On hibernation and possible remedies


Hotzn

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Hibernation has come up in various threads in the past (for example here (thanks to joki for the link) or here (on the steam forums, with some interesting remarks from Hinterland (thanks to Hyssch in another thread here which I only discovered after starting this one). For those who don't know: "Hibernation" means a playing style where the player spends larger periods of time just sleeping and drinking, while condition goes down to a few % (from starving), then eats and sleeps again to heal back up and then repeats the process. This makes it possible to survive for a very long time on very little food.

I have never experimented with it before, but just did so in my "Living Off the Land" run, a report of which can be found in the "Survival Stories" subforum. Just so I know what I'm talking about. And I found that hibernation is really easy to do and allows for almost endless survival (EDIT: at v228 this is still the case).

Now it's always a fundamental question what one seeks in a game, and to what degree a game developer wants to satisfy this preference or that. So to some people it might be fun to hibernate and thus find a way to "beat the game", which is perfectly legitimate. Others - like me - may derive pleasure from a competitive aspect and want to see how well they do compared to other players who are competitive. For those players, hibernation may appear as an exploit - at least as far as I am concerned, I have no desire to compete on the hibernation level. To me it seems nothing but grinding spending thousands of game days sleeping and drinking. And playing without hibernation makes it impossible to compete for longest-term survival, since the hibernating player will generally survive longer. The Steam leaderboards become pointless.

I dimly remember the devs having said somewhere at some point that the mid-game part is too long and grinding, and that they are thinking about making changes there anyway. However, it cannot hurt to discuss hibernation here and collect ideas in one place. Foremost, I would be interested how people would remedy hibernation. If someone especially enjoys hibernating, I would also be interested to know about it.

EDIT: Possible remedies that have been suggested here or elsewhere:

1. Punishment via medical afflictions (suggested by bburton31 and JoseyWales)

Starving could be punished via medical afflictions. We currently already have a fatigue modifier (fatigue is raised while starving, but is lowered again after eat-sleeping one night), but there could be infections which possibly aggravate if starving continues (eg cough - lung infection - death (bburton31) or bedsores (JoseyWales)). Fighting these afflictions would cost resources (extra food, antibiotics etc.). The downside is that the new afflictions would have to be added as new game mechanisms. However, this seems possible: The right place, in my eyes, would be the "first aid" menue. So if the character was starving and an affliction befell him, the red first aid icon would appear in the lower right corner (as is the case when the character gets injured). The player then would have to open the first aid menue to check what is going on and would get an indication what has happened, why it happened, and how to get rid of it. The "aggravation" - at least in my thinking - would then be a quick loss of condition (as is the case when catching dysentery). So the overall effect would be that starving is still possible, but starving periods would often be shorter than they currently are, and that they would "cost" more resources.

However: Introducing these afflictions would also make it considerably harder to survive for any unlucky player who really runs out of food. As things are now, a starving character may still set out to hunt and will have a sufficient time frame to succeed. However, if afflictions "speed up" the starving process, the door might close on these "just made it" scenarios.

Lately, I had an idea concerning an affliction which might actually deter people from hibernating, or at least overdoing starving: What about a certain probability that the whole digestion system goes off the rails when starving? It could be made so that the more a player starves (either going down to a very low condition or repeating the starving process too often), the higher the probability gets that his system comes off its hinges. The consequences could be severe, eg with the player having digestion problems for an extended period of time. He could randomly vomit up solid food, especially meat (that would nicely add value on liquid food like tea, tomato soup or soda as a side effect), which would then be lost in caloric value. He could also suffer from vertigo from time to time (blurred vision, slower movement), even after starving has stopped. This could be fitted into the game as another affliction, so when it strikes the little red first aid icon would appear in the lower right corner, and consulting the first aid manual would give the player hints how to treat it.

2. Adjusting sleep-healing (suggested by Kraelman and Scyzara)

The rate of sleep-healing could be lowered. This is an interesting idea, since it would likely not require any changes in game design. One has to keep in mind though that this would not only affect starving, but also any condition loss from other sources, eg freezing and injuries. I like the idea - I will often freeze or risk a slight injury in the game knowing that I can easily sleep-heal it off in one night. In real life, I would be much more careful and would try to avoid things like freezing, starving and injuries altogether (especially in a survival situation). So reducing the rate of sleep-healing would make me act more carefully and thus add some realism to the game.

However, there might be a downside: It would make survival during the first days of a run a lot more difficult, since that is the time when condition losses are most likely and at the same time the player does not yet have the resources to sleep for days to slowly get condition back up. So a premature wolf attack on the first day would mean running around the map for days with just 50% condition or so. Quite the challenge.

Also one should keep in mind that adjusting the rate of sleep-healing would not completely offset the advantages of starvation-hibernation. Even if the rate of sleep-healing would be set to 1% condition per hour of sleep (that is the same rate as the rate of condition loss per hour of starving-sleep), a player using starvation-hibernation would get his starvation-hibernation period (let's say 94 hours = 4 days) free in food cost, while the recovery period of sleep-healing (equally 96 hours) would generate normal costs. All in all, according to my calculations, food costs would still be halved by applying starvation-hibernation in comparison to "normal hibernation" if the rate of sleep-healing would be reduced to 1% condition per hour of sleep (which would already be quite extreme).

In one of my late Stalker runs, I found sleep-healing taking place at a rate of approx. 6.5% condition per hour of sleep (this may not be accurate, I did not do much testing). I would like to see that being reduced to, let's say, 3% (at least for Stalker) as part of a solution comprising several adjustments. However, due to the reasons stated above, I think that the starvation-hibernation problem cannot be solved by raising the rate of sleep-healing alone without doing too much damage to the game mechanics overall.

