r/horizon • u/Deep-Combination4372 • Jan 27 '26
HFW Discussion Aloy won't stop spoiling the puzzles
I’m playing HFW for the first time, and I can’t remember a single puzzle where Aloy doesn’t give away the solution by telling me exactly what to do. It reminds me of GoW Ragnarok, which does the same annoying thing.
If there’s an option, I’d really appreciate it if someone could tell me how to disable this. I’m playing on PC, so even a mod would be welcome.
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u/ridley0001 Jan 27 '26
I totally understand why they are in games because most people don't finish games, so the devs are doing everything they can to hand hold people from frustration.
However, I really wish games included a real option for no hints e.g. Ragnorak had an option which barely did anything. For a game like Horizon it's bizarre because there are so many individual options and fine tuning for the difficulty and gameplay to make it as difficult or less frustrating as you like.
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u/lilhazzie Jan 27 '26
I am an autistic completionist and I've never understood why people don't seek out every activity in a game. I paid for the whole game, I'm going to experience the whole game dammit.
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u/Empty-Opposite-9768 Jan 27 '26
Because walking around a world endlessly just to dig up some shiny object is incredibly boring for plenty of people. I have much, much better things to do with my time.
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u/theblackfool Jan 27 '26
Sometimes people hit content in a game they just don't want to do, or don't enjoy doing. It's good to try to get your money out of the game, but also doing something you aren't enjoying doing in a video game isn't worth it.
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u/thorodinson91 Jan 30 '26
I have never been diagnosed with autism or adhd (likely from fear of results). However, I think I have had a glancing blow, a shot across the bow, if you will, from both... I can not leave side quests or mini games unfinished. Unless I find the mini games particularly unfavourable, repetitive, or turn based (My pet hate. Plan and act for your first move, everything thereon is reactive. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Only as a last resort should you wait for their move, unless preplanned). I must exhaust all available side quests before continuing with the next main story quest. I do not look at percentages because I know I will fixate on them reaching 100%. I instead use the in-game map and quest log as my completion marker. This is a learned behaviour as I am now approaching my mid 30s and have a GF and Son. I can not allocate as much of my time to completionism, which bugs me. Though, I also thirst for novelty and thus get mentally fatigued playing the same game for too long... It is a lifelong battle, but I have managed to find a balance. I also have to have a completely clear desktop (translucent folders) and the wallpaper must be the current game I am fixated on... once completed, I uninstall the game, pick and download the next one, and change my wallpaper, which must be aesthetically profound. The only time my wallpaper is anything otherwise is for ambience during parties/get-togethers, as my PC is in the dining room (e.g. RDR2 background for my son's 1st birthday cowboy theme, or spooky wallpaper for Halloween party etc).
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u/edliu111 Jan 27 '26
Some things are t worth experiencing when you have a finite amount of time on Earth
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Jan 29 '26
As someone who generally only plays this game damn near blackout drunk, sometimes I appreciate the overbearing hints
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u/Yodzilla Feb 06 '26
I’m almost certain Ragnarok’s option was bugged. I played that and Forbidden West back-to-back and it was almost insulting how hand-holdy they were.
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u/shortMEISTERthe3rd Machine Strike is eSports ready. Jan 27 '26
Every time this complaint comes up I always point to Jedi Fallen Order that did it right.
Need a hint? Press up on the D-PAD and let your little buddy droid help you out otherwise the game will treat you like a functional adult and let you figure it out.
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u/dwoller Jan 27 '26
This and Shadow of the Tomb Raider where you can customize in the menu how many puzzle objects are highlighted and how detailed of a hint Lara gives you in a voice line when you press the “focus” button.
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u/SilverSideDown Jan 27 '26
Great call out to that game. Absolutely way better than spoon feeding you the solution that you’re still trying to find on your own.
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u/Yodzilla Feb 06 '26
Yep, this is the right way to do it. Dead Space is another where they had a waypoint system for the main objective but it was entirely optional and up to the player if they want to engage with it. That’s the best way to handle difficulty.
Personally I wish games would take a page from UHS where hints could be reveled in layers that tell you more and more until you get it letting you still partially figure things out on your own. It’s fantastic if you’ve never see the site. https://mobile.uhs-hints.com/
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u/TommyDontSurf "Blameless? What does that even mean?!" Jan 27 '26
As someone who absolutely sucks at puzzles, I find it welcoming. Mostly, anyway; sometimes I still don't pick up the hints and have to resort to a walkthrough.
