Gamestage balancing may need to be looked at

[Ghostlight]

Wasteland is THE place for cars, and cars are THE place for ammo early game.

[Royal Deluxe]

Wasteland is nice to go hunting for dogs.

But glue is no more a issue,... sadly

[Cirion]

Wasteland is THE place for cars, and cars are THE place for ammo early game.

 

 

I guess. but cars are not unique to wasteland.

[HungryZombie]

Wasteland is really great for early game scavaging. Lots of easy iron and stone and all the cars and ruins have loot containers out in the open so you don't have to run though sleeper infested POI's.

 

I don't find dogs too much of an issue to fight as long as they don't get the jump on me so it doesn't dissuade me poking around.

[Ghostlight]

Ah. I see a key concept in your posts now that I didn't before, one thing that makes all the difference.

 

We. Group. Guild.

 

You're assuming everyone plays this game with a group.

 

Yup. 85% of my play is in a group. I pity solo players as I've often said.

 

and the gamestage doesn't much care how many people are around when it spawns things..

 

It definitely does. As the miner I am also built for combat so I often enter POIs alone while others are building or crafting. Big difference to going in with 3 people.

[RestInPieces]

I get it, there are pros and cons to each way of doing it, so how about this then

 

Depending on biome you are in, you have higher or lower probability of getting harder POI's

 

Forest biome - low to zero chance of getting crazy POIs

Snow biome - low to medium chance of getting crazy POIs

Desert biome - medium chance of hard POI's

Burned wasteland - medium to decent chance of hard poi's

Wasteland - decent chance of hard poi's

Radiated wasteland (new biome?) - almost all poi's are crazy

 

something like that?

 

Approximately... the more unpredictable the better. Same with type of POI for type of spawns. And an extra factor of randomness so that they look as "natural" as possible - no two POIs of the same type being similar when it comes to spawns. And of course same with loot lists - more rewarding exploration. And as we were discussing in an other thread, Subnautica schematic acquisition - exploration gating, but that's going too far.

[Tin]

I get it, there are pros and cons to each way of doing it, so how about this then

 

Depending on biome you are in, you have higher or lower probability of getting harder POI's

 

Forest biome - low to zero chance of getting crazy POIs

Snow biome - low to medium chance of getting crazy POIs

Desert biome - medium chance of hard POI's

Burned wasteland - medium to decent chance of hard poi's

Wasteland - decent chance of hard poi's

Radiated wasteland (new biome?) - almost all poi's are crazy

 

something like that?

 

*Just a quick dirty process on how I would go about it, and why*

 

I would actually/am making the forest one of the hardest biome to stay in, next to the wasteland.

Reason:

Q: So which biome would the bulk of people go to, when the apocalypse started?

A: The forest biome.

1. It has food.
   
2. it is a good climate for the living to ahh live in
   
3. It has more wildlife, so a good food source.
   
4. etc,.
   

Q: So which biome would most zeds be in?

A: The forest biome. where their food is/was at.

Since the forest biome would have higher population of zeds, it would also have more different types of zeds.

Wasteland being the most dangerous biome, not because of population count, but more so unique stronger zeds.

 

So my list would be:

1. Wasteland
   
2. Forest.
   
3. Burnt.
   
4. Desert.
   
5. Snow.
   

 

Wasteland: Has decent zed population count, but the threat comes more from the higher tier zeds. Has most of the needed goods in them for crafting.

Forest: has the highest zed count. Has a decent amount of needed goods in them.

Burnt: has wasteland population count levels. has little needed goods in them.

Desert: has low zed population count. Has little needed goods in them.

Snow: has low population count. Has little needed goods in them.

 

Questing: Now the biomes have ready made quest difficulty as well

[apostrophe]

*Just a quick dirty process on how I would go about it, and why*

 

I would actually/am making the forest one of the hardest biome to stay in, next to the wasteland.

Reason:

Q: So which biome would the bulk of people go to, when the apocalypse started?

A: The forest biome.

1. It has food.
   
2. it is a good climate for the living to ahh live in
   
3. It has more wildlife, so a good food source.
   
4. etc,.
   

Q: So which biome would most zeds be in?

A: The forest biome. where their food is/was at.

Since the forest biome would have higher population of zeds, it would also have more different types of zeds.

Wasteland being the most dangerous biome, not because of population count, but more so unique stronger zeds.

 

I agree that people would prefer forests to desert and snow because of the weather but that shouldn't add TOO many zombies to it. I suppose people would leave the urban centers and army/gov. zones after the first months of the apocalypse but they would rather go to the country, and not to forests.

 

...Which gives me an idea for a new biome: rural.

[Guppycur]

Entitygroup for Wasteland is slightly different.

 

It has 17 zeds instead of 19 so slightly higher chance of fat zombie and also has dogs.

That definitely makes a difference.

 

Also...... yeah the mines.

[i mod those out. There's potatoes in the wasteland instead of mines. STUPID idea to have mines laying around.]

 

Huh, never noticed except for the dogs, and I assumed those were tied to the POI spawns.

