Late Game stage, POI's are getting to where they aren't worth looting anymore

[Cirion]

I would agree it does leave some things to be desired. That's why I downloaded a mod that bumps up the loot drop rate from zombies to make it more rewarding to kill a ton of them.

[AtomicUs5000]

Well what are the main items that you need to loot as your gamestage is highest?

Ammo, glue, repair kits. What else?

 

In loot.xml I see that the probability of certain items increases depending on level... better quality items, better mods.

However, I don't think they do much in this file to increase the count of some items.

Increasing the count of ammo, glue, and repair kits as gamestage increases might be what is needed here.

[HungryZombie]

Agreed. And they already do. Zombies are rich with exp and loot and I think that's reward enough ;-) Plus the sheer satisfaction that comes with killing a horde.

 

All I was saying is that if the intent was to make it so the player was forced into combat, that I provided a scenario that would do so, not that I necessarily want that solution to be implemented.

 

One idea that could provide incentive to fight at your base rather than away from it is to provide bonus to loot and exp from zombies if you are less than 50, 100 meters from your land claim block. This would reward players, while not "forcing" you to fight away from the base or even run away.

 

I feel what you are saying but this is running against the current flow of the game developers who are adding an option to turn the hordes off entirely.

[LuckyStar]

7D2D already has this ability. The map generation uses biomes, these biomes use a list of assets that can be placed in this biome. The issue is that more biomes means more resources needed. And this is where the pimp already run into issues with 7D2D.

 

If they did not have this issue, generating more unique biomes is much more possible. As well as nominating spots where to generate them more frequently. While maps will be more predictable ( snow north, desert south, hills east, ... ), they still have random terrain, cities etc.

 

Then it becomes a issue of having spawn areas and loot tables in those areas. No offense but this is actually not the hardest part. I did that kind of stuff 20 years ago when modding Ultima Online. It just takes more time to set up and maintain those list. The route generation does not need to be changed, nor the city generation. What you need is more district types for cities: Commercial Low, Commercial Med, Commercial High, each with different buildings, who in turn have different loot and enemy spawns. If you want to go crazy, you can have Commercial Snow Med, Commercial Snow High, ... etc ...for even more distinct styles.

 

Like i said, not hard but work intensive. Especially when the game keeps changing. If you have a stable game with stable and plentiful assets, then creating the lists and balancing them out is just a bunch of boring work that needs to be done one time and maintained after that.

 

Yeah well said.

 

My brother and I have run into this kind of stuff a few times.

Even our Minecraft Biome Mods took two years to get just right.

 

How do you do that in an Alpha game that's constantly changing?

There's just no way to keep up with it all.

 

You hit the nail on the head with that point.

 

 

I think for now what TFP are doing is the right decision.

RWG is simpler and easier to test and manage.

Perhaps when they are satisfied with what they've got they can add more fun stuff.

 

For now.... I just can't see it happening.

[fazi]

I loot exactly for that danger.

[zombo]

This is the result of the technical limitations of this engine+voxels+hd graphics.

They cannot do hundreds of onscreen zombies, so they have to do cheap state of decay like spawning mechanics along with green spam. It's unfortunate but still can be fun.

 

 

In this current design- you shouldn't necessarily get lots of ammo for doing pois. The idea is you farm and prepare so you CAN do places like this. Your reward ideally should be the rare uber mod\tool\weapon\armor, but the current design doesn't feature enough content and tiers to make this really work, and you can also just make everything at home.

 

With special rule-sets, a few xml modifications, and self imposed restrictions you can get more millage out of this game, but ultimately the pimps just need to do a lot more with this game yet. A lot of the problems are not "failures" by the pimps, but more just the alpha process and that needed content to flesh this out better will come in time, along with many rebalances.

 

 

Heck I tried to do the shotgun factory as a lvl 100+, and I burned through over 1000 ammo to clear just the first floor, and I got almost nothing back from it. So while I like that sometimes you can go broke gambling like this, it is going to need a lot more work and thought, and i am sure the pimps are aware of it, unless they stop playing their own game around lvl 80.

 

 

The game gets pretty boring 100+. I am super curious to see what the game will be like in 1 year from now (maybe 2- cause I don't believe for one minute that updates will come faster and faster, the changes needed are VAST!)

