SPOILER, DO NOT READ! Three gamebreaking issues

[cekivi]

18 minutes ago, SteveP said:

Another "exploit" is to remove and reinstall the game. This clears out any static data preserved by the game. I have the feeling as I advance through the game, that it seems to get harder with each new life and loot gets more scarce. I think this might be a heuristic designed to keep the game challenging (my suggestion somewhere else) The rules for the forum state we cannot discuss exploits but on the other hand, during Alpha we should at least warn the devs of any bugs that are exploitable so they can be fixed. There is already a feature to deal with the copy save data exploit so the leader board is not compromised.

I personally have not experienced this. The loot drops seem to be consistent across my playthroughs.

To address the original post.

1. No degrade if not picked up. While technically an exploit I personally don't consider it one due to gameplay reasons. Having all loot degrade across all maps at the same rate would mean you would never have a reason to leave the map you're on. What's the point if there's nothing to explore or sustain you because it has all degraded? Also, items degrading when you handle them is true (e.g. matches in your pocket can get wet) and food can still be edible, especially frozen, long after the best before date
2. Saves: Who cares? It's fine as is and if people want to abuse it for their own enjoyment they are well within their rights to do so.
3. Compass items: Never noticed this honestly. Now that you've pointed it out... I probably still won't use it. Constantly having to drop and pick up items would be too distracting for me to bother with

 

[Hatchet]

On 10-10-2015 at 5:25 PM, Scyzara said:

Just build a campfire between yourself and a bear, aim carefully and shoot it between the eyes. I promise you'll know why I consider this an issue afterwards.

Better with a torch equipped, i have a tendancy of always going outside with a torch (or two or three) even if it's storming, i can re-light it when the storm is over or quickly light it when there is a wolf then drop it on the floor even in stormy weathers the torch will last a couple of seconds giving you enough time to pull out your rifle and blow a bullet into the wolf his brain.
Making a campfire last a while, but the torch is just as powerfull as a campfire, don't brandish the torch, drop it and the wolf will stay back, haven't tried that on a bear though  but it works wonders on wolves, really go give it a shot, no pun intended.

[Scyzara]

42 minutes ago, Hatchet said:

Better with a torch equipped, i have a tendancy of always going outside with a torch (or two or three) even if it's storming, i can re-light it when the storm is over or quickly light it when there is a wolf then drop it on the floor even in stormy weathers the torch will last a couple of seconds giving you enough time to pull out your rifle and blow a bullet into the wolf his brain.
Making a campfire last a while, but the torch is just as powerfull as a campfire, don't brandish the torch, drop it and the wolf will stay back, haven't tried that on a bear though  but it works wonders on wolves, really go give it a shot, no pun intended.

The torch trick does work with bears as well, but it can be a bit tricky to perform as you sometimes need to step back a little after dropping the torch in order not to get too close to the bear. (If you get to close to it and cross its minimum security range, it charges and mauls you no matter if it has to run across your torch in the process. It even ignores a lit torch you're carrying at this point).

That's why using a campfire to hunt bears is a way safer method for everyone who lacks experience in bear hunting. With this strategy you will automatically stay behind your campfire and thus can't get to close to the bear accidentally. 

I'm aware that torches are more than sufficient to use the same strategy to kill wolves, but I hardly ever kill those anyway.  

[Raphael van Lierop]

Lots of good feedback in here. I'll respond to a few things while I have a few minutes between other tasks.

* Re: saving more often to remove "exploits". There isn't a save system that exists yet that isn't exploitable in some way. As a single-player game that isn't checking in with a server, it is impossible for us to guarantee that some players won't exploit the current save slot system, if they wish to do so. We could spend a lot of time/energy trying to come up with an unexploitable save system, but at the end of the day save exploits don't matter to anyone but the people who are exploiting them -- as they are, in some ways, "ruining" their experience by playing the game in a way other than it was designed/intended. Permadeath is meant to add meaning to your choices, and finding ways to work around this simply reduces your enjoyment of the "meaning" behind your choices. But, we also recognize that some people may actually find this more enjoyable/fun as it allows them to explore choices differently, and that's fine. At the end of the day, if you want your choices to matter, don't exploit the save system. If someone chooses to do so, it shouldn't take anything away from your experience (and hopefully enjoyment) of the game.

