Demolisher balance

[wizard puke]

On 5/20/2020 at 3:09 AM, Sellsents said:

Like junkies waiting for the next kick.

Pretty sure you don't understand how drugs work, buddy.

 

E: Fix. The word you want is fix.

Edited June 22, 2020 by wizard puke
Because it's funny (see edit history)

[Kazgrel]

Were it not for the demo boys, A18 would be an absolute snooze fest seeing that they're pretty much the only zombie that threatens any sort of purpose built horde base.  Course I have yet to convince my friends to let me set zombie movement speed to nightmare at all times... 😛

 

That said, I do find the challenge they provide a bit of a massive jump.  A17 the biggest threat to a base was irradiated cops exploding, which would barely dent reinforced concrete, let alone steel.  It also sucked to have some of our fav non-cheese strats taken away; shotgun turrets having such a high chance of setting them off pretty much caused our first A18 horde that featured demos to pretty much bring half our base down as a result.

 

Pretty sure the devs want there to be something that scares the @%$*#! out of bunkered down players; while the demos do kinda come across as a cheesy way of accomplishing this, they at least make higher gamestage hordes something that's a bit of a challenge, even if many find it a cheesy way of doing so.  It's not like we players haven't had all sort of cheesy things we've been able to do in A18.

[Marinxar]

Yeah, honestly the Demolisher has become a demoralizing 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' entity. I understand the reasoning, but the implementation is not working.

 

I propose a subtle change to it's behavior. Remove the explode on death. Make it only explode when it can't path to a player. I should not lose a section of my base, because I succeeded in killing it before it kills me.

[Sellsents]

7 hours ago, wizard puke said:

Pretty sure you don't understand how drugs work, buddy.

 

E: Fix. The word you want is fix.

And I am pretty sure you don´t know how to be polite to someone that never had english in school and teached herself over the years all by herself.

 

I feel bad for people like you, I really do.

[Outlaw_187]

Hey all. I'm kinda new here, just started playing with alpha 18 on PC however I was a console player since that launch.

 

Was the behemoth more or less replaced by the Demolisher? I remember when the behemoth was announced & I was super stoked about it. Then saw they dropped it & then here's this demolisher zombie. 

 

He looks pretty cool & I get the idea but I also see the frustrations people have with them. I personally haven't dealt with one yet so don't have a direct opinion of them. 

At least the behemoth would be a huge target that players could plan on/focus all fire power on when they show up.

Think they will give the behemoth another shot?

[JCrook1028]

Behemoth is gone, gone and never returning.

[hiemfire]

16 hours ago, Marinxar said:

I propose a subtle change to it's behavior. Remove the explode on death. Make it only explode when it can't path to a player. I should not lose a section of my base, because I succeeded in killing it before it kills me.

If it blows up, you didn't kill it. At least not in vanilla.

[Purpendicular]

The issue I have with demolishers is that it renders like 95% of the end game content of the game, pointless unless you cheese/exploit it.  Turrets?  Blade Traps?  Not viable end-game.  In terms of game design, the existence of demolishers contradict a lot of the skills and end-game trap design.

From the casual player's point of view, and not the person who is insanely good at video games and plays on nightmare difficulty with zombies at 3294x speed at all times... Instead of investing in guns, you can choose to build a base with lots of traps and such.  Some people have fun doing that, and seeing their hard work pay off on horde night.  Oh sweet.  You can build a base full of traps and let the traps do most of the work for you... a lot of the content of the game is designed for that.

Only... none of that is true, because demolishers exist.  It renders a lot of the Intelligence skill trees effectively pointless.

I mod out demolishers; I have a lot more fun with the game that way. 

[Noctoras]

On 6/22/2020 at 6:31 AM, Kazgrel said:

Were it not for the demo boys, A18 would be an absolute snooze fest seeing that they're pretty much the only zombie that threatens any sort of purpose built horde base.  Course I have yet to convince my friends to let me set zombie movement speed to nightmare at all times... 😛

The point made ist that it's easy enough to shoot yourself through horde night without any base. Actually ground level shooting in the street might be easier than in a standard base, as your standard base will be breached and due to structural issues, surviving horde night then ois easier with no base than with a regular base (not counting cheese or specific demolisher bases here).

 

For me, something is wrong, if survival in a base is more complicated than survival in an open field. 

 

So no, demo's don't scare any sh*t out of me. Actually when the horde follows me and I set of the demo, it's just gonna take a big part of the horde with it. I just do it somewhere in the street where I don't mind swiss cheese. No base required. 

