before it was ready, to show they had "something" and to gauge what they needed to change. Using their playerbase as a public test, because they were late.
I very much agree.
Wild to me that they already have a system for an enemy that will stalk you relentlessly through a region, including indicators when it starts gets closer.
Darkwalker.
The cougar could've recycled 70% or the darkwalker systems and been better than its release state.
Wait how is the cougar different to darkwalker mechanics?
This is honestly some of my favourite type content you make.
I like to listen to your opinion to make some sense of what the community actually think of the updates and things. You just have that calm, thinking things through kind of energy, that makes your opinions feel genuine.
Alot of comments seem to be just negative because they found it didn't live up to their hype, exactly as you said and looking at the poll you did was actually eye opening realizing that people actually thought the couger was a cool concept. Which is what I had thought but everyone seemed to bash it.
I think something that would be interesting is to have the cougar spawn in the region after x days but have a minimum distance it’ll keep from the player and over the course of the followings days it’s spawned have the distance reduced. the player character can have voice lines that progressively get more serious like “what was that noise?” To “feels like something might be watching me” then during bad weather have it target the player for an attack. If you get mauled you don’t get the last stand effect but the cougar will now run back out and reset its timer of stalking the player until another attack
I dont really care about the cougar or misery mode, im just upset with how often the game is crashing. I could handle it when it was just exiting a building but i went to transition zones and it crashed.
13:00 This is what the game still needs. The cougar in that state was a complete gamechanger for like literally everything you do.
You couldnt stay in one Region anymore because of the high risk of an attack now that you cant prevent with anything.
You cant use the Flaregun to protect yourself
You have a very high chance on interloper to die against him because lets be fair the bowshot is very hard to do in that short time and not everyone is a pro player.
I like the idea of the cougar itself to have something that hunts you but not in that current state.
On Voyageur latest patch, I used cheat death 3 times on day 14. The half health penalty last until I reached day 32. You can survive as long as you have enough resources to keep you alive and don't get attacked even though I was attacked by wolves twice and barley survived since I had good gear all at 100% and near a place to shelter and heal.
I did find my pack at the Carter dam but I died at the Ravine RR bridge.
The old bear from hunted part 1 is what the cougar should be it spawn in the world and is silent does not spawn close but stalks and follows and when close enough then it charges
Also, regarding Sundered Pass -- I guess I have a use for all those marine flares I have saved on my 500-day voyager run.
What is going on is simple if you look at it from business perspective. Over the last year we have seen the customer service/ community from hinterland change. Any complaints about new expansion was met with accusations of being ungrateful or just a complainer.People are being booted out of the forums and a content creator of tld was sent a nasty email by Raphael for making a complaint...is it coincidence that this downturn came at the same time Raphael announced moving on to new project? I think not. IMO they have crossed the threshold, think vanilla wow for those who were there. It was a close knit community, the game was challenging and then threshold was reached. What is a threshold? It's the point on which a business has cleared debt, making money and wants to appeal to a bigger audience leaving the old things behind. That is why , just like vanilla wow, new expansions came dumbing down game etc. in simpler terms it's a number games now. --- expect more of this in months to come. My guess is new team will be created to handle TLD whilst Raphael moves on.. This is not a personal criticism of him, but rather a realistic outlook of how businesses work. I could be wrong but I guess we'll find out in the future.
this is very accurate he doesn't allow discourse so he can be fat and lazy and just sit on his bum and do nothing at some point he has to get off his ass.
Along the same lines, I believe a major issue was the lack of communication from the developers from December 2023-May 2024. If you look at previous years, they always posted a dev diary on a steady basis. Six months of not a single update was extremely disappointing from fans.
@@KrikenNoxid excellent point
Honestly, the game was never that good outside of being challenging and "simple". No pointless crafting systems, zombies, gunplay, base building, pvp or any of the other trappings of the survival sandbox genre, only a fight against scarce resources and a struggle to navigate a barren map where storms can kill you if you are unprepared. Everything that made the game good was already there and what has been added in the past 10 years (outside of new regions) has basically added no value to the core gameplay.
