Detailed Feedback on Parasites

[MueckE]

After the hotfix, i was able to test the new mechanics a bit and want to give a feedback on the parasites mechanic. I haven't got cabin fever because i am outside most of the time anyway. That you can not heal up to 100% anymore if you are rested by sleeping is one of the best things added! I play Stalker, sandbox  v339.

 

Test 1:
START AT 1%, next piece 4% risk, next pice 9% risk
-The first piece of meat will produce only a 1% risk of infection
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Test 2: How works the reset-mechanic?

9h of darkness left
-eat 1 piece bear 80% condition = 1% risk of infection

-rest/pass time

12h of darkness left
eat 1 piece bear 23% condition = 4% risk of infection
-now the counter should start again, but in 3h the risk will go to 0

-sleep 4h - risk of infection gone

PARASITES DONT RESET THE NEXT START!!!
The 24h counter does not restart after eating a piece. The first piece of meat you eat starts the counter and if you eat another piece 23h later, it will raise the chance of infection only for 1h, and not 24h again.
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Test 3:
Will one piece raise the chance of infection by 2% or more?

1 piece = 1% risk (900cal)
2 piece = 4% risk (1800cal)
3 piece = 9% risk (2500cal) (now you have to rest, or wait because you are full)
4 piece = 14% risk
5 piece = 19% risk
6 piece = 24% risk
7 piece = 29% risk
8 piece = 34% risk

Sadly, i couldnt go further because the timer was resetting (24h passed) This means that the risk will go up by 5% per piece of meat and not 2% after the second piece - before 1% and 3%.

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Conclusion:
I really do not understand what most of you guys are complaining about. The intention behind this mechanic besicly does not work - like a bug! Nobody will ever get parasites, its almost impossible. To clarify: The intention behind that was to prevent players from using wolves/bears as primary footsource, and even that is not the result. Everything is basicly the same like before. 1 piece of bear meat gives 900cal and a stalker player does not eat at least for 3 days normally. This means that you can just as usual eat your piece of meat, heal up to 100%, sleep/pass time/starve for a few days, and repeat. That's hibernation as it was before and only because i get 1% of risk AFTER eating 1 piece that heals me up to 100% makes no diffrence.

The mechnic like it is now is besicly without any use. Maybe a new pilgrim player, who eats every hour and trys to constantly have 2500cal will notice it. On the other side he does not eat wolf or bear and even if you really try hard, like i did, you can not go over 40% risk before the timer resets.
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A suggestion how to make it working (for stalker)

-the timer changed from 24h to 96h (this will guaranteed force players to eat meat from deer too. If the timer is like that, you can eat half of the time deer and half of the time wolf/bear)

-with every bite of wolf/bear meat, the timer resets to 0 (will start again) So if you eat 1 piece and after 3 days another, you will have to wait 4 days from that moment you eat the last piece (not the first)

-the first piece of meat gives the risk of 10% (instead of 1%), every next piece10% on top. I think 900cal (healing up to 100% condition, at least 3 more days survived) for a 10% chance risk is pretty reasonable.
 

If it would be balanced like that, i still would have wolf/bear meat in my freezer and totally would combine it with deer. I would eat 1 piece deer, and one piece bear per week

Side note: i am not sure about that, but can you still get food poisoning? I eat a few pieces of bear meat below 20% condition but didnt poison me? I hope this is still in the game (have to test it)

 

 

[RIchAsissts]

I was just about to start a thread about parasites on stalker and then I saw you have done it already. What I have come to realise is I can evade intestinal parasites every day If i do this. 1. Become fully starving 2. Eat two full pieces of predator meat (note you have to get the full amount of calories possible out of only two pieces as eating 3 small bits will raise the chance too much) 3. Parasite risk raised to 4% for 24 hours 4. Do stuff, pass time, sleep until fully starving again 5. Risk of parasites has passed 6. Just repeat and u don't need anything else. Obv there is a very small chance I'm going to contract it but it has not happened yet and I've been just eating bear and wolf meat alone. I'm not absolutely sure this will work so if I'm wrong please correct me but it has been working for me now for weeks

[Silentfoot]

I got parasites on stalker after my second piece of wolf meat after waiting for the timer. It looked impossible to contract at 1%, but it happened. Just a really bad roll of the dice.

