Exploitative?

[invader80]

Zombie pathing is still being changed and updated as glitches and other exploits are found, but every once in a while I see a post talking about exploitative base design. I play single player exclusively and I don't necessarily subscribe to 'the right way to play' mentality, but I still wonder if there is an intended defensive setup the devs are designing toward.

My bases generally rely on elevated paths to funnel zombies into gun/explosive range. I usually get to my base using a wood frame bridge that I pick up behind me so the zombies have to go the hard way.

What are you guys' thoughts? Exploiting glitches is obviously the far end from intended design, but where's the line in your opinion?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330523323

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2330523304

[Lady Ming]

The main thing they patch out are ways that you cant' be touched, or you are less then 1% likely to be touched. Typically due to finding exploits in how the AI attempts to navigate the world. Just google Jawoodle killing corridor for prime examples of what they are trying to avoid.

[Raithon]

Originally posted by Ming:

The main thing they patch out are ways that you cant' be touched, or you are less then 1% likely to be touched. Typically due to finding exploits in how the AI attempts to navigate the world. Just google Jawoodle killing corridor for prime examples of what they are trying to avoid.

I used that once. It gets stupid boring stupid fast.

[Shurenai]

It's not about 'the right way to defend'. It's about fixing clear and obvious broken parts of the AI pathing.

For example, It used to be that zombies simply could not dig down. At all. Ever. So all you needed to do for 100% absolute safety from which you would NEVER be attacked by zombies, is find relatively flat land, or a dip in the terrain, and dig three blocks down and place a block over your head. That's it. This simple act made you completely untouchable by the zombies, for no cost, no effort, no defending required.

So The Fun Pimps made it so zombies can dig down. Simple change to correct a glaring flaw.

Similarly, a recent fix to zombie pathing was that it used to be zombies simply could not walk up steep inclines like wedges+wedge tips placed so it was facing the sky. So, if you just built a 4 tall wall out of these wedges and wedge tips, zombies would again never be able to get to you, with the sole exception of vultures and sometimes spider zombies. The main issue here was that the zombies perceive the wedges as walkable terrain- So they essentially never try to attack the wedges while constantly trying to run/jump up them unsuccessfully.

So, The Fun Pimps made it so zombies could walk the terrain, Again a simple fix to correct a glaring flaw in the AI. They could have alternatively made the zombie AI regard the blocks in question as unwalkable, which would have had a similar effect in which zombies would instead just bash down these walls instead of attempting to walk them.

But either way it needed to be fixed; It allowed players to create an almost perfectly safe space that basically never requires repairs, and hardly requires defending- only needs defending from vultures.


TFP is not out to 'beat the player' as so many people like to claim. They're just fixing incredibly obvious flaws in the AI that can be exploited to the level that the player becomes completely untouchable; Something a player should never really be in a survival game.

It comes across to players though as a personal affront or attack, or attempt to 'beat' them for of a number of reasons- But it isn't.

[Dester]

A single AI personality for any game is a bad design. Hopefully the developers have multiple AI personalities thus providing a more unpredictable long term challenge.

[Crater Creator]

The pitfall some players seem to get into is to view the game as having two buckets: a bucket of things that work against the zombies, and a bucket of things that don't. E.g. an underground base used to be in the 'works' bucket and now it's in the 'doesn't work' bucket.

But this oversimplifies things to the point of being downright wrong. Proper game balance lies in the in-between places. A landmine works once, and then zombies after that move past it. A steel vault door works for a while, and then it's breached. A raised platform keeps you safe for a while, until the zombies break too many of the pillars holding it up. An underground bunker can be dug into eventually, but the depth of stone blocks you put between yourself and the surface isn't nothing.

None of these defenses are worthless, and none of them provide infinite safety, either. You can't fully put them in the 'works' bucket nor the 'doesn't work' bucket.

