Alpha 19 Loot System improvement

[meganoth]

10 minutes ago, manni44 said:

But even if u make it hard to get the good stuff, the game is over as soon as u get a shotgun in ur hands.

No matter how long it takes to get It. It wont be long enough, or too long for ppl.

I feel like u cant make anyone realy happy if u make early game super hard. Early game shuld be medium hard in the beginning. and endgame should feel like Nightmare on Dope. That way new players can easy learn the game with less frustration and hardcore peeps have a challenge.

Right now its just when ever u get ur first gun u win. 

Limiting the access to guns early game wont cut the problem we have, it just delayes it.

 

I think tier0 weapons and normal zombies are well matched though. And tier1 weapons and ferals are well matched. Which begs the question: Should ferals come sooner or tier1 guns even later?

 

Yes, shotguns are still one rung above all others and lots of people would accept a nerf I guess. But tier1 shotgun is just the double-barrel. And even with two of them on the belt it is very easy to forget to reload one.

 

Are you of the opinion the early game is super hard now? Or do you think changing a few POIs to be more difficult is super hard even though 95% of buildings will stay as they are now? 

 

 

[manni44]

  I can only talk for nightmare/Insane settings.

 

There is no real gameplay without to cheese the ai with these settings. just because u are so gimped at the beginning u need to fight them from the distance but the actual weapons are not doing the job, i mean come on.. blunderbuss only? I know there is more to come and im happy about that. Meele only works with cheese Frames and or blocks u fast create.

 

But now to ur question.

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

I think tier0 weapons and normal zombies are well matched though. And tier1 weapons and ferals are well matched. Which begs the question: Should ferals come sooner or tier1 guns even later?

 

First of all. What is the real goal ? What do we want to accomplish here ? Is it about how long a player should stay in stonage.

Or is it about how Kittet a player will be by day 7 day 14 ? I dont even know. 

 

We cant realy talk about this until we get the zones and see how they want to balance it. 

I think its OK as it is but we need something harder as ferals. They are just to weak at some point.

In this state of the game we realy have to wait for the zones and balance them. All talking about balancing guns/Zombies right now will be obsolete once Zones are in the game. + They wont rebalnce anything before that happens.

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Yes, shotguns are still one rung above all others and lots of people would accept a nerf I guess. But tier1 shotgun is just the double-barrel. And even with two of them on the belt it is very easy to forget to reload one.

 

Noooooo Pls dont gimb my shotty again, i love her so much 😢

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Are you of the opinion the early game is super hard now? Or do you think changing a few POIs to be more difficult is super hard even though 95% of buildings will stay as they are now? 

 

 

Super hard ? not realy its kinda boring, thats the point i want to make. I want it to be more interesting. Not harder or more easy. It should be Fairly Hard On insane settings. But bulletsponges and no guns at all until day XX are not the solution for us here i think. 

So what is the solution ? No F idea Realy. 

The only thing i see is, We can make the endgame harder way harder then it is right now. So we wont feel like game over once u get a shotty.

If we cant make it any harder we have to talk about nerfing things like guns and so on but as i said its all obsolete already until Zones are in.

 

Edit

If we are talking about the zone balancing right now.

The best of the best items should be super hard to get yes.

But if u have like only 5% of the buildings super hard and only there will spawn the best stuff. U will run out of buildings to loot in a short time. If u can only obtain the best of the best loot wiht quests only in those buildings u are cutting the players freedom once more. ppl Like choices and as much freedom they can get when it comes to open world games. 

 

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, manni44 said:

  I can only talk for nightmare/Insane settings.

 

There is no real gameplay without to cheese the ai with these settings. just because u are so gimped at the beginning u need to fight them from the distance but the actual weapons are not doing the job, i mean come on.. blunderbuss only? I know there is more to come and im happy about that. Meele only works with cheese Frames and or blocks u fast create.

 

But now to ur question.

First of all. What is the real goal ? What do we want to accomplish here ? Is it about how long a player should stay in stonage.

Or is it about how Kittet a player will be by day 7 day 14 ? I dont even know. 

