Load screen exploit!!! Cheaters exposed...

Wolfie

By Wolfie
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Wolfie Survivor

Wolfie

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I just wanted to report the load screen exploit, that allows you to extend your life almost indefinitely. Some people are now using this to avoid dying, and living very very long runs in game. It really takes the fun out of the game, knowing that if you get into trouble all ya have to do is exit back the load screen, and re load your save game, and bam! your back were you saved the game previously, no harm, no foul. It really does kill the whole leader board thing, as to it's not true, nor accurate any more. This should most defiantly be fixed, and the leader board should be reset to reflect this change. I really hope you guys @hinterland will see this, and fix this bug, to an other wise great game. just hard playing it now, knowing that it can be exploited so easily. Thanks.

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Guest Alan Lawrance

Guest Alan Lawrance

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One possibility is to not allow a reload of a save until N mintues of realtime have passed after quitting. The idea is that a legit use of quitting and reloading is that you had to put the game down for a while.

While this would greatly discourage abuse of the saves, it would undoubtedly penalize players who quit then choose to start again before N minutes have passed for legit reasons.

There is no real obvious choice here. The last thing I would want to do is inconvenience players to try and stop a small set of players who abuse the save system.

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blueskin1980 Wolfbait

blueskin1980

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If you never loaded your game after getting food poisoning, if you never loaded after seeing a wolf spawn right outside your hideout, if you never loaded after 3 missed shots on a deer, then you have the right to complain.

Solution: save game only on quit, not on sleep. Save anywhere and anytime, but do not allow "rollback" loading to avoid consequences of bad decisions / bad luck.

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Guest Alan Lawrance

Guest Alan Lawrance

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Save on quit is an interesting option. A couple of downsides are:

* It's more likely to lose progress due to unexpected things like a crash or power outage. Admittedly, these should be rare.

* Saving the game when waking up allows us to not save every bit of game state. It's just a more controlled situation than a save-anywhere. For example, we don't have to worry about the game being saved while falling, being chased by a wolf, etc. There are many edge cases to deal with in a save-anywhere scenario.

EDIT: Although, if we also saved on Rest (like we do now) then the first concern is a non-issue.

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Wolfie Survivor

Wolfie

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That's a good start, or maybe if the person saves, and reloads the game to many times in a given time frame (start/stop/start/stop)not having enough time laps between loads. Then the game will not allow them to re start until a cretin time has passed.

Possibly another way is to only have the load button option available on the main home screen only, and not in game. This way they are forced to quit the game all together, and re start the game again a new, may not stop them, but would discourage it possibly.

I think something to discourage it would be a start.

If I can think of anything I will post it here.

Thank You for the quick response, you guy's rock!

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TarjaS Pathfinder

TarjaS

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If you never loaded your game after getting food poisoning, if you never loaded after seeing a wolf spawn right outside your hideout, if you never loaded after 3 missed shots on a deer, then you have the right to complain.

I even got annoyed by a crash that made me load a save game and replay half a day. Followed the original course I took and tried to reproduce everything as accurately as I could, because I'm only competing with my own previous record. So, I have the right to say that cheaters are stupid. What's the point in making incredible records when you know you cheated? To try to impress others? Well, I'm not impressed when it's obvious somebody is a cheater.

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robdoar Pathfinder

robdoar

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That's a good start, or maybe if the person saves, and reloads the game to many times in a given time frame (start/stop/start/stop)not having enough time laps between loads. Then the game will not allow them to re start until a cretin time has passed.

I made a similar suggestion. Something like a 15 min wait between exit and load. Doesn't solve the problem, but certainly a nuisance. And the wait for crashes would be an annoyance, but rare.

I also thought of something like only 10 loads per life... but that would kill my long runs.

What about auto saving after fighting off a wolf? Or getting injured or poisoned?

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Wolfie Survivor

Wolfie

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I think that autosave idea is really good. That way as soon as something bad happens you're stuck with it, just like...dun dun dun... IRL!

Yes that would be a great idea, you could have both types really, but ya have to start at the most resent save. Auto save at lower health, or damage, or fights with wolfs, or certain points of the game.

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blueskin1980 Wolfbait

blueskin1980

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Let's be aware though, that people loading the game are not real cheaters. After all, they're using official game mechanics for their benefit. The cheaters that cause the problem are people playing with Hinterland\The Long Dark\alpha_slot0002 folder, there's a bunch of potentially insane stuff you can do with that folder, including duping, loot regeneration, and more.

quick fix to outrageous leaderboard times - keep saved game state within the boundaries of ONE file, encoded on save and decoded on load, impossible to be tampered with.

even easier quick fix - when game is saved, add a short file checksum test to see if the user hasn't replaced/ deleted any area save files. At least test if the game is not being loaded with user in an area not present in save game folder - this eliminates the main source of "live forever" cases.

Until all major bugs like save tampering and everlasting clothing are solved, I'd humbly advise to play for fun rather than for the leaderboards, remember it's alpha and we're supposed to be finding all those things and making sure they're fixed / removed asap.

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Trandor Pathfinder

Trandor

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Cheaters gonna cheat, no matter what. If you look at the leader boards of gamesites like armorgames, there's always a couple of people that will abuse any means possible to reach something. The question is just: How do we want to react to that.

Limiting loads per life, limiting saving or saving at times that players do not want to save would in my opinion reduce fun and also gameplay experience. So those are all no options for me.

Imo, the best solution would be to somehow check the log_files for inconsistencies. I wouldn't know how those would be logged or controlled, but adding in there some kind of encrypted error checking numbers or something before submitting a score to the leaderboard might work. Also, that way people could cheat all they want and would not get the desired effect. And people that want to change some numbers for their own fun can still do so.

And just fyi: There's a lot easier ways to prolong your life indefinitely than loading every time you make a mistake. Changing Itemnumbers for example would be faster and easier than reloading. And Respawning items is even easier than that, and with respawning items you can live however long you wish. I've been doing so today to see what locations contain what chances of loot spawns and items. So I'm not abusing this power, but it would be easy to do so.

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Wolfie Survivor

Wolfie

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Let's be aware though, that people loading the game are not real cheaters. After all, they're using official game mechanics for their benefit. The cheaters that cause the problem are people playing with Hinterland\The Long Dark\alpha_slot0002 folder, there's a bunch of potentially insane stuff you can do with that folder, including duping, loot regeneration, and more.

quick fix to outrageous leaderboard times - keep saved game state within the boundaries of ONE file, encoded on save and decoded on load, impossible to be tampered with.

even easier quick fix - when game is saved, add a short file checksum test to see if the user hasn't replaced/ deleted any area save files. At least test if the game is not being loaded with user in an area not present in save game folder - this eliminates the main source of "live forever" cases.

Until all major bugs like save tampering and everlasting clothing are solved, I'd humbly advise to play for fun rather than for the leaderboards, remember it's alpha and we're supposed to be finding all those things and making sure they're fixed / removed asap.

Great ideas. I think in addition to the normal saves, they should definitely add an auto save after each event, or wolf encounter, so you can't just go back to a perfect 100% health.

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