Horde night is kind of weird

[Aliblabla]

Hello fellow zombie slayers,

 

First things first. Great game! I love it and spend a hughe amount of time on it! Keep up the good work!

 

I feel that the horde night is in a weird place at the moment and wanted to see what other players think about it. I am not really sure what it is but i am tempted to just deactivate it which is not really the point of having such a nice feature in the game. Building a base is a huge investement of time and ressources and doing so just to see that its not working and your whole base gets wrecked makes for a real frustrating horde night experience. I guess thats also the reason why people go for cheese base builds because its actually really hard to make a base in which you can fight the zombies and that even for me with over 200hours gameplay.

 

My first thought is that the zombie behaviour during horde night is nothing like the zombies behaviour during the rest of the game. I mean in POI the zombies find their way through 3 floors of maze to run towards you but during horde night they don't even reliably use ladders but only hit the pillars next to it. This "suddenly" different behaviour makes it hard to learn what a "good" base should look like.

 

The other thing is that during horde night you encounter zombies you have never seen before, which again makes it hard to anticipate how you should build your base. For instance you fight against meele zombies all the time and sudenly you have spitters that make your whole constructon fall apart. Once again you discover new features of the game in the worst possible moment.

 

The other thing is that surviving the horde night is actually not rewarding at all. The basic traps don't even give xp and you get more xp from building the base than for surviving the horde night. The amount of zombies you face is bigger than in any POI but you get nothing out of it. On top of that if you kill a zombie another just spawns, so why spend ammo? Just more reasons to go for a "cheese" base design because the only thing you care about is surviving with using as little ressources as possible.

 

Stuff you could change to adress the above points are for instance:

- In the day before horde night send one wave of zombies. You can put the day number in orange for instance. This way you could test your design and have 24 in game hours to adapt to it

- Make so you encounter the different types of zombies and the different behaviours more reliably outside of horde night. Perhaps have a early game version of exploding, spitting, regenerating zombies.

- You could make a quest to kill x zombies during horde night, and the more you kill the more reward you get. Perhaps through radio coms from the nearest vendor

- Make horde night zombies drop more loot and make the loot last at least until morning

- Have a bigger delay between killing a zombie and a new zombie spawning, so killing zombies during horde night actually helps you defend your base

 

What do you think of the horde night? what would you change?

 

Happy killing zombies everyone!

[Onarr]

You are right that you have no way of testing whether your base works or not. It sucks when you build something, and the AI goes totally elsewhere than you expected. Especially when you invested a lot of time into building it. Perhaps a small horde could attack you every night so you know what works and what does not. Waiting 7 hourse between them to test whether or not something works aint great.

 

Encountering new threats during the horde night for the first time sucks too, especially for the new players.

 

You have limited zombies that spawn during the horde night. You can deplete the horde by midnight on first horde night.

You do get rewards - zombies drop lootbags. First horde I got like 7-8 of those. You also get a whole lot of XP - I score around 3-4 lvls a horde night. But some bonus reward would by nice too.

[diegodgo87]

I love Horde nights, that feeling not knowing what's coming, base will stand? do we survive? do I upgrade the cobblestone pillar in the back?

I think you and I have very different ways to define "fun" 

 

One thing I find really quick is that playing multiplayer is a whole different game, been playing with two friends and this week tried to play solo, damn is horrible when zombies destroy my base and have to  rebuild, look for ammo, food, do quests, go mining all that before new horde, I leave and deleted the solo game; i'm sticking at multiplayer only.

[gaffers]

Building bases in single player is futile, mining and building is all you'll ever be doing.

 

If you're alone it's more fun and more practical to stagger out of the remains of a POI in the morning, stick your shades on and ride off on your motorcycle. Stuff making concrete for 6 days.

[Liesel Weppen]

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

I am not really sure what it is but i am tempted to just deactivate it which is not really the point of having such a nice feature in the game.

Imho horde night is anoying, so indeed i disabled it in my A19 singleplayer.