3. Raising "costs" of sleep-healing

In terms of calories, hibernation creates a "credit" out of nothing: One hour of regular sleep burns 60 calories. Starting starving at 100% and going down to 4% (better keep some % as a safety buffer), this means roughly 96 hours of hibernation-sleep or exactly 4 days. 96 x 60 cal = 5,760 cal. So we draw 5,760 out of one hibernation cycle. And I think we need some 960 cal to get back to 100%. So one hibernation cycle, if we may call it such, gives a net profit of 4,800 cal. Actually a bit less, as water production and item degradation are not included in the equation. Now if we punished the hibernation cycle with 4,800 cal, hibernation would become useless. Sleep-healing is 6.5% condition per hour, so roughly 15 hours of sleep are needed to heal from 4% back to 100%. To punish this correctly, some 320 cal would have to be added as cost on every hour of sleep-healing. Seems pretty hefty. Downsides: the mechanics would become quite hard to understand for the average player. And the nights would have to be interrupted by eating all the time. Hmmm...

4. Prohibiting/limiting sleep (simarson, elloco999, AmericanSteel, Scyzara et al.)

These suggestions range from a simple "no sleeping when starving" to models restricting sleep altogether (eg no more than 12 hours of sleep per day). The "no sleeping while starving" has simplicity speaking for it. It would also fit neatly into current game mechanics and is very transparent - everybody would understand it. Possible downsides? Maybe some people would complain it's "unrealistic". Personally, I have no idea whether a starving person would rather sleep more or less than normal (fortunately, I have no RL starving experience). And: Players might get caught up somewhere in a blizzard or during the night without anything to do. Would be a little bit harsh if that player wasn't hibernating, but actually ran out of food. And would then have to sit around for a long time in RL in front of the PC screen, waiting for time to pass. Another thing: If the occasional unfortunate player who really ran out of food gets caught up somewhere - maybe by a blizzard - cannot sleep, and so might be sentenced to death untimely by his fatigue bar.

One model seems to say "no sleeping when rested". But this would not work against hibernation, since starving now also raises fatigue. So hibernation would make sleeping possible again.

I have doubts whether a model with a fixed maximum number of sleep hours per day would work. People would definitely think it's unrealistic (I, for one, can easily sleep 16 hours or more). Also, sleeping is known to consume little energy and is therefore a viable survival strategy. Maybe this shouldn't be restricted in general.

5. Losing control of the character

This might contradict basic game design decisions, but it's fun to think about: What if a starving character would go rogue? Like suddenly shouting, "I have to eat something or I will go crazy!", then - without the player being in control - running to the nearest food stash and just gobbling up everything? Or running outside and towards the nearest wolf, mumbling crazy things like, "no wolf, just a little cupcake... come to momma, little cupcake, now here... all nice and easy..." - I would surely have a good laugh... :lol:

6. Not counting starving time for the leaderboards and/or the "time survived" (elloco999)

Another interesting suggestion is to subtract any periods of starvation from the "time survived", be it within the game in general or only for purposes of display on the leaderboards. This seems quite the elegant solution, as it solves the issue for those players who are competitive and aim for a position on the leaderboards. Downsides:

We would no longer have "time survived", but "time survived without starving". It sounds a bit awkward, does it not? The question the game asked was so simple and beautiful - how long can you survive? Now it would be - how long can you survive without starving? A loss of elegance in my eyes, although it may bring an elegant solution for the basic problem on the other side. BUT: Would the problem be really solved altogether? bburton31 has correctly pointed out that it might still be nagging in the backs of our heads if we shortened our potential survival time by not hibernating, knowing well that we could, and irrespective of any leaderboards. It's not just the leaderboards that concern some people. For another downside, see below (No. 7).

7. Introducing a "survival score" (elloco999)

Measuring the "time survived" as an indicator of players' skill could be replaced with a survival score. While this could have an impact on those players who like to play games for competition and/or compare their progress with other players, it also has a downside:

Measuring game success in the absolute number of days survived is beautiful in its simplicity. It raises the almost philosophical question what is more important - the number of days you live or how you fill them. Mind you, without answering it. This simplicity would be destroyed by starting to attribute values to how you survive, eg giving more points to periods during which the players do not starve or disregarding these periods. In my feeling, the game should remain neutral vis-a-vis to what you do in it. Remember the question the game originally came along with: How far will you go to survive? It's up to you.

I don't know if I am expressing myself correctly here or whether it is understandable what I am driving at. Once we start to introduce a score, we also start endless discussions as to how the score should be established. Should a player get more points if he sleeps at least 8 hours every night? If he gets up early to do some work? If he only eats vegan? If he never touches a gun? If he does not distract wolves with decoys before shooting them? If he does not stop the bear by building a fire in its way?

8. Adding a morale bar (CopperBot)

The morale bar has been discussed for a long time, and indeed it seems obvious that starving should lower morale. However, what are the consequences of low morale? Suicide? That would seem a little out of place in a game in which the player is always in full control. Low morale could also lead to a high base fatigue. Now this could be interesting if sleep-healing after starvation-hibernation would not suffice to get the morale bar back up. The player would then be at 100% condition, but would still be highly fatigued. This could be dangerous...

9. A game mechanic threatening the player inside the shelter

I originally had the idea of NPCs entering the player's shelter, which I introduced like this: "Ha! I just thought like this: Starvation-hibernation needs a shelter to take place in. Because having starved down to 10%, the player would not want to confront an enemy. Now... (harrharr)... what if a game mechanic was introduced that would allow enemies to enter our shelters? Imagine starving happily away upstairs in Camp Office and hearing the door downstairs open and close again..."

Now I am thinking that this could be expanded generally to events that would either threaten the player inside the shelter (eg animals or NPCs breaking in) or that would force him/her to abandon the shelter and move. I don't yet have a clear vision aht kind of event could fulfill the requirements of the latter, but maybe somebody else will come up with an idea...

