Farket too?

[Sylar]

Farket is one of the most respected persons on all things The Forest and Sons of the Forest, and is a great game reviewer/test-player who gives great tips.

He was even invited by Endnight, themselves, to play-test their game for them. He had a lot of positive things to say as he expected a lot of things to follow. He is even complaining now, and we all know why that's the case.

I made a massive post that highlights all the inconsistencies, the general lack of content carried over from the previous game—to which this is a sequel—and balance issues within this game.

The Variable Artificially Intelligent Leveling (V.A.I.L.) system needs to reduce levelling (the number and type of enemies spawning, as well as their frequency) when the player does things that should countervail detection or deter aggression. Even if temporary.

For example, the number of effigies within a certain proximity of the player, the use of leaf armor, washing off blood, when you are indoors instead of being exposed to the outdoors, enemies tracking you based on your direction of movement, to ensure trail-based spawning exists as its own thing when you avoid running into a cannibal camp.

In fact, there are so many ways the V.A.I.L. system can truly be made artificially more intelligent, not only in its levelling, but in what events trigger the levelling, how that levelling responds, and things that countervail levelling.

Even a simple interim/interval between these attacks, for example, directly following a serious ambush there's a day's respite from another major one, where you know you're likely to only face one or two enemies, not another horde minutes later... that would be great.

The L2P aspect of the game regarding the V.A.I.L. system feels flat and very one-dimensional, which is something you cannot fix with additional content.

That said, additional content such as wire-traps and other important carryovers that diversify the player's options and strategic approach, in turn laying the foundation for balancing other aspects as opposed to accidentally over-tweaking things, would be welcomed by most if not all players.

Please, we appreciate everything this game is offering already. But the fact is, it's like having the prey stand directly in front of you in real life but having no atlatl to hunt it. That's the general sense I'm getting.

The feeling of opportunity not being realized.

[grinsekeatzchen]

Or Just use what we Had in the First Game and build Up on it.

The "we want to make a new Game whitout Copy Paste the old" train has left Long ago.

[trevorkrause]

Farket hated the game on release and all downhill from that. Game is basically dead. Farket is no good anymore.

[Kotzwurst]

No offense to him but Farket should stop with SOTF if it makes him so negative and doesnt give him a good time. The game is amazing, alot of his complaints over the update videos and playthroughs dont even make sense and it feels like he just complains about the game for the sake of complaining.

[Yaga-Shura]

Who? Never heard of this person. I don't need other people to tell me if I can enjoy something or not.

[trevorkrause]

Originally posted by Yaga-Shura:

Who? Never heard of this person. I don't need other people to tell me if I can enjoy something or not.

Farket promised us the promised lands and actually gave us mordor at cost.

[grinsekeatzchen]

This is what Happens when you Put unnecessary stuff into youre Post. Instead of the Main Point people concentrate on exactly this, the unnecessary stuff ..

And now we have another stupid thread which bumps the other actually good Threads Out...

[ConflicT Zv]

Yeah I'm a bit confused about the topic of discussion here. Are we talking about Farket not enjoying the game or the issues with the spawn system? I guess I'll address both.

It's pretty clear Farket is dealing with some issues in his personal life, such as his mention of quitting nicotine, that are amplifying his frustrations with the game, but that doesn't mean the frustrations are unwarranted. He put so much of his life into creating content for The Forest that after so much waiting he really wants to enjoy this one, but it's hard in its current state. Many things like bugs, systems and mechanics not working properly or not in the way they would be expected to, inconsistencies and so on, all plaguing moment to moment gameplay, it's hard not to get frustrated. It's kind of refreshing to see as I had many of the same frustrations while playing.

Regarding the spawn system, it's true a lot of work needs to be done here. It often just feels like horde mode all the time. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do, then enemies know where you are and will find you.