 

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

My first thought is that the zombie behaviour during horde night is nothing like the zombies behaviour during the rest of the game. I mean in POI the zombies find their way through 3 floors of maze to run towards you but during horde night they don't even reliably use ladders but only hit the pillars next to it.

Was this changed in A19? It was not this way in A18. They did always find a way to the player and even if no free path existed, they always found the path with the lowest resistance.

E.g. if you build a room with 3 concrete walls and one wall wood only, they will always go for the wood wall.

 

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

The other thing is that during horde night you encounter zombies you have never seen before, which again makes it hard to anticipate how you should build your base.

The horde doesn't contain any zombies that will not show up during normal game (but i'm not sure about the demolisher). The horde is just a little ahead of the normal zombies. So yes, you might see spider zombies during horde night even if you haven't seen one before. But it is always the same progress, once you know it, you can estimate what to expect.

It was so long ago when i played 7d2d in A15 first without knowing what comes to me, that i even don't remember it any more. But in general it hasn't changed since then.

 

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

The other thing is that surviving the horde night is actually not rewarding at all. The basic traps don't even give xp and you get more xp from building the base than for surviving the horde night.

The horde is supposed to be a ressource sink. The only rewarding thing you get is XP and that is the reason that should you make attending the fight actively and not just rely on your traps. You are supposed to use the time between hordes to prepare for the horde, not expecting that the horde will carry itself.

It was different in earlier alphas (until A16 iirc?) where basically every killed zombie dropped some loot. Back then a horde did cost not much, the zombies often even dropped more loot that you "lost". Players tend to just wait for the horde... why go looting if the horde ships loot for free directly in front of your base?

 

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

On top of that if you kill a zombie another just spawns, so why spend ammo? Just more reasons to go for a "cheese" base design because the only thing you care about is surviving with using as little ressources as possible.

Killing a Z is winning time. It will take some time until the replacement zombie will be spawned and it will also take him time to run to your base. A killed zombie is also not replaced by the same time of zombie. So you could aim for killing the strong ones to have them replaced by weaker ones. But it's also a valid strategy to build such a massive base, that it resists the zombies until bloodmoon is over and allows you to kill them afterwards. Then repair/replace what they have destroyed.

No need to cheese. It's your decision if you want to cheese. If you don't want it, don't do it. There are various ways to handle bloodmoons without cheesing.

Use molotows, pipe bombs and grenades and design your base so that you are able to really use them.

 

2 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

What do you think of the horde night? what would you change?

Imho the default setting of once every sunday is way to predicitve and boring. In A18 i played with completely random bloodmoons and also the red day number turned off. If a bloodmoon happens this night you only recognize by the thunder and red sky after 18:00. So you need to be ALWAYS prepared. That was way more interesting.

In general imho it's still to static.... always the same. I'd prefer different random events. The wandering hordes should somehow work better to become a real (unexpected) challenge. Clouds of radioactive fog moving over the map, that you can't go out or need a haz suit. Coldwaves that might kill your plants. Animals that gone crazy and attack you(r base), so 2 (zombie) bears with 5 dogs in a pack randomly attacking you and your base would be something different.

[Outlaw_187]

Lots of good points and tips above. That's what's awesome about this game, so many options & customizations. 

You could even set the Z's to walk on horde nights that way you could have a little time to plan out who to take out 1st or what parts they are attacking so you can focus on them. 

 

Have fun & experiment brother!!

[Lemmers]

Blood moon bases have always been a letdown and I don't bother making one unless it's late game and I'm bored. They are inefficient resource hogs that in a best case scenario, do all the killing with traps so you won't get much XP per kill at all. And in a worst case scenario completely fail, all of your work is destroyed, you die and end up missing out on all that sweet, sweet XP. Demolishers only made this problem worse IMO as I'm not spending hours of my time making something that can be destroyed in 30 seconds when two spawn together and both path immediately to the weakest point to blow up.