 

We cant realy talk about this until we get the zones and see how they want to balance it. 

I think its OK as it is but we need something harder as ferals. They are just to weak at some point.

In this state of the game we realy have to wait for the zones and balance them. All talking about balancing guns/Zombies right now will be obsolete once Zones are in the game. + They wont rebalnce anything before that happens.

Noooooo Pls dont gimb my shotty again, i love her so much 😢

 

Super hard ? not realy its kinda boring, thats the point i want to make. I want it to be more interesting. Not harder or more easy. It should be Fairly Hard On insane settings. But bulletsponges and no guns at all until day XX are not the solution for us here i think. 

So what is the solution ? No F idea Realy. 

The only thing i see is, We can make the endgame harder way harder then it is right now. So we wont feel like game over once u get a shotty.

If we cant make it any harder we have to talk about nerfing things like guns and so on but as i said its all obsolete already until Zones are in.

 

Edit

If we are talking about the zone balancing right now.

The best of the best items should be super hard to get yes.

But if u have like only 5% of the buildings super hard and only there will spawn the best stuff. U will run out of buildings to loot in a short time. If u can only obtain the best of the best loot wiht quests only in those buildings u are cutting the players freedom once more. ppl Like choices and as much freedom they can get when it comes to open world games. 

 

It was you who was talking about "super hard" in your previous post, I was merely asking what you meant by it.

 

My personal opinion of the harder biomes or POIs is different from TFP: I think those harder zones will just lure experienced players to go there very early to get guns. Once they have a gun, say at day 3 or 4, the normal zones will be too easy for them again as they are now with a tier1 gun against normal zombies and they will not be really happy about it and complain about the game being boring. At least that is a danger of having those harder areas.

 

Those 5% of the buildings with special loot rooms are the biggest buildings in the game (tier4 and tier5 quest buildings). And if you want to loot only buildings with better loot you just have to settle into one of the harder biomes, the buildings there can be any you'll find in normal zones, but ... with better loot.

 

Don't expect too much from pipe weapons, they probably will all have a magazine size of one or two and @%$*#!ty damage and very low precision and won't enable you to just shoot down zombies from afar in insane. 

 

[manni44]

18 minutes ago, meganoth said:

It was you who was talking about "super hard" in your previous post, I was merely asking what you meant by it.

 

My personal opinion of the harder biomes or POIs is different from TFP: I think those harder zones will just lure experienced players to go there very early to get guns. Once they have a gun, say at day 3 or 4, the normal zones will be too easy for them again as they are now with a tier1 gun against normal zombies and they will not be really happy about it and complain about the game being boring. At least that is a danger of having those harder areas.

 

 

 

Indeed this is whats going to happen but i cant see a real problem there. If loot is gamestaged the might get a t1 from a t5 questbuilding but what is wrong in taking shortcuts ? if u played like 1000 hours + its ur own choice if u want to take a shortcut or not. Thats how i see it others see it diffrent i know. 

20 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Those 5% of the buildings with special loot rooms are the biggest buildings in the game (tier4 and tier5 quest buildings). And if you want to loot only buildings with better loot you just have to settle into one of the harder biomes, the buildings there can be any you'll find in normal zones, but ... with better loot.

 

i have to settle there ? i guess u mean i can just walk over to the hard zone and have my base in the noob zone right ? 

20 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Don't expect too much from pipe weapons, they probably will all have a magazine size of one or two and @%$*#!ty damage and very low precision and won't enable you to just shoot down zombies from afar in insane. 

 

I know whos playing with the numbers here i never expect anything fancy 😆 at least we will get something which is better than nothing.

Right now a19 has a lot of flaws when it comes to loot and sadly it will be like this until the zones update.

But ok i remember wrose updates, i remember when we had weapon and tool degration when repairing. Which turned me crazy killed my ocd 😵 made me ragequit until next alpha. Over all a19 is good just would have been better to include the zones with the lootchanges and itemranges(i mean whos idea was it to make a T0 lvl6 better than a T1 lvl3 item ??? OCD triggered again 🤯).

