Remove the Great Hall-Disbaled Water Cooler Expolit

[Magheat2009]

Great Hall gives +6 morale for placing a decor item and a disabled water cooler, which is too much-too easily at that stage of the game. It heavily dilutes the early game morale challenge. It is far too tempting for most players to resist themselves. Also, it puts new players in unnecessary disadvantage, who might end up thinking they are too stupid to play the game when they compare their utter failures to the performance of other players who knew about the exploit. Water cooler, by costing dupe labour and increasing the risk of food poisoning spreading, helps the Great Hall be less unbalanced.

[SharraShimada]

So because you cant restrain yourself, all shall suffer and the feature shall be removed? Nope, dont concur.

And btw. i never had ANY problem sustaining an active water cooler. I dont know whats your problem here.

Yes you may want to purify the water for the cooler. So whats the problem at all?

[Spoonwood]

This isn't a competitive game, nor an MMO where one person can grief another.  If you don't like something that other players do, that's your problem, not theirs.  One person playing one way does not give any cause as to why other players the way they do.  You can just not turn the water cooler off ever, yourself.

And no, there's nothing far too tempting about the water cooler exploit.  Other players get to make their own choices, not you.

In addition to just not disabling the water cooler, you can turn hunger off.  Then there's no great hall bonus whatsoever.



 

[tuxii]

I know what I said in the other thread...
But what's the point when you can do this anyway?

[Sasza22]

Personally i don`t build great halls beacause i find them easymode, but that`s just me handicapping myself.

The problem with the great hall is that it requires less setup that a plumbed bathroom or bedrooms with plastic beds and gives 3 times the morale than either of those. It`s pretty weird when stuff that is essential like bed and tolets give less morale than a fancy dining room. Personally i`d reduce the bonus it gives and redisitribute to bedrooms and bathrooms so the morale progression is more linear rather than a spike early and nothing for a long while.

[Magheat2009]

On 4/25/2022 at 11:15 AM, SharraShimada said:

So because you cant restrain yourself, all shall suffer and the feature shall be removed?

I do not use the exploit.

 

On 4/25/2022 at 8:55 PM, tuxii said:

But what's the point when you can do this anyway?

If someone comes up with that on their own, they probably deserve the free morale as reward for creativity.

It does not feel like a deliberate oversight from the developer. Where as, disabled water cooler option, makes it look like devs intend the game to be played that way. It is important for games to clearly communicate when the player is drifting away from the designed experience. That is why no-sweat difficulty toggle and sandbox mode are not problematic, as players are communicated very clearly that they are choosing not play on the full experience mode.

More than the trivial issue here, I am making a point regarding philosophy of game design. Single player games need to be balanced, as I pay for the experience of playing a well designed game, not for designing a game myself.

[tuxii]

1 hour ago, Magheat2009 said:

It does not feel like a deliberate oversight from the developer. Where as, disabled water cooler option, makes it look like devs intend the game to be played that way. It is important for games to clearly communicate when the player is drifting away from the designed experience. That is why no-sweat difficulty toggle and sandbox mode are not problematic, as players are communicated very clearly that they are choosing not play on the full experience mode.

It might not be a deliberate oversight that it was made, but by now it has certainly been deliberately left in the game.  It's been in the game for years now.  Besides if someone disables it on their own, they probably deserve the free morale as reward for creativity. 

No Sweat difficulty isn't even that good since the only thing it does is remove Stress and Morale from the game while leaving all other factors that make the game difficult in place.  All they say is "When disaster strikes (and it inevitably will), take a deep breath and stay calm. You have ample time to find a solution."

This exploit has nothing on the Flower Pot exploit.  A little bit of extra morale is really moot when an exploit that completely removes the difficulties managing a food source exists in the game.

Exploring and colonizing multiple asteroids is such a massive pain in the neck that I used the Flower Pot exploit myself on my latest Spaced Out playthrough.  I don't regret it for a second because the game still feels like a slog.  Why does the Interplanetary Launcher have to use radbolts?