10. Introducing a new parameter (strength?)

Part of the hibernation problem originates from the fact that all physical ailments are aggregated into one value expressing the overall physical state: condition. We may go down to 20% condition from freezing, taking damage from falling or fighting, from dysentery, burning, whatever. It's simple and elegant. However, it does not reflect that some ailments like freezing might be shaken off with a night's sleep while others should take days (dysentery) or weeks (starving) to cure. Extracting starving from this system and introducing a new bar for, let's say, physical strength, would allow to individually address starving by giving it some long-term effect different from the other ailments.

11. Doing something which might be ingenious, but is hard to understand (octavian_os)

The hibernation problem might be solved by changing the continuum of time and space and calculating how some factors which change over time (and maybe, traversing other dimensions), all with a view to how the player's psyche perceives the calorie burn rate in relation to fatigue, the infinitesimals being... I mean taking the square root out of... no, a function of some variable, let's assume it's called alpha, and another function... probably a function of a function... erm...

12. Conclusion

This is just my personal conclusion. It is obvious that something should be done about hibernation. Not counting starving time for the leaderboards has a certain elegance speaking for it and seems to be popular as a solution, but I think the game also loses elegance in the process. I would prefer an "in-game" solution.

In terms of game mechanics, hibernation creates resources out of nothing, it is like free food, and quite a lot of it. To make hibernating unattractive, a mechanism should be introduced that raises "costs" for the player to a degree which completely offsets the amount of "free food" gained from hibernating. Thinking about it, I keep coming back to the idea of physical ailments affecting the player long-term (like paying back a credit plus interest). Now I am not an expert on starving and its consequences on the human body, but I do like the idea of upsetting the digestive system and having a long-term problem with eating or digesting certain kinds of food. Maybe starving down to some 80% once in 10 days would bear fairly low chances of triggering the ailment (so as to not punish the occasional food shortage too harshly), but below that the chances would rise steeply. And then the player would have a long-term digestive problem which could cost him many calories (vomiting up food, catching dysentery much more often and without obvious reason), and he would have to maintain himself well-fed for, let's say, 14 days or so. Downside: The amount of condition loss attributable to starving would have to be measured independently from the overall condition. But I think this can be done.

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Negative calorie intake or BMI (I've seen discussed) would be the only 'straight cut job done' ideas I have, neither terrificly welcome from my perspective but would accept them as just punishments.

Hibernation for me, is a serious annoyance. Not because I have this dark feeling about people who want to spend their time in a video game doing as above, but it bothers me because it IS the most efficient way to survive, I know it artificially inflates the only 'objective' to strive for in sandbox mode and it bothers me it's an option *available* to me and I always feel like I have to pull a little ridiculous number-nerd in my head away from and remember I'm trying to be immersed in a video game, it's not a huge immersion-breaker for me, but it's a tiny nag. Fighting for virtual survival I think needs to be viewed also as fighting 'the game', and if 'the game' is a serious pushover. Then the survival becomes laughable too. You want to get mad at the game, relish at your close scrapes and relief in 'the game' and ultimately feel awesome when you survive longer than your personal best (without something like hibernation >.>) and not the game being like 'oh you've done a few days hard work, now you want to stay in here for hundreds or days, maybe wonder out a few feet every couple of months? Yeah fine, let me know when you're ready to fight for survival again'. I don't want to fight against that game, even in a competitive manner with other players, the 'board' we're playing on sounds like a wimp.

In the general discussion I posted an alternative way to play which is basically starry night but you can use habitable buildings for one night only until your marker perishes and is the currently the way I play because it shoves hibernation away from my mind, albeit still possible, and encourages a longer life than a simple all out starry night play but it's caused me to have enough close shaves to find myself running down the other side of the map seeking some kind of new shelter because the weather is just abysmal and because I'd decided I'd buy myself a "free night" by trying not to use a building but some ruins and a fire.

What I'm trying to get at, is that motivating/forcing the player to be on the move or 'up sticks' and relocate their 'home base' every so often would help deter it. Perhaps conditions of buildings deteriorate over time and their internal temperature slowly decreases and you get the windchill from outside, perhaps more hungry wolves start investigating this meat sitting around the same place for weeks and weeks. I don't know, but maybe coming at it 'from an angle' like that might be better than putting it some hard number-crunching/numerical penalty, maybe a more 'environmental' penalty. Random building decay would be a nice kind of play thingy if you could just kind of, have it as a 'gameplay' option when you start come to think about it... see buildings as expendable resources in random and slowly but surely deteriorating conditions like loot .. but now I'm getting off-topic and the disadvantage of taking an 'atmospheric' approach like building decay would be hibernation would exist in smaller dosages, but I think to a point you have to accept min/maxing will always exist, just not to the extreme and plain obvious way it is now.

It depends what angle the devs want to address it, and I really think they should address it in the sandbox mode as somewhat a priority, because ultimately as more coverage of the game comes out as it continues development it would be a shame to have people being like 'yeah this is how survive as many days as your boredom can cope with'. People who really get invested and immersed in the world don't really want their achievements 'devalued' I guess. I know it's still early development, but EA games have a tendency to randomly kind of 'blow up' in terms of random high-profile youtubers putting out footage and stuff and people getting invested, and I feel like something which kind of breaks the 'core principal' of the game (survive) should not be an exploit that continues to be overlooked as development progress.

I'm not too fussed with the leaderboards, but they are a complete mess. I don't personally understand the urge to 'compete' to the level of like global leaderboards anyway, I mean it's a game with RNG and so it's kind of... skewy. Also anyone who goes for things like global leaderboards would also have to take into account save game abuse and that sort of.. icky stuff. But hey, I can kind of understand where you're coming from. But honestly I think devs would have to take inspiration from other 'rogue' kind of titles if that kind of 'competition' wants to be supported. Global world seeds 'challenges' and speed challenges etc, all that jazz.

