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Tracking people around the map with spears??


Haxor666

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So me and a couple of friends is doing a pvp game, deathmatch. With horde nights and all. We have been pvp alot early game, and I noticed that you can track stone spears, that you have been throwing. It helps alot finding it again, but if you throw it at other players, you can follow the spear around the whole map. For me, it seems like a bug. Cause you can sit in your base, and track other players, and at some point, they will give up their base/hidden base/underground base locations. The question is: Is it a bug, or is it that overpowered in PVP?

 

Btw, first topic ever, sorry for the kindergarden stage of spelling lol ^^

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Bro, your spelling & grammar are in the top 1% among internet forums I assure you.

 

Definitely a bug. No way did they intend for spears to be GPS trackers. People - myself included - complained about how hard it was to see a spear that landed in grass, so we got trackers. Probably they need to make the tracker last like 10 or 30 seconds and then shut off. Or the player needs to be able to yank out the spear in their back and dump it on the ground. Or for extra fun, throw it into a zombie bear. Go track THAT to its base...

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30 seconds can't be the solution as a typical way of loosing the spear is if you have to run away for the moment and need some time to whittle down a group of zombies. In some cases a player may even need a full night before he can try to regain his spear if he was surprised by strong forces at night and had to run back to a save spot.

 

Spears sticking in players just have to be handled differently than NPCs or blocks.

 

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4 hours ago, meganoth said:

Spears sticking in players just have to be handled differently than NPCs or blocks.

 

Yeah, I couldn't come up with any that didn't seem worse to me than a timed tracker. My view of the tracker is that it was a bit of duct tape and glue to overcome the visibility issue of spears in grass. I didn't think it was actually supposed to be a GPS tracker on spears which the survivor implants with each spear made. Being able to find a spear hours later after running a mile away does not, to me, seem to be a mechanic that we need to preserve. But it is useful and I can understand why a lot of people would be irritated if it went away.

 

Maybe spears which hit player entities do their damage and then drop on the ground immediately? You lose the fun of yanking a spear out of a victim only to throw it back into him, but it solves the base-tracker exploit.

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On 11/20/2021 at 8:24 AM, meganoth said:

30 seconds can't be the solution as a typical way of loosing the spear is if you have to run away for the moment and need some time to whittle down a group of zombies. In some cases a player may even need a full night before he can try to regain his spear if he was surprised by strong forces at night and had to run back to a save spot.

 

Spears sticking in players just have to be handled differently than NPCs or blocks.

 

maybe have the tracker turn off after 300M

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8 hours ago, Roland said:

Can a player not pull out a spear from their own body?  If not, THAT is the true bug. Any player who is unaware of a spear sticking into him deserves to be tracked. 

 

First we need a pain interface to the game so a player has a chance of detecting it. Snowdog would surely support this.

 

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8 hours ago, Roland said:

Can a player not pull out a spear from their own body?  If not, THAT is the true bug. Any player who is unaware of a spear sticking into him deserves to be tracked. 

 

And how does one know if a spear is stuck in his back in a first person perspective? You can´t just switch to 3rd person unless you are admin.

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On 11/20/2021 at 6:46 AM, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

You just gave a lot of other PvP guys ideas. Also spoiled your own secret.

I know i've spoiled it, but I also dont want to do this trick in pvp, its a boring way of finding enemies or other bases. I like to play it all straight, without any kind of cheats, tricks og informations 😊

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Being unaware of it may not be the problem for the victim.  I assume the problem is that this has no counter.  You can't remove it, and you'll probably need to go to your base sooner or later.

 

My solution would be that if a player is hit by a thrown spear, they're guaranteed to get a visible debuff.  No need to reinvent the wheel with a 3rd person view or something.  This debuff would have an item to counter it, like other injury debuffs.  Say, a puncture debuff, cured by using a medical clamp item.  Some bow projectiles could cause this debuff, too.  Failing that, it could just re-use the bleeding or laceration debuff.  In this way, the victim controls if and when the spear is removed and drops to the ground.  I guess there'd be nothing stopping them from then taking it for themselves.

 

As far as changing the mechanics of the spear, there are several ways it could go.  I don't like using the darn thing, because I don't like not having a weapon after I attack, and I don't like filling up my tool belt with redundant weapons, either.  Someone on the Steam forum mentioned changing the spears to be the ammunition rather than the weapon.  An atlatl would become the weapon that launches the spears.  Any quality level or mods would be tied to the atlatl.  That thread devolved into an argument about realism and terminology, but I like the idea from a gameplay standpoint.  The value of the ingredients that go into the launcher versus the ammunition could be balanced, so that losing a spear doesn't mean losing everything.

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Spears as a PvP weapon would make a very poor choice no matter how you slice it (especially from a realism standpoint).  My thought would be simple... automatically return the spear to the thrower if they hit a player.  It's not like spears would be suddenly overpowered in PvP if that were the case.

 

They should also add a "bungee" mod for spears that automatically returns them regardless of target (presumably tied to the spear and the player's wrist, or something like that).

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2 hours ago, Maharin said:

They should also add a "bungee" mod for spears that automatically returns them regardless of target (presumably tied to the spear and the player's wrist, or something like that).