[Spoonwood]

9 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

I do not use the exploit.

 

If someone comes up with that on their own, they probably deserve the free morale as reward for creativity.

It does not feel like a deliberate oversight from the developer. Where as, disabled water cooler option, makes it look like devs intend the game to be played that way. It is important for games to clearly communicate when the player is drifting away from the designed experience. That is why no-sweat difficulty toggle and sandbox mode are not problematic, as players are communicated very clearly that they are choosing not play on the full experience mode.

More than the trivial issue here, I am making a point regarding philosophy of game design. Single player games need to be balanced, as I pay for the experience of playing a well designed game, not for designing a game myself.

No sweat is as full of an experience as any other settings.  In fact, no sweat can be more challenging in two ways without mods:

1. Duplicants won't eat every cycle in no sweat unlike with standard hunger level settings.  So, they can more easily experience a morale deficit.

.2. Locavore and carnivore come as more difficult in some ways on no sweat, because if not deliberately stressing duplicants out to binge eat, you need more duplicants.  That means you need more oxygen production early.

[Magheat2009]

On 4/28/2022 at 6:01 AM, Spoonwood said:

In fact, no sweat can be more challenging in two ways without mods:

No sweat is much easier than survival overall and ends up becoming a boring experience for most. Its not the way the game is designed to be played by most people.

On 4/27/2022 at 10:43 PM, tuxii said:

No Sweat difficulty isn't even that good since the only thing it does is remove Stress and Morale from the game while leaving all other factors that make the game difficult in place.

No sweat also reduces calorie requirement. Have you ever played on no sweat?

On 4/27/2022 at 10:43 PM, tuxii said:

Exploring and colonizing multiple asteroids is such a massive pain in the neck that I used the Flower Pot exploit myself on my latest Spaced Out playthrough. 

If you removed one of the most important challenges out of the game, whats the point of exploring and colonizing so many asteroids? You have not actually colonized them, but you get to pretend you did.

That is maybe the reason why people are so resistant to removing exploits. They will lose the false sense of having beaten the game when actually they did not. That is why they do not actually take into consideration things like sandbox mode. You could have just magically spawned food in the game, and accepted you do not want to play survival. People do the moat and bailey of "we will actively thwart attempts to get exploits fixed" and "devs left this deliberately in the game (we made them do it) so clearly we are still playing vanilla, right?" 

On 4/27/2022 at 10:43 PM, tuxii said:

Besides if someone disables it on their own, they probably deserve the free morale as reward for creativity.

The difference is, it will take sometime for the new way of getting free great hall morale to become popular. Whereas, due to advertising from various Youtubers, the disabled water cooler is more well know.

[tuxii]

1 hour ago, Magheat2009 said:

Have you ever played on no sweat?

I have not played No Sweat and never wanted to.

32 minutes ago, Magheat2009 said:

That is maybe the reason why people are so resistant to removing exploits. They will lose the false sense of having beaten the game when actually they did not. That is why they do not actually take into consideration things like sandbox mode. You could have just magically spawned food in the game, and accepted you do not want to play survival. People do the moat and bailey of "we will actively thwart attempts to get exploits fixed" and "devs left this deliberately in the game (we made them do it) so clearly we are still playing vanilla, right?" 

I might have been the only one to suggest nerfing the Flower Pot exploit.

I have multiple playthroughs of the base game under my belt so I have already colonized multiple asteroids.  The problem is I'll dream up something I want to do in ONI and I'll load up the game and start playing and realize what a monumental and tedious task it is along with how many hours I'll have to play... and it seems too much like work.  I've built mega-ranches of most base game critters to support colonies with BBQ and Surf & Turf.  I've built massive pip-planted megafarms.  Since I've already done these things and I know the Flower Pot exploit works still, I'd rather just chuck down some flower pots and feed the dupes fungus, since I know how much time and effort (and critter lag) it takes to support these colonies.  I already have to build all the other infrastructure, which is no small task either.