So all in all, kind of annoying to me as a current alpha player but I work around it in my own personal fashion and 'imaginary' self-limits as I bet/have seen other players state they do, but definitely would urge the devs to look at it to stop it being a long-term detraction from the game sooner rather than later because I'm convinced any dedicated player sooner or later when trying to 'optimise' their survival will eventually (usually probably accidentally) stumble upon the 'hibernation' mechanic, and it will suddenly blow the 'magic' of the game away and cause them to suddenly make decisions about their perspective and what's 'right' and 'wrong' for 'my play-through of this game' like you talk about and it was a bit of a foreign obstacle for me in terms of a PC gamer.. "I'm being rewarded constantly for doing.. almost nothing here.. for a very very very long time.. is this.. is this right? It doesn't feel right, at least not for this genre". I think many of us are arriving at the conclusion it falls as an 'exploit'.

Having written an essay about it, y'know the solution might be right under the nose. Something like a simple tweak so you can't get a 'net gain' of condition but a substantial enough 'net loss' over 24-48 hours with only minimal calories might be all it takes. But I don't know how the math would break down and if it's possible it's that simple, I feel like that would just slightly alter the 'boundaries' of hibernation and I'm not 100% sure you can 'out-math' it. Maybe you can. Who knows. Another simple solution would be medical afflictions / your bodies 'immunity' (not directly expressed to the player). But perhaps you can get conditions like a cough which develops into a more serious lung infection would could result in death over time or whatever, if you'e not supplying -large quantities- of what your body needs to fight it off. Again.. I suppose you would just 'overeat' during this period, only causing a small dent in the problem of 'hibernation'... unless it greatly taxed lesser-quantity supplies.. like antibiotics..

Lastly all I can think of is while in alpha opening up 'gameplay modifiers' to the players, things like condition deterioration for food/temperature/water and condition regeneration rate from sleep we can tweak ourselves and share our thoughts to see if there's an optimum level open to minimal abuse that's fun and maybe other 'background' mechanics could maybe be enabled/disabled (gimmeh building decay <3). Just a thought.

Sorry for the long post but I've stewed on it a lot myself, and it is a puzzler! I could spitball forever but I'll stop there. Hopefully it will inspire others.

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Making significant changes to sleep-healing is also a possible fix. Right now it's possible to freeze half to death and get mauled by a wolf, sleep for 12 hours and be perfectly fine the next day. I've been running a challenge on my stream where I only sleep in one hour increments, so I only heal at 1% per hour slept. Very much changes the experience and how you go about your day.

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I'm in for whatever change in game mechanics may solve the starvation/hibernation exploit.

Be it Polarbears suggestion (double the amount of kcal needed per hour after starvation), a change in regeneration times or even my plain sledgehammer method "if you starve for more than 1000h in a single game, you simply drop dead". (There should be a warning after 800h of starvation, whoever continues to starve on purpose afterwards, doesn't deserve better than losing his/her savegame).

As I've explained in another thread recently, it is nothing but realistic that you finally die once all your fat and muscle reserves are used up because of excessive starvation. And no-one can tell me that they starved 1000h hours alltogether "accidentally" within a single game - that would be about 40 days in a row or e.g. 12h every 5th day during a 400 days run!

People who seriously can't manage to find enough food in TLD would never ever survive for more than 50 days, anyway.

The community has probably already suggested more than 10 different approaches to this problem, of which at least 5 could be implemented without (too) severe/punishing side effects for new players or people who starve accidentally from time to time.

In my opinion, either the devs don't consider the problem worth a fix OR (and I assume the latter) they are trying to develop a solution completely without unwanted down sides. I personally doubt that such a solution exists, but I'll be pleasantly surprised should we get one.^^

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I can see some excellent material coming together here. I think bburton31 has expressed very well what man players may feel. I guess it might be helpful to edit my opening post and collect possible remedies there. Please bring it to my attention if you feel your ideas have not been included or misrepresented...

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Many other suggestions have been made during the past weeks - if you want to make a complete list, you might want to include them. I'll try to either quote or sum up the idea of each player, but I'll miss many ideas for sure.

(I'll also leave out the suggestions that you've already summed up ofc.^^)

Solution by plain prohibition of excessive starvation and/or hibernation:

simarson: "Hunger: If you starving you CANT SLEEP."

elloco999: "The longer you're starving, the more often you wake up before the time you chose is up (the sleep interruption mechanism that was introduced several updates back could be used for this)"

AmericanSteel & Scyzara: "Character refuses to sleep for more than 12h per day (me) or when the exhaustion bar is at zero (AS). Just like the character won't eat or drink when he/she isn't thirsty/hungry. Being sick should be an exception ofc. Requires to add a resting option to speed up time during blizzards. "

Solution by making starvation a zero sum game:

PolarBear70: "What should happen is that when I starve myself down to 0 calories and start losing condition, I experience a drop in movement and weight allowance much like when you are fatigued to replicate the loss of muscle. And, in addition, the food I consume to alleviate the starvation should be consumed up to twice as fast until I've restored what was lost from my body. Having the meter go into "negative calories" isn't as accurate since if you're down 1000 calories and you eat a 500 calorie meal, you're not still "starving". But the game should internally note how much of a deficit existed, and the calorie consumption should be something like 1.5x or 2x the normal rate until the deficit was alleviated. And the negative conditions would slowly go away as the deficit was made up by food."

Solution by punishing starvation with severe disadvantages:

elloco999 & tog89: "increase the effects starvation/ dehydration has on other aspects like fatigue."