[meganoth]

12 minutes ago, manni44 said:

 

 

Indeed this is whats going to happen but i cant see a real problem there. If loot is gamestaged the might get a t1 from a t5 questbuilding but what is wrong in taking shortcuts ? if u played like 1000 hours + its ur own choice if u want to take a shortcut or not. Thats how i see it others see it diffrent i know. 

No problem for me. The one who is taking a shortcut has a better weapon now, but it doesn't necessarily mean he advances faster in xp/levels. For him the game just got a lot easier if he ever goes back to normal biomes. So he has to stay in the harder zones to not get bored. Effectively this just cuts the stone age short, after that there is no change in pace or loot quality at all. If that is all he wants, good for him.

 

12 minutes ago, manni44 said:

i have to settle there ? i guess u mean i can just walk over to the hard zone and have my base in the noob zone right ? 

Yeah, sure, but why bother? Once you have a tier1 gun at day 3 (for example) the normal biome is just trivial and the hard zone obviously where the better loot is.

 

12 minutes ago, manni44 said:

I know whos playing with the numbers here i never expect anything fancy 😆 at least we will get something which is better than nothing.

Right now a19 has a lot of flaws when it comes to loot and sadly it will be like this until the zones update.

But ok i remember wrose updates, i remember when we had weapon and tool degration when repairing. Which turned me crazy killed my ocd 😵 made me ragequit until next alpha. Over all a19 is good just would have been better to include the zones with the lootchanges and itemranges(i mean whos idea was it to make a T0 lvl6 better than a T1 lvl3 item ??? OCD triggered again 🤯).

 

[manni44]

59 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Yeah, sure, but why bother? Once you have a tier1 gun at day 3 (for example) the normal biome is just trivial and the hard zone obviously where the better loot is.

 

I dont know the layout of the zones yet pretty much i know nothing about them yet^^ 

howmany zones will there be ? like 3 Noobzone, Midgamezone, Endgamezone.... this would lead to trouble once u play midgamezone and stay there for a while and u will build a base there. But now u want to move to the endgame and have to move all ur stuff to the new base + ur old base is worthless. this dosnt make sense to me. Im shure u guys got a plan already cant wait what u come up with 

[meganoth]

21 minutes ago, manni44 said:

I dont know the layout of the zones yet pretty much i know nothing about them yet^^ 

howmany zones will there be ? like 3 Noobzone, Midgamezone, Endgamezone.... this would lead to trouble once u play midgamezone and stay there for a while and u will build a base there. But now u want to move to the endgame and have to move all ur stuff to the new base + ur old base is worthless. this dosnt make sense to me. Im shure u guys got a plan already cant wait what u come up with 

I'm not one of the developers, I'm just a normal forum user (with a "side job" of moderator). But from what I read here on the forum it probably will be this way:

 

You have the biomes like now. Forest and burned forest will be the easy biomes. desert a bit more difficult, snow and wasteland the most difficult. What that means is that once you go into the desert, zombies and loot there just get a gamestage bonus of (for example) 20. So if you are at gamestage 16, in the desert you are gamestage 36 instead, changing which zombies you encounter and what loot you find. And in the snow biome that gamestage bonus might be 40.

 

The other feature they want to implement are radiation zones. They didn't tell us much details, but probably radiation zones might be small areas with just one or two POIs in them. And you need a radiation suit or lots of healing items to survive going in there.  And you need to hurry. Get in fast, grab what you can, get out before your HPs run out.

 

[RipClaw]

12 hours ago, manni44 said:

  I can only talk for nightmare/Insane settings.

 

There is no real gameplay without to cheese the ai with these settings. just because u are so gimped at the beginning u need to fight them from the distance but the actual weapons are not doing the job, i mean come on.. blunderbuss only? I know there is more to come and im happy about that. Meele only works with cheese Frames and or blocks u fast create.

You know Jonah Birch? He streams on twitch several times a week "7 Days to die" always plays on Insane, Nightmare Speed and with Permadeath.