 

My group builds a simple ladder jump that zombies can't make on the side of a tall, brick POI with horizontal bars on the outside to shoot down at zombies underneath us. Craft a lot of bullets and some barbed wire to slow them down, and in 15 minutes of build time we have a horde base ready that we can use for 10 weeks in a row. We all get full, shared XP for every zombie killed and by taking headshots we make ammo go a long way. Only threats are birds and cops, and both are easily dealt with. Detonators can explode all they want underneath while zombies destroy all the useless blocks that aren't even structural. TFP know how to build things too well and nothing ever falls down even when we skip repairs in hopes that it might collapse and be entertaining.

 

Maybe new gameplay mechanics can force players to build better bases if they want to survive blood moons, but from my view that was the point of the Demolisher and it only make me want to build a blood moon base even less.

 

I think my next game I'll take some ideas from here and make blood moon nights random, but lower the max zombies per player to something more reasonable. It could be a lot of fun to see our group panic at dusk while we are doing something far away like a quest and rush to fortify whatever position we can find.

[Orclover]

Out of all that I think the idea Horde Night Quest is probably the best to implement to make the horde night a bit more interesting to tackle instead of just avoiding as some do.  Let the traders post bounties on those bloody demolishers or even bribe the player to guard a location and set up a quick horde base outside their trading post or some random POI to defend it (without destroying the poi blocks or letting the poi get destroyed too much).  Now that would be a challenge.  Could even flavor horde night depending on the quest.  Have a night with nothing but Dire Wolves attacking you or it could rain rattle snakes.

[Nfg]

I'm very much a fan of the KISS base design for single player games. A "solid" 7 block cube is less then 400 blocks to build. This is my base on day nine. It started as wood on day 1 and most of the cement was found around town. I did get board and dig down to bedrock at night but that's all the mining I've done so far. The cobble was found or made from clay gathered from supply quests and I tend to do most of the building at night. I should have the corners to steel by day 14 and maybe some of the second row too. That just depends on if I want to spend a full day mining or not. It will be all steel by day 21 and I'll be working on the next three layers and the crafting room. 

 

[Aliblabla]

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

The horde is supposed to be a ressource sink. The only rewarding thing you get is XP and that is the reason that should you make attending the fight actively and not just rely on your traps. You are supposed to use the time between hordes to prepare for the horde, not expecting that the horde will carry itself.

It was different in earlier alphas (until A16 iirc?) where basically every killed zombie dropped some loot. Back then a horde did cost not much, the zombies often even dropped more loot that you "lost". Players tend to just wait for the horde... why go looting if the horde ships loot for free directly in front of your base?

If I would spend my time on something else instead of getting my base ready for the horde I would bet xp too (and loot on top), so i don't realy agree with the arguement that xp is the reward for horde night. Its a hughe ressource sink thats true but for the amount of ressources and time it takes i feel just xp is far to low as a reward.
I agree that it still should be a sink and not a way to farm ressources but a bit more encouragement to fight them would be nice in my opignion.

 

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Killing a Z is winning time. It will take some time until the replacement zombie will be spawned and it will also take him time to run to your base. A killed zombie is also not replaced by the same time of zombie. So you could aim for killing the strong ones to have them replaced by weaker ones. But it's also a valid strategy to build such a massive base, that it resists the zombies until bloodmoon is over and allows you to kill them afterwards. Then repair/replace what they have destroyed.

No need to cheese. It's your decision if you want to cheese. If you don't want it, don't do it. There are various ways to handle bloodmoons without cheesing.

Use molotows, pipe bombs and grenades and design your base so that you are able to really use them.

In my experience if I kill a Zombie 5 seconds later the replacement is there. It doesn't really feel to me like a long enough delay.

Personaly not a fan of the explosif since it would meen spending my time mining ressources. Not really how i enjoy the game

4 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Imho the default setting of once every sunday is way to predicitve and boring. In A18 i played with completely random bloodmoons and also the red day number turned off. If a bloodmoon happens this night you only recognize by the thunder and red sky after 18:00. So you need to be ALWAYS prepared. That was way more interesting.

In general imho it's still to static.... always the same. I'd prefer different random events. The wandering hordes should somehow work better to become a real (unexpected) challenge. Clouds of radioactive fog moving over the map, that you can't go out or need a haz suit. Coldwaves that might kill your plants. Animals that gone crazy and attack you(r base), so 2 (zombie) bears with 5 dogs in a pack randomly attacking you and your base would be something different.

