Door Trick / Overwatch Exploit

[DrMeat]

To balance this exploit, I would like to see a new Guard Status "Shoot on Sight" in real action.

I think it makes more sense if we have "Shoot on Sight" status that allows the guard have the ability to shoot our agent on sight for only ONE ROUND.

In reality, if guards know an target is on the other side of the door, surely the guards will shoot first thing after they open the door if they find the enemy is still standing there. If the target is not there any more, guard will go back to alert/hunting untill they find the target again.

This change of status could be just like changing from "Investigating" back to "Patrol" or "Stationary".

 

I rarely use this door trick actually. Because in many cases, avoiding the guard works better than attract all guard to the door. Well I have to say, even without this door trick, there is always alternative strategies around it.

 

My old trick, by standing beside the door without ready any weapon, open the door, attract the guard to the first block inside the room letting them overwatch. In this way you can get One Guard into the room Per Round, and KO the guard with the weapon that is able to use when facing them. e.g. bioshot dartgun.

 

For the freshly built version, Neuro Disruptor II and III are no longer able to use under overwatch. But with the above trick, I could use one agent with 3 Desruptors to KO all guards on the level easily in the old days. After the update, the stragety still stands, with two agents standing on each side of the door, each agents with 5 or more weapons combined will still do the job (bioshot dartgun cooldown time). Even in rare case, some guard do step two block into the room, It always works perfectly with a backup.

 

[hatem]

We've been talking about this a lot in the office. Keep the discussion going, but we're planning on trying out a few possible balance changes here in an attempt to get a good mix of elegance in our solution to this exploit. 

 

Some things we're considering trying (some inspired by this thread): guards holding open doors, guards kicking down doors if you close them in their face, etc.

 

I personally prefer the guards kicking down / busting open doors over the keeping them open because in the latter your only option is to go to the side of the door and thats not very practical if the guard can see hidden agents / the guard has a higher armour that your disruptor / the only way to get out of the room is in the guards watched zone / there are more than one guard.

 

I would prefer something simpler like the idea of the agent trying to keep the door closed while the guard is shoulder bashing it, once it starts, a countdown appears, if your agent moves then the door will open on the next enemy turn, but if they are still there when the countdown ends, the door opens and they're toast.

I really like this idea. on the first overwatch the agents slams the door, the guard comes to the door and tries to open it. if the agent had already moved then the guard will be able to if not he'll try to open it with force.

 

Another idea: guards break the hinges off a door with a fire extinguisher or something. I think a counter for this would be pretty easy to visualize if you show the number of hinges left on a door (which I guess would be 2 like in most doors). Also I think I've seen fire extinguishers on walls as decorative items (I'm not really sure) and it would be nice to give them some use. this would allow you to hold guards in place for a little while, but any longer and the door would be gone for the rest of the level which - as the tutorial teaches you - is not a very good thing. 

 

[HolyDeath]

My concern is that with guards kicking down doors you won't be able to do anything that'd allow you to run away on your turn (which is an option now). Unless he'll kick down door on his next turn, which sounds like good solution to the entire issue.

[Yarrr]

For the freshly built version, Neuro Disruptor II and III are no longer able to use under overwatch

Uh. What? That sounds more like a bug then a new feature. I haven't been able to play that much, but I'm reasonably sure I've been able to overwatch with one. Not 100% sure though as they're a damn lot more rare this patch. I cry every time I see a mark 1 in a Nanofab (so, a lot).

[JimThePea]

Another idea: guards break the hinges off a door with a fire extinguisher or something. I think a counter for this would be pretty easy to visualize if you show the number of hinges left on a door (which I guess would be 2 like in most doors). Also I think I've seen fire extinguishers on walls as decorative items (I'm not really sure) and it would be nice to give them some use. this would allow you to hold guards in place for a little while, but any longer and the door would be gone for the rest of the level which - as the tutorial teaches you - is not a very good thing. 

Yeah, maybe they shoot the hinges off or something, the additional penalty in the form of a doorless doorway is pretty sweet.

Mentioning fire extinguishers reminds me of stealth games where you could shoot fire extinguishers to distract/blind guards nearby, I'd love to see some of that sort of thing in Invisible, Inc!

 

My concern is that with guards kicking down doors you won't be able to do anything that'd allow you to run away on your turn (which is an option now). Unless he'll kick down door on his next turn, which sounds like good solution to the entire issue.