Whether something is exploitative is frequently subjective, but I think it comes down to expectations. If your defense consists only of you doing things you expect a survivor should be able to do, against zombies that can do all the things you expect zombies to be able to do, then it's not exploitative. By this measure, I think most would agree that it's not exploitative to use guns on the zombies when they don't, or to design and build complex structures when they don't. Because most would agree that a survivor should be able to use guns and build structures, and a zombie shouldn't.

Now, the layer on top of that is, are you leveraging a flaw in the game's design. I for one recognize that one of the design goals for the game is that it's possible for zombies to reach you anywhere. So anything a player can do to circumvent that design goal... means the game isn't meeting its design goals. We don't have to be mad at players that exploit this: no shaking our fists that other people aren't playing the way we think they should. But we can be mad that those design goals aren't always met, and demand that the game live up to them.

I've used base designs that rely on elevated paths, and base designs that rely on temporary bridges of wooden frames for access that I remove for the Blood Moon. The latter is a little cheesy that you can rely on that, but look. Fundamentally, it's a building game, and you're allowed to build things. If you couldn't pick up wooden frames, then you'd just destroy the ones behind you instead of picking them up. And if you couldn't walk across wooden frames, you'd upgrade them to wood blocks to get across and then destroy them behind you.

All this would amount to is re-balancing the game so it's somewhat more time consuming to do the same basic thing: build a bridge, cross it, and destroy it so the zombies can't follow you across. You can't really take that away entirely, or else it's not an open world building game anymore. So this method will always be viable, and should be accepted as such.

I don't see how your elevated path would be exploitative, either. If you were moving about it in a way that the zombies don't recognize, that would be one thing. But they're using A* pathfinding now and they pretty much take the best path in all circumstances, much to the frustration of some. If it's faster to take out the pillars, they'll take out the pillars. If it's faster to take some long convoluted path you've set up, they'll do that. Because you can build all week before the horde spawns, you can set up a situation where even the smartest zombie in the universe has to take the long convoluted path: there's simply no better option available to it. And I just don't see what's exploitative about that, because again, both you and the zombies are only doing the things you're each expected to be able to do.

[Mad]

This was probably done before, but what my friend and I did was:

- dig a moat around our base (it was about 4 blocks deep and 1 block wide)
- dig tunnel that passes through the middle of the moat square (which was some 2 blocks below our base's floor)
- expanded the tunnel in the middle, added stone walls and ceiling which formed a little room.
- added a trap door in the middle of said room that leads to our base
- placed ladders just below trap door so we could jump grab it, but zombies couldn't

This enabled us to easily survive every 7th day (so far). Zombies never managed to jump over the moat and instead clustered in the room in the middle of the tunnel below trapdoor.
We simply rained bullets and explosives from above and earned probably 5 levels per horde. Zombies did some damage to walls and ceiling, but we just fixed it afterwards.

[invader80]

Originally posted by Ming:

The main thing they patch out are ways that you cant' be touched, or you are less then 1% likely to be touched. Typically due to finding exploits in how the AI attempts to navigate the world. Just google Jawoodle killing corridor for prime examples of what they are trying to avoid.

In my opinion, glitching the zombies into helplessness is boring. So is dying repeatedly because I built a modest-but-realistic wooden hovel to resist a horde of sledgehammer-hand supervillains. The grey area in between is where most players reside and it's the source of the question: Where's the balance for you?

I guess I could cut the fat and just ask people what their favorite base design is, but I was stupid enough to start down the scenic route and I'm nothing if not a creature of habit.

Originally posted by Shurenai:

It's not about 'the right way to defend'. It's about fixing clear and obvious broken parts of the AI pathing.

...

TFP is not out to 'beat the player' as so many people like to claim. They're just fixing incredibly obvious flaws in the AI that can be exploited to the level that the player becomes completely untouchable; Something a player should never really be in a survival game.

It comes across to players though as a personal affront or attack, or attempt to 'beat' them for of a number of reasons- But it isn't.

The adversarial climate between the players and devs is an issue I have mixed feelings about. Up front, I take no offense about the devs fixing pathing issues, allowing the zombies to dig or even increasing their block damage, but I have only been playing for a year.

