RFC: Hunting Exploits

[tetradigem]

the problem is not that you CAN cheese things at low levels, its that you are REQUIRED to do so. i mean were talking a game where a human cant kill a BADGER at low levels without cheesing. if it werent for the fact that nearly every recipie DEMANDS leather, i wouldnt even bother hunting anything at all since doing so basically screws me out of any OTHER hunting for the next few hours or days, or in some cases even longer because for some inconceivable reason you need 30,000 different healing items, all ultra rare to find at low levels, to heal anything aside from a leech burn. i mean look at crabs and hedgehogs. theres no excuse for that level of middle finger to the player at low levels.

[Barbamaus]

About the shallow water exploit, there are a few things that would solve the problem:
1. Disallow players to shoot from boats
2. Disallow people on boats to lift objects (or at least the guy rowing, so u can't do it solo)
3. Allow trapped animals to destroy boats/obstacles that prevent them from fleeing
or
4. Allow animals to swim for short distances. If the animal dies in deep water, it drowns and disappears.

The last point would make it exceptionally harder to abuse shallow water for hunting.


As for the cave/cabin exploits, might not be the best solution, but how about making the animal just disappear or teleport at a random location (let's say somewhere in the 3x3 map grid around it)?
Preventing people from getting in while in combat is a BAD idea, since it's one of the very few things that can save you if you aggro something by mistake...



Personally I would make large game much stronger and harder to hunt, to increase the importance of small game and stuff like crab shells. Speaking of small-game, crabs and hedgehogs should be killable without getting yourself killed... maybe with a wooden spear or something. Crab hats are supposed to be low-level armor, but it's almost easier to take down a boar than to kill a bunch of crabs without getting destroyed.


On a side note, I think Unarmed Combat should be less effective for hunting. Today, if you don't want to PvP and care about quality, you are better off punching a bear than using a spear or arrows. Large game should require some equipment to be hunted effectively, not just a bunch of naked dudes punching it...

[aemaru08]

About the shallow water exploit, there are a few things that would solve the problem:
1. Disallow players to shoot from boats
2. Disallow people on boats to lift objects (or at least the guy rowing, so u can't do it solo)
3. Allow trapped animals to destroy boats/obstacles that prevent them from fleeing
or
4. Allow animals to swim for short distances. If the animal dies in deep water, it drowns and disappears.

The last point would make it exceptionally harder to abuse shallow water for hunting.


As for the cave/cabin exploits, might not be the best solution, but how about making the animal just disappear or teleport at a random location (let's say somewhere in the 3x3 map grid around it)?
Preventing people from getting in while in combat is a BAD idea, since it's one of the very few things that can save you if you aggro something by mistake...



Personally I would make large game much stronger and harder to hunt, to increase the importance of small game and stuff like crab shells. Speaking of small-game, crabs and hedgehogs should be killable without getting yourself killed... maybe with a wooden spear or something. Crab hats are supposed to be low-level armor, but it's almost easier to take down a boar than to kill a bunch of crabs without getting destroyed.


On a side note, I think Unarmed Combat should be less effective for hunting. Today, if you don't want to PvP and care about quality, you are better off punching a bear than using a spear or arrows. Large game should require some equipment to be hunted effectively, not just a bunch of naked dudes punching it...

+1 4th option

[Mafious]

the problem is not that you CAN cheese things at low levels, its that you are REQUIRED to do so. i mean were talking a game where a human cant kill a BADGER at low levels without cheesing. if it werent for the fact that nearly every recipie DEMANDS leather, i wouldnt even bother hunting anything at all since doing so basically screws me out of any OTHER hunting for the next few hours or days, or in some cases even longer because for some inconceivable reason you need 30,000 different healing items, all ultra rare to find at low levels, to heal anything aside from a leech burn. i mean look at crabs and hedgehogs. theres no excuse for that level of middle finger to the player at low levels.

agreed 100% on crabs, foxes and badgers. it made sense when you had like 3 animals in the whole game, but now they shouldn't require more than 15 UA to safely kill a fox (and i mean without your shp droping by half or getting stupid injuries) after all foxes are a piece of cake to kill for any developed character and don't break the game so much at low lvls because its just 2 pieces of leather and some int feps that are tanked by the quality of tools and skills you have.

[Mafious]

in regards to hordes of freshspawns killing animals, you can make animals.

flee if engaded by 3 or more people.
get a buff to damage or defenses or both if engaged by 3 or more people and can't run away.
"push" people away from their path if fleeing.

not perfect but makes it a little more difficult to trap them.