I don't want to use sandbox mode for a normal playthrough because that completely trivializes the game and I would like to get the achievements on Steam.  I've done a lot of stuff in sandbox mode already, you can see the stuff in my signature.

I'm not even 500 cycles into my Spaced Out colony and I find it so much more enjoyable to load up some other game to play.  Every time I load up ONI I realize how much work I have to do... and for what?  A 10 second cutscene I've seen before?  A few achievements for my Steam profile?

I think the average ONI player would rather watch Francis John beat the game rather than do it themselves, but to make such a broad assumption is beyond my sphere of knowledge.

[Spoonwood]

7 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

That is maybe the reason why people are so resistant to removing exploits. They will lose the false sense of having beaten the game when actually they did not.

So, the game is quite clear about what achievements exist.  That's the only way that beating the game is measured.  People who complete all achievements on no sweat difficulty still complete the game as much as anyone does on maximum difficulty settings.

Also, if you notice there's an achievement for teleporting a duplicant.  But, it's more difficult to disable the teleporter in the startup, especially for locavore and carnivore on some, if not all, asteroids in the DLC.  So, you don't really beat the game by doing anything with greater difficult settings in general.
 

 

7 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

People do the moat and bailey of "we will actively thwart attempts to get exploits fixed" and "devs left this deliberately in the game (we made them do it) so clearly we are still playing vanilla, right?" 

There are no broken exploits in this game.  There never have existed such.  Again, it's not a competitive game.  It's not a multi-player game with griefing either.  It's a single player game.  However anyone wants to play it, and whatever they consider a success, that's for them to decide, not you or anyone else.

 

7 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

The difference is, it will take sometime for the new way of getting free great hall morale to become popular.

People are disabling the water cooler on their own.  Since they do that, that indicates *their* preference.

 

No sweat is much easier than survival overall and ends up becoming a boring experience for most. Its not the way the game is designed to be played by most people.

Also, have you played for carnivore, locavore (and super sustainable) on no sweat?  Especially on a forest biome start on say Arboria, the Badlands, or Oassise?   Because again, it's not as easy playing locavore and carnivore in some ways, if you're not stressing out binge eaters deliberately. 

[Sasza22]

9 hours ago, tuxii said:

I have multiple playthroughs of the base game under my belt so I have already colonized multiple asteroids.  The problem is I'll dream up something I want to do in ONI and I'll load up the game and start playing and realize what a monumental and tedious task it is along with how many hours I'll have to play... and it seems too much like work.  I've built mega-ranches of most base game critters to support colonies with BBQ and Surf & Turf.  I've built massive pip-planted megafarms.  Since I've already done these things and I know the Flower Pot exploit works still, I'd rather just chuck down some flower pots and feed the dupes fungus, since I know how much time and effort (and critter lag) it takes to support these colonies.  I already have to build all the other infrastructure, which is no small task either.

I think this is a part of the bigger problem that is the late game getting sluggish not only by lag but by how long it takes to do stuff while maintaining all the stuff already build.

For that we need a lot of QoL. Reliable automated transport between planetoids, reliable production thresholds, ways to tune how much stuff gets produced and sent around and more ways to simplify all that. Making great designs is the goal we got late game (aside from winning) but great designs need a lot of infrastructure to support it and simplifying that would cut a lot of time we invest in building the same things over and over.

[Magheat2009]

22 hours ago, tuxii said:

I don't want to use sandbox mode for a normal playthrough because that completely trivializes the game and I would like to get the achievements on Steam.

Let me take a bow.

You have not got an achievement on steam at all, you have tricked yourself into thinking that you have. Achievements feel sweet because they come after all the frustration, nervousness and grind. The game does you a favour by not granting them easily. Achieving something as a proof of concept is different from making it happen in real life, and the same goes for the game.

Achievements are quasi-competitive in nature, so exploits ideally should not be used when trying to get them.

