Tuning of starvation system


phynix872

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I have not tried this exploit personally but everyone seems to be doing it. People commonly let their calories go down to 0 and dont care about eating because condition only goes down by 1% each hour. This way even an energy bar can get you through 5 days of survival which, again, isnt realistic. I don´t know what the best fix for this might be but I think it should be in the next update.

Only if this gets updated I will consider a new playthrough - until then my gf can play around with the game :D

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  • Hinterland

This has been an optimization strategy for a while. We updated the Starvation system several iterations ago to leave more long-term effects of intentional starvation which makes this a less useful strategy. Basically, if you starve yourself, it puts a ceiling on your Condition that you can only recover from slowly over time. So, you can starve yourself to get more survival days, but eventually you will become so weak that you'll easily die from other issues.

It doesn't eradicate this approach, but it does make it much less useful.

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I appreciate the intention but if I watch people who stream the game I see no problem at all to starve themselves to 20% or being attacked by wolves while starving and still not dying.

This is actually another issue - people can rely on being attacked by wolves and killing them that way. I got killed that way but apparently the chance of being killed that way is really low based on what I see with streamers.

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It's actually part of the game mechanics...

The displays were changed to a zero calories limit because players were having trouble grasping the concept and meaning of negative calories in earlier game versions [when calories could drop to -1500]

The misconception came from (as with most games) decaying condition was thought to mean you were dying, so players were constantly eating in order to maintain a 100% condition level (as you would expect to do in most games).

While in the zero calories [or negative calories previously], you're instead using your body's reserves - so yes your condition would go down, but it wouldn't be a sudden plummet. The idea was that your condition would lower slowly, and your fatigue would climb faster (since you're basically running on an empty tank with less energy), and you could continue as long as you replenished your calories intake when you needed to recover [during sleep]

The Hinterland team is constantly re-evaluating player responses for gameplay, and tweaking some mechanics and settings. The original settings were based closer on IRL calorie usage appropriate for that game setting area and weather conditions, but in order for more players to feel like the game wasn't overpowered to kill them [again, most players didn't realize how reasonably accurate the devs had calculates settings based on real mechanics] Hinterland eased up on a lot of the calorie burn rates, fatigue speed, and recovery rates for player gameplay.

The dev team have done a pretty remarkable balancing job (and they're still constantly re-tuning the settings during the alpha development) given the challenge of trying to satisfy the hardcore players [those wanting the more detailed struggles and challenges] as well as the more casual gamers [those wanting a more normal or common gameplay feel without worrying about learning how to balance the deeper game mechanics].

THE GOOD NEWS

As said, the game is in alpha, and constantly being tested, retested, and adjusted for various ranges of gameplay. The Hinterland team and devs realize that The Long Dark has kind of grown into a slightly more unique gameplay attraction because it doesn't fit the usual play function of most games.

Normally a game has a specific play area, with specific goals [missions, tasks, order of events, etc], and the play style is set to complete your progress in very specific steps.

The Long Dark is showing to be a little more unusual because players are determining their own way the want to play the game - whether it's for the most extreme or challenging way to survive [i.e. learning all the mechanics and playing the game more as if it had been intended to be played like a simulator], or adventuring and exploring [where the players like to explore every nook and cranny they can find within the maps], or straight mission style patterns [going for the loot and looking at wolves like enemies that "must be confronted" or battled to progress, or casual players [who use their loot gathering to determine their success or progress to complete their goal], to even the most unsure gamer [those who are still not quite sure what they're meant to do, or are still discovering new aspects of the game they haven't tried before].

While details can't be released yet, the devs are working on some very interesting approaches which should give every category of play preference a little something to make them happy. There will never be any way to satisfy everybody (don't forget it's a relatively small core team, not a major studio with hundreds or programmers, and mega million dollar budgets) -- but I will say if they can pull off some of the things they're working on, there will be quite a bit of fresh excitement coming very soon... ;)

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I appreciate the intention but if I watch people who stream the game I see no problem at all to starve themselves to 20% or being attacked by wolves while starving and still not dying.

This is actually another issue - people can rely on being attacked by wolves and killing them that way. I got killed that way but apparently the chance of being killed that way is really low based on what I see with streamers.

There are those who say the wolves are way overpowered or impossible to beat, and then there are those who look like they're battling wolves with an unusually high success rate (and without using macros of programmed sleep click keys)... both views are actually right...