 

You can learn a lot from him about how to use primitive weapons effectively. His favorite weapon in the early game is the bone knife. The bleeding damage is your best friend in the early game on this difficulty.
 

[manni44]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

You know Jonah Birch? He streams on twitch several times a week "7 Days to die" always plays on Insane, Nightmare Speed and with Permadeath.

 

You can learn a lot from him about how to use primitive weapons effectively. His favorite weapon in the early game is the bone knife. The bleeding damage is your best friend in the early game on this difficulty.
 

i know him hes one of the best permadeath players , but also he cheeses the ai once it comes to melee combat. Btw im just talking about the very beginning of the game when u have zero skills. The more skills u get the less u have to cheese the ai in melee. 

[leaderdog]

On 8/6/2020 at 3:33 AM, Tahaan said:

 

About finding Stone tools in loot ... Of course you would.  The survivor who got there before you took the marksman's rifle and left his blunderbus / stone axe because he thought it would help you.  You know, the guy who buys from your rented vending machine....

 

 

And then what? carefully sealed up the loot container from the Shotgun Messiah?  Sorry that's just ridiculous.  Finding that crap loot in backpacks sure I can see that.  But locked gun cases and sealed shotgun messiah containers is just wrong.

 

IF you want to play that logic, then have two randomized loot containers that spawn with your gamestage.  At low gamestages at a glance you can see an already picked through container - tool stiffy or shogun messiah container, knowing you'll likely get crap.  But if you have to break into a safe or any loot container with a lock pick or smash it open, there darn well should be something that doesn't resemble day one crap you can craft.

 

I'm still of the mind that progression made/makes no sense in a survival game,  but now that they're trying to be fallout, the game is also trying to be an RTS with the gamestage.  Which makes zero sense at all.  To me it's just mindless busy work and time wasted.  The same reason I quit playing World of Warcraft all those years ago.  I enjoyed the start over always did, but now I don't want to.  It's so unbearably boring raising the skill tree.  Which again was never needed.  But it seems many of you require a 'feeling' that you've accomplished something rather than just setting a goal and working towards it. 

 

I think a lot of this nonsense was added for multiplayer play.  Because as a single player it's a lot of time wasted on raising skills because you'll be making better iron tools and steel tools LONG before you find a decent one in the loot containers.

 

I rarely use firearms in this game, and thank the gods the pimps fixed melee combat because I've always preferred that, but finding garbage in a loot container or a safe when you used 5-8 lock picks to get in isn't one of those good 'feelings' a gamer is looking for.

 

Until they build level difficulty zones, which is a better idea, I think this is just a terrible artificial way to extend the game.  How many of you actually play into the 100+ days?  I don't typically.  unless I have a very ambitious build I want to make.  I'm bored by then because I don't like bullet sponge zombies, and the gear scales poorly/unnecessarily.  Starting over was a blast because of the loot system and the randomization.  That's gone.  That's boring, the start is now boring and feels tedious to level up.  They went from the greatest game I've ever played to quickly becoming just another on the pile.  That unique character the game had is being so watered down it's feels now like it's just trying to be a copy of other games.  That's just sad really.

 

edit:

Just to add to this, building the mini bike used to be fun, finding the parts (or building them) then upgrading the battery or motor was enjoyable.  It might be more "gameish" than "realistic"  but that type of minigame inside the game was more fun than the way the vehicles are now.  It was always a joy to find a better motor to swap out in your minibike to get more speed from it.  Now we just have the gutless vehicles that get stuck on everything.  But that random joy has been replaced with,... well nothing. 

[Solomon]

16 hours ago, meganoth said:

You have the biomes like now. Forest and burned forest will be the easy biomes. desert a bit more difficult, snow and wasteland the most difficult. What that means is that once you go into the desert, zombies and loot there just get a gamestage bonus of (for example) 20. So if you are at gamestage 16, in the desert you are gamestage 36 instead, changing which zombies you encounter and what loot you find. And in the snow biome that gamestage bonus might be 40.

Wouldnt this just result in players going into the wasteland by default so they can skip all the loot stages fast and then move out of the place as soon as they have what they want to settle down in a forest next to a town+trader+lake type of area?

