Suggestions for the Developers

Dear Devs / Pavel,

I have been playing MudRunner and / MR Spintires with a friend cooperatively for a little while now playing in hardcore mode.

Some features we would like to see as a priority:

Ability to override time change. Playing at night can be a bad experience at times.
Ability to customise goals and map settings.

Instead of 6 logs to be delivered I would like to be able to set up 50 logs or whatever to custom destinations, this makes the elaborate logistical network we create worthwhile. We enjoy working out the most efficient way to do things however the current game mechanics do not punish or reward our efforts in any worthwhile way.

The physics and vehicles are brilliant - the gameplay needs some attention.

Some things that would make the gameplay far more enjoyable:

The shadow objects of other vehicles not belonging to you completely destroys the experience.
Being able to pick up another players trailer and transfer tractor units would make cooperative play far more enjoyable and useful.
Being able to drive through any vehicle you want if its in the way is again something that completely breaks the experience.

I also don't like the packing logs mechanic, it makes it very stable and easy to do but it feels a bit cheaty - I would like hardcore mode to be actually load up 20 logs - strap them down and then go - it would mean you would need a production line effort to load logs and you could tailor the weight of your loads to the terrain you are on.

A more demanding suggestion would be to look at deformable and damagable terrain and objects - bulldozers to make our own forest roads would be epic.

I hope some of this sounds like good ideas to you!

I don't play multiplayer in this game but I like some of your ideas. They may be too late for MR but perhaps MR2 can incorporate some of them. I especially like the idea of hardcore mode requiring more realistic log loading & packing. Making a huge packed load out of 2 long logs always seemed cheap to me, especially when you can drop & repack any time for convenience. Hardcore mode should be more hardcore. But I think they should leave the night alone, at least for hardcore mode. I don't like the night either but I like the additional challenge it provides and the good feeling that comes with sunrise. Nonstop daylight would get boring.

And clearing trees and making roads & bridges would be pretty awesome, something I hope we'll see in MR2.

last edited by Unster

Many good ideas.
Well, you can't just drop and repack load. Because there is a bug in the that make the logs disappear. So you have to get new one's anyway.

@dragonb1988 I'm aware but from what I've seen it's only a bug with short logs.

It happens with medium and long logs to.

@dragonb1988
I think I've seen it once with medium logs but at other times they worked correctly. I have yet to see it with long logs. This is definitely one of those things I wish the devs would fix and finalize. At the minimum I want the behavior to be consistent with all types of logs.

Well since the dev's did say that there was not going to be any more patch or DLC after The American Wild DLC, but did released one after all. Is it very hard to know what will happen to Spintires Mudrunner further. Was it the last patch or not, or are the focus on Mudrunner 2?
I guess we just wait to see and probably have to pay for it anyway, no matter how big or how many fan's there are.
We just have to hope that the next thing will be a lot better, bigger and are with less bug's or error's then the previous one's.

@dragonb1988 Last time I heard from the source, MR is still in "active development" and another patch is coming. I hope they keep it going until MR2 comes out.

@unster
Yeah I hope so. Because the game concept is awesome. But its need a little TLC to fix all of the smaller issues and bug's that really can strike a nerve some times.

I agree, 8 points to finish a lumber mill is to little should be like 20. Also 2,3or 4 logs to pack on hardcore mode is to easy. So I fill the truck with logs before I pack it to make it more fun for me.
I like scavenger mode it makes it more challenging. Would be cool if lumber mill required weight for longs to bring to mills.

But what the game needs is a good loader like a JD 544. But the loader needs to work while being able to drive. I play PS4 so it would be easy to go into to "loader mode" have forward and reverse the same as automatic and the right stick for loader controls. R3 open and closes grapple. All loaders are controlled with 1 stick anyways.
B trains would be cool too.
Also need a setting to reduce steering sensitivity.

For devs.... Good job on the game. I've been driving flatbeds, b trains, a trains, RGNs and step decks for 26 years now. Been around heavy equipment my whole life. You nailed the feeling of driving these things and what it feels like to get stuck but more importantly the satisfaction of getting out of the mud. Well done!

@wiatowski said in Suggestions for the Developers:

I agree, 8 points to finish a lumber mill is to little should be like 20. Also 2,3or 4 logs to pack on hardcore mode is to easy. So I fill the truck with logs before I pack it to make it more fun for me.
I like scavenger mode it makes it more challenging. Would be cool if lumber mill required weight for longs to bring to mills.