 

That's crossed my mind, too.  Press reload to 'pull the cord' and retrieve the spear, whether or not the cord is visible.  I'd definitely try spears again if they had a mod like that.  For that matter, the 'GPS tracker' function could be its own mod for spears, instead of all spears having it.

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35 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

 

That's crossed my mind, too.  Press reload to 'pull the cord' and retrieve the spear, whether or not the cord is visible.  I'd definitely try spears again if they had a mod like that.  For that matter, the 'GPS tracker' function could be its own mod for spears, instead of all spears having it.

 

yeah but....99.9% of usecases involves throwing a spear at an NPC for which the GPS tracker works perfectly to help you retrieve your spear if you missed or if the spear goes inside the zombie or animal. Because the spear is a primitive weapon, you kind of need the tracker function on it from the very beginning and not as a mod that you may not find or be able to craft until much later. I say "must" in the sense that it is a QOL addition that you don't want to play without once having had it. I do realize that we had spears for a long time before having the tracker function for them. But there really is no going back in my opinion.

 

The problem described in this thread is going to be an extremely rare usecase in which a player doing PVP unequips his gun and loads his spear and is able to get close enough to throw it and hit the opposing player without the player realizing they've been hit so that they go back to their base unaware of being tracked. Even if the player knows they've been hit but can't remove it from their own body they can (and would) eat glass before going back to their base and reveal its location.

 

So we are talking about a slim chance of being able to stick a person in the first place and then an even slimmer chance that the person stuck doesn't know they're stuck and then the even slimmer chance that even if they do know, instead of committing suicide and respawning clear of the spear the player is going to choose to go back to their base while wearing their new body piercing.

 

I mean, I'll mention it for sure because its funny and we should be able to remove stuff that is currently impaling us but nothing can convince me that changes need to be made for this rarest of rare usecases that would hurt the QOL of those of us who use spears in their most common usecases.

Edited by Roland (see edit history)
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2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

yeah but....99.9% of usecases involves throwing a spear at an NPC for which the GPS tracker works perfectly to help you retrieve your spear if you missed or if the spear goes inside the zombie or animal. Because the spear is a primitive weapon, you kind of need the tracker function on it from the very beginning and not as a mod that you may not find or be able to craft until much later. I say "must" in the sense that it is a QOL addition that you don't want to play without once having had it. I do realize that we had spears for a long time before having the tracker function for them. But there really is no going back in my opinion.

 

The problem described in this thread is going to be an extremely rare usecase in which a player doing PVP unequips his gun and loads his spear and is able to get close enough to throw it and hit the opposing player without the player realizing they've been hit so that they go back to their base unaware of being tracked. Even if the player knows they've been hit but can't remove it from their own body they can (and would) eat glass before going back to their base and reveal its location.

 

So we are talking about a slim chance of being able to stick a person in the first place and then an even slimmer chance that the person stuck doesn't know they're stuck and then the even slimmer chance that even if they do know, instead of committing suicide and respawning clear of the spear the player is going to choose to go back to their base while wearing their new body piercing.

 

I mean, I'll mention it for sure because its funny and we should be able to remove stuff that is currently impaling us but nothing can convince me that changes need to be made for this rarest of rare usecases that would hurt the QOL of those of us who use spears in their most common usecases.

 

That's a little off the mark, because if the community at large concludes that this technique offers them an advantage, it'll quickly become a more common tactic.  But I also acknowledge and accept that TFP don't prioritize tuning for PvP.

 

I actually saw the idea less as going backwards on quality-of-life, and even less as addressing this inadvertent PvP tracking function.  I saw it more as repackaging an interface feature that's already implemented, in a way that gives the player more interesting options in game.

 

If you use and like the spear tracker, great!  You can mod your spear to include that.  If you don't like or need the tracker, then you can make a spear without it.  But rather than being a main menu option that 'hardcore' players turn off, people that aren't going to use the tracker get to make a cheaper spear, and put the resources and/or mod slot they save towards something more important to their playstyle.

 

It reminds me of the minibike in A14.  At the time, I thought that all the minibike needed for tracking was a tall, brightly colored flag on it, that you could see above the tall grass.  Now you can see every vehicle on the compass.  And that is superior.  But instead of being the default, that could be a mod you put on your vehicle if you want it.  I know you're a strong supporter of as little interface as possible, so I'd actually think you'd be someone who'd appreciate the choice to opt out of interface elements like this. :)

 

Similarly, the minibike used to require a padlock as part of its crafting recipe.  I didn't like that not having a padlock meant I couldn't build a minibike (especially in single player, where I was the last man on Earth and really didn't need one).  The padlock should've been an optional mod you install to enable the ability to lock and unlock your minibike.  It's the same idea as putting a tracker on things.  We have these neat quality of life features, but instead of them just being part of the system we take for granted, they could be available as upgrades over the default, giving us more goodies to weigh the costs & benefits of, without programming new features.

 

One can argue that the tracker is such a beneficial part of the spear that I needs it all the time!  But that same logic would apply to all sorts of items/playstyles.  Once you've played a sniper character with a scope on your rifle, you don't want to play without one.  Once you've played a stealth character with night vision, you don't want to play without it.  And so on.  A feature can be adored by players, but still have a cost you appreciate and choose to pay for instead of being ubiquitous.

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