Yup, definitely the latter! 

[Sander Bouwhuis]

Maybe I'm thinking too simple, but why not have a guard the first time he sees you be in overwatch, then the next time he sees you he immediately shoots? That wouldn't break any player's game that doesn't use this exploit.

 

And of course, just don't do the exploit. How hard is it to not cheat?

[the truthseeker]

The "instant shooting" bug with no overwatch makes it hard to see the current veracity of this issue. When they get that instant shooting fixed, I'll see how bad this currently is personally. 

[HolyDeath]

Maybe I'm thinking to simple, but why not have a guard the first time he sees you be in overwatch, then the next time he sees you he immediately shoots? That wouldn't break any player's game that doesn't use this exploit.

 

And of course, just don't do the exploit. How hard is it to not cheat?

Firstly - it's how guards operate currently and causes the exploit to appear.

 

Secondly - you shouldn't be able to exploit the game in the first place.

[blazemasterson]

Kind of a question of bigger game philosophy here. What if a player appreciates the ability to do this in an emergency situation? I think most of the above responses are right in that doing it over and over again isn't very fun, but doing it over and over again is a choice the player is consciously making for some reason (to test behavior, or because it's a convenient mulligan for a mismove). 

 

I don't know that having this exploit in the game necessarily makes it less fun for me. Maybe that's true of most of us. It's possible that preserving the integrity of the "hardcore" experience should trump this bizarre outcome of player choice, or it's possible that this is a natural, benign side effect of elegantly simple systems at work without anything bolted on. Tough to say.

[jimwinsor]

There's a fine line between expert play and exploitative play I guess. I've tried to replicate this "exploit" over the past few days, and frankly, I've found that it's a lot of work and takes a lot of strategic thinking to successfully pull off.

 

First, you have to scout the map and find a choke-point door. There has to be more than one guard behind it to be cost efficient, and optionally you can lure/drag other guards into the sealed off area to make it so.

 

And you have to be darned sure the something you want isn't hiding on the other idea of the choke-point, with the worst nightmare being the elevator. You're completely screwed if there are many angry (!) guards milling about in a choke-point room between you and the elevator.

 

If you manage to do all that, then well, yeah, one agent can effectively trap and pin down two or more guards. FWIW, after all that scouting and planning.

 

So I don't know. It takes a lot of strategic thinking to pull this off, in my opinion ... it's not something you can usually do casually or on the fly. A game like this is supposed to reward strategic thinking, is it not?

 

So, IMO this still falls on the expert play side of the line, not the exploitative play side. Hatum's posted example is one of fine expert play, for which he deserves to reap the benefits from. Well done!

[hatem]

So I don't know. It takes a lot of strategic thinking to pull this off, in my opinion ... it's not something you can usually do casually or on the fly. A game like this is supposed to reward strategic thinking, is it not?

 

So, IMO this still falls on the expert play side of the line, not the exploitative play side. Hatum's posted example is one of fine expert play, for which he deserves to reap the benefits from. Well done!

 

The devs said in one of their casts that they don't want the player to feel like he can always win, which is ultimately what this whole discussion is all about. In some way I feel like I won the game, not the mission or the session but the whole game because I figured out how to highly increase my chances of winning every mission. I mean, I got a real high the first time I used the trick thinking I really outsmarted the guards until I realized I could use it over and over and there's nothing the guards could do about it. Then the game stopped being very fun. It's kinda the same problem that caused them to introduce the alarm level. people would wait around for guards to move to a convenient spot and didn't take risks. Even though it wasn't a very fun way to play the game, players would still gravitate towards it.

 

However they choose to fix this should not affect the players who don't use the exploit, and should only be relevant to those who do. maybe a dialogue box could pop up like when you're seen by a guard for the first time and they tell you that you have one chance to get out of sight. The same thing could happen after X number of times of using the door trick (on the same door). it could say something like "If you close the door in the guards face again he will kick it down on his turn". that way other players don't even know about this whole thing until they try to use it as an exploit.

 

PS thanks for the compliment

[JimThePea]

There's a fine line between expert play and exploitative play I guess. I've tried to replicate this "exploit" over the past few days, and frankly, I've found that it's a lot of work and takes a lot of strategic thinking to successfully pull off.