9 hours ago, Purpendicular said:

The issue I have with demolishers is that it renders like 95% of the end game content of the game, pointless unless you cheese/exploit it.  Turrets?  Blade Traps?  Not viable end-game.  In terms of game design, the existence of demolishers contradict a lot of the skills and end-game trap design.

That is the point. The demo doesn not add to the game, it reduces viable game content by a large margin. 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Noctoras (see edit history)

[FileMachete]

16 hours ago, Purpendicular said:

Only... none of that is true, because demolishers exist.  It renders a lot of the Intelligence skill trees effectively pointless.

While it can seem that way, there are ways to 'safely' use Blade Traps & Turrets. By 'safely' mean that there is a very low possibility of the traps themselves setting off the Demolishers.

 

Set Turrets to shoot them in the back. Use Half blocks to raise Demo/Cop/Soldier/'Tall-zeds' so only their heads get hit by Blade Traps. See earlier in this thread.

 

And not saying that I personally 'like' the Demos & just, "git gud". Fully agree that Demos wind up accounting for too much effort/time/skill(?) and they dominate base design more than I'd prefer, But conversly as a long time player the demos have encouraged/forced base redesigns (depending on what kind of bases you build) and that's not a bad thing by itself.

[Kazgrel]

7 hours ago, Noctoras said:

The point made ist that it's easy enough to shoot yourself through horde night without any base. Actually ground level shooting in the street might be easier than in a standard base, as your standard base will be breached and due to structural issues, surviving horde night then ois easier with no base than with a regular base (not counting cheese or specific demolisher bases here).

 

For me, something is wrong, if survival in a base is more complicated than survival in an open field. 

 

So no, demo's don't scare any sh*t out of me. Actually when the horde follows me and I set of the demo, it's just gonna take a big part of the horde with it. I just do it somewhere in the street where I don't mind swiss cheese. No base required. 

That is the point. The demo doesn not add to the game, it reduces viable game content by a large margin. 

Therein lies one pet peeve of mine with demolishers; you're almost better off either using a POI as a horde base or simply using an open field to run around and shoot everything.

[Esperante]

demolishers are essentially nemesis from resident evil and kinda ruins the immersion of the game and is the primary reason why more people are going to mods because the devs for the mods actually listen to everyone instead of just the whinny ones

[Outlaw_187]

Going by this thread, I'm taking it no one likes the demolishers, lol. 

Again, I haven't encountered them yet but I'm not looking forward to it. 

I kinda like seeing destruction though so I won't mind seeing them blow my 💩 up. 

I do get why most people hate them cuz it ruins their hard creative work. I just turn prefabs into a makeshift base

[Viktoriusiii]

Easy fix:
Decrease the radius of the chest beeing hit and make it so that IF you can snipe that thing, he can't explode. He can still deal massive amounts of damage with his fist, but no more exploding.

That is litereally the only way to balance this without reworking the entire design.
Either he is tanky
or he deals damage
or he can explode and take half your base with it.
He can't do all 3.
And if he does, at least give us a countermeasure (like shooting his chestpiece).

[Orclover]

6 hours ago, Outlaw_187 said:

Going by this thread, I'm taking it no one likes the demolishers, lol. 

Again, I haven't encountered them yet but I'm not looking forward to it. 

I kinda like seeing destruction though so I won't mind seeing them blow my 💩 up. 

I do get why most people hate them cuz it ruins their hard creative work. I just turn prefabs into a makeshift base

They killed our server when we were playing.  Which is a sad statement.

 

At first just 1 showed up on horde night, we could handle one once we learned the ropes.  But within a few days of playing we had 4+ showing up at a time and inevitably one would destroy a huge portion of base/kill-base.  We started going offsite and using POI's, but they had to be completely rebuilt.  Eventually our players just got sick of constantly having to rebuild or being forced to build/play only one way to deal with 1 threat.  So we nerfed and then removed demolishers from the server.

 

It was too late, what few regulars we had were done with this version of the game.

 

It was just me and sometimes 1 other player on the server logging in daily so we scrapped it and will probably skip A19 and wait for A20 when bandits will hopefully replace demolishers.  Maybe within a year or two.

 

 

I think Demo's were a design choice of desperation to keep the game challenging for the truly hardcore and the devs.  They didnt mind having the bases built only certain ways and they needed SOMETHING to keep end game from being boring.  Some of us could handle the change but we found it irritating, and others.....well....that was their limit.  Builder/gatherer types were not into the extreme challenge that comes with head shooting constantly and no room for mistakes.  That is 0 ROOM for any mistakes on dealing with these guys or kiss your base goodbye.   So they just went to other games.