Exploits can be psychologically messy whereas sandbox mode, or difficulty toggle to turn things off entirely are not. They provide a psychological clarity about what you are doing in game, and what is something you can or cannot do. Declared challenges that a Youtuber announces before a series, for example, also provides similar psychological clarity.

To me, turning hunger off is better option than flower pot exploit. The problem is, as far as I know, ONI does not let you change difficulty after launching the game. If  its not too hard baked into the game's code, I like more a Minecraft style system, where you can either have changeable difficulty, or you can lock it, so you cannot change the difficulty later.

Btw, sandbox mode can be disabled while being accessible. You can turn it fully on for when you need it, and than turn it off. It does not remain active except a button on your screen to renable it.

The reason I want to get the Great Hall nerfed in some way, is to make nature reserves a proper option. It hurts my head to see lot of the player base not interacting with such a beautiful mechanic, because the Great Hall fulfills most of early game morale needs. If Food Poisoning returned to its old glory, having an enabled water cooler will give a serious disadvantage early game. Nature Reserves require natural plants, and bases to be designed around them, so the player, practically speaking, only has the option to use them for morale early game. Since early game morale needs are not very high, no downsides +6 from Great Hall especially is egregious.

I concede that Locavore and Carnivore may be more difficult on no sweat. I have not tried them.

I accept that fixing some exploits is a waste of development time or even counter-productive in following cases-

1. The exploit is not widely known/used. Flower pot exploit, I concede, is not a big problem as of now.

2. The exploit does not result in certain aspects of the game getting skipped out of ignorance/inefficiency.

3. The exploit is core part of game-play. For example, liquid locks.

I confess that some of motive behind getting exploits fixed is that I find their existence ugly. 

I am aware of your expertise in Oxygen Not Included, I am subscribed to your Youtube channel. I mean no offense, but I am just pointing things out for what I think they are. I felt I was not having a constructive discussion in my last few replies, partly because of some rude responses I got to this suggestion. I am sorry.

[Spoonwood]

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

You have not got an achievement on steam at all, you have tricked yourself into thinking that you have.

I'm pretty sure that Tuxii has gotten achievements on Steam.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

Achievements are quasi-competitive in nature, so exploits ideally should not be used when trying to get them.

They don't require anyone else to have played to get them.  Anything competitive requires other people than yourself.  So, no, achievements are not quasi-competitive in nature.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

Exploits can be psychologically messy whereas sandbox mode, or difficulty toggle to turn things off entirely are not.

There is no such thing as an exploit in a single player game, other than what the person decides is an exploit.  The thing with single-player games is that you design your own end conditions to some degree always.  So, you get to decide what is and what is not an exploit for your game and your game alone.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

They provide a psychological clarity about what you are doing in game, and what is something you can or cannot do.

Exploits in multiplayer games can make things confusing or controversial for players as to what they can do competitively or what is worthy of prestige.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

The problem is, as far as I know, ONI does not let you change difficulty after launching the game.

The game allows modding, and mods can change the game mid-game.  For example, the DGSM mod could get enabled mid-game, and thus one can change printing pod frequency (at least so far as I can tell this would work).  There are no mods to change hunger settings that I know of, but that probably could get accomplished.

Oh, also sandbox mode can get enabled mid game for sure, and that's in the base game. So, it definitely does let you change difficulty after launching the game.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

The reason I want to get the Great Hall nerfed in some way, is to make nature reserves a proper option.

It is an option for you to not use great halls at all and use nature reserves.  Again, you play the game, not anyone else.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

It hurts my head to see lot of the player base not interacting with such a beautiful mechanic, because the Great Hall fulfills most of early game morale needs.

Those people don't find such beautiful.  I use nature reserves, but they aren't all that beautiful the way I often use them, since they slow duplicant movement placing them in my central ladder/firepole chamber.  They take up time for duplicants to pass through, since doors need bypassed even if open if placed horizontally.