* Our resource/loot system "rolls" for what is in containers and interiors when you enter the interior. We save when you enter, and we save when you leave. This way we preserve the state of the game world for you, to respect anything that has changed (items you took or left behind, and where they are placed, etc.), and also means that just quitting and restarting doesn't allow you to "re-roll" a loot spawn you didn't like. We also save after all afflictions, struggles, etc. so that, again, you can't just quit and restart the game to "roll back" to a point before you suffered that affliction or whatever. 

* We have item degradation and how AI deals with fire/torches/flares, etc. on our To Review list. 

Regarding the idea that we only have X sandbox updates before Story Mode launch therefore if feature Y hasn't changed yet, it never will -- certainly there are core aspects of the game experience that can't really change once we launch Story Mode (ex. we wouldn't suddenly turn the game into a more combat-focused experience), but our intention is to continue updating the Sandbox along with further Story Mode episodes. For us, the work is never done.

[Scyzara]

14 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

* We have item degradation and how AI deals with fire/torches/flares, etc. on our To Review list. 

Happy to hear that! 

Are you also considering to review how the current leaderboards work? I'd be particularly interested to know if you're planning to stop the abuse of the current starvation & health regeneration mechanics (starving yourself on purpose during the day down to 20% condition, eating 800kcal in the evening and sleep-healing back to 100% condition during the night).

It's one of the biggest issues that I (and a whole lot of like-minded TLD players) have with the current game design as it makes competitive leaderboard runs impossible for people like us who refuse to use this stupid exploit that cuts down your calorie consumption to 1/3 of what you are supposed to consume. I'd love it if the leaderboards could at least make a distinction between people using the starvation/hibernation style and people who play as intended.

(I'm assuming that you as Developers intend our character to consume considerably more than 800kcal per day as he/she needs to consume between 2000 and 4000kcal per day in order to avoid starvation. Which is - at least in my opinion - probably the key aspect for long-term survival in general. Please correct me if you're fine with the hibernation/starvation "playstyle" and I'll stop bringing up the topic once and for all.)

[Raphael van Lierop]

Re: leaderboards. For a while we've not found Leaderboards to be a particularly interesting way to measure "success" in The Long Dark. We understand that the hibernation approach to extending play times has rendered the Leaderboards largely irrelevant. Our idea has been to essentially dismantle the Leaderboards, and replace this way of "competing" with other players with the sharing of post-game Stats (which is part of why we added the Stats screen(s)). Unfortunately, the sharing aspect of Stats is a pretty major undertaking as it involves hooking into various sharing mechanisms, so we've put it aside for now (though we have other ideas of how to do this, which would allow us to take a first step).

We have some other ideas for how to support competition for players who care about that approach to measuring their success.

In terms of the Hibernation "exploit" -- no, of course we don't really want players to be doing this. Not only is it against our gameplay intention, it also encourages a style of play that is highly unrewarding, and goes against the game's nature. The various fixes for Hibernation, however, also have the potential to dismantle/unbalance various other systems that are currently working well, so in the end it becomes a case of choosing to change the game to avoid exploitation by a small group of players who feel it is a valid way to artificially extend their Leaderboard times, when we don't really see Leaderboards as an interesting or meaningful way to measure "success". 

The short version is -- no, we don't like Hibernation, yes, we have plans to address it, Leaderboards will probably be replaced by something else that is a more meaningful measure of success. 

I hope that answers some of your questions!

[illanthropist]

No offense to anyone who is interested in leaderboard rankings but I'd much rather devs spent their precious time on playable content rather than combating exploits and hacks but if the game does have them I'd say a thrive rather than survive ranking system so only minutes played above say 80% condition tallied. 

[Scyzara]

43 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Re: leaderboards. For a while we've not found Leaderboards to be a particularly interesting way to measure "success" in The Long Dark. We understand that the hibernation approach to extending play times has rendered the Leaderboards largely irrelevant. Our idea has been to essentially dismantle the Leaderboards, and replace this way of "competing" with other players with the sharing of post-game Stats (which is part of why we added the Stats screen(s)). Unfortunately, the sharing aspect of Stats is a pretty major undertaking as it involves hooking into various sharing mechanisms, so we've put it aside for now (though we have other ideas of how to do this, which would allow us to take a first step).

