Starvation exploit

[Max10142]

This exploit of starving tactic makes survival too easy even on Interloper level. It lets you pass the 500+ days mark with very few resources. (And let me remind that 500 days = 1 year and 4 months). You just can't starve yourself for so long without getting any permanent damage.
In real life, if you starve yourself by this method, you will last for long enough, but after around 50 days you will get to the point when you lose about 25-35% of your body weight which, puts your life in danger. It's the stage when your body have consumed all the fat you had in you, and now starts consuming muscles, including your hurt, which grants you the risk of organ failure and the following death.

My proposal of how to fix this exploit is to add body weight in the game, which will affect the survival experience in the long run. 

The Idea

if you starve for 72 hours, you will get the opposite effect of "Well fed" - "Starving" (-5kg carry, minus some amount of permanent health and you start to lose weight)

When you continue to starve for long periods of time, you will reach your minimal weight and on your status bar will occur "Organ failure risk", which will gain percents (similar to "hypothermia risk"). 
As the 1% of the "organ failure risk" occurs, you are no longer able to regain fatigue at all. It means, you become very weak and your health bar will drain quicker. It will make this situation very dangerous and players will not be able to exploit it so much as they do it right now.

And so on. If you keep yourself fed for 72 hours+, there occurs the known bonus for additional health and weight that you can carry. Now in addition to it, as long as you keep this bonus active, you will gain the weight back to the normal mark and maybe even more (?)

Cheers.

[Timmytwothumbs]

I don't care how they do it, I just want to be punished for starving!!! This simple mechanic or lack thereof constantly reminds me it's just a game and it's a huge reason I don't play it more often. I hate feeling like I'm exploiting the mechanics in any game and it's ruined some of my favorite games because it's simply not fun when you know you can win a game as long as you do just one thing a particular way. Lately I try to keep well fed bonus the entire game just to combat this. And it's a bit more fun that way I guess.

 

[Willy Pete]

I could go either way on this, mostly because the best thing about an exploit is this: you don't have to use it. If you don't like an exploit, then don't use it. I certainly don't, all my characters keep well fed whether they want to or not. The idea of an opposite to the well fed bonus is neat, but I feel the developers want to offer rewards over punishments.

I also don't like it when folks say "It's not realistic" because TLD isn't a "realistic" survival game, it's what I would term a simple survival game. There's no management of waste, item storage is based on weight and not volume, sickness and wounds are beyond simplified, the list goes on and on. 

I'd like to see a Loper's opinion on this, I only ever play Voyager and Stalker.

[StrangerFromTheInternet]

I had a similar idea 2 years ago (decoupling hunger & stored calories), and I used some MatLab code to simulate that system. With some tuning, it worked fairly well!

I feel like overhauling the hunger system is definitely something Hinterland should consider, as it would make for more interesting gameplay, and seeing one's stored calories dwindle could add another layer to the whole "constant depletion of resources" aspect of the game that Raph really seems to like.

[ManicManiac]

I really don't consider this an exploit.  It's perfectly reasonable to be able to ration your food how you want to... If folks don't like that a player can get by with eating once per day, then they can simply chose not to do that.

Very much like what I said before:

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 11:50 PM, ManicManiac said:

Player choice has really been at the core of the Survival Sandbox from the beginning anyway.  You say people will always take the shortcut... well that's not true.  I don't play this game in ways that I think feel cheap.  I also don't feel the need to complain about things the player is capable of just because I don't like it.  I mean why ruin the experience for someone else when I can just choose to play differently.

What some are proposing is that the Hinterland Team needs to try to cater to every single player/player type... and that's just not the case.  The team only really needs to do what they feel is right as it lines up with there vision and goals for the game.  It's up to each player to choose how they will use the world, tools, and systems provided by the game.  Limiting player choice in a Survival Sandbox is not the right answer in my opinion.

The bottom line... I feel it's more productive to talk about things the game does not permit that we would like to see incorporated, rather than to fuss about things it does permit.  All we have to do is choose not to do those things.  If a developer creates a situation where there is too little player choice it can ruin the game too... that is a key component of "game balance" as well.  I argue that the Survival Sandbox should remain driven by player choice, and those who don't like what they create can play other things.

...or come to the realization that they are free to play in whatever way they want with what's provided by the game's world and mechanics.

and also:

On ‎9‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 2:28 AM, ManicManiac said:

The great news is that this game is all about player choice.  If there is something in the game we can do, but we don't like it... we can just opt to not do that. 

[non-relevant text removed for brevity]

If it was viewed as an issue by the Hinterland team... I'm sure they'd have addressed it.  Otherwise, I'd just call it creative gameplay...  It's up to each player to choose who they live within the framework of the world that's been provided for us.  Me personally, I chose not to do this... but I wouldn't want to take that option away from another player that does.

as well as:

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2019 at 11:13 PM, ManicManiac said:

I saw a review of this game done rather recently (a little over a month ago)... just a random-ish YouTuber sharing their first impressions of the game.  Being able to see the game through the eyes of someone just discovering it has made me realize just how spoiled some of us (who have been with the game a long time) have become.   