But what the game needs is a good loader like a JD 544. But the loader needs to work while being able to drive. I play PS4 so it would be easy to go into to "loader mode" have forward and reverse the same as automatic and the right stick for loader controls. R3 open and closes grapple. All loaders are controlled with 1 stick anyways.
B trains would be cool too.
Also need a setting to reduce steering sensitivity.

For devs.... Good job on the game. I've been driving flatbeds, b trains, a trains, RGNs and step decks for 26 years now. Been around heavy equipment my whole life. You nailed the feeling of driving these things and what it feels like to get stuck but more importantly the satisfaction of getting out of the mud. Well done!

8 is way to little. The way the game works is your logging route will soften and get harder to navigate the more you run over over it, problem with this is that with 8 load points you can fill a lumber mill in 1-2 trips. So the map has very little chance to deform.

If mills had 20-30 load points, it'd require a lot more trips back and forth, which in turn would make a map deformation a much bigger deal over time.

Plus I kinda hope online gets dedicated servers in Mudrunner instead of running Pier2Pier. By rights 8 load points is way to easy online, 4 players and 8 points? Half the time by the time I even gather a load of wood, other players already has a map finished. If single player has, lets say 50 total load points (25 points per mill, most maps having 2 mills, also just a good round number for examples sake). Online should at the very least double that and have 100 load points.

I'd even argue since online can have up to 4 players, then it should have 4 times the amount of load points then what single player has. So in Mudrunner how it is, instead of 16 total load points that single player gets, online maps should be requiring 64 total load points to finish off, to account for having 4 players.

Then again though, far as I know Rockstar runs Pier2Pier as well and they add a bunch of stuff to their game world, including changes to the map that never see the light of day in story mode. So maybe the game doesn't need dedicated servers to make changes to the online component.

@justinlynch3 I think 8 points per lumber mill is fine. Your problem is that since you're on a console, you are stuck with the official maps that have only 1 or 2 lumber mills and I see your point. I often play mod maps that have around 6 lumber mills (in single-player). I certainly wouldn't want to do 20-30 points per mill. That would get repetitive and boring. Like you said, maybe different rules for multiplayer could be added.

last edited by Unster

@unster said in Suggestions for the Developers:

@justinlynch3 I think 8 points per lumber mill is fine. Your problem is that since you're on a console, you are stuck with the official maps that have only 1 or 2 lumber mills and I see your point. I often play mod maps that have around 6 lumber mills (in single-player). I certainly wouldn't want to do 20-30 points per mill. That would get repetitive and boring. Like you said, maybe different rules for multiplayer could be added.

Well generally when people talk about upgrades for the next game, mods aren't a factor because it's not official content, it's fan created mods. Most official Mudrunner maps only have 2 mills and 8 points a mill really isn't enough. Some trucks can nearly fill that in 1 haul, some trucks even can fill that in 1 haul.

If Mudrunner 2 had 20 points per mill, then mod creators simply wouldn't need to put 6 mills in there created maps.

When talking about Mudrunner 2, it's always safe to assume we are talking about the official content in Mudrunner 1 and what can be improved on that in Mudrunner 2.

@justinlynch3 Got it. Still, going to the same lumber mill many times isn't really my thing. I haven't really noticed that ground deformation plays a factor. So it would really end up being repeating the same trip many times. I prefer more lumber mills in different places to go to.

last edited by Unster

@unster said in Suggestions for the Developers:

@justinlynch3 Got it. Still, going to the same lumber mill many times isn't really my thing. I haven't really noticed that ground deformation plays a factor. So it would really end up being repeating the same trip many times. I prefer more lumber mills in different places to go to.

It can start to become noticeable, but you need to make more then 1 or 2 trips.

If you ever decided that instead of using trailers to haul 7 or 8 point loads, and you just put a short log cart on a truck and started going back and forth like that, filling the mill 3 points at a time. You'll see your logging trail will eventually soften up quite a bit.

Won't really do anything much against a 4X4/6X6/8X8, but it can most certain cause issues for the 2WD's.

@justinlynch3 idk, the only time i have found to have issues with multiple trips like above with a 2wd (or 1wd if you will since open diff) is when i come across something in the deep mud or ground (sticks, rock, hidden fallen tree) and not counting a good uphill, other wise it is not so bad imo, at least once you add some weight like a log load or heavy attachments.