We have some other ideas for how to support competition for players who care about that approach to measuring their success.

In terms of the Hibernation "exploit" -- no, of course we don't really want players to be doing this. Not only is it against our gameplay intention, it also encourages a style of play that is highly unrewarding, and goes against the game's nature. The various fixes for Hibernation, however, also have the potential to dismantle/unbalance various other systems that are currently working well, so in the end it becomes a case of choosing to change the game to avoid exploitation by a small group of players who feel it is a valid way to artificially extend their Leaderboard times, when we don't really see Leaderboards as an interesting or meaningful way to measure "success". 

The short version is -- no, we don't like Hibernation, yes, we have plans to address it, Leaderboards will probably be replaced by something else that is a more meaningful measure of success. 

I hope that answers some of your questions!

It answers all of my questions, thank you very much for your thorough reply, Raph.

I'm really looking forward to the new competition system now, sounds like it has the potential to be great fun. Very happy to hear you're (also) working on some challenging activities for experienced players! 

[cekivi]

3 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

The short version is -- no, we don't like Hibernation, yes, we have plans to address it, Leaderboards will probably be replaced by something else that is a more meaningful measure of success.

There's always my personal preferred fix for this: player morale

But regardless it is awesome to hear that Ralph et. al. plan to continue adding and tweaking the sandbox post launch

 

[Raphael van Lierop]

Regarding the "morale" discussion -- there seems to be quite a bit of mixing up between the notions of "morality" and "morale", which are not the same thing.  I'm not spilling any beans about our plans around this (if we have any!), but just as a general point, these two concepts are quite different (even if they can be interlinked, depending on the situation). 

[cekivi]

39 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Regarding the "morale" discussion -- there seems to be quite a bit of mixing up between the notions of "morality" and "morale", which are not the same thing.  I'm not spilling any beans about our plans around this (if we have any!), but just as a general point, these two concepts are quite different (even if they can be interlinked, depending on the situation). 

Yes. Totally my fault. I was musing on the morality in the single player but the thing I wanted to talk about was morale (how you feel vs how you perform).

[GELtaz]

Quote

The short version is -- no, we don't like Hibernation, yes, we have plans to address it, Leaderboards will probably be replaced by something else that is a more meaningful measure of success. 

Cool, happy to read that

[Wasteland Watcher]

10 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Re: leaderboards. For a while we've not found Leaderboards to be a particularly interesting way to measure "success" in The Long Dark. We understand that the hibernation approach to extending play times has rendered the Leaderboards largely irrelevant. Our idea has been to essentially dismantle the Leaderboards, and replace this way of "competing" with other players with the sharing of post-game Stats (which is part of why we added the Stats screen(s)). Unfortunately, the sharing aspect of Stats is a pretty major undertaking as it involves hooking into various sharing mechanisms, so we've put it aside for now (though we have other ideas of how to do this, which would allow us to take a first step).

We have some other ideas for how to support competition for players who care about that approach to measuring their success.

In terms of the Hibernation "exploit" -- no, of course we don't really want players to be doing this. Not only is it against our gameplay intention, it also encourages a style of play that is highly unrewarding, and goes against the game's nature. The various fixes for Hibernation, however, also have the potential to dismantle/unbalance various other systems that are currently working well, so in the end it becomes a case of choosing to change the game to avoid exploitation by a small group of players who feel it is a valid way to artificially extend their Leaderboard times, when we don't really see Leaderboards as an interesting or meaningful way to measure "success". 

The short version is -- no, we don't like Hibernation, yes, we have plans to address it, Leaderboards will probably be replaced by something else that is a more meaningful measure of success. 

I hope that answers some of your questions!