[Tin]

I agree that people would prefer forests to desert and snow because of the weather but that shouldn't add TOO many zombies to it. I suppose people would leave the urban centers and army/gov. zones after the first months of the apocalypse but they would rather go to the country, and not to forests.

 

...Which gives me an idea for a new biome: rural.

 

Heh, Im just going with tfp version of, ww3 already happen, then a virus appears transforming the remaining people into zombies. So was thinking, most people were already pushed out of the city and urban areas into rural areas already.

[Jugginator]

Lots of neat ideas here. I'd definitely vote for Guppy on blood-moon style spawning on the player when they go into POIs once you've hit the mid to end game stages. Having them spawn outside to head into the POI you're half-way in happens sometimes if there are some outside already and that's a lot of fun when it happens. I just think the zombies should get harder, since even on survivalist solo anything that's not rad is a joke, and swarming me with rads is a joke. It feels cheesy and silly. They're (perceived) as bosses and currently, they replace everything and it's not common to have 12 rads inside a damn pop n pills store. Yes, they can be dealt with, but more times than not I'm just not going to want to deal with that. If rads have (guessing) 200% hp versus ferals, buff ferals by 100% (I guess progressively based on GS + difficulty + etc.) and send triple at the player and leave the rads, as I said before, in the loot-rooms (the areas in POIs that have the best loot).

 

And Gazz you said that's a horrible way to progress difficulty, but couldn't implement that because HP bars were disliked? Why? If that's what it takes please put them in there, but I don't see why that's a no-no because hp bars weren't liked lol.

 

And Silver, idk why you're stuck on me calling for a nerf. Ive killed over 1800 zombies in my current run -- I have no issue killing. I just find the way of throwing rads at me annoying and cheesy when other ways to add difficulty are options.

[Guppycur]

How did 'Not' having HP bars for zeds stop this from happening? Why couldn't you keep them 'only' as a dev tools to help scale the changes? Why would they need to be displayed as a bar? Couldn't you also use audio cues instead to signify the change or whatnot? couldn't you use changes like their eye's getting brighter? their attacks getting faster? use a particle effect to denote the change? different animations?

Just some Ex: Zed health at 75% their eye's get brighter. Zed health at 50% <use particle effect>. Zed health at 25% their attacks start to increase. Zed health at 50% the zombie lets out a roar with accompanying animation..

 

I went ahead and made this a mod. =)

 

...but I made it so that all 23 zombies would start to run after sustaining 50% damage, with a small particle effect to let you know.

[Jackelmyer]

Hey Guppy.

 

Care to make me a modded GameStage setup that pulls ferals out of game stages under about 125?

 

I think if the game stage progression was more like that, I might even try dropping the difficulty settings. But since the GameStage xml is pretty much hard coded to throw your first general sleeper ferals in at GS 52 I think I saw, which... is just lame IMO, with I think no cap on how many ferals in that group may spawn (which should be another attribute, max #feralsspawned), changing difficulty doesn't actually do much.

 

By level 40, if you've been focusing on getting basic iron tools and workbench setup, sure, you can probably handle one feral. But having 3 spawn in a small room as you walk through a door? that's just bull crap. With AI as it is, it's hard to even split them up to take them down one at a time.

 

If ammo was a bit more plentiful, I may sing a different tune. But I go through a fair chunk of the ammo I during a horde night. So I'm SOL come time to go looting.

[Cirion]

One thing that can reduce the pain of ammo during horde night VS looting is to keep this in mind

 

Shotgun turrets use shotgun ammo (obviously)

Auto turrets use 9mm

 

Once you have a lot of turrets set up, the need to do anything yourself reduces a lot.

 

Given that turrets really use an obscene amount of ammo, the solution then, while looting, to use all OTHER types of ammo types, while stockpiling shotgun & 9mm. Seems to work pretty well for me. I like to use AK47 (7.62) ammo for looting personally. AK fully kitted out and with the perks for it is quite deadly. Since you can't use steel ammo in turrets (without mods anyway), feel free to spend 9mm steel and slugs also however you want.

 

Earlier game, or if you're strapped for ammo, it is probably best to stick to melee or crossbows though.

[Ranzera]

Snip

 

Considering that a lot of people grind the weak wandering zombies for EXP, I think your change would have the opposite intended effect. People would have an even higher preference for the forest biome.

[RestInPieces]

Considering that a lot of people grind the weak wandering zombies for EXP, I think your change would have the opposite intended effect. People would have an even higher preference for the forest biome.

 

I always loved and supported the fact that zombies award kill exp, props to the one who decided that they should - totally immersive and not problematic at all.

[Tin]

Considering that a lot of people grind the weak wandering zombies for EXP, I think your change would have the opposite intended effect. People would have an even higher preference for the forest biome.

 

Probably, if I left everything else vanilla, and just did those changes.

[Jedo]

I always loved and supported the fact that zombies award kill exp, props to the one who decided that they should - totally immersive and not problematic at all.

 

I would be totally fine with zombie xp being severely nerfed (max 200 per zed?) or completely eliminated. I mean, people already complain about not wanting to use traps for the loss of xp. If it's gone entirely, they should be more happy to use traps, and the avoidance types will be happy not to miss out. Sounds like a win to me.