 

 

To me this sounds like one of those games where everyone and their mothers on the forums tell players to play only on the hardest settings because everything else is just not worth the time.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Solomon said:

Wouldnt this just result in players going into the wasteland by default so they can skip all the loot stages fast and then move out of the place as soon as they have what they want to settle down in a forest next to a town+trader+lake type of area?

 

 

To me this sounds like one of those games where everyone and their mothers on the forums tell players to play only on the hardest settings because everything else is just not worth the time.

Possibly. Or they succumb to the lure of better loot because now they feel invincible with a gun.

 

I described the basic version above. One improvement they could think of would be to have different bonuses for zombie gamestage and loot gamestage. So the loot might be slightly better but the zombies far better. Also there are already lots of mines, bears and dog hordes in the wasteland, it won't be as easy as it sounds at first

 

 

[Solomon]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

Possibly. Or they succumb to the lure of better loot because now they feel invincible with a gun.

 

I described the basic version above. One improvement they could think of would be to have different bonuses for zombie gamestage and loot gamestage. So the loot might be slightly better but the zombies far better. Also there are already lots of mines, bears and dog hordes in the wasteland, it won't be as easy as it sounds at first

The first thing what came to my mind is suicide run exploits. Set zombie damage to minimum, player damage to max, no death drops, rush into the place, get the loot, die, repeat.

 

The whole thing only get challanging to dead is dead players, thought you can even exploit the ai to do your bidding and smash open walls to make your day easier.

[caatalyst]

14 hours ago, meganoth said:

Possibly. Or they succumb to the lure of better loot because now they feel invincible with a gun.

 

I described the basic version above. One improvement they could think of would be to have different bonuses for zombie gamestage and loot gamestage. So the loot might be slightly better but the zombies far better. Also there are already lots of mines, bears and dog hordes in the wasteland, it won't be as easy as it sounds at first

 

 

I think too much emphasis is put on stopping players finding guns and game stage / player level and perks when it comes to looting and exploration.

 

If the game stage continues to becomes the main system that determines what loot players find then it's going to lose the excitement that comes with exploration and looting. The whole process becomes too predictable and the desire to start over gets lost. Players are essentially getting funneled to play the game in a specific way which is eroding away the sandbox fun.  It just feels very artificial and gamey (I know I keep banging on about this but it's just frustrating to see the path that the devs are going down with looting). 

It should be perfectly fine for a player to find a gun on day one, even a top tier gun if they take the risk and loot an end game poi successfully regardless of game stage or player level. A way to tackle these weapons being too OP could be handled by quality and ammo types.

For example, the difference between each quality level (1-5) could be made much more significant. A level 1 rifle could be very unreliable, prone to break often with poor performance (poor accuracy, slow reload speed, poor recoil).  Quality doesn't need to be coupled to game stage, player level or POIs (maybe some nasty POIs have a slightly better chance of awarding better quality items). Instead quality is pretty much determined by a solid RNG system that includes an incredibly low chance to get T6, very low T5 and low chance to get T3 or T4. Of course the RNG would need to be tested and balanced. It makes sense in a post apocalyptic world that most things left over from before the war would have degraded over time with the exception of a few well hidden stashes.

Yes you might find a q6 rifle on day 1 but it could be balanced in a way to make that odds incredibly low. Additionally to keep a bit of a game play loop active you could make repairing weapons reduce their quality over time so they would need to be replaced (or have parts replaced). This doesn't need to be too severe, maybe repairing a Q6 rifle 5 times would take it down to Q5. Repairing a Q1 weapon a few times could result in that weapon breaking beyond repair. Maybe there could be a perk that allows players to master repairing weapons so by the end game they don't degrade when repaired or it is significantly reduced (Although i'd much prefer a LBD system for this).

 

Damage doesn't need to be assigned to the weapon or perks but instead the types of ammo and these could also be tiered.

 

T0 Hand made bullets - Easy to mass produce but terrible damage and maybe reduce recoil / accuracy further. Yeah you find a AK on day 1 but you are going to be relying on these.