[MueckE]

well there is one hidden aspect only the devs can say something about, and that's how the infection is triggered. Lets say you have a 10% chance of becoming infected, how does the game decide if or not? I guess that there is a hidden event (like rolling a dice) one time within these 24h (or maybe more often).

So make it, that this hidden event will happen within 24h once for the next 4 days each (4 times total). Than you could keep the shown chance at 5% because if you check 4 times, there is a higher chance of an infection than if you would check only once. But it is absolutly necessary to reset the timer with every piece you eat to 0!

[Drifter Man]

When reading this, I don't feel the problem lies in the parasite infection mechanics. It lies in the fact that players can choose to survive on just 1/4 of their normal daily caloric requirement and there is no long-term penalty or disadvantage in such permanent starvation.

[Scyzara]

18 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

When reading this, I don't feel the problem lies in the parasite infection mechanics. It lies in the fact that players can choose to survive on just 1/4 of their normal daily caloric requirement and there is no long-term penalty or disadvantage in such permanent starvation.

That's certainly one of the biggest problems regarding parasites.

I personally also dislike the huge randomness about parasite infections in general (some people get parasites after eating one piece of wolf meat a single time, others don't contract parasites even if they eat nothing but wolf meat for 20 days in a row...) for it is likely to cause people to draw "wrong" conclusions about the actual risk and how one should deal with it in a responsible way.

Many players have e.g. reported to shun predator meat completely and just let it rot away in the carcasses instead now because they made bad experiences with taking a risk as little as 1%. Others like me eat two pieces of predator meat (+1 piece of deer meat or a fish) per day and only get parasites once every 100days. It's nothing but plain luck whether parasites break out or not.

The fact that people starving themselves are even less likely to contract parasites than average Joe doesn't make things better. I very much hope further new gameplay mechanics (like e.g. wellbeing) are finally going to end this silly perma-starvation exploit.

 

[MueckE]

let's say your condition would rapidly go down, like if you are freezing or with bloodloss, as soon your calories are 0, than everybody would complain how unrealistic it is to have to eat all the time ...

so from a game play perspective i dont mind that you are able to hunger for a few days. The only way i see to balance it a little bit is to lower your maximum condition if you dont eat all the time. Like the cabin fever mechanic the game will check if you have eaten enough calories within a longer period of time and if not will lower your maximum condition. But that is not the topic here The thing is, that parasites are no issue at all and basicly dont work (as intended).

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, MueckE said:

But that is not the topic here The thing is, that parasites are no issue at all and basicly dont work (as intended).

I mean, you can still eat wolf meat exclusively and not contract parasites (or only rarely so) as you say, but only when you starve:

On 6/3/2016 at 7:45 PM, MueckE said:

1 piece of bear meat gives 900cal and a stalker player does not eat at least for 3 days normally. This means that you can just as usual eat your piece of meat, heal up to 100%, sleep/pass time/starve for a few days, and repeat. That's hibernation as it was before and only because i get 1% of risk AFTER eating 1 piece that heals me up to 100% makes no diffrence.

If you supply the full daily quota of 2000-3000 Cal with wolf meat, you will contract parasites more regularly. So while it makes no difference to you, it does to me, or at least it did until parasites were removed from Voyageur (my level), simply because I refuse to starve. I contracted parasites recently after I was left with wolf meat alone for one day due to mismanagement of resources on my part.

This is why I argue that starvation is the thing to be fixed, rather than parasites.

On 6/3/2016 at 7:45 PM, MueckE said:

-the first piece of meat gives the risk of 10% (instead of 1%), every next piece10% on top. I think 900cal (healing up to 100% condition, at least 3 more days survived) for a 10% chance risk is pretty reasonable.

Now, this suggestion would make it unacceptable for non-starving players to eat wolf or bear meat. One steak per day, and I'm out of antibiotics in less than 100 days.