How I would fix this is to have a "local anger level" in addition to the "world anger level" that currently dictates enemy aggression. The world anger level should dictate the difficulty scaling of the world as a whole. What enemy types are allowed to spawn, how many spawn at camps, patrols or raids, how much armor they wear, etc. The local anger level should dictate how aware the enemies are of your position and the frequency of attacks. This would be tied to cannibal camps within a distance from you. Patrols that spot you and are left alive, increases the anger level around the camps in the area. Kill the patrols and this delays the effect. Destroying camps would temporarily slow raids until they rebuild. Move to a new area on the map and the enemies are unaware again until you start making your presence known. Camps taken over by mutants would spawn mutant patrols in that area with similar rules being applied. This would provide a nice back and forth where you have some agency over the pacing of the game, but the difficulty scaling stays consistent over time.

[grinsekeatzchen]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Yeah I'm a bit confused about the topic of discussion here. Are we talking about Farket not enjoying the game or the issues with the spawn system? I guess I'll address both.

It's pretty clear Farket is dealing with some issues in his personal life, such as his mention of quitting nicotine, that are amplifying his frustrations with the game, but that doesn't mean the frustrations are unwarranted. He put so much of his life into creating content for The Forest that after so much waiting he really wants to enjoy this one, but it's hard in its current state. Many things like bugs, systems and mechanics not working properly or not in the way they would be expected to, inconsistencies and so on, all plaguing moment to moment gameplay, it's hard not to get frustrated. It's kind of refreshing to see as I had many of the same frustrations while playing.

Regarding the spawn system, it's true a lot of work needs to be done here. It often just feels like horde mode all the time. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do, then enemies know where you are and will find you.

How I would fix this is to have a "local anger level" in addition to the "world anger level" that currently dictates enemy aggression. The world anger level should dictate the difficulty scaling of the world as a whole. What enemy types are allowed to spawn, how many spawn at camps, patrols or raids, how much armor they wear, etc. The local anger level should dictate how aware the enemies are of your position and the frequency of attacks. This would be tied to cannibal camps within a distance from you. Patrols that spot you and are left alive, increases the anger level around the camps in the area. Kill the patrols and this delays the effect. Destroying camps would temporarily slow raids until they rebuild. Move to a new area on the map and the enemies are unaware again until you start making your presence known. Camps taken over by mutants would spawn mutant patrols in that area with similar rules being applied. This would provide a nice back and forth where you have some agency over the pacing of the game, but the difficulty scaling stays consistent over time.

The Anger Level was a Thing in the First Game and worked great for the Most Part. It dictated how often you where attacked when they discoverd youre Base.
They would literly send Scout Out who would circle youre Base.
I Had a gameplay where i absolutly didn't Hurt any cannibal. And even when the mutants started appearing, the cannibal groups would Not senseless Attack. And i hadn't much attacks at all.

It was so fun, playing with the mechanics and seeing them do their patrouls and stuff. They Had sich a good Thing going on. I really don't understand what they thought with this Game uu.

[ConflicT Zv]

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

The Anger Level was a Thing in the First Game and worked great for the Most Part. It dictated how often you where attacked when they discoverd youre Base.
They would literly send Scout Out who would circle youre Base.
I Had a gameplay where i absolutly didn't Hurt any cannibal. And even when the mutants started appearing, the cannibal groups would Not senseless Attack. And i hadn't much attacks at all.

It was so fun, playing with the mechanics and seeing them do their patrouls and stuff. They Had sich a good Thing going on. I really don't understand what they thought with this Game uu.

I agree The Forest did this very well. But the map was small enough that the game could spawn in a bunch of entities and keep track of them all across the whole world. They were given their own routines and didn't just blindly attack on spawn. It felt organic and lively, not forced. The map in Sotf is too large for this system to be implemented, so we have a 100 meter spawn radius instead to simulate it. The way the attack behaviors are handled just make it feel swarmy, not like the game of cat and mouse that was achieved so elegantly by The Forest.