T1 Standard bullets - A bit harder to craft and slightly better damage, maybe has a slight negative impact on recoil / accuracy.
T2 HP Bullets - harder to craft but even better damage
T3 Armour Piercing bullets - Very hard to find and craft

 

The systems are pretty much already in place for all this to work. The types of bullets could be expanded further. More calibers for different rifles etc...

 

[Solomon]

12 minutes ago, caatalyst said:

I think too much emphasis is put on stopping players finding guns and game stage / player level and perks when it comes to looting and exploration.

 

If the game stage continues to becomes the main system that determines what loot players find then it's going to lose the excitement that comes with exploration and looting. The whole process becomes too predictable and the desire to start over gets lost. Players are essentially getting funneled to play the game in a specific way which is eroding away the sandbox fun.  It just feels very artificial and gamey (I know I keep banging on about this but it's just frustrating to see the path that the devs are going down with looting). 

It should be perfectly fine for a player to find a gun on day one, even a top tier gun if they take the risk and loot a end game poi successfully regardless of game stage or player level. A way to tackle these weapons being too OP could be handled by quality and ammo types.

For example, the difference between each quality level (1-5) could be made much more significant. A level 1 rifle could be very unreliable, prone to break often with poor performance (poor accuracy, slow reload speed, poor recoil).  Quality doesn't need to be coupled to game stage, player level or POIs (maybe some nasty POIs have a slightly better chance of awarding better quality items). Instead quality is pretty much determined by a solid RNG system that includes an incredibly low chance to get T6, very low T5 and low chance to get T3 or T4. Of course the RNG would need to be tested and balanced. It makes sense in a post apocalyptic world that most things left over from before the war would have degraded over time with the exception of a few well hidden stashes.

Yes you might find a q6 rifle on day 1 but it could be balanced in a way to make that odds incredibly low. Additionally to keep a bit of a game play loop active you could make repairing weapons reduce their quality over time so they would need to be replaced (or have parts replaced). This doesn't need to be too severe, maybe repairing a Q6 rifle 5 times would take it down to Q5. Repairing a Q1 weapon a few times could result in that weapon breaking beyond repair. Maybe there could be a perk that allows players to master repairing weapons so by the end game they don't degrade when repaired or it is significantly reduced (Although i'd much prefer a LBD system for this).

 

Damage doesn't need to be assigned to the weapon or perks but instead the types of ammo and these could also be tiered.

 

T0 Hand made bullets - Easy to mass produce but terrible damage and maybe reduce recoil / accuracy further. Yeah you find a AK on day 1 but you are going to be relying on these.

T1 Standard bullets - A bit harder to craft and slightly better damage, maybe has a slight negative impact on recoil / accuracy.
T2 HP Bullets - harder to craft but even better damage
T3 Armour Piercing bullets - Very hard to find and craft

 

The systems are pretty much already in place for all this to work. The types of bullets could be expanded further. More calibers for different rifles etc...

 

How about we expand the tiers a bit and play the balance on that?

 

Lets say that we get 12 tiers total, the first 5 are practically weapons in bad condition (low damage/durability/accuracy/etc...), everything you find in basic containers are between T1-5 and items in safes and such are all in quality t6-7.

 

To get an item to T11 you need to "repair" it with a workbench using the repair kits, forged iron+steel and weapon parts, each tier needs more of these to improve the quality of your gear. T12 can only be bought or upgraded at the trader because they are the only ones who have access to high grade, sealed military equipment.

 

This way early game guns are weak but with enough effort you can actually upgrade them as you progress.

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, caatalyst said:

[...]

It should be perfectly fine for a player to find a gun on day one, even a top tier gun if they take the risk and loot an end game poi successfully regardless of game stage or player level. A way to tackle these weapons being too OP could be handled by quality and ammo types.

 

Currently there is no way to have an end game POI in the game and therefore there is no risk. A shamways factory loot room can be as easily plundered as a tier2 loot room. A20 should have that.