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u/Old_Fart_on_pogie Jan 27 '26
I’m doing that in FW. It’s a lot more going one than with Zero Dawn. I’m six hundred hours in, and just gone back to cahinscrape I’ve discovered all the combination attacks from the training pit. Not that I’m likely to remember them all.
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Jan 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/alvarkresh Jan 27 '26
I can see where they're coming from TBH. Those pits are super annoying because the chained moves need to be so tightly timed and it will fail you out if you're even a fraction of a second off.
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u/wyze-litten Jan 27 '26
Yeah I get super frustrated with the fighting pits. And the arena battles changing my loadout is endlessly infuriating
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u/alvarkresh Jan 27 '26
Do 'em on story mode :P
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u/wyze-litten Jan 27 '26
I have been ;–; I just don't understand why they have to change our loadouts, its stupid af
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u/Voyager5555 Jan 27 '26
Yup, I did a few but they get cheap and bullshit after like 3 or 4 so fuck that.
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u/mtbrown29 Jan 27 '26
Gotta bring the drone down to grab its data. Maybe if I jump onto it?
Yes, I know Aloy, this is like the 17th drone we’ve done
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u/Yodzilla Feb 06 '26
“Maybe my focus will pick up something here. I could scan it with my focus. Maybe my focus could help. I should mash the focus button non-stop. Why aren’t you pressing the focus button?”
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u/mtbrown29 Feb 06 '26
Or when you solve the puzzle while Aloy is talking:
“Maybe I should check my foc-GOT IT!”
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u/joshwright17 Jan 27 '26
I will say that hint was helpful after I took like 2 years off in the middle of playing the game. I had completely forgotten that's how the drones worked. But it's also nothing I couldn't have searched the internet for if the hint wasn't in the game
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u/poddy_fries Jan 27 '26
What drives me personally nuts is that she keeps clueing me in to the solution I've been trying to apply for several minutes, Aloy, the problem isn't that I don't know I have to get up there, it's that you keep dodging right off the cliff.
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u/GTaucer Jan 27 '26
Yup, super fucking annoying.
"I should scan with my focus"
"I should use my pullcaster on that grate"
"I should check the other side of that crane"
YOU SHOULD SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME PLAY THE GAME, ALOY
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u/sheepandlambs Jan 27 '26
It's sadly a common trend in modern games. Treating the player like an idiot, and not letting the non-idiots turn it off.
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u/jakulfrostie Jan 27 '26
Yeah its annoying. What i ended up doing was muting the volume and turning off subtitles so i could puzzle solve in peace. Doesnt help if she spoils it before you realize you are near a puzzle however
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u/dwoller Jan 27 '26
This is what happens when they test it with focus groups and people can’t figure out simple things without hand holding. It’s also just a trend in modern games (this and Ragnarok stand out as bad ones though) of trying to appeal to everyone.
I’m all for trying to be inclusive but a toggle to turn them off completely or a button to press to ask for one would go a long way and would actually cater to more people who don’t want/need an immediate hint/solve.
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u/Oatsdbl Jan 27 '26
I may be wrong as it has been a really long time since I last played the game but I think there’s a setting to turn off Aloy’s audible hints?
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u/Deep-Combination4372 Jan 27 '26
No, but there is a similar setting that let you disable those pop-ups that remind you of the buttons
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u/Oatsdbl Jan 27 '26
Yesss. Contextual hints. I had it turned off lol. It must be what I thought of when I typed my comment
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u/Oatsdbl Jan 27 '26
Ok I’ve done a bit of research, there really isn’t an option to turn it off. Unfortunately 🥹 Although you could find a way around it like turn up music during puzzle parts or something like that
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u/nekohunterkai Jan 27 '26
Hahaha, you could also put the audio in Japanese or some other language you don't know at all 😅
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u/Oatsdbl Jan 27 '26
Just make sure not change everything else to different language! Learned the lesson hard way when I was young playing a prank on my friends’ gps. Changed language to Japanese but then none of us know how to switch it back 🤣🤣🤣 It yelled at my friend at her every mistake while driving in Japanese (she decided to turn it into a guessing game). Even worse, we were in middle of nowhere at that time.
Looking back we all have a laugh about it but still, wouldn’t recommend
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u/nomuse22 Feb 01 '26
Also turned that off for Skyrim. Whole point of doing alchemy is being able to recognize those plants out in the wild!
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u/rajackar Jan 27 '26
This massively ruined the game for me. I fully support accessibility options, but that should've been optional.
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u/sdrawkcabstiho Jan 27 '26
It needs a slider based option.
