Gamestage balancing may need to be looked at

[Royal Deluxe]

I mean the horde night wasn't the point in the thread, but I still question that logic. The point of the game is to survive the hordes, isn't surviving it the point in the game? Can't that be rewarding? I solo play Survivalist with increased spawning and my base is straight walls, spikes, and iron bars on top of the walls to combat them. I use up quite a bit of resources, have fun, and the horde nights don't dent my resources bad enough for me to have to go farm more to be able to play. Hell, I got 9k concrete, 3k steel all ready to go with more to smelt/craft with after my day 49 horde. Just think of it as a goal in the game, and the reward is surviving it.

 

Yep.

Look at "Empyrion"

Place 4 Turrets and your base is safe

 

100% boring gameplay.

 

BUT. (in the context of a forced horde all 7 days) Avoiding the horde in a bunker was still adding to my enjoyment. Never liked the 7 days until repeat style.

With the new option i will set the horde to X64 and 7+20 days and hope for a more enjoyable feeling

Last game i only had a Poi upgraded for hordenight Day7 X64

Until 1:am i feeled not really safe

[RestInPieces]

I've been waiting for that random horde option since the beginning. It will definitely renew my interest in the game.

[Jugginator]

Yep.

Look at "Empyrion"

Place 4 Turrets and your base is safe

 

100% boring gameplay.

 

BUT. (in the context of a forced horde all 7 days) Avoiding the horde in a bunker was still adding to my enjoyment. Never liked the 7 days until repeat style.

With the new option i will set the horde to X64 and 7+20 days and hope for a more enjoyable feeling

Last game i only had a Poi upgraded for hordenight Day7 X64

Until 1:am i feeled not really safe

 

Yeah I read that about Empyrion. Honestly yeah, I'm thinking of leaving it 7 days or so and around day 28 or so when I get set up I'll do daily horde nights, just to see how far I can go. I usually hold out in a POI for the first 3 blood moons personally. It's a blast.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I've been waiting for that random horde option since the beginning. It will definitely renew my interest in the game.

 

For sure. Same here. Granted I'm still interested, just not fighting hordes of rads inside POIs before I even reach mid-game... so it's just horde nights for me until they make changes/make it worth it lol

[FileMachete]

Interesting. My view is the exact opposite. If I build a base then I make the defense stronger than necessary. I also test the design in test worlds against much stronger hordes than I would usually get at the time to make sure it holds.

 

The ideal base for me is that I can also go AFK and the Horde still can't harm me. I have no need for thrills or excitement. I get my fun while I'm building the base and getting the raw materials. The best moment in my current game was when I discovered a Q6 auger at the trader. Never before had 38000 coins been spent so fast and I had a smile on my face.

 

Should clarify that I was speaking about a horde night specific base. Main base was/is always over built.

And it was indeed my weekly thrill fix in 16.4; trying for that perfect race car build, where it falls apart just after crossing the finishline. In 16.4 I could have a base looking like one of the rental cars in Days of Thunder at the end of the night. And I had a lot of fun in both the building & defending.

 

What I like so much about this game is that both of our ways of playing are possible here. And I wouldn't want you to have to give up your way of playing but of course I also don't want to give up my way of playing.

 

Here Here! 100% agree.

 

Fun? To test your base? It's the highlight of the game for me. Without it the game would be no challenge because there would be no real need to do....anything. Make a farm, build a 10x10 concrete box base surrounded by a few layers of spikes and basically survive....forever.

 

That's a big part of the "A17 Issue", from my point of view; the whole 'test your base' part has become -very- blue & red, either it holds out or it doesn't. There's very little grey area anymore where one players contribution to defense will/could tip the balance, and that, along w bling-bling&bones, was the sweet spot/incentive that I found to be a lot of fun in A16.4.

 

There's just not that much challenge to building a horde base when the mantra is simply, "give it everything".

Not to say that folks haven't made some really cool bases; and I still enjoy building, in general.

But honestly, how much uncertainty do you have about you base failing by this point in A17?

 

Exactly, heh. Horde Nights -should- be an Event!

Now? I just don't want to waste too many resources on it, and -that- earns a sad-face fer sure-->

 

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Turning damn near every POI into a mini horde night was a horrible idea, imo. Like Royal said in this thread, make em fewer and don't overuse the gags; you'll wind up jump-sacring & killing a lot more players than the current setup.

 

Another thing on the POIs: yes, these are as close as TFPs can get to a pure FPS crafted "map" where the level designers put all their dasterdley tricks & lead you to the crescendo.

Ok. But just save the majority of the level designers attention to mainly the bigger pois. And I'd personally prefer that there were both the original pois & a 'scary' version. Variety is the spice of life.

[Jackelmyer]

As far as game stages go, the game stages XML and EntityGroups kinda should go away and become a calced in game generated zombie collection. At most maintain the entity groups so you have your base list of what's in a group configurable, especially for special events and special POI's. But getting rid of the Group By GS direct configuration.

 

Zombies by them selves should have a weight. And depending on the situation, spawn up to a weight calced by game stage. Where the situation is based on the zombie group. Would also be good to have a minGS setting.

 

* Removes the big ol game stage static list of zombies by stage which is a bit unreasonable.

* Allows for a lot more settings oriented tweaking.

 

Zombie Examples:

 

* Arlene, Weight: 5, MinGS: 1

* ArleneFeral, Weight: 10, MinGS:50

* ArleneFeraRad, Weight: 15,MinGS:100

 

 

You could apply things like difficulty to where

GS = (x + y) * multiplier

 

But then add to that

MinGS Multiplier = (Min Val 0/Max Val 5)

 

Now you can spread the zombie groups that dynamically generate out waaaaaaay better. And give the game a real time settings option to tweak how things spawn and how the game plays.

 

Further, you could add a Weight tweak by zombie type:

BaseZombieWeightMultiplier=(min value 0.1, max value 2.0)

BaseZombieWeightMultiplier=(min value 0.1, max value 2.0)

RadZombieWeightMultiplier=(min value 0.1, max value 2.0)

 

and so on.

 

 

I dunno. Just think that...

 

* The current GameStages and EntityGroups are already probably overly taxed

* Could be causing a notable chunk of memory usage and game performance. Granted, the entity groups is the largest of the two but the lists in there are long. I'm sure dictionaries are used. But if you've got any loop mechanisms used to search out attributes or details... the lists are long enough to start getting noticeable at a frame rate level. Especially if the code isn't well tuned and is doing a lot of ForEach loops as opposed to for (int i...) loops. Which... 7D2D is a walking list manager. Sooo... mmmm... Maybe.

* Due to spawn frequency, the calcs required should be stupid small to determine what zombies are spawned in any situation.

* The current Game Stage/Spawn mechanics are REALLY static. It may not seem like it... buuut... they are. Which makes the whole thing way less flexible.