I don't get why more survival games haven't appeared to take its place, given that Raph and his team do not value the original direction the game was supposed to go in. Now you just gather loot but the world itself feels empty and dead. The "primitive" aspects devolve down to stripping the world of sustenance and living off of wolf/bear meat forever. There has been very little meaningful expansion of the sandbox aspects. Permadeath means very little when survival was already a choice vs continue to subsist forever when you reach a state of overpreparedness. Scurvy was a step in the right direction, but it seems to be one step forward and three steps back these days.
Go back to simping for LMG please 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😊
16:07 I found the Tactical Gloves in my 900+ day Interloper run, but they were ruined. I did not find the Tactical Jacket.
I remember when people said "the ravine would be the perfect spot for the cougar", and I was like "ugh, my vacation getaway will be ruined! 😂"
I love the ravine when I just want a little quiet time.
I think you covered the issues with the cougar well. The first implementation resulted a game mechanic that a rational player wants nothing to do with. They added this cool animal… best you never see it. It’s not fun to have a feature meant not to be explored.
There should be signs that it’s around. Prints, dead bunnies, etc. The player should glimpse it in the distance. I suppose the devs can give it a very small cross-section so it’s quite hard to hit from all but short range. And its run up could be very fast and erratic.
Also, I think they should tweak the wolf behaviour to make the torch+stone thing a bit less viable. One way would be to make it initially successful with a given wolf (or pack?) like now, but the deterrence wears off if the player keeps doing it, and the wolf will eventually call the bluff, ignore it, and attack anyway. And a cool down on that so that the original behaviour returns after some time (a couple days).
Weirdly a slight majority of zaks polled viewers liked that Cougar? So did Zak. Did you watch the video before claiming the rational high ground lol?
The "Cougar" was in a word: Lame.
It was easy to avoid altogether by just moving between 2 zones like CH and DP.
It was easy to bait by just sitting in one zone until it "spawned" and then making sure you were actively "hunting" for it anytime outside by being ready to fight in throw away gear with ample meds and then counter attacking it.
Destroying the den is just end game busy work as avoiding the "cougar affliction" is easy to maintain.
Having 0 real recourse to managing the cougar once it "arrives" is so immersion breaking, even in-game, as every other animal is a real entity that you have to physically avoid or pursue. Looking around a barren lake one moment and then getting "pounced" upon feels like a weak and cheap mechanic; because it is. (This was my personal single biggest gripe)
The whole thing feels like they found making an animal stalk the player, really, was a lot taller order than they first imagined and this was next best solution to simulating that experience as best they could envision.
Hinterland will mostly reconsider the balance between the Cougar being an easy threat to deal with versus the Cougar being a guaranteed maul down animal for a chance for it's rewards. Because if they don't reconsider the Cougar this way they end up releasing a filler animal unlike a true challenge animal. The rewards should be better for such risks of what the Cougar pressures the player with. Currently, the Moose, the Bear and even a Deer now has way better risk/reward ratio unlike the Cougar. You can craft +5 KG Satchel from a Moose, you can craft a Bear Bedroll from the Bear, you can craft a Travois from the Deers. These rewards are already versatile and tremendous in survival situations. The new Cougar Knife is only good for a reward if guarantees kills immediately after struggles against wolves or significantly faster bleedout from them so we can get craft materials more efficiently. The Cougar Head Wrap is just a warmer version of any warm headgear in the game which can be neglected for the reason that balaclavas, accessory headwraps, warm hats and other head covering clothing items in the game only serves with increased protection against wildlife if you don't know what you are doing and more protective layers against a slightly harsher weather than usual. That is something that you mostly won't ever craft in Interloper even if it's a must in most Misery plays.
I think the idea to have the cougar take time to gain interest in you is correct, although the way the show its interest isn't right. I feel the cougar could do something a bit more horrifying than just a hud notification.
Say you went to bed in a house, you've been long enough in the region to peek it's interest and then one night/day when you go to bed, you just hear loud bangs on the doors and windows that wake up your character from sleep and give you the "fear" afliction, kind of like what dark Walker does to you. Then you gotta spend time awake in the house a bit and then the cougar goes away.
