Exploits that need to be fixed


MueckE

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Hello Hinterland, hello community

In my last runs i tried out the outdoor challenges,naked and afraid and a few others. After a while i came

to the conclusion that i only was able to do that because i kind of exploited the game mechanics.

So here are my suggestions to fix that.

I know it is right before the storymode and you guys have other things in mind right now. Thats why i made

the solutions as easy as possible (as far as i can imagine as a non-developer) For example can you crouch infront of a branch to use it as a windshield .. thats hilarious :D and easy exploitable but i guess hard to fix in a short time. So i came up with other, easier to do solutions.

torch

-A craftet torch will burn for 60 minutes, a torch taken from a fireplace only 30 minutes

-you can only take 2 torches from 1 fireplace

-any torch that is lighted up by a fireplace or another torch will only burn for 30 minutes

(now any torch is buring 1,2h)

weight exploit

-as soon you have more than 25Kg, you will walk slowly and can not run anymore

(like it is now if you have 40Kg-50Kg)

-as soon you are above 30Kg you cant pick up any more items! and you are as slow as it is now above 50Kg

lets say you have 29Kg, than you still could pick up a rifle, hammer or something else that brings you above 30Kg, but after that you only can walk very slowly (like it is now above 50Kg) and you are not able to pick up any more items. (the most extreme case i can imagine would be to have 29.99Kg and pick up a jerry can with 5L fuel)

-fire starting base skill reduced from 50 to 30 in stalkermode

infinite fire exploit

You only will find sticks and branches after heavy winds or a blizzard (limbs double time to respawn)

-> convenience of good weather and cabins in CH comes for a price ..

(alternative: amount of sticks and branches 30% of what it is now i mean, there has to be a value how many sticks and branches are spawning that could be changed easily???)

I think these are the most important exploits to fix right now. There are plenty more like the save/load exploit, wolf/bear kill abusing campfire/torches, use a branch as a windshield and not to

mention the bigger balance related things like starvation and so on. But the things i mentioned above are easy to fix (i guess) and have a huge impact on how to play.

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Just an observation, but perhaps state what are the actual exploits this is intended to fix. It just seems rather they are areas of the game the OP wishes were harder. What exactly does shortening torch burn time, lowering carry weight, making fires harder to light, and removing sticks from the environment solve?

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the post was actually long enough and the topic is for more experienced players (no offense).

I personally dont stream or produce videos on youtube but i recommend you to check out "Kraelman", "Kimiota" or other stalker veterans on twitch or you really should try out Kraelmans outdoor challenge (or variations of it) to understand what this thread is about. That is easier than explaing everything and how it is related to other mechanics, gameplay and surviving stalker mode ;)

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Weight is fine as it is in my opinion, I struggle to get under 30 kg as it is. If you are wearing furs, and carrying a bearskin bedroll, as well as a hatchet, knife and a litre of water, you can just about forget about it. Don't even consider taking a rifle along.

yes you do, because you think thats why the mechanic is in the game, and you are right, and thats why it is an exploit because I dont care ( i discoverd in my challenge runs). I am constantly heavily encumbered because it wont kill me. I am not afraid of the cold or wolves too, dont have to avoid or kill them because i have a burning torch that provides me with warmth and protection. The only time i dont need a torch is at my campfire that is almost burning non stop. I dont need any clothing, and have little use of matches. All this "easy" surviving without entering any building ... And all this is possible because i can exploit mechanics to a point where the whole idea of the game becomes absurd. You could say that it is not a multiplayer game (although abusing exploits becomes interesting regarding the leaderboard) and that it doesnt matter. In fact, all that would not be possible if these mechanics would do what they suposed to do.

again, please try to survive 30 days without entering any building, not sleeping in a cave/fishing hut and without wearing premade clothes. If you manage do to so without abusing these exploits (not beeing encumbered, light a torch with a match, use fire to warm up/cook food/boil water, only light torches when there is no heavy wind/blizzard and so on) than i am wrong and the mechanics work fine. I didnt manage to do it and have not seen someone else doing that. So feel free to prove me wrong :D

I will give another example.