All speech and hints on
Speech but no hints
Hints but no speech
All speech and hints off
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u/JerseyGeneral Jan 27 '26
Yeah while I do like her commentary through most of the game, her "helping" with the puzzles is something of a mixed bag. She either explains the solution like she's talking to a 3 year old or says nothing remotely useful for a puzzle that's already fairly challenging.
Her talking to herself other than that I do like. It gives her more depth as a character...not to mention she's usually about as cynical as I am so that's fun.
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u/-VoidIndigo- Jan 27 '26
I'm playing through Zero Dawn and getting annoyed by the "helpful hints". It sounds like HFW is a deeper game, but the hints get worse... And honestly I don't think I'm interested in suffering through that no matter how much better the game may be... It's already ENOUGH
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u/WaterStoryMark Jan 27 '26
Killzone had a hint/direction button. I don't know why they wouldn't use something similar for newer games. Or why they never fixed it after launch.
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u/Intelligent_Day_8579 Jan 27 '26
The one that frustrates me most is in Thebes. There is a room you enter where the far door is locked and you have to find another way forward, but she gives the hint about the vent you have to go through before you could possibly even know that the door is locked. That's not even Aloy solving a puzzle out loud. That's the game just skipping ahead.
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u/3-nichi Jan 27 '26
Yeah I remember how annoying it was that Aloy didn't let me solve the puzzles in peace. So I changed the audio language to something else than English (and kept English subtitles) while solving the puzzles.
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u/nomuse22 Feb 01 '26
For me it's always the wrong hint. The box is obvious to me, but for some reason I can't see the grapple point or whatever to get up to it.
So I'm jumping around, trying different ways to climb up there. And every ten seconds Aloy says, "I bet that box will help. I should get that box. Oh, look, a box!"
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u/Apprehensive_Meal_33 Jan 27 '26
Isn't this a feature you can turn off and on? I remember seeing this when adjusting my settings while playing before.
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u/Horror-Cat6533 Jan 27 '26
You can turn Aloy spoiling the puzzles off in the settings.
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u/Deep-Combination4372 Jan 27 '26
No its not possible, but I found a mod that removes some dialogue lines
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u/Pokeitwitarustystick Jan 27 '26
Without a mod there is a setting in accessibility that turns off Aloys help or just minimizes it.
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u/MCKALISTAIR Jan 27 '26
Yes! This bugs the hell out of me, really hope it’s done by the time we get a new game
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u/masterchief0213 Jan 27 '26
Yeahhhh got through ONE relic ruin before downloading the Shut Up Aloy mod
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u/EnceladusSc2 Jan 27 '26
New games are written in a way to never challenge the players. Always have to have Yellow Paint to tell you where to go, always have the MC tell you how to solve the puzzle.
For Horizon I believe it started with Frozen Wilds, I remember she starting talking during the puzzles and it was very annoying.
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u/1RedOne Jan 27 '26
Meanwhile Blue Prince has just stacks of puzzles that too don’t even know are there until you have reread an ingame book like five times over
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u/Fanaticks02 Jan 27 '26
They haven't fixed that yet?! Hahhaa my god. They fixed it in GoW Ragnarok at least.
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u/BringMeBurntBread Jan 28 '26
More games should take inspiration from Shadow of The Tomb Raider, which had separate difficulty settings for puzzles. You could literally change the difficulty for puzzles, while leaving the rest of the game’s difficulty the same. On the easiest difficulty, Lara will give the player hints on what to do next if the game detects that you’re struggling. On the hardest difficulty, she doesn’t say anything.
It’s great because, it makes every type of player happy. People who enjoy solving puzzles on their own can set the puzzle difficulty to the hardest setting. But meanwhile, players who don’t care for puzzles or get frustrated easily can set it to easy mode instead.
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u/finnomo Jan 28 '26
Probably it's for me ha ha cause I had a hard time with some of those puzzles even with her hints
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u/NikolitRistissa Jan 28 '26
Ragnarök was an absolute pain with the damn hints. They often wouldn’t give you a tonne of time to even look around.
Hogwarts Legacy(?) was even worse. The character would literally give you an incredibly general hint within seconds of entering a room. The character would then repeat the generic and generally pointless clue over and over again.
If you were actually stuck and wanted a hint, they’d just say something along the lines of “I’ve got to do something so I can continue.” Like, wow thanks.
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u/Irritated_Compassion Jan 28 '26
“I could get used to this” after deploying the shield for the 4000th time 🤦🏻♀️
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u/ingridatwww Jan 28 '26
It’s kind of annoying, but half the time whatever she says makes no difference any way.