 

 

This was a good thread, I really enjoyed reading through it.

[OnlyMeiya]

What the Horde delivers to me in loot and XP brings me also few PIOs. The loot is small and there is nothing special about it. Currently I don't see any real reward for fighting the Horde.

 

As far as the satisfaction of having fought the Horde is concerned, I'm not so enthusiastic. Give me an auger with enough fuel, repair kits and enough to eat and drink and I build you a tunnel across the whole map. That's my kind of fun.

 

I fight the Horde but for me it's more a duty than a pleasure.

 

Are you for hire for MP seeds? :3

[Jude]

We smashed the rad zombies in the .xml on our server. Looting wasn’t enjoyable anymore.

But we are close to the stage when you going on a loot task but not because of the loot.

 

As now that the parts are gone I think we need a lot more mods to play with.

 

And crafting my own guns should be canceled, maybe primitive guns instead.

 

would you be willing to share your xml file(s) that squashed the irradiated with us?

[Benjiro]

I am super curious to see what the game will be like in 1 year from now (maybe 2- cause I don't believe for one minute that updates will come faster and faster, the changes needed are VAST!)

 

I fear that in 12 months, your not going to see that much changes. Take a look at A16 and the changes between A16 and A16.4. And the time it took to stabilize the game.

 

AI needs more work. Perks are constantly running into balancing issues and some simply do not do what they describe. The random Map generator is again being reworked. We have loads of stripped content that is still missing or broken ( smell, behemoth, jump lines, bandits, real food system, ... ).

 

I love to be proven wrong but A17 has already been a 18 month disappointment of epic propositions on the content level.

[meganoth]

AI needs more work. Perks are constantly running into balancing issues and some simply do not do what they describe. The random Map generator is again being reworked. We have loads of stripped content that is still missing or broken ( smell, behemoth, jump lines, bandits, real food system, ... ).

 

Behemoth and jump lines (I assume you mean ziplines) and probably smell too are not **still** missing, they are gone. They have gone the way of the wooden stick. What a real food system is for you and if it ever was on the menue I can't say.

 

Bandits are (AFAIK) the only thing on your list that has a good chance to be in the release version of 7d2d.

[Benjiro]

Behemoth and jump lines (I assume you mean ziplines) and probably smell too are not **still** missing, they are gone. They have gone the way of the wooden stick. What a real food system is for you and if it ever was on the menue I can't say.

 

Don't forget about caves... It been so long now, that most people have forgotten that caves even existed. The nice spot for first day starter base for a lot of us.

 

The removal of Smell never made sense to me. It was the one thing that actually made you think: "Do i kill this dear and take the meat with the risk of having every zombie in a 5 mile radius coming after me or ...". It is actually one big element cut from the game, that makes getting food now so easy because of the low risk involved. Let alone the huge amounts of meat one gets out of animals from the start ( and that does not spoil ).

 

Bandits are (AFAIK) the only thing on your list that has a good chance to be in the release version of 7d2d.

 

I have my doubts about bandits really making it in. The new AI can be useful for (dumb) bandits but ( as far is i know ) no work has been done on them going back to A15. I suspect that if they look at bandits now, it will be another total rewrite.

 

And something tells me that the Pimps finances are not doing that great. Big team, player numbers that do not indicate a massive increase in sales ( despite discounts, massive twitch / streamers A17 coverage, community waiting for a long tiem ). So who knows what will even make it in-game. Bandits is a big task, that will take several releases to get all the bugs ironed out.

[Kirtonos]

The removal of Smell never made sense to me. It was the one thing that actually made you think: "Do i kill this dear and take the meat with the risk of having every zombie in a 5 mile radius coming after me or ...".

 

At this point in the game's direction, I'd approve of smell coming back and even go far as to wear a meat suit if it meant I could attract more zombies to me.

[OnlyMeiya]

At this point in the game's direction, I'd approve of smell coming back and even go far as to wear a meat suit if it meant I could attract more zombies to me.

 

This is actually what I did in those Alphas for power leveling my avatar, I would take raw meat and put it into my toolbet, increasing its effective range.

[AtomicUs5000]

Or a rotten meat suit for the opposite.