Easy leader-board fix: 
Do not count hours asleep in the "days survived" measurement stat.
When you're asleep, you're not really surviving. You're relaxing

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

Easy leader-board fix: 
Do not count hours asleep in the "days survived" measurement stat.
When you're asleep, you're not really surviving. You're relaxing

Unfortunately, our Leaderboards stat tracking doesn't really allow for this, but our post-game stats DOES differentiate between hours awake and hours asleep. We'd like to see players sharing those stats more and using them for "bragging rights", since they are both a lot more in-depth, and a lot more accurate, than the data in the Leaderboards.

[KD7BCH]

A simple "goal system" combined with a morale system could be used to dissuade player hibernation but negatively penalizing some actions and positively reinforcing others. 

As modeled sleep is what restores condition. Excessive sleeping though has negative consequences which are unrepresented in the game but could be with a morale system. A Goal system might contain a whole series of simple goals the player can set such as.. 

• Harvest 4 hours of firewood today
• Boil A gallon of water
• Walk 3 Miles
• Stuffing yourself silly 

Might also be some Morale Buffs/Nerfs

• Hypothermia Passed = Happiness
• Food Poisoning Passed = Happiness
• Found Premium Wintercoat = Happiness
• Find a Rifle unloaded when you already have one = Discouraged
• Fishing for an hour without catching a fish = Discouraged 
• Getting caught in a blizzard while already freezing = Distraught
• Successfully build a fire in a blizzard = Secure

If a goal is achieved it would lead to a stat recovery boost or some positive benefit.

Sleeping too much (more than 10 hours) = extra intolerance to cold for 4 hours.

Finding a Candybar = Happiness = Stat recovery boost for 1 hour.

Satisfying a Daily Goal = Satisfaction = Stat recovery boost for 4 hours.

Discouraged = stat drain for 1 hour. 

Distraught = stat drain for 3 hours.

Stat modification based on morale could be a buff or nerf factor combined with the current variables based on the environment. So if you are already cold and losing "warmth" at rate of 1 arrow, if you were discouraged or distraught, you'd lose "warmth" at 2 arrows, for the length of time of the buff/nerf. The effect of feeling secure during a blizzard could negate the feeling of how cold you are to some degree while the fire is heating up or etc. These are just ideas. I think the system would work pretty well with the existing system. 

 

 

 

[Wasteland Watcher]

1 hour ago, KD7BCH said:

 A simple "goal system" combined with a morale system could be used to dissuade player hibernation but negatively penalizing some actions and positively reinforcing others. 

As modeled sleep is what restores condition. Excessive sleeping though has negative consequences which are unrepresented in the game but could be with a morale system. A Goal system might contain a whole series of simple goals the player can set such as.. 

• Harvest 4 hours of firewood today
• Boil A gallon of water
• Walk 3 Miles
• Stuffing yourself silly 

Might also be some Morale Buffs/Nerfs

• Hypothermia Passed = Happiness
• Food Poisoning Passed = Happiness
• Found Premium Wintercoat = Happiness
• Find a Rifle unloaded when you already have one = Discouraged
• Fishing for an hour without catching a fish = Discouraged 
• Getting caught in a blizzard while already freezing = Distraught
• Successfully build a fire in a blizzard = Secure

If a goal is achieved it would lead to a stat recovery boost or some positive benefit.

Sleeping too much (more than 10 hours) = extra intolerance to cold for 4 hours.

Finding a Candybar = Happiness = Stat recovery boost for 1 hour.

Satisfying a Daily Goal = Satisfaction = Stat recovery boost for 4 hours.

Discouraged = stat drain for 1 hour. 

Distraught = stat drain for 3 hours.

Stat modification based on morale could be a buff or nerf factor combined with the current variables based on the environment. So if you are already cold and losing "warmth" at rate of 1 arrow, if you were discouraged or distraught, you'd lose "warmth" at 2 arrows, for the length of time of the buff/nerf. The effect of feeling secure during a blizzard could negate the feeling of how cold you are to some degree while the fire is heating up or etc. These are just ideas. I think the system would work pretty well with the existing system

 Don't want to sound like I'm discouraging the morale system idea, but that seems a bit extensive. 

 In all honesty I don't feel happy (sitting there playing the game) if I have to sleep the day away. I tend to go outdoors just to gather wood if there's nothing for me to craft or fix and if I am stocked up on food. 

Of course, if it gets foggy, and I am at least "winded,"  I will sleep in one hour blocks until either the weather clears or I am fully rested.  Then go back outside! 

