Game feels like its punishing me for levelling up

[Jedo]

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history. <snip>

 

What I liked about Borderlands 2 was their enemy scaling. It moved in plateaus. At times, you would get your ass kicked, so you had to be more strategic. Eventually, though, you got to a point (whether through gear or abilities) when you were godlike even as you progressed to "harder" levels. At some point, though, the balance shifted back to where you had to be careful again. That game is still one of my favorite games to play with a team.

[Khulkhuum]

I do agree that there are so many voices spreading word that it is getting too tough for them at some point. @Cirion posted a neat idea how to improve things, but let me share a short story with you all.

 

Once upon a time i discovered a fun game called Gundemonium. Beautiful anime graphics placed into a bullet hell shooter. I played the game when i had a pretty bad PC, which meant that it ran in low FPS (ideal for such games). Thus i used the mechanic of friction quite often - making bullets fly very close to the heart (which when hit you lose HP) would increase the multiplier of the score. I was pretty fond of completing the game at the time this way, especially as increasing the multiplier increased the difficulty quite a lot.

 

After a few years i played the game again, this time in standard >=30 FPS and tried using friction as much as i could to get the best score again. Even with added experience of many other games i played during that past few years, i was constantly being destroyed even at the first levels. Only after quite a few hours i decided to not use the friction so much and i was able to beat a couple levels more - in lower difficulty it had because of this.

 

So in summary - we sometimes aim for something that we think we can easily achieve, especially as the beginning more often than not is pretty chill. Depending on our gaming skills and proper management of skill points (if present in a game) sometimes we easily fit into the game and don't have many problems, but sometimes we end up with a wall that blocks us from achieving further progress. In such a situation, it's always good to look at the whole picture and verify what is going wrong and if there are any ways to improve it.

 

Hell, we can start all over and try a new approach if that's too much. Cut your losses and go again.

[Cirion]

How hard would it be to mod the gamestage calculation to make it only increase with zombie kills? I might try that, so I can see how it plays out.

[RestInPieces]

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history.

 

The player should start with 50% of all perks/abilitys and be able to reach 80% of all abilitys, balanced a way that he can dominate from day 1 on with decent equip. The zombies should not level at all. But in such a gameplay there should be pois that have exclusive loot and stronger enemys.

 

Am i the only one who pacepalm at every game the player becomes stronger and the enemys too ?

Where is there the sense except wasting a lot of development time ?

 

But i take it as it is. I guess no developer would do this if not enough people would want it. I cant understand twitter and co too.

 

No, you are not the only one. Level scaling is just a lazy, crude way to control the game's difficulty and gameplay experience of the player. Contrary to popular, unimaginative belief, it is NOT the only way to present challege to the player at late levels. My main gripe with level scaling, is that progression and enemies feel artificial and the virtual world less believable.

 

Bethesda games use it a lot. In TES for example, Morrowind had the "right" kind of scaling, as immersion-friendly as possible, Oblivion had the laziest and most artificial, Skyrim had a mix of both. Thanks to the modding community the latter games were "fixed".

[Randomdude]

No, you are not the only one. Level scaling is just a lazy, crude way to control the game's difficulty and gameplay experience of the player. Contrary to popular, unimaginative belief, it is NOT the only way to present challege to the player at late levels. My main gripe with level scaling, is that progression and enemies feel artificial and the virtual world less believable.

 

I agree with both of you. Level scaling is a lazy way to artificially make the world "harder".

[madmole]

Preach it man. This right here is the main problem with the current system as it is IMHO.

 

In A16, it was a non issue. If you wanted to get better at mining? Just mine. Now, you have to get mining 69er, and the only way to get that is to spend points on strength, and points are at a premium. Mining is almost the most important thing you need to do in this game, making mining 69er NOT OPTIONAL, but MANDATORY, thus pointing points in STR is literally required. Well between that and INT which is also mandatory to function in this game (especially single player) you're left with no HP, armor resistance, or ranged weapon damage, nor stealth. However, you're at a high gamestage, which leaves you facing green zombies with little to no points in HP, damage resistance, stealth, or ranged weapon damage.

 

I suppose the consolation prize is that you have melee weapon damage, and can use a sledgehammer. HOWEVER, again - you have no points in stealth, so you maybe will get one or two kills before you wake everybody up. And good luck against high end zombies with no HP especially on hard difficulties. Green Cops can do 100+hp damage a hit easily with no armor. And did I mention you have no HP or armor? So, one hit = RIP

 

I mean let's think about it from another angle.

 

The max level is 300, right? SO logically, you should start maaaybe getting end-game content in the 200's, right? WRONG. You easily start getting green zombies regularly long before even level 100. At level 100 you only have enough skill points to have about 1/3 of the skills you need.

 

Does this make sense to anyone else?