[MueckE]

hmm but didnt you say that you are playing voyager? and parasites are exclusive for stalker?
 Nobody, even in pilgrim mode, does eat more than 1 piece because 700cal is enough to heal you up from 10% condition to 100%. As soon you have played the game a few times and are not a complete newbie anymore, you will do it like that (most of the time). Why would you eat more and waste all the food for nothing? Also, we are talking about Stalker mode and that the intention of this mechanic failed horribly because it was meant to force players to not use wolves/bears as their primary foodsource. I believe you when you say you only would survive 100 days, but for me as a stalker player it makes no diffrence at all as it is right now and with that change i still would eat bear meat.

I can understand that you dont want that, that's the reason why it is exclusive for stalker and you can chose a diffrent difficulty. What i mean is, it doesnt effect you and most of the other players anyway because you dont play Stalker. You still can do it like you want in voyager and pilgrim.

[Scyzara]

25 minutes ago, MueckE said:

Nobody, even in pilgrim mode, does eat more than 1 piece because 700cal is enough to heal you up from 10% condition to 100%. As soon you have played the game a few times and are not a complete newbie anymore, you will do it like that (most of the time).

That's just not true. Many players (including very experienced Stalker players) consciously decide NOT to starve themselves. I personally never did that (not even during my leaderboard run) just because it feels like a ridiculous and extremely immersion-breaking exploit of the game mechanics to me.

I just can't believe that the Devs are honestly fine with players consuming less than 1/3 of the calories they actually spend. At least not for hundreds of days in a row without any consequences. Hence I've decided to play the game as it is (presumably) intended to be played, even if this means disadvantages for me personally. (Not that it matters much anyway given the abundance of ammunition, prey, tools and everything else).

I wouldn't find it immersion-breaking if starving yourself for a reasonably short amount of time (let's say four to six weeks) would work as it currently does, but if you permanently starve yourself for months on end, you should definitely become weaker and finally die at some point. Not only because that's common sense, but also because getting a short-term advantage by "saving" food or ammunition should come at a long-term price in my opinion gameplay-wise.

 

[TWM]

Quote

really do not understand what most of you guys are complaining about. The intention behind this mechanic besicly does not work - like a bug! Nobody will ever get parasites, its almost impossible.

Well, I can testify from my own experience this isn't true. I play a Stalker Mode run, started out at Desolate Point and I was crafting a piece of clothing (sorely needed because I was freezing my boobs off all the time). Lived off of wolf meat for a couple of days, got the infection risk up to 14% or 19%, I don't remember precisely, but I got an infection that lasted ten days and blew out all my antibiotics + most reishi mushrooms I could find (it didn't help I'd already gotten food poisoning twice and used a reishi tea to warm up once).

So it was tight. But it's not like the hypothermia rating where a 86% chance of hypothermia means you better get indoors before it reaches a 100%, because then - and only then - will you get hypothermia.

With the infection risk it is actually like playing Russion roulette. You eat some meat, you take a chance. You eat more meat, your chance increases. So 19% chance might actually be a 1 in 5 chance you get intestinal parasites. I can't be sure, I don't know what the conversion is.

 

                                                              

[Drifter Man]

My standpoint on intentional starvation is exactly the same as Scyzara's. I never allow my character's calorie store drop to zero as long as I have any food left.

However, if we accept that eating once per three days is actually the intended way to play the game and not an exploit, then I agree that the parasite affliction cannot dissuade players from eating carnivore meat as their main source of calories. On the other hand, if you are supposed to eat regularly and keep your stomach full and happy, then the affliction is set up quite well.

I'm interested in this topic even as a Voyageur player. First, the parasite affliction may be reintroduced to Voyageur again - it was removed just a few days ago and the feedback on the decision was somewhat mixed. Second, I may decide to move to Stalker at a later point. I personally wouldn't mind if it was returned to Voyageur, but I would prefer it to have harsher effect on the player's condition and strength while being treatable with less limited resources than antibiotics (e.g. birch bark tea that has been suggested a couple of times).