🤔 you know this bring up something to mind that was a thing with spintires and now i am thinking it is still a part of mudrunner as well. with the original game people who ran very low settings did not seem to have the same effect with mud as those who ran high settings. what i mean is lower settings made the mud easier to get through and vice versa. does not seem to make sense, but it was a thing.

might be something worth checking out, just need a couple people with good PC's to really test it. my PC is halfassed at best, i can not run full high settings without dropping serious frames (10-20 at best). not so good for a test like that i think. lol

@8up-local I have a pretty beefy PC and running MudRunner at max settings, minus motion blur which doesn't look good to me. And I have over 600 hours on MR. Never noticed traffic having an effect on a trail, other than visually. I'm not even sure that deformation is saved, so that could be a factor, since I almost never finish a map in one go.

@8up-local said in Suggestions for the Developers:

@justinlynch3 idk, the only time i have found to have issues with multiple trips like above with a 2wd (or 1wd if you will since open diff) is when i come across something in the deep mud or ground (sticks, rock, hidden fallen tree) and not counting a good uphill, other wise it is not so bad imo, at least once you add some weight like a log load or heavy attachments.

🤔 you know this bring up something to mind that was a thing with spintires and now i am thinking it is still a part of mudrunner as well. with the original game people who ran very low settings did not seem to have the same effect with mud as those who ran high settings. what i mean is lower settings made the mud easier to get through and vice versa. does not seem to make sense, but it was a thing.

might be something worth checking out, just need a couple people with good PC's to really test it. my PC is halfassed at best, i can not run full high settings without dropping serious frames (10-20 at best). not so good for a test like that i think. lol

Pretty sure open diff is still 2WD, as the axle can transfer power to any 1 of 2 wheels. Diff lock is just locking the diff so both wheels turn at once.

But yea I'm mainly thinking of the Logmore map. There is a log station pretty close to a lumber mill, you can get logs, go up the hill, drive down the road and bam to the lumber station. Honestly should of been a blockpost somewhere along there to stop loaded trucks going that way, it's like a 2 minute at best drive on a paved road from the log station straight to the lumber mill. How the devs missed that is beyond me.

Anyhow, when using the Bison, Freightliner or LTL9000 I'll put on a small log cart and make short log hauls back and forth. I do this because the 2WD trucks usually get stuck trying to haul long logs up the hill, but with a short load all the weight of the wood is on the truck itself and not the trailer, so with a short load they go on up no problem. I really only put long loads on the Star.

Anyhow, again, while the trip is short if I'm running a 2WD hauling short loads, I have to go back and forth a nice few times. When you reverse into the parking lot and drive out the first few times the ground is fair solid. But after going back and forth over the same tracks for a bit, it actually starts getting quite muddy. Do deformation is most certainly a thing.

(Note: Obviously this example is coming from a casual mode gameplay as in hardcore you have to go down into a swamp with a crane and manually load from log kiosks. But, it works for this example.)

As for it saving, I don't think it does. Pretty sure the map is reset to new any time you come back on.

Single player adjustable delivery targets is fine. Changing setting in Multiplayer would be something that needs to be considered and how this is presented in the lobby (e.g. Standard/Custom games).

I think the current Multiplayer experience needs to be rethought from the ground up. The current player hosted system doesn't work, especially when it results in game termination when the host leaves or crashes out. Higher delivery requirements and an unstable MP would result in zero games being completed. There needs to be a way to support players wanting to play MR the 'long way' and players wanting to jump in and out for an hour as time permits. Maybe different maps or game modes. Definitely need to have the 'hardcore long haul' MP game though, protected from the 10 year old troll who only has half an hour before bedtime to come in and mess everybody else's game up lol.

I personally like the idea of many multiple and dynamically changing log collection and delivery locations, XP being rewarded for what you do in the game towards the goal rather than particularly "8 logs delivered = complete".

This XP would then perhaps be usable to buy certain add-ons to certain trucks, i.e. 2-5% increase in power, traction, suspension travel etc. These trucks wouldn't be usable for delivery though, so all players remain on a level playing field, but they could be used for things like scouting or fuel delivery etc. Haven't fully thought that through though. Progression would need to be slow though but I love the idea of working for weeks to get some proper kick ass vehicle. I still would want it to remain in the realms of correct physics though. Maybe the idea would be that certain trucks that are unlocked in SP from progression points would only be available through XP in the MP game. EG Unimogs.

Maybe the need to make the log stations and timber yards usable before you can deliver, i.e. "clear roads to log station" (use crane/loader to move logs out of the way that are crossing the roads leading to and from). "Delivery machinery parts to timber mill" (i.e. pick up saw blades or something from some other location like a supply yard or jetty on a river with a container ship). This could be designed in such a way to require crossing the map in multiple ways (i.e. not just e.g. east>west logs>sawmill) but south>north for parts and so on. locations would be chosen to make you think more about the logistics of how to get the whole thing completed.

last edited by zoglet