Edited September 16, 2019 by ManicManiac

[ManicManiac]

@Timmytwothumbs
But the game does punish starving...  If you are starving for more than 18 hours you get a "fatigue de-buff" which lowers the amount of rest you can replenish from sleeping until you've eaten something (then that cap gradually reduces over time).  You also loose condition every moment you are in a starving status.  Both of these things represent the character's weakening state.

So I'm not sure what you are taking issue with.

[StrayCat]

1 hour ago, ManicManiac said:

So I'm not sure what you are taking issue with.

I guess what he means is the whole starvation strategy : the fact that the health lost during a day of starving is fully replenished by a good night of sleep. There's no real drawback to this, except you don't get the "well fed" buff.

[ManicManiac]

2 hours ago, StrayCat said:

I guess what he means is the whole starvation strategy

But that just calls back to the point that if we can do something in the game... and we don't like it, we can always just choose not to that.  I suppose I get what they're driving at... but being it's a single player game.  I feel like each player should be able to live within the framework of the world Hinterland gave us any way we want to.

Ultimately, I think that if Hinterland felt it was an issue they would have addressed it... and changed it.  Until that happens, I would just consider it creative gameplay.  

4 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

Me personally, I chose not to do this... but I wouldn't want to take that option away from another player that does.

All things considered I think the systems work fine, and I see no need at all for them to change.  If the Hinterland team wants to make changes then fine, but I don't seen any reason to cry out for change on this.

Edited September 16, 2019 by ManicManiac

[StrayCat]

12 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

But that just calls back to the point that if we can do something in the game... and we don't like it, we can always just choose not to that.  I suppose I get what they're driving at... but being it's a single player game.  I feel like each player should be able to live within the framework of the world Hinterland gave us any way we want to.

Ultimately, I think that if Hinterland felt it was an issue they would have addressed it... and changed it.  Until that happens, I would just consider it creative gameplay.

Well, it's not me you'll have to persuade. Imo, this has already been adressed with the well fed buff. By adding this buff, Hinterland has given something useful to players who don't want to exploit the starvation strategy, while allowing starvers to continue. That's an elegant way of solving things.

[ManicManiac]

I'm not trying to convince anyone really.  I only quoted you because you were the last to comment, and what you mentioned just sort of tied in to the point I was making while expressing my point of view on the topic.   

 

[Timmytwothumbs]

I definitely think the best option is an opposite to well fed bonus. If you starve the majority of a 72 hour period youre starving or malnourished until you remain well fed for a full 24 hours your carry capacity is lowered, you can't study, and you can't do any task that burns calories. Then your only option is find food! And quick. Maybe every day you are malnourished your condition drops exponentially.

The exploit I'm referring to is eating 4-5 cattails a night or anything about 600 calories and recovering all effects from starvation. I don't care if it's realistic, but it removes any challenge and any fear from dying of starvation. I literally can't remember the last time I cared about my hunger dipping into the red. And I've completely zoned out to the audio cues of hunger because it's simply not the slightest bit worrisome. Whats the point in bagging a moose if I can just starve? What's the point in losing calories from chopping wood if I couldn't care less about calories? Because apparently 600 calories a night before bed is enough to keep me in perfect condition. 

Although it might not sound like it at this point I do really love this game. But I can feel the love fading with every passing day I don't die from starvation. When this game was truly addicting for me I was dying after just a couple in game weeks or hours, and I miss those days. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Timmytwothumbs

[stratvox]

Deadman. Pick your preferred mode, select custom, use your mode as the base line and set active and at rest recovery to none. The only way to recover condition is the adrenaline shot... but eating keeps you from losing condition to starvation. Keeping warm keeps you from losing condition to hypothermia. When you can't get them back keeping them topped up is crucial. This mode means you're gonna die, and probably soon... it's all about how long it takes for the game to kill you.

I would totally vote for deadman as an official mode. Actually what would be really cool would be to be able to play a "Dead Edition" of all of the existing modes, differing only by the complete absence of natural condition recovery, so you know like "Dead Pilgrim" and "Dead Stalker". 

At any rate, try going custom, picking your preferred mode as the baseline, and set the two different recovery settings to none.

[ManicManiac]

22 hours ago, Timmytwothumbs said:

The exploit I'm referring to is eating 4-5 cattails a night or anything about 600 calories and recovering all effects from starvation.

... As I mentioned before ...

On ‎9‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 11:22 PM, ManicManiac said:

The great news is that this game is all about player choice.  If there is something in the game we can do, but we don't like it... we can just opt to not do that. 

[non-relevant text removed for brevity]

If it was viewed as an issue by the Hinterland team... I'm sure they'd have addressed it.  Otherwise, I'd just call it creative gameplay...  It's up to each player to choose how they live within the framework of the world that's been provided for us.

I don't think it can be reasonably considered an exploit if the systems are working as intended.  Just because something is possible with the mechanics given to us does not make it an exploit just because some folks don't like it.  

 

It's getting to the point where this seems to be running around in circles.   

Edited September 20, 2019 by ManicManiac
Edited for clarity... moving on.

[rakshasa]

On my current Interloper run I just hit day 150 and have maintained well-fed since day 3. I just consider not being well-fed as a starvation debuff. It's not the devs job to make the game realistic, but to give us interesting choices. IMO the real food exploit that needs addressing is 100% immunity from parasites and food poisoning at lvl 5 cooking, and being able to leave meat outside forever.