Also, again, barbeque fulfills most of early game needs without a great hall easily.  Getting on consistent barbeque is sometimes achievable by cycle 25.  Heck, it fulfills most late game morale needs, since one can always use the skill scrubber and morale is only needed for skills like mining, and mecahntronics engineering (steam turbine building or engie tune-ups can get handled by the same duplicant), and rocketry.  Actually, even then morale isn't necessarily needed.  Not meeting morale only increases stress.  If stress is turned off entirely, not meeting morale requirements is never an issue.  If it's on, there still exist other ways to counteract stress like floral scent from buddy buds, bristle blossoms, and carpeted tile.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

If Food Poisoning returned to its old glory, having an enabled water cooler will give a serious disadvantage early game.

There's a mod which does that for you.  I think it's called Diseases Restored.
 

6 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

Nature Reserves require natural plants, and bases to be designed around them, so the player, practically speaking, only has the option to use them for morale early game.

Morale isn't what matters.  It's stress. Buddy buds and bristle blossoms can be available early game.  Everyone can benefit from buddy buds in or near a bedroom on a temperate map.  Also in a central ladder chamber, and a plant pot can hang from an airflow tile.  Carpeted tile for the tickled tootsie effect while sleeping only requires one tile, so that's two reed fiber per duplicant.  If playing on many asteroids, well, there's easily eight dreckos out there for shearing early (Terra, Arboria, probably Oceania, Verdante they are farther out, but they exist, Aridio).  A researcher and cook stand on one tile and get the tickled tootsie buff while working the entire time.  Same goes for an operator crushing metal or rocks or flipping a metal refinery switch.  Though, that person will move around more.  I think a rancher also might need only one tile while grooming, though that worker will move around more.  Diggers and builders are another story.  They more need plastic tiles and plastic ladders once you can get them.  Their stress levels would be the most difficulty to counteract, since they move around so much.

Also, barracks, latrine, bathroom, showers, mess hall, and decor increase are all available early, in addition to food morale from barbeque or omelettes.  So are shift breaks.

A bathroom is +2 morale, a shower is +3 morale, a barracks is +1.  That's already 6 morale.  A five shift break is +4 morale.  So, 10 morale so far.  A mechatronics engineer, who needs more morale than anyone else, needs 9 morale.  So a mechantronics engineer can have enough morale without even getting onto omelettes, barbeque, pepper bread, frost buns, or even eating in a mess hall!

What you want for getting exosuit training could get counteracted by having the duplicant train on a wheel until their athletics are up, or not wearing an exosuit so much.  In other words, by not skill leveling them.   The fourth and fifth morale for improved carrying level two, well that's only 5 morale.  It also like exosuit training isn't necessary for doing something like mechantronics engineering, it's a convenience.

And that's even before other ways of increasing morale like soda fountains, mechanical surfboards, socialization, and salted food.

No need for any parks or nature reserves even without a great hall.

Edit: I'm now seeing that the mechanical surfboard is -10% stress per cycle!  The beach chair is -15% per cycle also.  The sauna is -10% (though it requires steam).  Jukebot is -10%.  The arcade cabinet is -10%.  The vertical wind tunnel is -15%.  The hot tub is -15% (though this one might be the trickiest to get to work).  If you don't have sufficient morale, those buildings both give you morale and reduce stress, counteracting any "insufficient morale" debuff.

[tuxii]

11 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

Achievements are quasi-competitive in nature, so exploits ideally should not be used when trying to get them.

I agree with Spoonwood in that achievements aren't competitive.  I am not competing with the next Steam profile.  I am just doing them because they exist and I am a completionist.

11 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

I am aware of your expertise in Oxygen Not Included, I am subscribed to your Youtube channel. I mean no offense, but I am just pointing things out for what I think they are. I felt I was not having a constructive discussion in my last few replies, partly because of some rude responses I got to this suggestion. I am sorry.

Thanks for watching and subscribing. 