Maikleeps: "I'd like to suggest a feature that is called body weight.[...] If one eats less than the amount of calories needed per 24h the body weight decreases [...]. Greatly decreasing body weight results in e. g. walking slower, more likely to fail crafting or making fire or even forage wood and reduces FOV (field of vision) and finally results in death."

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Solution by punishing starvation with severe disadvantages:

elloco999 & tog89: "increase the effects starvation/ dehydration has on other aspects like fatigue."

Maikleeps: "I'd like to suggest a feature that is called body weight.[...] If one eats less than the amount of calories needed per 24h the body weight decreases [...]. Greatly decreasing body weight results in e. g. walking slower, more likely to fail crafting or making fire or even forage wood and reduces FOV (field of vision) and finally results in death."

One thing to keep in mind is that potential debuffs resulting from starvation (e.g. slower walking speed, narrow FOV) will have very small impacts on Hibernators due to the nature of that 'play style'. In effect, this type of solution will punish accidental starvers more (since they are TRYING to find food).

For this reason I favor the suggestions that prevent sleeping when sleeping is plausibly disturbed e.g. too rested to sleep (fatigue = 0 or < X%, or 12 hours of sleep already that day) or too hungry to sleep.

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So I was thinking about how funny it could be if we could catch a cold ingame and randomly have to sneeze. Like "alright, wolfie... I'm just gonna sneak past you... haaaa-tchi!" And searched the forum if there maybe already has been such a whishlist item. And doing that I've sumbeled upon something that might fit here.

Alpha Wish List / Topic "so i cant catch a cold"

The main strategy I've picked up is, get down to -1500 calories, get down to 20% condition or so, eat a bunch of food to get into positive calories, sleep, get condition back up to 100%. If this (= punishing not eating / drinking enough with a higher risk of catching some kind of illness) comes into play more when you are starving yourself and otherwise not maintaining a healthy condition, it makes that strategy more difficult to implement.

this is something i think that actually needs change....yes i now you can go days without food but start to become weakened. also if you were to have such an empty stomach then stuff your face full of food it would make you sick....so in turn i think you should take the same risk in game and should cause you to vomit losing some of your calories, or at least give you an upset stomach and need immediate rest or some other kind of medical assistance.

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I have said before we need "Sleeping" and we need "Resting". Resting should cost more calories than sleeping but not as many calories are walking about. The return would be, at best, half that for stamina and healing. Originally I had proposed resting would be on any surface not a bed. So the player could sit on the floor of a cave, behind a tree, etc. I also said we need to change all resting surfaces (like chairs and couches) to the equivalent of a cot (+0 warmth).

On a similar note, anyone with an injury would be considered resting and not sleeping if their injuries put their status less the 75%. If a player had full stamina and were fully healed, then they would be resting and not sleeping. This would put forth a greater penalty to injured players and put the screws to people who hibernated. Would it eliminate the problem, no. But it would make the gap on the returns the OP mentioned significantly smaller.

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Alright, so I think I can offer a pretty wide perspective on this. I'm definitely in agreement with some of the major points being made in this thread. In fact I mentioned the problem in one of my first posts back in January, going as far to say that I would basically wait until release to go for a very long run. However, my love for the game kept me playing and I figured that if I was going to play I might as well play it out in the most efficient way possible. So, I've done enough hibernating now to know exactly where everyone is coming from on this.

Now, is hibernation really the issue here? I think that what we need to be looking at is the cause of hibernation. The question is, WHY are we hibernating? We are hibernating because there is just way, way, way too many resources on the map. Every experienced and efficient player reaches that point in the run where there is absolutely nothing worth doing beyond hibernation. And an especially long phase of hibernation occurs once you've looted the map and localized everything into one home base. This phase is broken up slightly by hunting trips, wood foraging and cooking/water making, but resources are currently so abundant that this phase can be insanely long.

I tried to think my way through the solutions in this thread to figure out how my overall strategy would change in each case. It seems to me that basically the only thing that really changes in how your run would play out is that there is now much more incentive to eat a lot more and keep yourself from starving most of the time, if not all the time. So basically, when you're thinking up a solution, you also need to think about the solution to your solution. Whether it's complete prohibition of sleeping while starving, or medical ailments from doing so, or reduced healing, it would seem to me that all of these answers just lead to the same adjustment. That adjustment here being that you would just need to eat a lot more food and keep some calories going. This is a step in the right direction, because you would definitely burn through resources much faster. However, this does nothing to end hibernation. As far as I can figure, you would just hunt more often and for bigger hauls. Your other resources would still be so stock piled, that you would still have nothing better to do but hunt large hauls before a period of hibernation. So, instead of going out for one deer/wolf combo, you do that and then immediately go back out for another deer/wolf combo. Nothing really changes here, because you will still have nothing better to do beyond hibernation, the only thing that will change is that instead of starvation sleeping, you'll just have to eat before every sleep.

To be honest, I don't think hibernation is the problem at all. Hibernation is a BLESSING! Can you imagine trying to endure a leaderboard run with the amount of resources that are currently available on the map and not having a way to quickly pass the time? It would be an absolute nightmare!

So, I think what really needs to happen is a large reduction in resources for experienced players. Hibernation won't even come into play if the cause of it no longer exists. This is a difficult thing to balance, because we all know how hard this game was as a beginner. And even as an experienced player, the very first few weeks of a run is much more difficult than those that follow. I have a couple ideas in mind, but at the same time we also know that the game is going to change in potentially big ways, so maybe it's not even worth really putting much thought into right now. We know that the devs have a long list of things to add, and NPC's could even be placed into the sandbox and who can guess how this will change optimal strategies. As the game stands now, here are a couple of my own ideas:

Loot that despawns gradually from the world

This one is my favorite idea, because it keeps the early part of the run at the same difficulty that it is right now. All loot would spawn just as it does now, but after a couple weeks or a month, x% of loot begins to despawn on all maps every x number of days. Depending on the numbers, this could greatly reduce the maximum possible survival time, which would be a wonderful thing. There could be a limit to the % reduction, so that if you eventually moved to the last map you had never been to before, there would still be stuff to find, but very little. Just enough to extend the run a bit. This idea could even be reinforced by some story, like other survivors out there who have been making passes through the maps and reducing the loot that's left there for you to find. I'd also love to see deer/wolf gut reduced to 1 instead of 2, and no more of this "if you don't touch it, it won't degrade" mechanic. Things that degrade should begin degrading right from the start of a run and that will also help reduce resources as well.