 

First, you have to scout the map and find a choke-point door. There has to be more than one guard behind it to be cost efficient, and optionally you can lure/drag other guards into the sealed off area to make it so.

 

And you have to be darned sure the something you want isn't hiding on the other idea of the choke-point, with the worst nightmare being the elevator. You're completely screwed if there are many angry (!) guards milling about in a choke-point room between you and the elevator.

 

If you manage to do all that, then well, yeah, one agent can effectively trap and pin down two or more guards. FWIW, after all that scouting and planning.

 

So I don't know. It takes a lot of strategic thinking to pull this off, in my opinion ... it's not something you can usually do casually or on the fly. A game like this is supposed to reward strategic thinking, is it not?

 

So, IMO this still falls on the expert play side of the line, not the exploitative play side. Hatum's posted example is one of fine expert play, for which he deserves to reap the benefits from. Well done!

It might require some strategic thinking but at it's heart is one simple, boring trick that works, you don't need to go all out to make it work for you either, anywhere there's a door and a guard that wants to come through you can use it, more than one guard and it's probably worth doing.

 

In the end, how could any elegant, well thought-out solution to this be worse than leaving it in? Nevermind the amount of skill or thought required, it's dumb and boring! Sure, I don't have to play that way, but can you really blame Klei for wanting to change it?

[HolyDeath]

If you manage to do all that, then well, yeah, one agent can effectively trap and pin down two or more guards. FWIW, after all that scouting and planning.

 

So I don't know. It takes a lot of strategic thinking to pull this off, in my opinion ... it's not something you can usually do casually or on the fly. A game like this is supposed to reward strategic thinking, is it not?

 

So, IMO this still falls on the expert play side of the line, not the exploitative play side. Hatum's posted example is one of fine expert play, for which he deserves to reap the benefits from. Well done!

 

It's more of an AI being unable to respond outside the rules that govern it and players exploiting this loophole for their own purposes. I find it silly as an exploit that shouldn't be here, because rendering guards helpless this way has no real downsides and basically breaks the game.

[the truthseeker]

If it's repeatedly exploited, than it's an exploit and (while other game crashing things take priority, followed by making overwatch always work and no auto shoot) I know Klei will address this eventually. 

[Nathya]

While I used this trick/exploit quite regularly for one or two turns in earlier builds when I thought there would be no other way to escape unseen in detention centre missions, I realized that this has to be an exploit when I managed to turn the tide of an already lost game by letting one agent not only block the only choke point, but one by one reviving the other three team members who were lying around him ( waiting 3 times for the entire medgel cooldown because I had just used it before ).

Interestingly, I just tested it in the new build and now the agent blocking the door always got shot when there were two guards in overwatch and one of them opened the door again. ( This is probably the instant shooting bug, but in earlier builds I never came across this bug myself, while now it seems to be highly consistent. At least in the three test runs I did.)

 

Kicking the door in after an agent shut it seems to me the most interesting solution.

If the agents will still delay the guards by this for a short moment (one or maybe two turns), it could still be a valid stategy in hectic situations. The downside would be that the door is broken afterwards which could seriously decrease the survival chances of the team.

 

[Cipher1251]

Tried this, 1st turn it worked, second turn one guard opened the door and the one behind insta shot my agent =(.

[SwagPenguin]

Possible solution and a "new mechanic"! 
Instead of having a few turns of opening and closing a door you should be able to give your agent a command to hold the door shut. The Guards have 2 ways to respond 1)find another way around or 2) Break the door down.

If there are multiple guards all the guards not in a space directly in front of the door try to find another way around. The remaining guard or in some cases the only guard starts to break the door down maybe it takes 2 turn (idk for balance). When the door goes down the doorway is permanently open and the guard goes into over-watch. if there are agents on the other side.

 

Also there could be special guards you have to watch out for that are equipped well to break doors down and can do it in one turn.

[uncop]

I think a "fool me once, shame on you..." approach might be best. If the door trick is used once, the next time the guard will shoot through the door before moving through. In case the engine can do it, it might cause some cool emergent gameplay to have missed shots hit something on their way.

 

Or maybe a mechanic where running agents and hunting guards bash/kick doors open so that anyone standing right on the other side gets knocked down for one turn...? That could be even better. Anyway, if you want to abuse doors, you should have to use shock traps.