Realising that you are absolutely dead if you stay, you have to leave right that instant. Now here is what can happen:
If you leave immediately, 20% chance that the cougar spots you are one of the exits of the regions and intercepts you.
If you stay 12 hours, 50% chance it shows up and blocks your exit.
If you stay 24 hours, 100% chance it blocks your regional exit
Any longer than that, you walk out of that building and it's on you because it's become impatient.
An aurora version also could exist, just more aggressive and if you try to leave during an aurora, it just is on you, no matter how quick you try to leave. Wait out the aurora for the slim chance to avoid it
On my Interloper run I died in transfer pass & respawned in Blackrock, those far away spawns can be the whole other side of the game world. This is after two close spawns in ZoC with no chance of surviving. Managed to just edge it out from supplies left there
Custom challenge idea 50% brightness Heritage mode on and 30 FPS. It makes it an old VHS horror movie.
They could make some sort of guaranteed ending to Misery mode. Maybe by day 100 an unavoidable super blizzard hits the entire world, they could make a sad cutscene of your character slowly succumbing and freezing to death with sad music, mirroring the dead person they used for the mode's logo. That way it will still be incredibly difficult to reach day 100 but it will also avoid the scenario of players surviving longer than the mode intends
Big fan of the content patch, and I love that they added content for advanced players. Misery is unique because of the random affliction order and how every decision matters. Day 41 so far and I'm excited to see how far i can go!
I don’t know about everyone else, but when I decided to cheat death my game just decided to reset my entire run. I didn’t have the condition de-buff or anything. I also checked my journal and It reset to day one. Everyplace I had looted before also had their loot reset and plants that are non-renewable had reset again and I could pick them. This might’ve just been a bug but I don’t know for sure. (I play on console btw)
Tomisina is great to watch, I’ve been enjoying catching up with her TLD runs. Love Misery. I’ve done 6 runs. First run lasted 14 days, the next three lasted only a few days cuz I goated down mountains and that didn’t go well. 5th time went well. I got to day 57 (not dead yet probably could last til 80+ days with my current set up and no cougar) and if I would have done better food management, I could have lasted well past 100. Doing a 6th run now with my knowledge now but love how brutal this is. It’s not easy at all and I’ve had so many 1-3% moments where I thought for sure I was done just to barely come back swinging. Also I think we all love anything you create as fans of yours. This overview/update on everything was good to hear and I’m sure hinterland appreciates your support, candor, feedback and keeping everyone up to date with how things are going. Also I’d listen to your ideas on why TLD is a perfect game. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on this game and am still not bored
I think two simple fixes to the cougar would make it 1000% better.
1)zak's suggestion of it soawning kinda behind you but givijg you a chance to defend yourself works great.
2) rather then blowing up the cougar den you can track the cougar back to its den and hunt it. It may be in its den or near it hunting something, maybe even have it start hunting you if you get too close to its den.
i think my opinion is what summarise the cougar perfectly for the the idea is good but the execution is bad like yea it's a good idea to have like a apex predator stalking you forcing you to stay on the move but him just tp on you deleting like 60% of your health without being abble to fight back before it's attack you is very bad
It’s curious to me how steep the permanent condition loss is, when you choose a permanent debuff over a temporary one with cheat death. It might be more interesting to implement some misery afflictions as the permanent debuff, instead of permanent condition loss. Say, 1 random affliction for your first death, 2 for your second, 3 for your third. Broken body excluded, of course. Maybe that will make a permanent debuff a better choice, because as it stands the temporary debuff is just better.
Latest update removed Scurvy from my custom game of 555 days, a game I started because my last playthrough of 886 days, I couldn't just add the affliction into the game. Hoping they allow me to reintroduce it back to my playthrough like I'm suppose to be able to do. Noticed the Vitamin C missing from all my food items.
The cougar can be easily fix if they make it an actual animal that stalks you and moves around the map instead of a teleporting kitten.