Expert mode

I know that I've read that the devs aren't interested in making any extra difficulty modes than what we have now, but this is one option that occurs to me. I think it would make sense that you could only unlock Expert mode by proving yourself in Stalker first. Say, surviving 100 days or maybe a year in Stalker mode would unlock Expert mode. This mode would just have loot be absolutely scarce right from the start and possibly function the way it does now, meaning no despawning, but scarce enough in general that you really can't even stay in one place for long.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on the matter thus far. It's hard to say what should be done considering how much the game is going to change as things continue to be added. I'm happy to patiently wait and see what happens with the game. It's already one of my favorite games of all time and the devs are excellent at what they do.

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To be honest, I don't think hibernation is the problem at all. Hibernation is a BLESSING! Can you imagine trying to endure a leaderboard run with the amount of resources that are currently available on the map and not having a way to quickly pass the time? It would be an absolute nightmare!

Have you ever even tried it? I'm on a day 650 savegame right now, without EVER starving on purpose OR Sleeping excessively. (It's probably gonna be #9 or #10 in the end, unless further hibernators jump in before I die, ofc. x-x

Everything beyond 9 is a priori out of my reach because I both made a lot of mistakes at the beginning of my game and - which is more important - refuse to hibernate because I inherently dislike exploits). The game took about 200 RL hours (since January) yet, but it wasn't particularly boring or a nightmare at all.

You only need to take personal responsibility for NOT getting bored instead of waiting for the game to force a not boring playstyle on you. Change your daily routines every few days and get some excitenment every now and then (hunt a bear, sleep in Quonset gas station, hand-fight two wolves in a row on purpose... whatever you like), and you'll be way less bored than sleeping away the days for sure.

It's a causal fallacy to say "people hibernate because the game is boring", because the game is probably (also) way more boring for people who hibernate.

I nevertheless agree that more mid-game activities and shorter runs (either less items or despawning items like you suggested) would definitely benefit the leaderboard runs.

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Have you ever even tried it? I'm on a day 650 savegame right now, without EVER starving on purpose OR Sleeping excessively. (It's probably gonna be #9 or #10 in the end, unless further hibernators jump in before I die, ofc. x-x

No, and I would never want to try that. What you're doing is basically just another one of those self-imposed challenges that many other good players are doing these days. If I was going to do a challenge, it would be one of the much harder and ultimately shorter challenges. What you're doing actually doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The way I see it, if I was going to do a really long leaderboard run, I would want to take it as far as possible. Limiting myself during a run like that would drive me crazy and make me feel like I was wasting my time for not taking the run to it's maximum potential.

That being said, I can see how my thoughts on this may not be shared. I am personally driven by competition when it comes to doing a long run, and that in itself is an enjoyment for me. In addition to that, I would have fun taking the game into a phase that I hadn't experienced before and learning how it plays at the end of a very long run. If you get the most out of your game by imposing a challenge on yourself, then that's great and I respect that.

I love the idea of leaderboards for a game like this and that's where the basis of all my thoughts are starting from. I would be ecstatic to see leaderboards that update in real-time for characters that are both alive and dead. That would be so much more interesting to watch and follow and play along with. That, and a much harder game with a shorter maximum survival time would be fantastic.

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[...] Nothing really changes here, because you will still have nothing better to do beyond hibernation, the only thing that will change is that instead of starvation sleeping, you'll just have to eat before every sleep. [...]

I thought that this was exactly the change the community here asked for. That you are not rewarded for starving on purpose with a higher ladderboard rank.

I admit, I don't know much about this issue. I havn't ever put my character to bed starving, waited for his condition to drop to about 20% then eat a bit and sleep again to get the condition back up. And I don't care too much about the board...

But as I understood it, this is what the community here means when they talk about "hibernation".

And it seemed to me like the community was okay with people doing sleep-marathons, which means: sleeping a lot on a full stomach to use up your previously gathered resources. Well of cause this can be boring for each player that does so. But to me the community semms okay with such a playstyle on the ladder boards.

So assuming I am not wrong, then "please do something about the falsitied ladder board by hibernation" and "please do something about the mid-game... it's sooooo boring" are two different discussions.

But if I'm wrong, please correct me :)

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What you're doing actually doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The way I see it, if I was going to do a really long leaderboard run, I would want to take it as far as possible. Limiting myself during a run like that would drive me crazy and make me feel like I was wasting my time for not taking the run to it's maximum potential.

Well, we obviously have different ethical points of view, because I can't comprehend how getting an achievement (in this case, a high leaderboard rank) earned by exploiting can be fun to anyone, either. ;)

I guess I understand your point on a rational level, though. You feel the need to use any potential advantage as neglecting beneficial options would cause worse results than those you could have achieved otherwise. The whole dilemma can be boiled down to the old (and dangerous) question, whether the end justifies all means.

Think about it for a moment. If you follow a purely efficiency-based way of argumentation, you would e.g. also have to support doping for professional sportsmen as a consequence.

An olympic athlet on steroids can for sure run faster, jump higher and thus achieve better results.

But would you ever say anything along the lines of "Steroids are a blessing! Those stupid other sportsmen who refuse to take drugs shouldn't complain about doping. It's just their own fault if they're limitting themselves by playing fair!" ? *beware the cynism*

(No offense intended, I just want to point out how twisted this way of thinking is in my opinion).

