A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

I played until day 14 and both blood moons were almost completely boring and easy.

Well of course they are, that's only the 2nd horde.

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

Because I was a newbie not too long ago

Did you just respond to Dcsobral that you also had 8k hours in the game? Which is it, newbie recently or 8k hours?

[bachgaman]

21 minutes ago, Roland said:

Yes, I was talking about the most extreme on the spectrum. I also stated myself that there are degrees. By stating the most extreme, people can now read what you post and evaluate how you compare to the extreme. Going by your posts (I don't know you after all) I would say you are closer to the extreme end and I'm betting most who have read your viewpoint would agree. I mean not only can you not stand to play inefficiently you can't even stand to watch inefficient play. It is one of your admitted main objections to streamers and it makes so much sense and fits why you could never be part of that culture. 

If I were minmax, I would abuse all the exploits that the game teems with, but in many ways you're right, it's impossible to look at a bad game

31 minutes ago, Roland said:

Yeah, you win. Since efficiency is the only context that matters to you-- in those terms-- I fully admit that bow and stealth are worse perks than barter and adventurer. I also admit that by concentrating on bow and and stealth I would never be able to have a jeep, concrete base, best tools and weapons, and otherwise win the game under your conditions by day 7 on Warrior or higher difficulty.

 

Now the big question that has got to worry you is whether the developers of the game believe that efficiency is the only context for balance that matters. 

The funny thing is that the conversation initially began with a discussion of how useful the bow and stealth perks were. The funny thing is that the conversation initially began with a discussion of how useful the bow and stealth perks were. I have proven that fun is not proof of utility. After that, we could close this discussion. Not about whether the developers should do something about it. Reread the thread.

49 minutes ago, Roland said:

And now I admit fully that they are simply unbalanced by your criteria. I completely believe you when you say you can achieve your win conditions by Day 7 with one particular combination of perks and play strategy but that you cannot replicate that using other combinations of perks and play strategies. My argument has ceased to be whether you are wrong or right about the balance of the game. You are 100% right. The perks are not all balanced against efficiency.

 

My own enjoyment of the game is completely unconditional upon whether one strategy is more or less efficient than another, however. In fact, my enjoyment of bow and stealth is due to the fact that it is less efficient because that offers a new experience and unlike you I don't have to work hard at all to ignore the fact that the way I am choosing to play is going to be slower and wasteful. So I really have no need or desire to avoid admitting that the imbalance as you have described it exists.

You say "by your criteria", then tell us in what criteria they are balanced

52 minutes ago, Roland said:

Do you realize that your very definition of what makes someone a bad player vs a good player just adds more evidence about how extreme you are in your views about efficiency? Not only are you obsessed but it has become the very definition of good and bad to you. "Good choices" are only those choices that are the most efficient. "Playing well" means purely that you are progressing as quickly as you can maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste. 

 

A streamer who pauses to talk to their chat is a bad player and makes poor choices because chatting with your audience doesn't help them advance their progression in any way.

A player who decides to focus on bow and stealth is a bad player because on day 7 they will be in rags crouching behind a bush while someone else who started at the same time and is a good player will have a truck and a machine gun.

A player is a good player if they mod out the trader so none exist in their game but a bad player if they leave the trader in but just choose to ignore or limit how they use the trader because then they are making inefficient choices and ignoring the best possible choices to advance as quickly as possible that are available to them.

This is not "my definition", these are facts. If a player plays badly, makes bad choices, dies on low difficulty, builds a bad base, sorts things badly, or plans his actions badly, then this is a bad player. I do not humiliate anyone with this, it is a fact. If a person does something poorly, then he is bad at it

55 minutes ago, Roland said:

I very much doubt that the developers are going to rebalance the game (the entire game needs to be rebalanced I believe you said) to suit you. They are not nearly so focused on the thing you hold most dear.

Stop pulling phrases out of context and read in response to what I wrote this. The person said that all difficulty settings that go beyond the standard are not something to focus on when balancing

[Kosmic Kerman]

When I started playing in A15, I rushed everything. I wanted to get the best weapons, the best tools, and the best techs ASAP. I wanted to have a solid horde base that I could upgrade by Day 7. Over time that approach caused burn out. So I switched to my current playstyle which is simply doing whatever I feel like doing efficiency be damned. It's not unusual for me to spend the first blood moon or two on top of a POI ignoring the zombies because I did not feel like building a horde base and I don't enjoy shooting down at zombies. Even with this more relaxed playstyle, I typically end my games around Day 50 or so because I have purple Tier 3 weapons and a solid horde base. And so I start a new map or switch to another game.