I wish they would rework the way timberwolves worked. It makes me just avoid certain areas altogether on longer runs
I was excited for misery and it was close to something I would had liked. Everything except the last affliction. Being unable to heal in anyway sets a hard cap on how long you can survive since being real no ones going to avoid taking any condition loss. I wouldnt mind a version that had everything but the last negative or a different final modifier that caps it off being brutal. I hope they let us have it in custom mode choosing which negatives we want. My main other complain is the final reward of the tales. The badge is great but is a one time ever thing and funny enough cant even be used on the run you get it. So doing it for that save or really any other since the badge is permanent is for a few pieces of meh equipment. They added a watch item make that the final prize being able to see the exact time in game. A small thing but a nice little touch that would had made maybe doing the tales again worth it if you plan on doing an extreme length playthrough.
Love the long format videos, please do more!!!
Hey Zac,yep,great video chat, I think also they need to give us a map in wintermute and survival mode because realistically if your plane crashes most times there is a map, whether you download in a region or crash there,so a map would be so helpful,thanks😊😊.
great video, loved all the info and the straight up just talking about what you think and how you felt about the update/dlc. would listen to more of this about future updates. keep up the good work
I think the game could use long-term fire storage item. Tinder fungus would be a simple thing to implement, you'd have to craft a fire canister then you can light the canister at a fire then use it as firestarter, like oil-lamp you could refuel it with tinder fungus. Fully loaded canister could smoulder for like 12-20hrs, and would require like 4 tinder fungus? I'd leave numbers to balancing dpt.
One useful advice I've really grown to appreciate is that people are very good at detecting that something IS wrong but people are very bad at identifying what would rectify the issue. So all the critique is useful but community consensus on how to resolve the cougar is not necessarily the best advice to follow.
I'm also going to push back a little on the idea that the huge hype for the cougar caused expectations that couldn't have been met & that's why people were un happy.
No... the cougar broke the main promise of the game - an immersive survival experience where we the player pit our skills against the threats. The cougar is un-huntable. No matter how carefully you watch your back & be cautious while outside - it just teleports onto you. And after a few seconds it vanishes. Feels like it doesn't exist in the game world.
I was excited about the cougar but when I learned it was basically an event designed to force you to hop regions.... I had planned to just leave it disabled.
don't make cougar spawn behind my back. Make it use line of sight blockers while stalking and make it possible for me to see it from afar. Oh yeah, and cheat death should give random affliction from misery mode.
Misery Mode has officially given TLD the full Halo difficulty suite:
Pilgrim = Easy
Voyager = Normal
Stalker = Heroic
Interloper = Legendary
Misery = LASO
not a Halo player. What does LASO stand for?
@@littlebirdy3545 Legendary All Skulls On
(skulls are toggleable difficulty modifiers, ie one makes enemies have more health, another makes them throw grenades more, another makes less ammo drop, etc)
I think I'd prefer the cougar work something like this:
1) Spawning grace period at game start -- 20 days scaling by difficulty.
2) Player gets the anxiety debuff when the cougar is moving into their current region. It takes 1-2 days for the cougar to arrive.
3) It stays in the region for 7-8 days.
4) It has a # of camping locations in every region. It spawns at one of them and is respawned to another every 8-10 hours, provided the player isn't close to it.
5) The cougar is not visible from a long distance. It only renders when you get close. Distance scales with weather and light.
6) Other than that, handle it like any other animal. If the player stumbles close to where it is camping hidden, it stalks the PC. It doesn't bleed out.
I think I'd probably also make a small chance the cougar leaves a claw stuck in the player after a struggle and make the cougar claw knife more of a consumable. Low durability weapon that is almost like a melee survival flare. Maybe even allow the player to shorten a bear struggle by spending one. Also make bombing the cougar's nest shut it off for a lot longer 60+ days at least.
I say keep making videos like this if it’s more convenient because I think your able to nail it pretty easily
Whether you like the cougar or not, I think it's a bit of an odd choice to remove it altogether. Especially since it was a toggle anyway, but now I needed to update the game again to REMOVE content.