[FileMachete]

First off I don't play 7dtd for it's 'shooter' aspects (FPS). I prefer to think of & play it more as a 'sim'.

 

That said, it's fine if others do see & play it as a first person shooter with some extras, -and- some limitations.

 

What I really don't understand though is when some folks, more FPS inclined, don't bear in mind that 7dtd wasn't built or advertised as a pure shooter. All the horsepower used for voxels, building, crafting, rwg, etc. means it simply can not compete against a pure shooter. Could the FPS part of 7dtd be better? Sure. But expecting 7dtd to be 'as good as' _current FPS Champ_ is unrealistic.

 

I'm not pointing this out to start a flame war with anyone, far from it. "To each their own" & I honestly hope you're having fun.

 

I am mentioning it to point out that even most of the hard core folks who've chimed in here mention the lack of reward for even early-mid game POI raiding.

 

Now I haven't kept up with FPSs in quite a while but every single one I ever played -always- rewarded the player for 'winning'. Sure, might have just been access to the next level, so kind of a 'forced' thing, but there was always some good reason to take on X.

 

Where has that gone now in 7dtd?

 

XP you say? Sure, for a while, then, unless you're FPS-playing it, it's actually a -bad- thing. Bad due to it tipping the gamestage scale to the point where -looting POIs-, a =core= mechanic of the game(!) becomes something to avoid.

 

The fact that I'll be better off taking on the toughest POIs ASAP is completely backwards.

Likewise that by "mid game" the average cost vs. rewards for a POI run is negative.

 

Why bother dumping thousands of coding hours into all the new POIs if a bunch of the players wind up actively avoiding them?

---

Sry. I'm PO'd. I've just hit the beginning stages of the point of this thread and was starting to build a fully automated kill horde base to -avoid- lvl'ing, just so I could loot a few more POIs I've never been in before. Which is just such BS.

[Jackelmyer]

I agree that people would prefer forests to desert and snow because of the weather but that shouldn't add TOO many zombies to it. I suppose people would leave the urban centers and army/gov. zones after the first months of the apocalypse but they would rather go to the country, and not to forests.

 

...Which gives me an idea for a new biome: rural.

 

 

I've been wanting a good rural area for a few alpha's. Always seemed to be one of the maps glaringly missing elements.

[Jackelmyer]

I get it, there are pros and cons to each way of doing it, so how about this then

 

Depending on biome you are in, you have higher or lower probability of getting harder POI's

 

Forest biome - low to zero chance of getting crazy POIs

Snow biome - low to medium chance of getting crazy POIs

Desert biome - medium chance of hard POI's

Burned wasteland - medium to decent chance of hard poi's

Wasteland - decent chance of hard poi's

Radiated wasteland (new biome?) - almost all poi's are crazy

 

something like that?

 

 

World spawns aren't terrible right now IMO. I just think they made some pretty crazy choices on the game stages generally speaking. Ferals, i do not recall them in regular POI's, at game stage 52. Granted, the new leveling system has game stages behaving a bit differently, or rather, our higher levels coming faster now, makes us interact with gamestages differently.

[RestInPieces]

I would be totally fine with zombie xp being severely nerfed (max 200 per zed?) or completely eliminated. I mean, people already complain about not wanting to use traps for the loss of xp. If it's gone entirely, they should be more happy to use traps, and the avoidance types will be happy not to miss out. Sounds like a win to me.

 

Definitely. No zombie kill exp would be a win on many, even less obvious fronts. Game would be seen as less of a grind for starters. Players' actions should never depend on how to grind and level up, but on playstyle preference and survival needs.

[apostrophe]

I've been wanting a good rural area for a few alpha's. Always seemed to be one of the maps glaringly missing elements.

 

this suggestion reminded me of Sir You Are Being Hunted. The country biome was a beauty. All biomes had their charm, but when I think of that game I think of the sprawling, desolate farms, rampants... and the awful dread.

[Cirion]

I would be totally fine with zombie xp being severely nerfed (max 200 per zed?) or completely eliminated. I mean, people already complain about not wanting to use traps for the loss of xp. If it's gone entirely, they should be more happy to use traps, and the avoidance types will be happy not to miss out. Sounds like a win to me.

 

Not on board with this. THis is an example of nerf everything. This is why we cannot have nice things as they say. If this happens probably even more people will skip horde night than they already do. We already need more incentive to participate in horde night than there is currently.

[Jedo]

Not on board with this. THis is an example of nerf everything. This is why we cannot have nice things as they say. If this happens probably even more people will skip horde night than they already do. We already need more incentive to participate in horde night than there is currently.

 

I would think protecting your hard-built base would be incentive.

 

If horde night is unavoidable (which it should be and increasingly is), then I'm not sure why you need incentive. Furthermore, people currently complain about gaining too much xp from horde night (causing them to level), and other people complain about not getting any because their traps get the kills. What's the middle ground?

 

Horde night is and should be the game's punishment. It should be balanced, but it should be punishing.