Love your idear of random horde nights, would be a nice mod to play

4 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Was this changed in A19? It was not this way in A18. They did always find a way to the player and even if no free path existed, they always found the path with the lowest resistance.

My experience is the blood moon horde zombies tend to ram there head against the wall instead of malking 2 squares to the open door. Last experience was me standing on top of a ladder going all the way to the ground and 95% of the zombies just bashing the pillars. Even had instances where the zombie stops running towards me (with no obstacles at all between me and him) turns right and starts banging against the wall. Thats all in alpha 18.

[JCrook1028]

35 minutes ago, Aliblabla said:

Love your idear of random horde nights, would be a nice mod to play

 

You can do that with the vanilla game by adjusting the settings.

[ElCabong]

I've been through so many of those that I have it turned off. I spend more and more time preparing for horde night and less time doing other things I enjoy more.

[warmer]

10 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

My first thought is that the zombie behaviour during horde night is nothing like the zombies behaviour during the rest of the game. I mean in POI the zombies find their way through 3 floors of maze to run towards you but during horde night they don't even reliably use ladders but only hit the pillars next to it. This "suddenly" different behaviour makes it hard to learn what a "good" base should look like.

I think what you are experiencing is a portion of the AI that has a random chance after falling to destroy everything near them. This makes it much harder to make a cheese base with a looping fall trap. After falling there is a chance they will destroy blocks vs trying to climb. What this does is enable zombies to bring down bases that exploit fall loops.

[Nfg]

4 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

Personaly not a fan of the explosif since it would meen spending my time mining ressources. Not really how i enjoy the game

If I remember correctly you can make a 100 molotovs with a single stack of oil shale. So if you spent maybe 15 minutes IRL per in game week mining shale, you can have an unlimited supply of them. You will also have all the gas you can ever want. 

[gcomerfo]

Guys, I'm reading this thread and not sure if you snowflakes are playing the same game as me :)   Is this like the millenial generation of 7D2D players who can't figure out or build anything that is "too hard"?!? 

 

The devs made the AI harder to predict the behavior because a couple versions back, it seems, there was an entirely different sentiment of people whining because the AI was so predictable, that horde night was too easy if you built one of 2-3 types of bases. 

 

For example, one type is the base raised on columns with all spikes underneath and you have iron or wood bars to shoot down at them.  That base still even works in A19 as I have used it up to day 35.  However, the zombies do a lot of more unpredictable things this version that keep me on my toes. 

 

But, my point is, the very thing you are frustrated with is something that a few version bacl people complained about the opposite.  I guess you guys must be newbies.  Fear not!  Keep trying new designs!  That is fun.  Be more efficient.  Learn new things.  Manage your time and resources better - that is fun when you achieve it.  And, SURVIVE! 

 

Cheers!

 

 

[Aliblabla]

59 minutes ago, gcomerfo said:

Guys, I'm reading this thread and not sure if you snowflakes are playing the same game as me   Is this like the millenial generation of 7D2D players who can't figure out or build anything that is "too hard"?!? 

I am not complaining its to hard, I am saying the games doesn't teach you how to deal with it. Not the same at all. The games makes you play for 7 hours and sudenly throws something completly different at you. It feels like you are not playing the same game any more, the zombies don't even behave the same way. Its is absolutly not intuitive ! so yeah newbees who don't know how the games works are complaining because loosing 14h of game because the games throws something at you that you have never seen is a pain. I have never ask for the horde night to be easyer if you read the post above.

 

11 hours ago, Nfg said:

If I remember correctly you can make a 100 molotovs with a single stack of oil shale. So if you spent maybe 15 minutes IRL per in game week mining shale, you can have an unlimited supply of them. You will also have all the gas you can ever want. 