[Gipothegip]

I didn't read the whole thread, so somebody might've already mentioned this, but here's my two cents.

 

Personally, I think gamestage is clashing with the way the POI are designed, and this is creating a progression treadmill. Since we now have tiered POI, and thus area's that are innately more difficult, I think progression based difficulty is becoming frivelous and the need for it (in dungeon POI) is moot. I think difficulty and rewards should be more weighted towards where the player is.

 

I think it might be time for gamestage to be phased out, as we have the mechanics for a better and more rewarding progression right under our noses. The only thing I feel we would even need gamestage for is hordes, so I wouldn't advocate getting rid of it completely, but we no longer need it for POI IMHO.

[Laz Man]

The devs can also introduce weapons/ammo that does bonus dmg to ferals/radiated zeds versus just adding more ammo or increasing wpn dmg in general since that would imbalance pvp.

[meganoth]

Don't forget about caves... It been so long now, that most people have forgotten that caves even existed. The nice spot for first day starter base for a lot of us.

 

The removal of Smell never made sense to me. It was the one thing that actually made you think: "Do i kill this dear and take the meat with the risk of having every zombie in a 5 mile radius coming after me or ...". It is actually one big element cut from the game, that makes getting food now so easy because of the low risk involved. Let alone the huge amounts of meat one gets out of animals from the start ( and that does not spoil).

 

Did you really every leave a piece of meat because of the smell? Certainly not after you had the minibike. Even before the minibike my only precaution was to put the meat into a storage box after nightfall. Maybe it was different in alphas before A15?

 

I have my doubts about bandits really making it in. The new AI can be useful for (dumb) bandits but ( as far is i know ) no work has been done on them going back to A15. I suspect that if they look at bandits now, it will be another total rewrite.

 

What is missing for bandits? You need AI mostly and a spawn logic. Bandit models are already included. What else?

[HungryZombie]

would you be willing to share your xml file(s) that squashed the irradiated with us?

 

I saw in the mods section of the forums someone made a modlet for each entity that removes it from the game. I installed the vulture one and it works great. I saw ones for cops, bears, dogs, irradiated, etc. Give it a look.

[MaxTunnerX]

I saw in the mods section of the forums someone made a modlet for each entity that removes it from the game. I installed the vulture one and it works great. I saw ones for cops, bears, dogs, irradiated, etc. Give it a look.

 

I'm using the mod myself and it's great. However sometimes I need to remind myself that I have this mod, because I often forget about it, and then I end up on a roof of a POI with about 5 goats and I'm wondering how the hell they got up there

(it's because the mod replaces zeds with animals btw)

[HungryZombie]

I'm using the mod myself and it's great. However sometimes I need to remind myself that I have this mod, because I often forget about it, and then I end up on a roof of a POI with about 5 goats and I'm wondering how the hell they got up there

(it's because the mod replaces zeds with animals btw)

 

Rofl I've found goats on the roofs of POI's myself and didn't put it together with the mod. I was thinking WTFs with all these goats/deer whatever they are.

[Ghostlight]

The new AI can be useful for (dumb) bandits but ( as far is i know ) no work has been done on them going back to A15. I suspect that if they look at bandits now, it will be another total rewrite..

 

I expect Bandits to surround your base and shoot from cover, not swarm to the weakest block.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Late game (say gamestage > 250) you NEED the POIs to swarm you with Ferals and Irradiateds in numbers or there is no challenge whatsoever.

[meganoth]

I expect Bandits to surround your base and shoot from cover, not swarm to the weakest block.

 

Did you play one of the mods where the modder reenabled the bandits? With all the limitations of the old AI they did stop and shoot IF they had a ranged weapon. And they did not swarm the weakest block.

 

So all that is missing from bandits (as you picture them) is an AI that looks for cover before starting to shoot (and shoot anyway if there is none). That seems to be an achievable goal for this year.

[Guppycur]

I personally think bandits will be the main a18 attraction.

[PoppaTot]

I personally think bandits will be the main a18 attraction.

 

And I think the current zombie AI is a test run for bandit AI. IMO

[Jackelmyer]

I personally think bandits will be the main a18 attraction.

 

agreed. It's about the last real main feature missing isn't it?