[Ataxio]

I stopped watching Farket because quite honestly his contents not the same as it was and he's just not putting out useful stuff.

I liked being able to see where and how to get stuff. Now it's a painful 20 min of him struggling to grasp the mechanics or build some useless structure.

[grinsekeatzchen]

Originally posted by ConflicT Zv:

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

The Anger Level was a Thing in the First Game and worked great for the Most Part. It dictated how often you where attacked when they discoverd youre Base.
They would literly send Scout Out who would circle youre Base.
I Had a gameplay where i absolutly didn't Hurt any cannibal. And even when the mutants started appearing, the cannibal groups would Not senseless Attack. And i hadn't much attacks at all.

It was so fun, playing with the mechanics and seeing them do their patrouls and stuff. They Had sich a good Thing going on. I really don't understand what they thought with this Game uu.

I agree The Forest did this very well. But the map was small enough that the game could spawn in a bunch of entities and keep track of them all across the whole world. They were given their own routines and didn't just blindly attack on spawn. It felt organic and lively, not forced. The map in Sotf is too large for this system to be implemented, so we have a 100 meter spawn radius instead to simulate it. The way the attack behaviors are handled just make it feel swarmy, not like the game of cat and mouse that was achieved so elegantly by The Forest.

Yeah, thats their next mistakes. Who has asked for this huge af map?
Bigger is Not Always better and Herr it definitly makes a Lot worse.

[Hellsmoke]

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

Yeah, thats their next mistakes. Who has asked for this huge af map?
Bigger is Not Always better and Herr it definitly makes a Lot worse.

I disagree. Nobody wants a tiny map where you know every pixel in less than a month.

[Sylar]

Originally posted by Hellsmoke77:

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

Yeah, thats their next mistakes. Who has asked for this huge af map?
Bigger is Not Always better and Herr it definitly makes a Lot worse.

I disagree. Nobody wants a tiny map where you know every pixel in less than a month.

+1

Originally posted by Ataxio:

I stopped watching Farket because quite honestly his contents not the same as it was and he's just not putting out useful stuff.

I liked being able to see where and how to get stuff. Now it's a painful 20 min of him struggling to grasp the mechanics or build some useless structure.

+1

[Sylar]

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

The Anger Level was a Thing in the First Game and worked great for the Most Part. It dictated how often you where attacked when they discoverd youre Base.
They would literly send Scout Out who would circle youre Base.
I Had a gameplay where i absolutly didn't Hurt any cannibal. And even when the mutants started appearing, the cannibal groups would Not senseless Attack. And i hadn't much attacks at all.

It was so fun, playing with the mechanics and seeing them do their patrouls and stuff. They Had sich a good Thing going on. I really don't understand what they thought with this Game uu.

I like where this game is intending to go but can it get there? I'm kind of hopeful it will but one thing is for damn sure, the spawning and cannibal logic needs serious fine-turning.

I'll gladly admit, I still have respect for Farket as he seems to be a decent human being. Even though I don't follow his content as much anymore, mainly due to my fading interest in Endnight, he's 100% on point regarding what Endnight is doing wrong regarding Sons of the Forest.

They invited him to test-play. But are they willing to actually take his feedback seriously? To take our feedback seriously regarding the way this issue is annoying clearly many of us? Look, at the end of the night, I just want to have enjoyed a fun game.

Whatever will be will be.

I've made my peace, but it would be nice if the developers could show us in the next few updates that they really mean business when it comes to attention to the important details that can refine the whole experience.

[Ryzilynt]

I'm big picture most of the time. Everything they (devs) are doing makes perfect sense to me. Get the foundation in place. Build in the more granular mechanics, items, story , events etc. Consider feedback from the base. Then once everything is in place go hard on balancing, bugs, and optimization.

If i'm looking at it like a game that isn't finished yet, then everything seems perfectly reasonable.

I'm sure at least half the people reading this don't care for my assessment , and i'm OK with that.