[azrid]

make quality equal to survival skill

survival hardcap is the simple solution you are looking for jorb

[tetradigem]

the problem is not that you CAN cheese things at low levels, its that you are REQUIRED to do so. i mean were talking a game where a human cant kill a BADGER at low levels without cheesing. if it werent for the fact that nearly every recipie DEMANDS leather, i wouldnt even bother hunting anything at all since doing so basically screws me out of any OTHER hunting for the next few hours or days, or in some cases even longer because for some inconceivable reason you need 30,000 different healing items, all ultra rare to find at low levels, to heal anything aside from a leech burn. i mean look at crabs and hedgehogs. theres no excuse for that level of middle finger to the player at low levels.

agreed 100% on crabs, foxes and badgers. it made sense when you had like 3 animals in the whole game, but now they shouldn't require more than 15 UA to safely kill a fox (and i mean without your shp droping by half or getting stupid injuries) after all foxes are a piece of cake to kill for any developed character and don't break the game so much at low lvls because its just 2 pieces of leather and some int feps that are tanked by the quality of tools and skills you have.

not to mention that as an IRL person, i can literally effortlessly kill any fox i was capable of getting my hands on.and its been that way since i was a small child, because foxes are tiny little cat/dogs that literally break like kit kat bars. the same with badgers, even the oh so dreaded honey badger cant do anything against me grabbing it and wrenching its neck around till its head pops off. but for some reason here the literal most basic enemies require you to either chow down on tons of high level food you wouldnt be able to get on your own, or use exploits just to stand any chance against them. my last character had ~50 in every stat, and would still get nearly bodied by ants and bats, and had just started to be capable of killing foxes. dosent help that the combat system is a mess of incomprehensible completely unexplained gibberish. why does my ability to do damage depend on some arbitrary debuffs i apply? why cant i just SMACK A DUDE IN THE FACE WITH MY SWORD AND HAVE IT ACT LIKE A SWORD? even worse is the way you obtain new combat skills : punching specific enemies in hopes of RNGesus smiling on you until you gain the ability to actually use a weapon. pretty sure i had a single weapon attack out of my like 2 dozen punches, kicks, and interpretive dance movements.

[Zentetsuken]

additional ideas to previous post as It accidentally came early:

If an animal kills any character, lower quality of products that you get from the animal(depending on the stats of the character that it killed, less stats=more quality penalty), or make it completely impossible to get anything off the animal when you butcher it, if it has killed somebody. This would make using alts to lure animals etc. more difficult or impossible.

I think this is a fair idea but it can even be extended further, like the more hits an animal takes or gives the lower quality and less products you get from it. This would mak ANY sort of early game cheesing not overly worth it and slowly bring the quality of products up along with characters stats. Plus it makes sense, like MagicMan said, the more you beat an animal, no matter what you hit it with, the shittier the meat and hide will be, right?

Animals should have passive counter-strikes for players. When a player hits an animal with melee attack, the animal hits back always. This would make it difficult to kill animals in close combat in early game by some abuses.

Not sure if this is necessary if the quality is just shit

Animals should be able to swim, all of them, faster than boats of course. As many exploits use boats.

THIS seems overkill. I mean, if you shoot something from a boat in real life I think that is a pretty legit strategy. Do we think an injured animal is going to be able to swim faster than a boat after its aggressor? I mean MAYBE some animals, but for others I think you can sorta kill the boat exploit by giving them more fleeing points along their hp reduction and just allowing them to destroy or pass through certain objects while fleeing or agrod.

Completely disable archery from boats. (They wobble too much anyway with waves, center of mass and all!) This would fix many things

Why tho? If you are a master archer why shouoldn't you be able to shoot from a boat? Maybe we can make it harder to aim, but if we make animals flee at more spots during their hp reduction we wouldn't need this. If somebody can 1shot a fox from a boat, all power to them in my opinion.

Add the mechanic from salem or something similar: Bears should have large range AOE attacks, like bear roars and your character loses hp.

Sure, bears could be harder I guess.

Caves and houses... Preventing the player completely from going in/out of them when aggroed by animal would work to prevent abuse at least. Other option is to make the animal follow you to caves and houses.

This seems silly too because I feel like it would be a legit strategy even in real life. Maybe just make it so animals no longer spawn near claims and buildings so that actually kiting an animal from far away to a house would be a pain in the ass. Also, more flee points would reduce the ability to utilize both caves and houses.

[Massa]

I feel as though the consensus, even amongst anti-cheesers, is to leave things cheesable.

Otherwise, it's just a numbers/stats game. Would you rather you have people inventively fight boars and bears with compromising positions and traps to keep them from running, or... Spam sideswipe on a horse because their number is now high enough? It has been established that bears and megafauna in general aren't worth the time or effort, it's no real reason to fear cheesies.

EDIT: To respond to the idiot who suggested we lose control of our characters in a 'frightened' state because an animal roared: fuck that. Fuck 'crowd control', fuck losing my own autonomy to stupid shit and my own ability to make decisions. Fuck that. That is stupid and a stupid decision in ANY game.

And to add to my original point: Why nerf the ability to kill things? What's the point? The game is so heavily bottlenecked by leather anyway, and that's all this is for. It just means more squirrels get squished. But what is the actual purpose to locking people into a simply worse early game?

[Granger]

make quality equal to survival skill

survival hardcap is the simple solution you are looking for jorb

Preferably capped to the lowest value of all characters that performed an offensive move on the animal.