[Hotzn]

On 4.6.2016 at 7:22 PM, RIchAsissts said:

I was just about to start a thread about parasites on stalker and then I saw you have done it already. What I have come to realise is I can evade intestinal parasites every day If i do this. 1. Become fully starving 2. Eat two full pieces of predator meat (note you have to get the full amount of calories possible out of only two pieces as eating 3 small bits will raise the chance too much) 3. Parasite risk raised to 4% for 24 hours 4. Do stuff, pass time, sleep until fully starving again 5. Risk of parasites has passed 6. Just repeat and u don't need anything else. Obv there is a very small chance I'm going to contract it but it has not happened yet and I've been just eating bear and wolf meat alone. I'm not absolutely sure this will work so if I'm wrong please correct me but it has been working for me now for weeks

Just for the maths behind it: If eating one piece of predator meat gives you a 1% infection risk over the next 24 hours, and you restrict yourself to that one piece and then wait until the counter resets, and repeat this process, let's say, 10 times. Then your chances of NOT contracting parasites is 90.44% (0.99 to the power of 10). Consequently, the chances of contracting parasites (at least once) is 9.56%.

If you eat two pieces each time, and eating two pieces raises your risk to 4% each time, and you do this ten times, then your overall chances of NOT contracting parasites is 66.48% (0.96 to the power of 10). Which means that your chances of contracting them (at least once) are 33.52%.

As you can see, even though the chances of a single event are fairly low, repeating the process substantially raises your risk of contracting parasites. And if you eat two pieces each time, the risk rises dramatically. Much better to stick to one piece at a time.

[thinair]

My story with parasites is following:

Started new run on stalker in ML, and never hunt for wolf, but so it happened that got attacked 4-5 times in my current 60+ day run, so i did track all of them down the next day and got the meat. What i decided to do, is to eat it but on the most safest side...which is 1 piece per 24 hours, so 1% risk per day and never more.

So probably after like 14 wolf steaks, i did contract parasites. Kind of wack, and RNG thingy... because %1 seems so low... its basically like fishing in TLD... straight RNG stuff. I'm now eating wolf meat left and right due to being sick, but once i'm healed i will never eat wolf nor bear meat.
With the all the meat decaying very slowly if stored outside, i'm fine with dear diet. 1 deer can last me like a whole month. eating like 300 cals a day.

Honestly, i thought with eating only 1 piece per 24hours i would be untouchable, and already thought about bear, but then got sick, and said F it. 

[selfless]

6 minutes ago, thinair said:

My story with parasites is following:

Started new run on stalker in ML, and never hunt for wolf, but so it happened that got attacked 4-5 times in my current 60+ day run, so i did all of them down the next day and got the meat. What i decided to do, is to eat it but on the most safest side...which is 1 piece per 24 hours, so 1% risk per day and never more.

So probably after like 14 wolf steaks, i did contract parasites. Kind of wack, and RNG thingy... because %1 seems so low... its basically like fishing in TLD... straight RNG stuff. I'm now eating wolf meat left and right due to being sick, but once i'm healed i will never eat wolf nor bear meat.
With the all the meat decaying very slowly if stored outside, i'm fine with dear diet. 1 deer can last me like a whole month. eating like 300 cals a day.

Honestly, i thought with eating only 1 piece per 24hours i would be untouchable, and already thought about bear, but then got sick, and said F it. 

Math.  It'll get you.

You had an 87% chance of eating 14 wolf-steaks-once-a-day in a row and not getting sick.  But you didn't.

[MueckE]

Finally i got parasites! I currently play the test branch and eat raw meat, this gives a 75% parasites risk and i got it! You know what? I am about to cry about this topic. I really dont get why all you pilgrim player come to a stalker post, whining about parasites and all it does is reducing the stamina for a few days. I always thought it is something like your condition is dropping fast and you cant heal or the condition goes down to 3% and 100 wolves spawn that hunt you or whatever makes the game harder .. but no, a little bit of reduced stamina.

And all that whining over such a great game mechanic that just needs a little tweak for STALKER players.

 

[Scyzara]

15 hours ago, MueckE said:

I really dont get why all you pilgrim player come to a stalker post, whining about parasites and all it does is reducing the stamina for a few days.