The difference is what isn't explained during every streamer battle for beating the wolves - it's not just a case of your condition %, hunger, or any single item when deciding whether to fight or avoid wolves.

Dying is part of the game (and for hardcore players, the most fun), but when you start discovering how all the mechanics interact, you realize how to balance your weight, calorie usage, health conditions, travel patterns, and a lot more -- so what may seem like a "lets just fight this wolf so we can continue" has often been a case of experience where the player also knows the balance of risk vs reward [e.g. the higher their fatigue, the weaker chance they will have of fighting off the wolf] - as well as knowing how to escape or avoid a fight if possible.

And yes, a lot of time it's luck - but like I said, dying is half the fun :P

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Every single player, who is passionate about this game and the team behind it, knows that you guys are doing a fantastic job not only with the game itself but also with the community and feedback system and it is safe to say that it is much appreciated.

Maybe you can try to satisfy the different play styles by giving a choice of difficulty/realism at the start of the sandbox. That way the unsure gamers get to slowly learn about the basics of the game while not being confronted with the harsh reality of the Canadian wilderness and the extreme survival freaks get the challenge they are looking for. I am sure you guys have a much better ideas that you are already working on, but I just wanna help ;)

Thanks for the feedback and again, I am looking forward to all that "fresh excitement" :D

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Every single player, who is passionate about this game and the team behind it, knows that you guys are doing a fantastic job not only with the game itself but also with the community and feedback system and it is safe to say that it is much appreciated.

Maybe you can try to satisfy the different play styles by giving a choice of difficulty/realism at the start of the sandbox. That way the unsure gamers get to slowly learn about the basics of the game while not being confronted with the harsh reality of the Canadian wilderness and the extreme survival freaks get the challenge they are looking for. I am sure you guys have a much better ideas that you are already working on, but I just wanna help ;)

Thanks for the feedback and again, I am looking forward to all that "fresh excitement" :D

Agree. This development team is doing a great job right now with updates and updates that respond to player feedback. The way Hinterland is going about this is how professional gaming development should be done. Places like Ubisoft and EA should take note.

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This has been an optimization strategy for a while. We updated the Starvation system several iterations ago to leave more long-term effects of intentional starvation which makes this a less useful strategy. Basically, if you starve yourself, it puts a ceiling on your Condition that you can only recover from slowly over time. So, you can starve yourself to get more survival days, but eventually you will become so weak that you'll easily die from other issues.

It doesn't eradicate this approach, but it does make it much less useful.

I like this reserve health pool concept. Perhaps though the game should indicate it exists and make a little more information about it available?

I'm a lazy min-max type who makes some bad guesses. Still, at over 900 days in my current run I'm not seeing it clearly enough.

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I appreciate the intention but if I watch people who stream the game I see no problem at all to starve themselves to 20% or being attacked by wolves while starving and still not dying.

This is actually another issue - people can rely on being attacked by wolves and killing them that way. I got killed that way but apparently the chance of being killed that way is really low based on what I see with streamers.

There are those who say the wolves are way overpowered or impossible to beat, and then there are those who look like they're battling wolves with an unusually high success rate (and without using macros of programmed sleep click keys)... both views are actually right...

The difference is what isn't explained during every streamer battle for beating the wolves - it's not just a case of your condition %, hunger, or any single item when deciding whether to fight or avoid wolves.

Dying is part of the game (and for hardcore players, the most fun), but when you start discovering how all the mechanics interact, you realize how to balance your weight, calorie usage, health conditions, travel patterns, and a lot more -- so what may seem like a "lets just fight this wolf so we can continue" has often been a case of experience where the player also knows the balance of risk vs reward [e.g. the higher their fatigue, the weaker chance they will have of fighting off the wolf] - as well as knowing how to escape or avoid a fight if possible.

And yes, a lot of time it's luck - but like I said, dying is half the fun :P

I love your feedback here and on twitch.

One potential issue with this mechanic is an assumption everyone can spam keys at the same rate. They can't, at all. As the macros prove, regardless of other factors, a wolf engagement can be completely determined by mouse clicks. In other words, any deficiencies can be made up with click rate. It's hard to say why some people win consistently versus others, when this is the case. Along these lines, the spam mechanic also makes the engagement mechanics harder to figure out.