I think a better approach to morale would be higher morale requirements for tier 3 or higher skills rather than nerfing anything that provides morale.  Unless someone goes for a know-it-all dupe, they'll never need more than 21 morale. For example, a dupe with Super-Duperhard Digging, Demolition, Exosuit Training & Improved Carrying II. 21 morale isn't a high bar to achieve, it can be done handily with Food and Decor alone and we have a multitude of other options to boost morale.  I am not even accounting for interests.  If our example dupe had interests in Building and Digging he'd only need 15 morale.

If they boosted morale requirements for tier 3 skills the issue would then be that only a few tier 3 skills are worth keeping on a dupe long term. Those are Super-Duperhard Digging, Exosuit Training and Mechatronics Engineering.  Researching finishes eventually and decorators could be temporarily skilled. Hazmat Digging & Demolition could easily be used and scrubbed as needed if they are needed at all.  The rest of the tier 3 skills are just nice-to-haves.

[Spoonwood]

10 hours ago, tuxii said:

Researching finishes eventually and decorators could be temporarily skilled.

I'm not so sure about research getting scrubbed.  Analyzing all geysers and vents, especially in Spaced-Out, requires skill and doesn't finish until rather late, if at all.  Also, in the base game, researching skill is needed for rocketry, which I think is necessary, and thus can't get scrubbed out for everyone even late game.  I do agree about decorators though.

[tuxii]

3 hours ago, Spoonwood said:

I'm not so sure about research getting scrubbed.  Analyzing all geysers and vents, especially in Spaced-Out, requires skill and doesn't finish until rather late, if at all.  Also, in the base game, researching skill is needed for rocketry, which I think is necessary, and thus can't get scrubbed out for everyone even late game.  I do agree about decorators though.

I was referring to tier 3 skills.  Geyser analysis is done using Field Research which is a tier 2 skill.

In the base game morale for rocket pilots doesn't matter.  Once they enter the rocket it's like they cease to exist until they leave the rocket.  You're right they can't be scrubbed, but they never have to leave the rocket.  I had 14 rockets constantly running on my main base game save, those pilots were all happily one with their machines.

[blakemw]

On 4/30/2022 at 8:13 PM, Spoonwood said:

There is no such thing as an exploit in a single player game, other than what the person decides is an exploit. 

I've always found exploit relativism a strange argument.

Exploits are taking advantage of bugged behavior that is contrary to the clearly intended game mechanics.

I'm perfectly comfortable thinking of something as an exploit, and nevertheless taking advantage of it because it enhances my enjoyment of the game (in most cases this will be because the exploit is low effort and hard to avoid, for example that Algae Terrariums output pwater at 30 C despite the tooltip clearly stating that it should be 30 C or hotter if the input is hotter. But short of not using algae terrariums or not Pitcher Pumping hot water, I can't avoid this exploit, so I enjoy it instead)

I'm also perfectly comfortable thinking of something as not an exploit, and not taking advantage of it because I think it's a dumb game mechanic, such as starvation ranching of pacus and shove voles, there's no evidence of any kind of bug or unintended behavior and critters generally have loose calorie requirements.

In the topic of this thread, I don't think disabled buildings counting towards room requirements is an Exploit. That is to say I think the devs decided that "mere presence" is enough instead of trying to draw a line at how operational a building has to be.

I can understand that interpreting "the will of the game designers" will cause different players to have a different opinion on what is "objectively" an Exploit. For example the tooltip for the Barracks explicitly says "single bed", but allows any number of beds. And the Bedroom says "single comfy bed", but allows and gives the "private bedroom" buff for any number of Comfy Beds - but this is tagged as a known issue on Klei bug tracker. If we blindly trust the tooltips as the source of developer truth, then anyone who puts more than one Cot in a room to get the Barracks benefits without making a bunch of separate barracks, is an exploiter, but it seems reasonable to take the name of the room at face value.

But anyway, I'm far more comfortable with the idea of thinking of something as an exploit and using it anyway because I enjoy it, than rationalizing it as not an exploit.