Neither do I see whining, nor a single Pilgrim player around this thread.

Just seven Stalkers, one Voyageur (who probably contracted parasites at a point of time before it was removed from Voyageur mode) and you calling everybody else a Pilgrim for god knows what reason. ("Pilgrim" is btw. completely unsuitable as an insult, if you've meant it that way.)

If you want to give feedback about certain mechanics, I suggest you focus on doing just that and leave everybody else except yourself out of your posts. Thank you.

[June]

Stalker Player here. I completely abandoned eating wolf or bear meat, only when it´s absolutely neccesary. @MueckE: To assume that everyone is playing permanent starvation just because you do is ridiculous. I always take care of my hunger, because, like Scyzara said, it´s immersion breaking. Also to have your stomach grumble all the time and your character stating 100 times a day that he could eat a horse is annoying.

 

[MueckE]

Well thank you @June 

but thats not the topic. This thread is not about sharing experiences or opinions about wether you like parasites or if it is to hard/annoying, what your playstyle is or whatever. Of course you can get parasites, this is not the bug-report forum. It is about that this amazing mechanic in my opinion needs a little tweak based on the detailed data i provided. If you have a diffrent opinion and think it is fine as it is because of whatever reason, that's fine and there are several posts in the forum that reflect it. In this thread, i wanted to talk about the values. What would it look like if they would be in the game? Would it be still possible to eat wolfmeat? What other problems could occure and what change to the values would solve it? Short, which values will make the mechanic more challenging, but in a blanced way? This does not concern players who have abandoned eating wolf/bear.

See the diffrence? I didnt ask if anyone of you has a playstyle where, despite an extremly low chance getting parasites, he once got parasites and thats why doesn't eat any wolfmeat at all. I adressed players who still would eat wolf meat, even if it is a 50/50 chance. Players who like the challenge and not just stop eating wolf/bear. The mechanic adds a really nice aspect where you have to make decision. If you have abnadoned eating wolf/bear, than this is the wrong thread for you. Not only because you do not help with ideas regarding values, but also because it does not matter at all for you. You don't eat wolf/bear anyway, regardless which values. I took effort to test it and collected data about it to have something to discuss on and not have to rely on opinions or experiences.

[MueckE]

@Szysara Good to know that your reaction is a characteritc reaction to a personal insult despite pointing out yourself that you are not sure even if it was an insult and clearly not personal. I mean it is interesting that you have a choice and you chose the bad, the negative despite you know better. Cekivi by the way did exactly the opposite Don't get wrong, i don't want to argue about it. It is just interesting to see the reaction  

 

on topic

seems that the upcoming update will have some changes to a related mechanic. That's why parasites have to be testet again to see if the problem still exists. I think we will just have to wait

 

[Scyzara]

I don't feel personally insulted by your Pilgrim comment (neither would I feel insulted if you called me a member of religion, ethnic group or sexual orientation X as all of these are not suitable as insults despite certain people using them as such).

I merely pointed out that your Pilgrim comment is complete nonsense as not a single person who answered to your thread does play this mode.

So you either didn't read at all what people have answered you or your Pilgrim comment was a (particularly  pointless) attempt to insult them. Which is  something the HL team doesn't tolerate in general, no matter which mode one does or does not play.

If you interpret me telling you that your comment is nonsense as me being insulted, I very much suggest you reconsider your understanding of causality.

Regarding @cekivi: Well, he's just a better 'good cop' than me, hence I'm playing the role of the 'bad cop' atm. Beware, next year we might switch sides and he'll give you hell!

 

[cekivi]

To weigh in I prefer non-confrontation and having people fix their own mistakes. That being said I support @Scyzara 100%: it is not OK to target players just because they prefer a different difficulty level. It is certainly not OK to attack someone directly and it is particularly foolish if they're a moderator. @Scyzara and I are both volunteers. We're here because we enjoy doing this. We just want to make sure that everyone can enjoy the game as much as we do.

[Patrick Carlson]

A good moment to take a breather and reflect on why we like to spend time here and share our passion for the game. With that in mind, I'm going to lock this thread for now.