 

We're not debating whether or not you "can" win with this setup (Obviously you can), but this does not change the fact there is an imbalance here. I should not be getting end-game zombies until I'm level 200+. Full stop IMO.

I generally agree with this statement. This is gazz's area I'll have a speak with him about it. To me we get brown and orange crap way too long as well. I don't think it should be raining purples, but its pretty geared to give you low quality loot all the time.

[PoppaTot]

What I liked about Borderlands 2 was their enemy scaling. It moved in plateaus. At times, you would get your ass kicked, so you had to be more strategic. Eventually, though, you got to a point (whether through gear or abilities) when you were godlike even as you progressed to "harder" levels. At some point, though, the balance shifted back to where you had to be careful again. That game is still one of my favorite games to play with a team.

 

Sal: Grog+DPUH+Sheriff's Badge+SHAM Shield put the right perks in and gunzerk for days = EZ MODE lol

[lord_ahriman]

I generally agree with this statement. This is gazz's area I'll have a speak with him about it. To me we get brown and orange crap way too long as well. I don't think it should be raining purples, but its pretty geared to give you low quality loot all the time.

 

So, is Gazz in the hot seat?

 

Jokes aside, I understand people's frustration because we have so many green zombies. I really don't mind that, but loot isn't rewarding enough to make me spend my precious ammo to clean an entire POI, so I always nerd pole to get the "roof loot" and that's it.

[jdifran]

Yeah, I'm finding that the novelty of exploring a dungeon POI wears off quickly and if I come across the same one again, I'm just going to nerdpole or axe my way to the loot.

[Ghostlight]

by catering to the minority who complains that the game is too ez (i'm guessing that would be you) it alienates pretty much everyone else. you can crank up to the hardest difficulty, leave the rest of us alone

 

No, I am saying USE THE DIFFICULTY SETTING. If you feel there are too many rads, lower it and there will be less. If you want more challenge increase it. Complaining about the occurrence of rads is just dumb when there is a setting that will fix it to your preference.

 

note i've pretty much adapted to the idiotic greens by avoiding POIs and levelling up via mining and collecting bird nests and getting stuff from traders - so the game is not any more challenging and no need to lower the difficulty, its just forcing me to avoid questing and POIs which presumably the developers worked hard on. LOL

 

So the difficulty is making you avoid POIs and quests, but you don't feel the need to lower it. Mind blown.

[Ghostlight]

The max level is 300, right? SO logically, you should start maaaybe getting end-game content in the 200's, right? WRONG. You easily start getting green zombies regularly long before even level 100. At level 100 you only have enough skill points to have about 1/3 of the skills you need..

 

Getting a few green zombies is hardly endgame. You may see a few rads at level 100 but that is nothing compared to what you will encounter at level 200.

[Royal Deluxe]

No, I am saying USE THE DIFFICULTY SETTING. If you feel there are too many rads, lower it and there will be less. If you want more challenge increase it. Complaining about the occurrence of rads is just dumb when there is a setting that will fix it to your preference.

 

 

 

So the difficulty is making you avoid POIs and quests, but you don't feel the need to lower it. Mind blown.

 

For me not the Difficulty, simply the fact that i need (if a have a hordebase i need to shoot)

in a vanilla game (before i have a running setup of mines (Means Q6 auger and perks too))

Arround a week to gather enough ammo for next hordebase and have enough ammo left to raid one poi per week.

 

Well currently i solve that by a modded vendingmachine that sells me additional ammo. Money is no issue, last game i had 520 000 Coins on stock. but only 100 7.62 Bullets

[Ghostlight]

Holy crap how many bullets do you fire?

 

I am the miner for a group of 3, and 2 days solid mining per week is enough to make bullets for all of us (and 4 turrets) for horde night, and we still raid as many tier 5 quest POIs as we can in between.

 

btw you are not digging actual mines are you? Surface boulder mining is far more productive.

[lord_ahriman]

Holy crap how many bullets do you fire?

 

I am the miner for a group of 3, and 2 days solid mining per week is enough to make bullets for all of us (and 4 turrets) for horde night, and we still raid as many tier 5 quest POIs as we can in between.

 

btw you are not digging actual mines are you? Surface boulder mining is far more productive.

 

That would be true in A16: 100 boulders would give you ~ 3.5k coal/nitrate/lead. In A17 you need almost 400 boulders to get same results. Underground mine is a better option.

[Royal Deluxe]

Yep underground give better results.

But it need some time until you have a few mines working.

 

And how much ammo i use ... 500 7.62 per average poi i guess.

Did i say that i have a 7,7,5,5,10 Skill Build with low amounts of skills in fighting ?

(and i wear no heavy armor)

 

You can guess 3 times what i prefer as Death is death player. Spend a few bullets more or start from scratch...