 

Just wait a ~ couple years, 7D2D will prob be completely different again.  I'll personally play a bit after every patch but I get pretty bored playing alone and the game will probably have to change a lot to bring back our regulars again.

 

[Boidster]

13 hours ago, Esperante said:

because the devs for the mods actually listen to everyone instead of just the whinny ones

[Grolbu]

A friend and I were looking for something different to finish up our time in A18, so we made a very simple horde base to see how we could survive demolishers without wedge tips and extra cheese, and, well ....

 

We build a solid steel block 2 blocks wide, 7 blocks high, and 12 blocks long. The ends were mirrored - the end row was a generator, the next to end row was a pair of electric fenceposts, the 3rd row in was 4 dart traps facing into the middle of the base. We had a 1 block high wall of steel plate around the ends to give the generators some protection. For the 6 middle blocks we built a cage of iron bars 3 blocks high (including in front of the dart traps) with stairs going up on either side at one end so zombies were free to climb up into the cage. We had blocks alternating high and low across the cage so the zombies had to jump through it instead of just walking. Then we hooked up the electric fences (starting from the generator at the end where the stairs were), wired the dart traps up to motion sensors that for once we remembered to set to look at zombies and ignore us, climbed up onto the dart traps at the far end of the cage from the steps, and whacked the time back to 9.58pm on the last horde night.

 

We were both around gamestage 150 and the game was set to 16 zombies each per horde, so it was a heck of a horde. More than half of the zombies were rads and demolishers turned up in small groups every couple of minutes, and every last one of them streamed up the stairs into the cage and started trying to jump their way down the cage to smash through the bars at the end to us - and almost immediately died.

 

The electric fences stunned them while they were trying to jump towards us and the dart traps rained steel death on them. Nobody had a chance to explode, even demolishers that got their nipples pinched by other zombies were dead before they had beeped more than a couple of times. We just stood on the dart traps with shotguns nuking the pelicans and taking potshots at zombies coming in on the ground for the lols, and repairing the dart traps and fenceposts at our end. With electric fences all of the damage is taken by the 2nd post and none by the first post, by wiring them up from the other end we got the second posts on each fence at our end where we could keep them tuned up. And it worked amazingly well.

 

At the end of the horde the steps had taken a few hits but that was expected as we hadn't messed around making it easy for them to get up, a couple of railings from the side of the cage by the stair openings were gone, and that was it - nothing in the half of the cage closest to us took any damage, and the bars covering the dart traps at each end were untouched.

 

We're a lot less worried about horde nights in A19 without drop traps and wedge tip slopes now, even the demolishers have stopped being scary.

[Boidster]

We're about to try a similar-sounding base, a modified version of blugold1's in this thread. A hallway with electric fences, jumping obstacles, and dart traps. In sandbox testing, it destroyed a group of 10 demolishers AFK, and we do not plan on playing AFK. We hope that no demolishers reach the base, actually. They and cops will be priority targets for us from the rooftop. The riff-raff can get shredded by the base defenses. Anyhow, if the base survives, but with significant damage I will still consider it a success. It can be rebuilt from scratch in one game day. Maybe two if I have to go mine up 12000 rock for cement.

[FileMachete]

Just a visual of what a couple demolishers going off do.

 

Built a newish horde base. Just a 2-wide corridor with 4 rows of doubled electric fencing and 7 rows of dart traps firing down from ceiling.

Main corridor has 2 shotgun turrets mounted up high to shoot zeds in the back but positioned so they can't hit me at the end of corridor.

No falls or exploits. If zeds make it to corridors end there's doubled r-concrete poles then me.

 

Had it built for Day 49. Had a couple demolishers. Switched to different Marksman rifle w AP rounds. No issues. Didn't use shotgun turrets.

 

Pics are the aftermath from Day 56 horde after 2 demos blew up near beginning of corridor. Not sure what triggered the first one. There was a big mama in front of him and I didn't have an angle to shoot him before he blew. I think I triggered the second one when he jumped up out of the hole the first one had made in the floor. (which I'd thankfully had the foresight to double up so two layers of r-conc) While I'd tested the shotgun turrets earlier in the horde, they weren't on during either demo explosion.

 

Explosions took out all but one of the trigger plates for the first 3 rows of dart traps. E-fences were far enough away to not get destroyed.

(the hatches protect e-fences on the outlying, not-connected pylon bases. On main corridor part hatches prevent cops from puking at me in end cage when they're still at ground level) Even with those dart traps 'down' (they were high enough to not get destroyed) rest of the horde went fine (only 8 alive, old pc).