A new player will respond to the mechanics as intended. As soon he niticies he is hungry, he will eat up all his food to go up to full calories. Most of you here in the forum, more experienced wont do that. You know that you can easily starve 3 days and after that only need 700cal to heal up to 100%. And yes, most of you (and me) abuse that intentionally if you are honest.to your self. And only with that tld becomes a whole diffrent game than it was before, for the new player. Well the starvation/hibernation is a topic for itself and is a big thing regarding many changes. The things i mentioned are compared pretty small but have a huge effect.

Now you forced me to write a book for such a short thing.....

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Fully agree that hibernation/starvation is a really bad exploit that should be fixed. There are a few threads trying to think of ways to fix it actually :)

Carry weight... yes you can be over encumbered but I don't find it an exploit. You go slow over 30kg and can't run. Personally, I find that really annoying (I like to run - I get bored otherwise). If you want to bother keeping a fire constantly going to generate torches and scare wildlife that's also fine. Personally, I can't be bothered to constantly scavenge for wood. Again, I get bored.

So, for my type of player (not doing challenges, role playing while playing) the things you are describing are annoying enough to me that I just don't do them by default :)

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I think maybe I understand now, MueckE. Thanks for sharing. I believe you are saying when you started playing the game, you interpreted the best way to play to be one way but then later saw other people who played differently. They are probably playing using more complete knowledge of the game mechanics and are using that knowledge to the advantage of them as players. I don't think that's called exploiting. That's what I would call gaming.

Exploiting to me would be something akin to lighting 10 torches one after the other and dropping them all in your lap while sitting in a car to make an absolutely windproof campfire in the middle of a blizzard. Or quitting out of the game when a bear charges only to be able to restore to a previously safe saved point. Using gaps in mechanics to one's artificial advantage.

Disassembling fires into torches since while one cedar log burns 60 minutes providing 6 degrees of heat that 60 minute fire can become 3 torches that provide 5 degrees of heat for 90 minutes each, or realizing that chopping wood for fires is unnecessary since one can gather even more fire potential from the sticks just laying on the ground, would not. That's just being good at math.

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Only because you are one of the 99.9% players that dont use it and so to speak dont care about it, makes these things not to "features" or less exploits.

As i said before, one main mechanic is the wind/weather connected with torches/campfires. But i can imagine that this is no easy fix because the weather is complex, collision of objects and so on. So i guess to fix these things, it would take alot of work and time. On the other hand, fixing an exploit by adjusting a value that is wirtten in a file only takes a few seconds/minutes (there has to be a value that says how many branches are spawning or how long a torch is burning)

If you dont care, because you dont use it anyway, whats the point of arguing about it? My post is about exploitable mechanics and my suggestion how to fix it easily. The devs know if they want/have time to fix it and they know exactly if it is an easy fix. I only know how to abuse these mechanics to a point, where TLD is losing all its meaning (as far sandbox has one :P)

If i am right about the easy adjustable values and the devs have no other reasons to keep it like it is, i am sure they will change it.

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If i am right about the easy adjustable values and the devs have no other reasons to keep it like it is, i am sure they will change it.

They definitely have a reason not to change everything you mentioned above as most of your suggestions wouldn't solely have an impact on veteran players, but also (and probably especially) on new players.

Let me give you an example:

I for one wouldn't be affected by a 30kg weight limit at all as I leave behind a whole lot of stuff on purpose anyway and I don't bother to craft heavy fur clothes because I don't need the high temperature bonus to survive. New players who don't know how to prioritize what they really need yet (and thus tend to pick up and carry around more items than necessary) would be punished by a weight hardcap way more than experienced players like e.g. Kraelman (or any other veteran) who can simply save weight by running around naked.