Downside is sometimes I'll be wide awake at night,  but the upside to that is that it got me to finally go outside at night time and see what it's like wandering around under the full moon. Beautiful. 

 I think the incentive is that you're trying to get people to do something besides sleep, which is good. 

I'm not sure if a morale system is the way to do it though. Personally, I think that once you reach a fully rested status you should not be able to sleep until you're at least somewhat tired again. 

Just my opinion.

 

[Edit: Off topic but I noticed that sometimes after writing and clicking "submit" I will get an error screen. I'd hit 'refresh' naturally and get the error page again. So anyhow when the page finally loaded again it'd show a double or triple post of the same thing.]

[KD7BCH]

Well the reason it sounds a bit extensive is the player needs more things to do in the gameday. The whole idea of goals and picking your own goals allows you to buff when you achieve them without breaking the realism of the current system. Feelings are all about perception. However there is a correlation between how fast you heal and how much pain you feel and a correlation between how much pain you feel and your morale.

Essentially, feeling good about your situation, however dire, allows you to heal faster, and gets you into better condition which in turns gives you higher probability of survival. 

You could have just a morale system. Where only certain conditions score points. But that ignores diminishing returns and the situation. For example, finding a candy-bar would make you happy because it is food, it tastes good, it's not too heavy, and it probably won't make you sick. However if you already have 25 candy bars in your stock and you get the same bonus it isn't a very compelling system even though it makes sense. 

That is why I propose a goal system. It would allow you to trade in things you were likely to do anyway and if successfully done, you'd get a stat buff for being successful. The complexity seems more intricate than it really is. Imagine a few goal types. Distance traveled. 1 mile, 2 mile, 4 mile, these go very easily achieved to moderately easy to difficult to ensure because of weather. With higher buff for completion of the more difficult ones. Other goal types, procure 5lbs of food, boil a gallon of water, Craft 3 items, etc. The thing about goals is they require significant resources which you may be using already so its just a matter of setting them. If you set them and achieve them you should get a reward. If you fail a small stat nerf. 

 

[SteveP]

I like the idea that doing nothing all day could cause malaise or depression. It would be good to have something to do during blizzard down time and when you have spare food to stay indoors; I think making cordage would be a good thing. Also making decorative items, carvings, improving the shelter, building snares and such; all these things will help morale.

The player sometimes talks to himself/herself when hungry or over burdened. Perhaps he could talk to himself about loneliness especially when the wolves start howling and singing at night. It is an eerie sound! It would also be neat to have the bear snort by in the darkness making all sorts of disturbing noises outside the cabin such as rattling windows and doors. In real life, bears will rip through almost anything if they want to get inside. I wonder how a bear inside a cabin would look? Scary!!

[Wasteland Watcher]

On 2/29/2016 at 2:28 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Unfortunately, our Leaderboards stat tracking doesn't really allow for this, but our post-game stats DOES differentiate between hours awake and hours asleep. We'd like to see players sharing those stats more and using them for "bragging rights", since they are both a lot more in-depth, and a lot more accurate, than the data in the Leaderboards.

Interesting idea:
Append the "hours awake" and the "days survived" stat for current sandbox to everyone's name in place of where it reads "Advanced Member" or make it a 'default signature'

"76 Days Survived..1106 Hours Awake. "

Or maybe ...

76 Days Survived...78 Hours Awake

[LucidFugue]

Re: Leaderboards

First up - It's great to hear that some form of competitive metagame is being considered for expansion/tweaking. I personally never found the existing leaderboards to be enticing, because even back in the v.1xx versions I didn't find playing through to the end-game scarcity condition all that exciting. Fighting for every breath because the resources are out there is more fun than fighting for every breath because there's nothing left, to me. I still haven't secured the 100 day & 200 day achievements because I find you pass the early game struggles within the first 2 weeks, then achieve most of the things you might want to do in a map within another 2-4 weeks. Survival to the bitter end isn't what drives me, I guess.