Yeah sure in the lategame wen you got motordrill and all ressources you could ever want. In this situation I agree that farming xp is almost the only thing you care about. But in the early stages its not the same, you are not even garantied to have acces to an Chemistry Station because you are unlucky and don't find any Beaker. And on the other hand having to farm something in order to deal with a ressource sink is not something i can agree on. For me it means that there is something wrong with the ressouce sink which is not shredding the right ressources.

 

16 hours ago, Nfg said:

I'm very much a fan of the KISS base design for single player games.

I am not saying that there isn't any base in which you can fight. I am saying you should be able to come up with designs while playing the game instead of having to look up basedesigns just to survive. If you want to do it, in order to be more efficent, get some new idears or what else yeah sure, but not so you don't loose hours of gameplay.

 

12 hours ago, warmer said:

I think what you are experiencing is a portion of the AI that has a random chance after falling to destroy everything near them. This makes it much harder to make a cheese base with a looping fall trap. After falling there is a chance they will destroy blocks vs trying to climb. What this does is enable zombies to bring down bases that exploit fall loops.

Well no its not. In my experience some zombies use gps and navigations systems and other don't move 2 blocks to the side to go through an open space. You point out something interesting they spend dev times to come up with ai changes so they can play cat and mouse with the cheesers, and that is for me not the right approche. There will be always someone looking for exploits to do stuff. In my opignion you should give the player a reason to play the game you want him to and not force him to play it the way he doesn't want to.

[Onarr]

Aliblabla is right that the game does not teach you how to deal with horde night. Heck it doesnt even tell you ther WILL be a horde night. The problem here is for the new player. The onboarding is almost non-existent in current stage of alpha.

[Nfg]

4 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

Yeah sure in the lategame wen you got motordrill and all ressources you could ever want.

FYI, you can easily mine a few stacks of shale with a pickaxe in a few minutes. No auger needed. That's the first thing I do after I get a chem station with my down time. Before that I just use the blunder bus or shotty. Also it's normally not very hard to find a working chem station in random POIs. No beaker required.

4 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

And on the other hand having to farm something in order to deal with a ressource sink is not something i can agree on. For me it means that there is something wrong with the ressouce sink which is not shredding the right ressources.

So what resources should you be sinking and how do you get them???

 

My general schedule early game after I get a bike is; Out the door before 4 and do some quick mining before the traider opens, get quest, finish quest. Then if i have enough time, I'll get a second quest, if not I'll go mine for a bit. Most of the time I'm still just using a stone axe still. Then head home to work on the base over night. I do that 6 days a week. On day 7, I'll finish getting prepared the night then just hit some random POIs until it's time to get to base. Using that method, I can have a steel base by day 21 and once you have 2 layers of steel between you and them, they can't touch you. At least until the demo's show up.

4 hours ago, Aliblabla said:

You point out something interesting they spend dev times to come up with ai changes so they can play cat and mouse with the cheesers, and that is for me not the right approche.

They are not playing cat and mouse with the players, they are trying to fix the kind of bugs you are talking about. Designing a complex AI that can work with zombies, animals, raiders, and friendly NPCs takes a lot of time make, especially if the world is voxel based.

[Dracula]

My problem with the horde is that, late game, it becomes an experience grind and not a challenge.  I'll have two bases; a "main" base and a "horde" base that's a combination of corridors lined with spikes and a new spike-roofed iron bar bunker at the center.  It removes all challenge from it and all the "new" or "overpowered" zombies simply mean "rotate scroll wheel to next weapon that's for them on the tool belt."

[AtomicUs5000]

8 minutes ago, Dracula said:

My problem with the horde is that, late game, it becomes an experience grind and not a challenge. 

For me, this would tell me that I need to increase my difficulty settings. I basically consider the game beaten at the current settings.
There aren't many options for the devs. The same thing happens in most games that have a game loop. They can either keep repeating the loop at some peak difficulty, they could keep increasing the difficulty, or completely end the loop. I think this is the better choice. If they keep making it harder and harder there will be a point where the difficulty exceeds the difficulty selected for your game. It also means that every game would result in 100% failure.. What would motivate someone to play that? 