 

[RestInPieces]

On 8/8/2020 at 6:15 PM, meganoth said:

 

Currently there is no way to have an end game POI in the game and therefore there is no risk. A shamways factory loot room can be as easily plundered as a tier2 loot room. A20 should have that.

 

There are a LOT of things TFP should be praised for, having made this wonderful game which was something that the rest of the market failed to offer, but "cause and effect" is just not up their alley... I mean, this is the "20, 40, 60 gates" all over again, and a lot of people have been asking for area & POI scaling from the beginning for very specific reasons, which I don't believe they endorse or understand. And as this will require a balance do-over, it certainly wasn't a necessary step. 

 

I really, really hope I get proven wrong and A20 greets us with a great zone system that emulates a "living, breathing world", with, for once, sublime gating, which will achieve prolonging gameplay in a more intuitive way that the players won't even notice.

 

But for that to happen, as you said, leveled zones have to apply to enemies as well. "That's why they are building the GS scaling" one might say, but personally I can't imagine how they will achieve smooth player progression, that doesn't lead to gimmicky player behaviors like the ones @Solomon mentioned, with GS scaling enemies and items like it does now, with its outdated formula, while also governing the difficulty of the BM (which is the only part of the game that actually needs level scaling) and, finally, the current death penalty, spawning and item economy states. My guess is that, in the end, they will have to tune everything separately all over again, or leave the game in a transcendent "just fine" state and move on to the next. Many steps forwards were made towards that direction like the DP introduction (which is still mostly inconsequential) or the injury system, but again, as I see it, a lot of steps backwards were made as well, like e.g. degradation going away, and even in areas such as spawning (e.g. sandwich-ing, which was gone on a whim).

 

Anyway, it's a fun ride which yields lessons for everyone involved and I wish the final result is a great experience, for both the sake of my own entertainment as well as the success of their next game.

[Solomon]

19 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

There are a LOT of things TFP should be praised for, having made this wonderful game which was something that the rest of the market failed to offer, but "cause and effect" is just not up their alley... I mean, this is the "20, 40, 60 gates" all over again, and a lot of people have been asking for area & POI scaling from the beginning for very specific reasons, which I don't believe they endorse or understand. And as this will require a balance do-over, it certainly wasn't a necessary step. 

 

I really, really hope I get proven wrong and A20 greets us with a great zone system that emulates a "living, breathing world", with, for once, sublime gating, which will achieve prolonging gameplay in a more intuitive way that the players won't even notice.

 

But for that to happen, as you said, leveled zones have to apply to enemies as well. "That's why they are building the GS scaling" one might say, but personally I can't imagine how they will achieve smooth player progression, that doesn't lead to gimmicky player behaviors like the ones @Solomon mentioned, with GS scaling enemies and items like it does now, with its outdated formula, while also governing the difficulty of the BM (which is the only part of the game that actually needs level scaling) and, finally, the current death penalty, spawning and item economy states. My guess is that, in the end, they will have to tune everything separately all over again, or leave the game in a transcendent "just fine" state and move on to the next. Many steps forwards were made towards that direction like the DP introduction (which is still mostly inconsequential) or the injury system, but again, as I see it, a lot of steps backwards were made as well, like e.g. degradation going away, and even in areas such as spawning (e.g. sandwich-ing, which was gone on a whim).

 

Anyway, it's a fun ride which yields lessons for everyone involved and I wish the final result is a great experience, for both the sake of my own entertainment as well as the success of their next game.

I sadly too believe that TFP's gonna need to rebalance the entire item economy and create a new gamestage formula.

 

 

One of the things i believe could be done is essentially the spawner block from minecraft. A simple invisible block what you can move throught what in itself governs the spawn of enemies of the area to smoot out progression.

 

Instead of the current system where we have these scripted enemies and spawns all in each Poi, it would be set up to cover a size and place zombies randomly around. No more "the next room will have 6 spawns, be ready" moments and each spawner could be set to create different difficulty for the Poi's.

 

Thought this again needs TFP to create more zombie types because without those all we going to see is the rad version of existing zombies in a bullet sponge style.