What has always driven me, however, are specific goals I set for myself. Whether it's day by day "I'm going to check out the lookout tower today", or for an entire character "I'm going to make a Timberwolf Mountain summit run on Stalker", these specific goals give a context for the survival activities beyond seeing the next day. Perhaps my play style of restarting constantly, achieving some specific goal with a character, then more or less abandoning them to the comforts of a warm bed, plenty of food and supplies, and all the tools they need to survive has coloured my own thoughts on competitive challenges. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with a "most days survived" challenge. The problem is that it is the only challenge outside of specific achievements in Steam. It's the only one with a leaderboard. Where performance is measured, this affects behaviour. Whatever challenge you set, people seeking the number 1 spot will use whatever exploits they can to meet the goals of the challenge to the highest degree possible. So, yes, you could make a "Most hours awake survived" challenge, and this would affect behaviour, such that people looking to "win" would adjust their playstyle. This is fine, and to be expected.

I don't think the goal should be to tweak the mechanics to keep the challenges "interesting" or "free from exploits", per se. That's the cart driving the horse. What's really great about this game is that I see so many completely different playstyles and attitudes towards where the fun is in this game. I believe Hinterland can see this as well, both from survival stories, and from the data they gather on player behaviour.

Setting different challenges to accomodate for these playstyles would allow people to choose which goals they want to stretch themselves to meet. Once the infrastructure to share the enhanced statistics within the community have been built, a much richer and more diverse set of "leaderboards" could allow players to approach the game in a variety of ways - from most days survived, to fastest 100% exploration, to whatever's next.

[ChillPlayer]

On 29.2.2016 at 6:20 PM, SteveP said:

I like the idea that doing nothing all day could cause malaise or depression.

Yes and no I am all for a mechanic that prevents eat/sleeping for the sole purpose of surviving more days but on the other hand I do not want to get punished when staying inside a cave for several days is the right choice from a survival perspective, for example when you got hypothermia because you were gutting a bear and have to cook 30kg of meat before bringing it down through wolf infested territory to your camp (I was in exactly this situation once and spend 2 weeks naked in a fishing hut, some might remember that stream ).

The only method I can think of that would prevent you from eat/sleeping for days and still alow a prepared stay would be some sort of vitamine/minerals system that requires you to not only eat meat but also have variety in your food to not get scorvy due to low vitamine C levels and so on. The system could be drastically simplified, e.g. you have 3 bars representing 3 different groups of vitamines, red, blue, green colored and different food would be either red, blue or green, you eat meat and your red bar goes up, you eat any form of fruit/vegetable and green goes up and blue for everything else. They deplete slower than your calories reserves, say over a week or so but one bar down will cause your condition to slowly drop like when you are hungry and with 3 bars down as if you'd were freezing. Condition does not improve by sleeping obviously, only be replenishing the bars with the right food.

I proposed this over a year ago already and I still think this would be the perfect system to fix hybernation and by this to some extend the leaderboards for good. If someone sees a flaw with this please point it out to me because I don't see any disadvantage.

Seeing that Raph is writing here: do you have any plans to implement a system like that?

 

[Wasteland Watcher]

 Really like the idea of "nutritional needs" as a part of wellness. 

 All this would entail is plants regrowing, right?  I don't think that would be too hard to implement. 

 Scurvy on one end of the spectrum for not enough plant (vitamin C) intake, and protein deficiency on the other end.

 Another "benefit" is that people would be encouraged to explore in order to find plants for their nutritional needs --  instead of hibernating after getting enough meat stored. 

 Nice idea

[cekivi]

It's an interesting idea but I think the game already has enough bars to manage...

Plus, in theory anyways, if you ate the blood and organs of everything you killed a hunting only diet should still be sufficient or very close to it. At most, you may need additional vitamin C which you can get from rose hips.

[Wasteland Watcher]

1 hour ago, cekivi said:

It's an interesting idea but I think the game already has enough bars to manage...

Plus, in theory anyways, if you ate the blood and organs of everything you killed a hunting only diet should still be sufficient or very close to it. At most, you may need additional vitamin C which you can get from rose hips.

 Good point. But from the amount of meat (in kilograms) that we are getting from our kills, it seems like we are leaving a lot of the animal behind, which leads me to believe that we are only harvesting the muscle meat from them. I could be wrong though ...