I'm not on board with the sentiment that players shouldn't feel a certain way playing a procedurally generated sandbox survival game and I have my own opinions about what I'd do if I was a dev. However, it's hard to fault TFP for making the zombies more of a threat considering how close late-game players come to being Dr. Hercules With A Shotgun, PhD.

The point of bringing any of this up is less about the next trench in the 'war' and more about what other players have found to be fun ways to play the game in its current state. The devs' intent matters in this context only because I'm not sure if the zombies are balanced around beating through a door I walked through or balanced around me pillaring up the side of a concrete building. Or both, I guess. My bases make the hordes easy compared to the frantic nature of raiding POIs and I refuse to believe it's because I've done something right, so I'm asking other players for their experiences.

I'm just here to have fun with a good game like everyone else, after all (and it is a good game, imo. Boring games don't get 200 hours of my time).

Originally posted by Crater Creator:

Whether something is exploitative is frequently subjective, but I think it comes down to expectations. If your defense consists only of you doing things you expect a survivor should be able to do, against zombies that can do all the things you expect zombies to be able to do, then it's not exploitative. By this measure, I think most would agree that it's not exploitative to use guns on the zombies when they don't, or to design and build complex structures when they don't. Because most would agree that a survivor should be able to use guns and build structures, and a zombie shouldn't.

I could justify laying down wood frames as a temporary bridge by saying, "IRL, you'd just use a strong plank to span the gap and walk across before picking it back up," but realism-based justifications sound hollow because I also just rebuilt a two story A-frame complete with an automated turret security grid using a claw hammer and T h e s e H a n d s and it was awesome.

When choosing between game balance and realism the appropriate yardstick is the resultant fun.

Originally posted by Crater Creator:

I don't see how your elevated path would be exploitative, either. If you were moving about it in a way that the zombies don't recognize, that would be one thing. But they're using A* pathfinding now and they pretty much take the best path in all circumstances, much to the frustration of some. If it's faster to take out the pillars, they'll take out the pillars. If it's faster to take some long convoluted path you've set up, they'll do that. Because you can build all week before the horde spawns, you can set up a situation where even the smartest zombie in the universe has to take the long convoluted path: there's simply no better option available to it. And I just don't see what's exploitative about that, because again, both you and the zombies are only doing the things you're each expected to be able to do.

The base I've built seems invincible to me. The Demolishers can always prove me very wrong, but they haven't yet and it seems the sole task at hand is crafting enough ammo to meet demand. The only way to be 'doing it wrong' in this context would be if I wasn't having fun and this isn't the first time I've been stymied by grinding mining, brass finding, timing roaming with bullet-point molding from morning to evening repeat. I guess my point in asking is to see where other players might go from here and this way I also satisfy my curiosity regarding wtf someone might mean by 'exploiting zombie pathing' (not your words, just something I've seen bandied about in other topics which never seems to get a clear definition).


I'm straying from the topic of exploitative base design and I don't like the meandering path I've started down, so I'll just say that I appreciate everyone's responses. You've given me something to think about in terms of the next steps for my solo world. I might just be taking things too seriously.

[invader80]

Originally posted by Mad:

This was probably done before, but what my friend and I did was:

- dig a moat around our base (it was about 4 blocks deep and 1 block wide)
- dig tunnel that passes through the middle of the moat square (which was some 2 blocks below our base's floor)
- expanded the tunnel in the middle, added stone walls and ceiling which formed a little room.
- added a trap door in the middle of said room that leads to our base
- placed ladders just below trap door so we could jump grab it, but zombies couldn't

This enabled us to easily survive every 7th day (so far). Zombies never managed to jump over the moat and instead clustered in the room in the middle of the tunnel below trapdoor.
We simply rained bullets and explosives from above and earned probably 5 levels per horde. Zombies did some damage to walls and ceiling, but we just fixed it afterwards.

Oooo.

Moats are cool. Haven't tried one of those yet. That idea sounds pretty neat, actually. Might have to get diggin.