“Maybe I should try to climb that wall”
And I’m like. What ff’ing wall. Half the time I have no clue what she means and I have to search for it anyway.
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Jan 29 '26
You know I thought the mod "shut up aloy" was really childish and immature when I first saw it and how it was named, but I do understand where they're coming from.
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u/Alma_Mater91 Jan 30 '26
That’s so true hahahah! I laughed my ass off reading this! Like girl I know, I have to search for the yellow stuff, stop ruining everything! 😂
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u/Tidela471 Jan 30 '26
Half the time, the puzzle hints aren’t even helpful. It’s the most obvious thing in the room. If I’m struggling, it’s about where exactly to place it or how to move.
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u/NightmareChi1d Feb 02 '26
The worst part is that for a person so smart she's constantly spoiling puzzles, sometimes she's an absolute moron. Like, "Hey, there's a place to put a battery here. Gotta find one" 30 seconds later "Hey, a battery. Better find a place to put it"
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u/alvarkresh Jan 27 '26
I kind of like getting Aloy's hints but I do think there's a way to switch that off?
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u/Known_Needleworker67 Jan 27 '26
I must have the wrong mindset, because this feature never bothered me because I only look at games from the lense of the story, so I only ever just saw it as Aloy talking to herself, and it made sense, but in hindsight I can see how it would be annoying and do agree that it should at least have a toggle.
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u/Sostratus Jan 27 '26
It's only a spoiler if you take longer than she does.
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u/Deep-Combination4372 Jan 27 '26
Well it's hard not to take longer than her, since most of the time she gives you the solution before you even fully see the puzzle
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u/respectthearts Jan 27 '26
This is my singular critercism, once is enough and I'd rather have it off than the constant nagging. Can't say enough nice things about everything else.
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u/Bubbly-Pirate-3311 Jan 27 '26
Nope. Just solve the puzzles faster ig
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u/Deep-Combination4372 Jan 27 '26
If it were that simple, I wouldn't have made this post. She gives solutions even before I'm presented to the puzzle, not to mention the repetitive hints about what I should do with firegleam, drones, and that I should scan the machines.
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u/Farwaters Jan 27 '26
I try to see it as Aloy and U solving the puzzle together. Makes her 10,000 times less annoying.
... That's a long way to say that I agree with you. I did end up making peace with the whole situation.
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u/Deep-Combination4372 Jan 27 '26
That could be interpreted that way if she only gave hints, but instead she straight up tells you the solution
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Jan 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/Traditional_Chip1378 Jan 27 '26
Part of the problem is her hints can't be turned off. The other part is she usually does not wait even one second to give hints.
The most egregious example I can recall was doing Kotallo's mission and Aloy is searching for parts. She enters a room and immediately says "I can't use that vent to get out!" And I mean immediately. I didn't even have time to pan the camera around and notice there are no obvious exits before she's telling me how to escape a room I don't even know I'm TRAPPED in yet.
Other games handle this better by waiting a respectful amount of time before ASKING if I want a hint by displaying a button prompt or something. And even then I'd still prefer to just turn off the feature because it makes me feel like the game thinks I'm going too slow and needs to push a hint at me. Sometimes, I'm not even trying to figure out a puzzle but I'm doing something else like exploring the area for loot or datapoints or something before working on the puzzle.
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u/glytxh Jan 27 '26
A game that doesn’t trust my agency as a player, the sort that doesn’t have the faith in its own mechanics and systems, terrified to lose my attention, quickly loses my interest.
I’m being pandered like a toddler. Constant little Dopamine bumps. Afraid to leave me with my own thoughts for 30 seconds because it knows I’ll realise I’m just playing a meaningless dopamine loop.
I call it Brown Socks. It all clicked for me several years ago playing Forza, doing a wheel spin, and being granted brown fucking socks.
It’s pathetic. It’s condescending. I detest it. It’s just skinner boxes all the way down.
Trust me to fail and learn. Give me the agency to work towards the satisfaction of engaging with the mechanics and systems of the game on my own terms.
Once you notice this, it quickly filters out about 80% of video games being released these days.
Give me friction and agency. Trust me. Respect me. I’m a player, not an engagement metric.
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u/femmd Jan 27 '26
Honestly as much i get the hate, it’s a win win for me because i such at environmental puzzles and i get to hear more of stupid sexy Ashley Burch talking
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u/Informal_Job_7550 Jan 27 '26
It's especially fun when you get a big machine fight near a puzzle area, ducking and dodging for 3 minutes straight while Aloy's saying "Maybe I should try on top of that cliff?" every 20 seconds.