Debating switching to trip wires instead of trigger plates. Issue is that the trigger plates work better. Larger area? compared to the trip wires, where it seems like even when zeds get zapped, they often move far enough forward to be out of the activation zone for the trip wires.. would be nice if there were a way to use both. don't think it'd work to use a relay or switch in between the activation signals and the dart traps?

 

 

 

[Grolbu]

3 hours ago, Boidster said:

We're about to try a similar-sounding base, a modified version of blugold1's in this thread. 

That's exactly the video that we watched before we built ours, although we only built the platform and the cage with the electronics on each end.  We didn't bother with the rest of it, it was only a proof of concept and we figured (correctly) that standing at the end of the platform furthest from the steps would be enough to legitimately get the zombies pathing where we wanted them. 

 

Turned out that just a half built tunnel of terror ("tun'o'ter" ? 🤣) with iron rail walls not steel blocks (so we could see what was going on properly) was more than enough to do the job.

 

Try it, you'll love it. We probably could have used reinforced concrete not steel, but steel is just more comforting

2 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Debating switching to trip wires instead of trigger plates. Issue is that the trigger plates work better. Larger area? compared to the trip wires, where it seems like even when zeds get zapped, they often move far enough forward to be out of the activation zone for the trip wires.. would be nice if there were a way to use both. don't think it'd work to use a relay or switch in between the activation signals and the dart traps?

That's why I went with motion sensors, the activation zone is the whole corridor and quite a bit outside it which is a good early warning - if the dart traps suddenly fire up you know something's coming. It's totally a using a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach to firing darts along a corridor, but a nut that's been hit with a sledgehammer is well and truly cracked ...

[FileMachete]

That's an interesting idea @Grolbu , I haven't used the motion sensors much. Wonder if their 'view' can be restricted by a tunnel of blocks? If so then maybe I could rig something where only a couple dart traps would fire, instead of all 14 in the corridor.. hmm...

 

Posted more pics of my base here if anyones curious:

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/19658-a184-fairly-basic-no-exploit-base-before-after-2-demos-explode/

Morning after day 63 horde. Went very well.

[Kirtonos]

On 6/23/2020 at 10:54 AM, Kazgrel said:

Therein lies one pet peeve of mine with demolishers; you're almost better off either using a POI as a horde base or simply using an open field to run around and shoot everything.

We don't build horde defense bases anymore. We just take over a POI and put in a murder hole or two for spraying death down on the zeds. Next horde night, find a new POI and let them wreck it. 

[Boidster]

3 hours ago, FileMachete said:

That's an interesting idea @Grolbu , I haven't used the motion sensors much. Wonder if their 'view' can be restricted by a tunnel of blocks? If so then maybe I could rig something where only a couple dart traps would fire, instead of all 14 in the corridor.. hmm...

Not in 18.4, no. Our motion sensor's visibility extended through concrete blocks down to the outside of our base. So zombies ambling along the ground near the base wall would trigger the dart traps to fire even though the zombies were 6 blocks below, still needing to climb the stairs.

 

Extra bizarre is that a couple of months ago I specifically tested motion sensors and found that if a zombie's head was not visible, the motion sensor would not trigger even if the shuffling feet were clearly visible. I cannot reconcile my results from that testing with our experience last night.

 

Also regarding using motion sensors, be sure to put it somewhere safe from friendly fire. The last calm thing either of us said during blood moon last night was "uhhh, I think I shot the motion sensor". All traps disabled, much screaming and dying ensued. Demolishers blew out 30% of the base. It was ugly.

[FileMachete]

Thanks for the info @Boidster , was kinda afraid that would be the answer, but hey fixable in the future!

 

5 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Also regarding using motion sensors, be sure to put it somewhere safe from friendly fire. The last calm thing either of us said during blood moon last night was "uhhh, I think I shot the motion sensor". All traps disabled, much screaming and dying ensued. Demolishers blew out 30% of the base. It was ugly.

Ha!  Sounds like fun though

[Boidster]

If you consider trying to sprint from home base back to horde base with naught but 8x 9mm, 15x 7.62, and a single arrow 'fun'. If you consider trying to bash your way through the temporary wood-bar railing with your fists because your tools are in your dropped backpack and your friend can't really stop shooting the radiated taking over the base 'fun'. If you consider a mad dash with a wire tool to direct-connect at least half of the dart traps and the fences to the generator so at least you'd have some type of active defense, even though the dart traps would just fire at all times because your idiot friend killed the motion sensor 'fun'. If you consider emptying one set of dart traps just to scrounge enough darts to try to make the other set partially effective 'fun'. If you consider dying for the 3rd and final time when the 3rd demolisher blows up right in the party's face 'fun'.

 

Okay, yeah, it was fun.