[Cirion]

So the difficulty is making you avoid POIs and quests, but you don't feel the need to lower it. Mind blown.

 

green zombies are for the most part not difficult. they are HP sponges. There's a difference. They pretty much have the same attack animations etc as their regular counterparts, so its just increased HP and damage that's it.

 

Anyway myself and others like to play harder modes because we do enjoy the damage taken, it makes you more cautious. Lower difficulties are boring, there is no danger when you can take 20 hits and not die. That's why myself and others won't turn down the difficulty.

 

What we want is to keep how much damage we take but not have HP sponge zombies.

 

I've finally found some ways to mod my game that alleviates some of this pain, so I can deal with it now, but it still leaves something to be desired.

[PPanda0421]

Holy crap how many bullets do you fire?

 

I am the miner for a group of 3, and 2 days solid mining per week is enough to make bullets for all of us (and 4 turrets) for horde night, and we still raid as many tier 5 quest POIs as we can in between.

 

btw you are not digging actual mines are you? Surface boulder mining is far more productive.

 

Umm no, mining for a specific ore is by far WAY more productive (especially when you're higher level and have the perks). Bonus if you find other ores in the same area. In my recent mining expedition I mined for about 6-8 hours in-game and ended with 4-5 stacks of iron ore. So around 4800 - 6000 iron ores. Smelt that and you'll get 16K+ iron. How many boulders do you have to destroy to get that much ore? Boulders are by far way less common than iron veins.

[lord_ahriman]

Umm no, mining for a specific ore is by far WAY more productive (especially when you're higher level and have the perks). Bonus if you find other ores in the same area. In my recent mining expedition I mined for about 6-8 hours in-game and ended with 4-5 stacks of iron ore. So around 4800 - 6000 iron ores. Smelt that and you'll get 16K+ iron. How many boulders do you have to destroy to get that much ore? Boulders are by far way less common than iron veins.

 

I'm Str 10, Miner69er 4/5 and Mother Lode 5/5. I need 105 boulders to get ~ 4.8k raw iron. Mining surface boulders is not bad if you only need raw iron, but for lead/coal/nitrate underground mine is by far the best option.

[Jugginator]

No, I am saying USE THE DIFFICULTY SETTING. If you feel there are too many rads, lower it and there will be less. If you want more challenge increase it. Complaining about the occurrence of rads is just dumb when there is a setting that will fix it to your preference.

 

So the difficulty is making you avoid POIs and quests, but you don't feel the need to lower it. Mind blown.

 

Except this statement is completely false. 1. Noone is speaking of difficulty but you. 2. Lowering the difficulty doesn't make green armies in POIs vanish.

 

What we're speaking of is it's just not worth the effort to go into POIs, namely solo or with one friend. Annoying != Difficult. It's not difficult to kill 30 rad zombies in a POI, but with the progression skill-tree wise, it's annoying. You can't have both high-damage perks and crafting perks by the time you're faced with rad armies, the math doesn't add up. Just as you came to my post saying I was complaining about it being too hard (completely ignoring everything I said), I WANT hard. But what I don't want is to be faced by an army of bullet sponges that takes me an entire in-game day and halfway through the night to go through a single POI. That would be acceptable -- if I was in the end-game stage. But I am not. I am barely out of early-game.

 

Just because you and your large-group are all armed with AK-s and most of you concentrated in combat perks because you have other(s) who can put points into Int and steamroll through green armies doesn't mean solo or duo players need to suffer through the 24-hour warzones in POIs in the transition between early and mid game.

 

So, there should be transitions. Not early-game no rads straight to armies of rads. There's currently nothing in between. This isn't a case of your alegged "ermagerd git gut bruh you sux" -- nobody is complaining about that.

 

In a16, I ran constant spawning blood moons with XML edits, banned the use of anything but wood and iron in bases, banned AI-trolling in bases, banned all guns except the blunderbuss on insane difficulty, made world spawning spawn cops, wights, zombie bears (blood moons had nothing but the toughest zombies) and was still bored. Do I still need to "lel omg git gud"?

[AtomicUs5000]

I still believe that if we had more and more ammo, glue, and repair kits in POIs as gamestage increases it would balance out.

 

At any stage, you need to be able to leave a POI with more valuable resource than you started with.

 

Increasing loot drop rate from zombies with increasing numbers of these items included in them, as your gamestage increases, would help even more.