While I do make bad guesses often--I think that makes me normal--the only thing I could figure out which seemed to have a noticeable affect when fighting wolves is lower fatigue is better than higher. I've guessed, and it's a very low probability guess, having a weapon such as a knife at higher condition versus lower helps.

Regardless, I tried about ten to fifteen games specifically to figure out how to best engage wolves and died consistently. Apparently, I have horrible spam click foo (and I don't think it's that bad, I do very well in games like Diablo III, etc) as that was the only thing which really seems to matter as low fatigue, clothes and a knife didn't noticeably help. Eventually, as I said on Oedi's stream, I gave up and just went to a macro.

The end result is the wolf mechanic right now seems too inconsistent and too seemingly unpredictable. Hopefully, the spammy portion gets scraped and other factors, such as wearing certain clothes or using certain weapons, lead to a much more noticeable and predictable outcome.

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High success rates of people fighting off wolves due to luck or macros seems like a rather unrealistic situation. I don´t think anyone would really choose to fight against a wolf when alone in the wilderness. Accordingly, it should either be fatal much more often to get involved with a wolf or the wolf should start to flee more often.

Maybe a built-up of energy to fight off the wolf should take out a random chunk of a players condition (based on fatigue, hunger, etc.) because I would imaging a wolf-attack to be painful and tiring.

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correct me if I am wrong but the starvation system (exploit) is still in place. Even when on stalker mode it is possible to let the condition from starvation go down to 20 %, eat, recover and start over.

PS.wouldnt it make sense to let recovery be much much slower (maybe 1% every 12 hours only) or after starvation there will be a new maximum a player can reach in condition and this maximum remains the same from then on or it only recovers by 1% per day

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Adjusting condition for one issue would easily toss the balance of a handful of other mechanics out of balance. The issue with wolves and being attacks is the interface to attack and defend against them isn't a good mechanic. Should they adopt a Fallout type mechanic where it becomes stop motion action, with a strategic focus that is one way to level the field, another way is to make the clicking dependent on some other factor than rate, skill based. A lot of these types of

"mini" implementations suck. So while I don't like the current system I do want to fight off wolves, I do want them to cause a little less damage and be less lethal to a degree, I still want them to be dangerous and have better A.I.

Recovery should be the same and independent of the attacking, recovery from sleeping should take time but it should not be detrimental to other factors. Wolves simply need to kill players less often.

You know what bottom line is, what we don't need is for the wolves to be any less lethal or any less of a pain in the ass, what we need is for the player to be more lethal, we need the player to actually strike the animal with an object. Each object should have a damage value, two or three hits from the knife should ward off all but the most rabid a wolves off, same thing with a prybar. Hitting a wolf with a hatchet should cause instant damage to a wolf and make it fleet slowly with a broken foot. The Decoy strategy is still good too if you want to pursue non-violent get aways. How about bear spray? For that matter how about some Bears in 1.90! :)

We need more lethal players oh yeah and uh a bow and arrow. Certainly need that. In fact once you put the bow and arrow in and have it optimized you can sell the game and start development of the sequel.

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Minmaxers will be minmaxers. You couldn't possibly sleep for 22 hours a day for months without going insane, either.

I've been aware of the starvation trick, but I decided it clashed too much with what I find fun to play. Haven't had the need for it in my Voyager playthrough either by far, now that Liam Neesoning a wolf munching on some deer provides 13+ kg of meat that can stay tucked away for weeks on end without going bad. I think the devs are doing a good job by not constantly rebalancing the game, but making exploits pretty much meaningless for anything other than the leaderboards on top of that.

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Maybe this has been said already, but it seems to me that a good way to tamp down on the starvation exploit would be to have starvation cause your fatigue to rise much more rapidly, making it a less useful tactic. This also makes sense from a realistic standpoint, since you will naturally be much weaker physically if you are starving.

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Maybe this has been said already, but it seems to me that a good way to tamp down on the starvation exploit would be to have starvation cause your fatigue to rise much more rapidly, making it a less useful tactic. This also makes sense from a realistic standpoint, since you will naturally be much weaker physically if you are starving.

That's the way it was done in v.152 and v.153 and personally it felt right.

The devs are still running tweaks, so it may get readjusted back again - even if only in the Stalker mode.

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