It wasn't a toggle for Misery mode. Not sure about Interloper.
Sundered pass felt the easiest..there was a path leading to everything and it was wayyy open enough to scout for wolves/path forward. I love the open vastness design adding a sense of distance and travel.
I bought the DLC but the disappearing item bug forced me back to the build just prior its release, Hesitant Prospector I think. Even if that bug has been fully squashed (again), I plan on waiting until after everything has been fully released and enough time has passed to where the inevitable bugs are patched out. The way they implemented the cougar was honestly really cool in my opinion, I like the idea that it is better at hunting you than you could ever possibly be, which is what the unavoidable attack feels like. However, I get that people don't like feeling their agency is being taken away and the argument that they should be able to outsmart the cougar in some manner, or counter it without being attacked, does make sense.
If they do decide to make a counter against the cougar (aside from leaving the region/destroying the next/etc) where you can fight it before it catches you, I'd like it to be extremely difficult. Traps (aside from rabbits) intended to capture/kill or even delay/hamper predators would be one way to not only provide a possible counter to the cougar, but to also counter other animals. However, this does go against the idea that the character is not an expert in survival and the deck is supposed to be stacked against us. I look forward to seeing how Hinterland addresses the cougar in the future.
So its not much of a timeline but they said they intend to rerelease the cougar BEFORE part 6 of Tales.
One of the most absurd thing about it is fact that they added misery because players figured out how to beat main point of interloper (every run will end with dead eventually). Yet at the same time they've added a cheat death mechanic, which is just huge blow to the permadeath.
I don't get it, they want to go for two paths at the same time, eat cookie and have a cookie.
Trying to make every type of player happy eventually leadsto lack of direction and character
Wish we could remove the cheat death without ruining achievement and badge progression.
I don't like knowing that I can basically ignore deadly scenarios and I hate having useless icons on my screen.
"A game for everyone is a game for no one"
Just don't use it
@@vincentbamboo2260 achivement progression :'o
its because the TLD community is not one entity or one person, but a myriad of people who play for different reasons. the cheat death system can simply be ignored if you want to keep permadeath. also the mechanic is not nearly as forgiving as one thinks; load up a new game and try the cheat death system out for yourself. if the world is older than a couple months it is extremely difficult to survive long enough to become stabilised. think of it less as a free revive and more of a final desperate stretch to keep the world alive.
as for misery mode I'm a stalker main so I cant speak much for it. what I will say is keeping multiple communities happy with different rule types is commonplace in single player games and it doesn't tear them apart. examples are risk of rain, project zomboid, terraria, (debatably) stardew valley, and a million different others. maybe don't starve is the best example. point is, any change to the game that is optional is a change that by definition cannot be a bad change.
I wish there's was a "rare" variations on animals, like the ghost deer, old bear, a polar bear maybe, those would be unique and had unique loot
For the Old Bear, you could harvest the arrows on its back?
@@NomadSage07More meat and tougher bear coat too
Regarding cheat death, I remember I once died due to changes to tree hitboxes. Previously I had a spot between a tree and some rocks where I'd cook, because I knew if I placed a campfire in the right place there was only one way wolves could get to me and they'd stop before the fire.
However, after an update to hitboxes there were now two directions which the wolves could get to me from, and I lost my run when I was attacked from behind while fast-forwarding. I only figured out it was the hitbox after some testing.
I feel like these sorts of situations where yes, I could've done things to prevent the death, but at the same time it was a meta reason why I died, are a good example of where cheat death wouldn't have felt "wrong" relative to maintaining permadeath.
I don't mind kitty warping into the reality directly on my back. I just didn't like those immersion-breaking icons and the fact that kitty mauled me twice in a row indoors, ending my interloper run that i prepped days prior, specifically to test new content
I personally think it would be really cool to have the cougar an in game predator but you cannot deter it or kill it with a critical hit that way you have a really high chance of getting mauled.
the part where you explain how people have mixed feelings about the cougar using psychology was awesome. especially since I've heard you are a professor in the subject. thats so cool!!! amazing video zak..