I also fail to understand why you consider "lighting torches with a match" or using a campfire "to warm up and boil water" an exploit. It's obviously intended by the Devs to work that way.

In my opinion, only playstyles or actions that lever out intended mechanics can truely be called exploits. Everything else might make the game way easier than desirable from a veteran's point of view, but that doesn't automatically make it an exploit.

The "torches inside a car" method mentioned by selfless is for instance a real exploit imo (as it circumvents the inability to light a fire inside a car and thus makes cars safe shelters despite low outdoor temperatures).

So is the darn starvation-hibernation exploit (the Devs seem to want our character to consume 2500kcal/day, being fine with only 1/3 of that is probably NOT intended) and presumably the numerous save/load exploits that make it possible to escape permadeath.

Or that ridiculous "wolves behave like inverse weeping angels from Dr. Who" exploit: They don't chase you if you don't look at them while you run away. You can even stumble away from a wolf with a sprained ankle, exhausted and at 20% health and it still won't follow you unless you turn around and look at it. I very much doubt this is intended behavior.

Hunting bears with campfires or from rocks/hunting blinds is kind of a grey area. It's ofc. highly unrealistic and makes killing bears ridiculously easy, but I suspect the Devs really want things to work this way. For whatever reason they disabled the "escape by zone change" bear hunting technique, but not the three methods mentioned above - most likely because they're fine with them, I guess.

I very much hope the really gamebreaking exploits (especially starvation-hibernation) will be adressed before the story mode launches, but I somehow doubt it.

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i am not against lighting torches at a campfire, i am against the value how long the torch is burning because this little value leads to surviving that would not possible without it.

When you abuse the starvation "value", you still will die if you dont eat. So the mechanic "eat or die" still has its meaning in the game (and makes the game what it is in the first place, its not a shooter).

If you can not die anymore from a bear attack becausee you reload than you exploit the reload mechanic.

If you can not freeze/die because you can light a torch inside a car, than you exploit the burning-mechanic.

And if you can not freeze/getting hurt/dont need to craft/wearing clothes/dont have to travel back and forth but just collect as much as you want/die only because have torch that never turns off, than you exploit the burning mechanic.

"lighting torches with a match" is a possible, easy to implement (i guess) solution for the exploit, not the exploit.

And you still can light a torch at a campfire. You just cant take 20 torches out of your infinit burning campfire,

never let them go out without using matches/firestriker while collecting enough wood to keep the campfire buring and while you harvest carcasses without any fear of freezing or beeing attacked. That is what will be impossible by tweaking for example the burntime of the torch. And the best thing, 99,9% of you dont care :D

Maybe the devs dont care too because its just sandbox and only because a single person or a few of thousands complaing about something that has no meaning for the rest is not worth the attention. Maybe they do something completly diffrent to nerf this (as they often have done) or not, who knows.

At least, now they know about it for sure and have one more detailed feedback about their game that they can use if needed.

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I find it really hard to believe the things you are calling exploits as problems. Something to consider is that what might make sense for a self-imposed challenge doesn't actually make sense for other ways of playing the game. I think it would be awesome if the game allowed mods to add imposed rules, so people could play the game they want to play. But for me many of these things make no sense. I think it totally makes sense to take wind cover behind a branch when chopping it (often feel cheated when I try to stand behind a tree or walk along a ridge and get no shelter bonus). And I want the carrying capacity increased because ferrying items is not actually a challenge just extremely tedious and boring.

Things I consider exploits are like getting animals AI 'stuck' on a dropped torch, taking off your clothes to avoid wear when fighting/falling or freezing, staying awake for days straight at a fire, and hibernating. They are things which make sense because of the game mechanics instead of things you would actually do to survive. You seem to be complaining about creatively taking advantage of your environment to survive, which is the opposite of the game I would like to play. It's totally incomprehensible to me how you think lighting a torch off another torch should be penalized for realism (It is something I do all the time in real life)... in fact I can do it holding both torches in my hand, without having to stop and drop one on the ground first..

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