[Jugginator]

Yeah, I still feel like there should be a transition in between though. Like all non-rad (ferals too) get stronger, then at a higher stage, you get the rads. I one-shot most reg or ferals and have to pummel rads half a dozen or more times in the head to take one down. Definitely increased ammo/repair kit stuff for POI rewards. Too often I spend 24-30 game hours clearing a single POI and then I get mid or low-level guns, some forged steel etc and a handful of bullets as rewards. Then I gotta play on and off for a day or two before I can do it again lol. Glue isn't an issue anymore, and I farmed up a few thousand gunpower/ wrenched enough cars for plenty of brass but... I mean that took a couple RL hours over two days to do. I get it's not a CS-GO style game where I jump into a match, play, get off but. I'd like to enjoy some of the beautifully done POIs at some point. Without falling asleep. The line between boring and taking 24 hours in POIs is non existent. Lower the difficulty and steamroll. Increase it and engage in WW2 in a poi.

[AtomicUs5000]

Another problem I think is that there simply is not enough zombie types.

Yes, I would love more variety and more to look at, but that's a different story.

It applies here because since there is a lack of variety, they are forced to recycle the same zombies into ferals and then rads... and these come rather quickly because they need to. If they didn't, things would get insanely boring.

On top of that, because there are so few zombies that are introduced right away, they really don't differ much in stats. The bigger ones are only another hit or two with a club.

 

I tried to imagine setting up a personal mod where I rank each individual zombie from weakest to strongest and apply meaningful stat differences. Initially, there is only one zombie. After every 7 days, a new zombie is introduced into the mix, and so on. I think it would be fun, and you could stretch out that gamestage more. However, that boredom factor of the same zombies especially in the beginning would be brutal. What would be nice is about 3 times the zombie types. Then I could say, ok, give players mainly 3 easy zombies the first week, then introduce one or two each week. Perhaps you may run into next week's zombie rarely in a POI... but not ferals or greenies just yet. Leave special ability zombies for last. Then bring in ferals following the same flow. Then bring in rads following the same flow.

All this while getting more and more ammo and repair kits to make up for the increasing sponginess. <- This part wouldn't be too bad, as I could just create new ammo loot groups with higher ammo count tied to higher probability as gamestage increases, and then apply that loot group to almost every loot container. It's just a lot of work defining the counts and probabilities for all those stages. It would be easier to write a script to generate the code.

[Alphado-Jaki]

Problem is, current system allow/encourage player to spam peaky progression too much.

 

Such as, just purchase intellect too much to acquire steel armor, but no purchase 1 or 2 on heavy armor or pain tolerance, which is furthermore powerful and cheaper than to cost int 9 or 10. I don't think easy to encourage player to notice and to purchase another option. Maybe better visualized ui will help them understand entire system.

[Jugginator]

~

 

Yes, 100% agree there. In all honesty, I've always thought slightly-different, highly disfigured and unrecognizable zombies would be better. That way it saves on performance since you have practically similar, not as detailed models, which would allow massive swarms rather than a handful of the same... and I don't think it would get boring. Case in point, black ops 1 / 2 zombies modes. My friends and I could go through 6-hour runs, fighting zounds of similar looking zombies and never get bored. The game progressively increased their health and (well, for the first few rounds) damage, and kept increasing the number of spawns per player every set interval of rounds. That's why I think a sort of tier of the zombie-difficulty would be better than having normal zeds > boss zeds. It just.. idk it gets old. Like I said, the difficulty isn't the problem, but it's just I hit end-game stage difficulty waaaaaay before my character does, and it just becomes a slogging-7-day-war, which wouldn't be so if my character's combat skills were end-game. But, they're not.

 

I play on Survivalist because regular zombies and even ferals/cops/wights are easy to deal with, and instead of more zombies/harder zombies I get rad-armies nearly at the start of the game.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Problem is, current system allow/encourage player to spam peaky progression too much.

 

Such as, just purchase intellect too much to acquire steel armor, but no purchase 1 or 2 on heavy armor or pain tolerance, which is furthermore powerful and cheaper than to cost int 9 or 10. I don't think easy to encourage player to notice and to purchase another option. Maybe better visualized ui will help them understand entire system.

 

I think the system is fine, but I agree. Solo, even duo, gets punished for crafting... in a sense. You go straight-combat and have no crafting to deal with rad armies, yet if you go for crafting, you have the stuff to kill the rad armies, but no skills to make it worth it. I skipped on medical, master chef, and most of the other crafting that didn't give me things like gun/ammo, steel, motorcycle and armor crafting, yet I still lack the combat skills to deal with the rad armies in POIs (which started before day 21...)

[Ghostlight]

Umm no, mining for a specific ore is by far WAY more productive (especially when you're higher level and have the perks). Bonus if you find other ores in the same area. In my recent mining expedition I mined for about 6-8 hours in-game and ended with 4-5 stacks of iron ore. So around 4800 - 6000 iron ores. Smelt that and you'll get 16K+ iron. How many boulders do you have to destroy to get that much ore? Boulders are by far way less common than iron veins.

 

1 day mining boulders gives me:

 

3000 Nitrate

3000 Lead

3000 Coal

9000 Iron Ore