It's obvious that starvation-hibernation is more efficient (less RL time required for playing AND longer survival times) than what I'm doing, you're right about that. From a purely efficiency-based point of view, my way to play really doesn't make any sense. But optimal efficiency, regardless of the cost, is not my motivation. Having fun while playing (and alongside proving that decent survival times without cheating are possible), is just enough for me.

I mean, what good would it be if I was #1 and would feel guilty all the time because I cheated to get that rank? I prefer an honest rank 10 (or even 20) to a cheated rank 1.

Well, and I would of course even more prefer the Olympic committee to step in and take away the drug syringes once and for all.

I thought that this was exactly the change the community here asked for. That you are not rewarded for starving on purpose with a higher ladderboard rank.

I admit, I don't know much about this issue. I havn't ever put my character to bed starving, waited for his condition to drop to about 20% then eat a bit and sleep again to get the condition back up. And I don't care too much about the board...

But as I understood it, this is what the community here means when they talk about "hibernation".

You're right, most people just write "hibernation", when they actually mean starvation-hibernation.

I personally don't mind people sleeping a lot (although I find that terribly boring as well). But that's everyone's personal freedom to play as they like.

I wouldn't even mind people starving themselves, IF (and this is a big IF that is completely violated by the current game mechanics) this starvation playstyle wouldn't make all other playstyles (sleeping without starvation, active playstyle, nomad, mad lumberjack, whatever else you can imagine) totally non-competitive.

Playing in a way that is against "the sprirt of the game" (dev's quote), common sense AND realism should simply not be the only viable way to go.

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Maybe the problem isn't with the hibernation or the starvation-hibernation, it's with the fact that 'time survived' is what counts. The best way to increase your time survived is to use starvation-hibernation. It's also the most boring way to play the game, but you are "rewarded" with a high ranking on the leaderboards. If that reward wasn't there, I doubt there would be many people using this technique and there wouldn't be many people worried about it if others did use it.

Maybe the solution here would be to have the leaderbords display a score that is based not just on time survived but other factors as well. One of those factors could be the amount of time not starving or something like that. That way people could starve as much as they want to but it will not raise their score.

Or maybe the game could simply register 'time survived without starving', so any time you spend starving is not counted towards your position on the leaderboards. That would immediately nullify the starvation-hibernation technique for the purpose of getting a high position on the leaderboards.

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Or maybe the game could simply register 'time survived without starving', so any time you spend starving is not counted towards your position on the leaderboards. That would immediately nullify the starvation-hibernation technique for the purpose of getting a high position on the leaderboards.

That's a great idea! More than great even, rather ingenius as it wouldn't have a single negative side effect for people who starve accidentally. I have a new favorite solution. BIG thumbs up, elloco! :)

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Think about it for a moment. If you follow a purely efficiency-based way of argumentation, you would e.g. also have to support doping for professional sportsmen as a consequence.

No, I wouldn't. I don't think it's even the same thing. Using performance enhancing drugs that are banned and clearly known to be against the rules is the same thing as hibernation in The Long Dark now? Nonsense. What rules am I breaking by hibernating? Do you not have equal opportunity to do the same thing? If I was exploiting food by eating a strictly healthy diet to gain an advantage over you in sports, and you didn't want to do the same thing because it was boring to eat that way, would you call me a cheater? If Hinterland puts a ban out on hibernation, let me know, but until then hibernation is still playing within the rules. Am I using a literal cheat, hack or program that is giving me an unfair advantage that you don't have access to? I can see why you frown on hibernating, but to call it cheating? No, I don't think so.

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...If Hinterland puts a ban out on hibernation, let me know, but until then hibernation is still playing within the rules...

Hinterland has been trying to figure out a way to get people to stop hibernating (talking mainly about starvation-hibernating here) for as long as people have been complaining about other people hibernating. It's not how they intend the players to play the game. They have already tried several ways but nothing has worked so far. Coming up with a way to stop hibernating without penalizing players when they are in a situation where they are not starving by choice and also enabling players to pass the time when they have nothing to do while a blizzard is raging for hours outside has proven very difficult.

That said, it's not really cheating either. It's not illegal and everybody can use it if they want to. On the other hand, most people just want to play the game the way it's intended and still have their ranking on the leaderbord mean something. And thay feel that a number of people use hibernating to achieve a very high ranking, diminishes the value of their rank. I can understand that. The leaderbords don't really show who is best at surviving in TLD, it shows who is willing to hibernate the longest.

I for one really hope that Hinterland either figures out a way to make hibernation obsolete without impacting regular play too much or changes the way the leaderbords work so hibernating is no longer a way to get a high rank.

Or maybe the game could simply register 'time survived without starving', so any time you spend starving is not counted towards your position on the leaderboards. That would immediately nullify the starvation-hibernation technique for the purpose of getting a high position on the leaderboards.

That's a great idea! More than great even, rather ingenius as it wouldn't have a single negative side effect for people who starve accidentally. I have a new favorite solution. BIG thumbs up, elloco! :)

LOL thanks Scyzara!

Not punishing players for starving when it's not by choice has been a concern for me ever since the discussion on hibernation started. There are many ways we could make (starvation-)hibernation more difficult but almost all of them seem to result in also making it more difficult to survive if you're just having a bit of bad luck and run out of food.

Reading this part of your post:

...I wouldn't even mind people starving themselves, IF (and this is a big IF that is completely violated by the current game mechanics) this starvation playstyle wouldn't make all other playstyles (sleeping without starvation, active playstyle, nomad, mad lumberjack, whatever else you can imagine) totally non-competitive

Playing in a way that is against "the sprirt of the game" (dev's quote), common sense AND realism should simply not be the only viable way to go.

it suddenly dawned to me. The problem is not with the starvation-hibernation itself, it's with why people do it: to get a high rank on the leaderbord. Change the leaderbord to not take into account time spend starvation-hibernating and it will probably go away and even if it doesn't it's no longer an issue to the other players.