[Onarr]

15 minutes ago, Dracula said:

My problem with the horde is that, late game, it becomes an experience grind and not a challenge.  I'll have two bases; a "main" base and a "horde" base that's a combination of corridors lined with spikes and a new spike-roofed iron bar bunker at the center.  It removes all challenge from it and all the "new" or "overpowered" zombies simply mean "rotate scroll wheel to next weapon that's for them on the tool belt."

I see you have not encountered demolisher zombies yet

[Orclover]

3 minutes ago, Onarr said:

I see you have not encountered demolisher zombies yet

 

Yea we turned Demo's off on our server back at the start of A18 and our players still gave up after dealing with them for a week.  Some players love the challenge but it wrecked the game for others.  If we ever make another server then Demos will be nerfed or turned off.  I would rather have more players to interact with than a slightly bigger challenge on horde night.

[Dracula]

1 minute ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

For me, this would tell me that I need to increase my difficulty settings. I basically consider the game beaten at the current settings.
There aren't many options for the devs. The same thing happens in most games that have a game loop. They can either keep repeating the loop at some peak difficulty, they could keep increasing the difficulty, or completely end the loop. I think this is the better choice. If they keep making it harder and harder there will be a point where the difficulty exceeds the difficulty selected for your game. It also means that every game would result in 100% failure.. What would motivate someone to play that? 

Difficulty becomes relatively moot; as I have tried at harder levels and with more zombies, etc.  My problem is, to use the most common recommendation, I got good.  Now I like to play with a more looming threat instead of an invasive threat.  I'll find a large city and set about rebuilding it; clearing every building and rebuilding it as much as I can so that it looks as if there were no apocalypse.

 

A dozen forges and cement mixers running at all times and constantly deforesting/reforesting the area changes a lot and has given me a lot more to do.

 

I've become the law of my new city; eliminating any zombie that respawns, establishing large networks of electrical devices to run makeshift street lights, a massive underground cistern to act as a septic system, etc.

Just now, Onarr said:

I see you have not encountered demolisher zombies yet

Oh, I have, but a decent kill corridor lets me pick them off at a range where they cease to be a threat.

2 minutes ago, Orclover said:

 

Yea we turned Demo's off on our server back at the start of A18 and our players still gave up after dealing with them for a week.  Some players love the challenge but it wrecked the game for others.  If we ever make another server then Demos will be nerfed or turned off.  I would rather have more players to interact with than a slightly bigger challenge on horde night.

How did you do this?  I had a mod that did so for A18, but I wish there were a "Zombie Spawner" list that would let me check exactly what I want the game to spawn so that I don't have to seek out mods.

[AtomicUs5000]

2 minutes ago, Dracula said:

Difficulty becomes relatively moot; as I have tried at harder levels and with more zombies, etc.  My problem is, to use the most common recommendation, I got good.  Now I like to play with a more looming threat instead of an invasive threat.  I'll find a large city and set about rebuilding it; clearing every building and rebuilding it as much as I can so that it looks as if there were no apocalypse.

 

A dozen forges and cement mixers running at all times and constantly deforesting/reforesting the area changes a lot and has given me a lot more to do.

 

I've become the law of my new city; eliminating any zombie that respawns, establishing large networks of electrical devices to run makeshift street lights, a massive underground cistern to act as a septic system, etc.

Oh, I have, but a decent kill corridor lets me pick them off at a range where they cease to be a threat.

Nah, man... max zombies and hardest difficulty, you don't have time for that. All your time is taken up getting and making ammo. You aren't using spikes anymore either.
But ok... you like looming threat better. How does that make the horde night a problem? Because you like it less than looming threats? It just means you like playing the game differently.
 
What I like doing from time to time when typical BM gets dull is maxing out the settings, but then put it on very short days with longest nights, BM every night... and see how long I can last. Nobody is lasting that long, trust me. It is a constant challenge.

[hiemfire]

18 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

If they keep making it harder and harder there will be a point where the difficulty exceeds the difficulty selected for your game. It also means that every game would result in 100% failure.. What would motivate someone to play that?

The same thing that motivated people to play the old 8 bit arcade games that did that...