The game needs to save more often

[rw28]

At the very least in the harder modes or anything that has a Leaderboard I think. I played the game a long time before I realized this, but the way the game saves is easily exploited. For example, it can be used to completely break the "chance of success" mechanic on repairs or fires. Here are some examples of how you can exploit the saving/loading:

• Need to start a fire or repair some gear but low on matches or materials? No problem! Just enter a building (game saves) and immediately attempt your fire or repair. If it fails, press Escape, hit that load button and try again.
  
• Miss your headshot on that deer/wolf combo? No problem! Hit that load button, save your bullet and try again for a better outcome.
  
• Caught out in a blizzard, lost your way, and worried you might just walk into a wolf and get eaten? No Problem! Hit load and try again.

Yeah, I think you get the point

At the very least, any action that has a chance of failure should save during said action, the same way it does when you sleep.

[elloco999]

+1

[frunsi]

v good point

backed hard

[S-Lola]

Nope, sorry, I respectfully disagree. Too many save points removes the deliberation in your decision making. Should I go outside today? Do I have food? What if I run into a storm?

Those choices are mandated by the lack of a quicksave feature and force the game to be hardcore. That, and permadeath. My choices have meaning, and I love it.

[John Dow]

my dear pinoy fluffy friend, could you please answer in english ? I would really like to understand your comments.

Me myself agrees with OP. He is talking about harder games or leaderboard games.

[TopDawg]

I think what rw28 was trying to get at was that with the system as it is, the fewer saves the easier it is to 'go back' or 'reset' any mistakes you might have made; and it's especially easy to set it up that way, essentially taking advantage of the system as it currently is.

I think S-Lola was essentially trying to say that same thing as well (that the game shouldn't be able to be exploited like that and that the fewer saves, or the fewer exploits, the harder the game is), but there was a misunderstanding/miscommunication somewhere along the way.

When rw was talking to me about this, I suggested having the random parts 'pre-rolled' at least a little time in advance, so that even though it remains a random percent chance, no matter how many times you reload you're still going to get that same result (at least where starting fires or repairing clothes and the like are concerned).

Alternatively, perhaps an 'ironman mode' could be added that only saves upon quitting out of the current game, meaning loading would put you back in exactly the same position/situation you were in, leaving absolutely no room for exploitation then (and perhaps then also including achievements for the different difficulty levels!).

[rw28]

S-Lola,

I don't understand what you're saying. I think you have it backwards. The way the game currently saves is what removes deliberation and meaning from your choices. For example, I believe the game only currently saves when you enter a building, when you sleep and after a fight with a wolf. These are just the occurrences that I noticed, there may be others. Anyways, knowing this is exactly what actually removes deliberation from my decisions. I don't have to worry about how much food I have, or whether I'll get stuck in a blizzard, because I know that I can just load the game back to the last time I either slept or entered a building. An experienced player can take advantage of this to a large degree.

Example: I awake from resting at 10AM and leave my base/house. I can wander around exploring, or I can do some fishing, or maybe gather some wood, or anything that I feel like. I can do this all day long, for as long as I want with very little risk or care, because I know that as long as I avoid wolves, don't sleep or enter a building, the game won't save and I can press escape, hit load and go right back to 10AM and start over from there. It doesn't matter if I run out of food, get caught in a blizzard or forage for wood too long in freezing temperatures. As long as my condition doesn't drop to 0%, then I'm good. Even if I come out of a long fishing spree, or wood gathering session and my condition is suddenly 2% because I'm freezing, I can simply just say "oh shit", hit escape and press the load button. Back to 10AM I go, for another try.

However, if the game saves more often, that actually adds deliberation to your choices, because you can only go back so far now.

Example: I awake from resting at 10AM and leave my base/house. Now the game is saving regularly, say every 30 minutes in-game time, and also after doing actions such as foraging wood or fishing. Now, if I make a mistake like foraging for wood too long in freezing temperatures, and the game immediately saves when the foraging finishes, there is no going back. You make a mistake, and you deal with it. That's what would actually add meaning and consequence to your choices.

Keep in mind that each save is overwriting the last, and so the more often it saves, the better!

[Bill Tarling]

even the infamous Starvation exploit

The Starvation is actually a legit and realistic technique, but what makes it unrealistic is the one night sleep recovery.

The body can run on reserves, but there should be a huge cost for lengthy starvation - slower recovery, faster fatigue, less energy to carry max normal weight... the longer and more often the technique is used within a period, the faster and higher the penalties should climb.

Like I said - the technique is legit (both in the game and IRL) - but the swift in-game recovery is what isn't balanced for it.

[ChillPlayer]

Idealy the game should save after every step you make, as it's done in most MMOs but also Dark Souls as one example. Meaning when you're standing on the lake in ML and quit the game, the next time you load you'll be standing exactly in the same position. Of course, whithout the possibilitie of having multiple saves to load. There's only one save and it contains all your mistakes

I'm not sure what you pinoy fluffy mean by the exploit. The fact that once you're stocked you can sleep for 12hours, drink/eat and sleep again? Well what else do you want (can) do once you've 60kg of meat in your fridge and freezer and have visited every place? In it's current state, sleep/eat until you run out of supplies, then go for more supplies, is the only reasonable thing to do. So it's not an exploit, the current version is designed like that (and should be fixed, don't get me wrong), because there's no other need to go outside other than to explore (which most people in the top25 of the LB probably do at the beginning) and get food. Everything else is just role play

[EDIT]: ah just remembered the issue: you can starve, drop to 10% condition, eat and restore in one 12hours sleep completely. Yeah that doubles your reservers and this should be fixed. But just to let you know, I made it to 148 days on my last stalker run (LB 23 last I checked) and never did this, I don't like my character to see in pain (also, it never crossed my mind to try it in the first place ).

[elloco999]

You don't really have to starve yourself to make it into the hundreds of days. Once you've got the resources to make 4-6 snares you can easily get enough food to eat enough every day to limit any starving to only a few hours a day at most. With 6 snares you get 3-4 rabbits every day, even if you only harvest 1kg of each rabbit (to not waste your knife and or time on the .0 to .4kg that's left), that's still 1500 - 2000 calories if you eat them raw or 1350 to 1800 calories cooked. This way you can easily keep your condition above 90%.

The only other thing you need to do is heard a deer into a wolf every once in a while to get the gut after the wolf is done eating, so you can fix your broken snares. And if you're lucky you even get some meat of the deer carcass.

[LDbubba]

Idealy the game should save after every step you make, as it's done in most MMOs but also Dark Souls as one example. Meaning when you're standing on the lake in ML and quit the game, the next time you load you'll be standing exactly in the same position. Of course, whithout the possibilitie of having multiple saves to load. There's only one save and it contains all your mistakes

Exactly...

The entire "save" concept is not needed. It's trivial for a modern PC to track exactly what you are doing, and where you are, every second of the game. You quit/crash the game, you simply resume exactly where you left off.

Far more realistic and immersive since there is no "savepoint" crutch.

[Cosmoline]

Just add these and it will go a long way toward locking down the gameplay, esp since weather is somewhat random at the door opening (I checked and confirmed this). So instead:

Save when you leave a structure, not just enter

Save when you fire a round

And that will take care of most of it. It already auto saves when you get hurt, get in a fight and IIRC it does it in a bad blizzard but I'm not sure.

[elloco999]

I would also add saving after every action like harvesting, foraging, crafting etc. Right now if you forage for 1 hour and the weather turns and you find yourself in a blizzard after foraging you can simply reload and try again.