Now let's hope the devs read this and agree ;)

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This seems like another area where a morale bar could be useful. Doing nothing but sleeping and drinking for days on end is depressing and could negatively impact morale. While a morale bar has been discussed in several other threads already this seems like a perfect application for it. Consistently low morale could run the risk of death by character suicide.

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This seems like another area where a morale bar could be useful. Doing nothing but sleeping and drinking for days on end is depressing and could negatively impact morale. While a morale bar has been discussed in several other threads already this seems like a perfect application for it. Consistently low morale could run the risk of death by character suicide.

I like the idea of Morale but I think suicide it to high a price to pay. Some people can be depressed and live with it for years, others suffer a bout of depression and take drastic measures. And then there are all the differences in between. Pigeon Holing a stat like morale where red line = death is a bit to extreme. I think it impacting other stats is really the way to go. Make the character slower, make them weaker and/or drop their health. Their actions exacerbate their conditions that speed their doom, instead of finishing off that bottle of pain pills they have been hording or making that last rifle round become your undoing.

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This seems like another area where a morale bar could be useful. Doing nothing but sleeping and drinking for days on end is depressing and could negatively impact morale. While a morale bar has been discussed in several other threads already this seems like a perfect application for it. Consistently low morale could run the risk of death by character suicide.

I like the idea of Morale but I think suicide it to high a price to pay. Some people can be depressed and live with it for years, others suffer a bout of depression and take drastic measures. And then there are all the differences in between. Pigeon Holing a stat like morale where red line = death is a bit to extreme. I think it impacting other stats is really the way to go. Make the character slower, make them weaker and/or drop their health. Their actions exacerbate their conditions that speed their doom, instead of finishing off that bottle of pain pills they have been hording or making that last rifle round become your undoing.

Totally agree. In every other thread where this subject has come up I've suggested that morale be something that is typically low anyway (because of the nature of the game) and not necessarily be something you can die from. I just wanted to toy with the idea that if morale was in the red for an extended period of time suicide could be the outcome.

In essence having morale impact other stats might still fit the bill. If you stayed inside too long and your morale was too low for a long time then the effectiveness of sleeping and drinking and eating could wane - forcing you out of hibernation.

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This seems like another area where a morale bar could be useful. Doing nothing but sleeping and drinking for days on end is depressing and could negatively impact morale. While a morale bar has been discussed in several other threads already this seems like a perfect application for it. Consistently low morale could run the risk of death by character suicide.

I like the idea of Morale but I think suicide it to high a price to pay. Some people can be depressed and live with it for years, others suffer a bout of depression and take drastic measures. And then there are all the differences in between. Pigeon Holing a stat like morale where red line = death is a bit to extreme. I think it impacting other stats is really the way to go. Make the character slower, make them weaker and/or drop their health. Their actions exacerbate their conditions that speed their doom, instead of finishing off that bottle of pain pills they have been hording or making that last rifle round become your undoing.

Totally agree. In every other thread where this subject has come up I've suggested that morale be something that is typically low anyway (because of the nature of the game) and not necessarily be something you can die from. I just wanted to toy with the idea that if morale was in the red for an extended period of time suicide could be the outcome.

In essence having morale impact other stats might still fit the bill. If you stayed inside too long and your morale was too low for a long time then the effectiveness of sleeping and drinking and eating could wane - forcing you out of hibernation.

I also think morale should be stat sitting at around 50% at the start of the game. As the player accomplishes certain tasks for the first time their morale ceiling gets higher. This is lets the avatar know they can survive in harsh conditions. Also some situations should give a morale reward. For instance, crafting a particular item for the first time give a +1% bonus. Recovering after your first attack by bear and/or a wolf award +2%. Surviving your first week gives a +1%. Certain events that recover moral might be eating fresh meat +2%, eating past being full (food drunk ftw), +5%, catching a fish +3%, snaring a rabbit +2%, harvesting a kill +1%, finding a new zone +5%, etc. There would then be modifier to take the stat down: boredom, hunger and thirst would modify it. Further modification could be done depending on injuries, equipment failure, etc.

I think a really GOOD way to modify morale is have the game tag every resource the player has touched. It then categorizes it. Does not matter if it is in the zone or another zone. For example, the player harvests 10 hardwoods and uses three. The player has 7 hardwoods at their disposal. If the player had more than X hardwoods the avatar could say "I have enough fir to last me a week!" This gives them a resource morale bonus. Their resource falls below a certain level the avatar could say, "If I get snowed in I will freeze to death. Better gather more wood." The player then takes a resource morale penalty. So as items rot, break, consumed, replaced and repaired the table will shift accordingly. Maybe have an "total inventory" screen we could access could show out total supplies. I think showing the total modifier would be a bit gamey, it would let the player know what they have. Have it look like a note book and the tally is hashes. As the player mouses over an item, the avatar could say something appropriate like "No need to worry about fresh water", "I need to process this water so I can drink it" or "I need to find more pain killers". This would mean a player, at the beginning of the game, was at just a lower moral (50%) because they simply did not have the resources to aid in their survival. They start to stock up and the feel they are in a better place. As the items are used they begin to worry about their replacement.

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Glad we had this thread now. We'll see what the devs decide to do, I feel good a lot of the community has chipped in here and suggestions aside, the pure interest and feedback in this topic should undoubtedly unsure we'll see some impact from the devs one way or another.

I have my personal opinions about a lot of the 'solutions' ranging from 'great' to 'awful', so I'm sure there's something tangible the devs will pick out here.

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