 

All of that is to say, rushing progression or rushing base building is a choice. It's not about good players or bad players. It's about having fun. If you enjoy rushing progression more power to you. But it is not more valid than any other playstyle. It is a way to play the game, not the way to play the game. 

[meilodasreh]

53 minutes ago, Roland said:

My goodness, it pays to be bad.

new motto of my life

[bachgaman]

59 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

That's not a "normal" game, that's a speedrun game. Normal games don't include crucible and 4x4 by D7. You just prefer to speedrun it. Which is fine but that is also why the game gets boring to you, you do it the same way every time. Playing with "worse" methods increases the fun factor because it is new and challenging.

I would not say that I was speedrunning, but yes, I wasted no time (mostly)

34 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Did you just respond to Dcsobral that you also had 8k hours in the game? Which is it, newbie recently or 8k hours?

Where did I write that I have 8k hours? You are sick? Stop wishful thinking, that's ridiculous

46 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

So in your eyes the trader is severely unbalanced yet you still go full hog into the perks to make it even more OP? Lmao, that's just stupid.

I did this race specifically to test my words after the recent controversy about the trader. Is it stupid? Do you seem to judge my "playstyle"? Oh oh oh how toxic

39 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Well of course they are, that's only the 2nd horde.

Another answer without regard to context. This was said in response to the words that the power of the bloody moons allegedly scales with game progress.

[Burrfly]

Holy crap, if you would take all of bachgaman's posts from the last 8 pages and place it in a list you would have to scroll for 4 hours straight. Not to be mean  Just find it interesting that all of that 20GB of text is about how other people should play the game. Everyone should play however they like.

[bachgaman]

6 minutes ago, Burrfly said:

Holy crap, if you would take all of bachgaman's posts from the last 8 pages and place it in a list you would have to scroll for 4 hours straight. Not to be mean  Just find it interesting that all of that 20GB of text is about how other people should play the game. Everyone should play however they like.

These pages are not about that, you are mistaken.

Edited November 19, 2021 by bachgaman (see edit history)

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

When I started playing in A15, I rushed everything. I wanted to get the best weapons, the best tools, and the best techs ASAP. I wanted to have a solid horde base that I could upgrade by Day 7. Over time that approach caused burn out. So I switched to my current playstyle which is simply doing whatever I feel like doing efficiency be damned. It's not unusual for me to spend the first blood moon or two on top of a POI ignoring the zombies because I did not feel like building a horde base and I don't enjoy shooting down at zombies. Even with this more relaxed playstyle, I typically end my games around Day 50 or so because I have purple Tier 3 weapons and a solid horde base. And so I start a new map or switch to another game.

 

All of that is to say, rushing progression or rushing base building is a choice. It's not about good players or bad players. It's about having fun. If you enjoy rushing progression more power to you. But it is not more valid than any other playstyle. It is a way to play the game, not the way to play the game. 

 

Wow. You used to be such a good player, too...

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

This is not "my definition", these are facts. If a player plays badly, makes bad choices, dies on low difficulty, builds a bad base, sorts things badly, or plans his actions badly, then this is a bad player. I do not humiliate anyone with this, it is a fact. If a person does something poorly, then he is bad at it

 

Good and bad are very subjective terms.  If you want people to be open to your opinion/discussion, try not claiming things as "facts" that everyone should abide by and just objectively speak for yourself.  

 

[nielm269]

6 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

Good and bad are very subjective terms.  If you want people to be open to your opinion/discussion, try not claiming things as "facts" that everyone should abide by and just objectively speak for yourself.  

 

Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun.

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

My own enjoyment of the game is completely unconditional upon whether one strategy is more or less efficient than another

Tut, tut... careful, you're deluding yourself now. 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

I have proven that fun is not proof of utility.

I don't need to prove that fun is the whole point of playing.

 

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

You say "by your criteria", then tell us in what criteria they are balanced

You've been told several times by multiple people but you can't understand it because it is alien to your way of thinking. This is not a dig. I'm just stating that we have no common frame of reference. Analogies don't work because you can't see the connection and so you dismiss them. Flat out telling you hasn't worked because you can't believe that people actually don't care about efficiency and are deceiving themselves as they play to maintain their fiction. It's taken us awhile to figure out where you're coming from but I think we are finally getting the gist of it.

 

This is not to say that I don't think that bow and stealth can't see some improvements but it is to say that I am perfectly happy with how they play right now and have had many enjoyable hours playing the game focusing on these areas for the sake of playing survival with a specific type of character. So in the sense that you can play and have an enjoyable time and experience some challenge they are balanced nicely vs the gamestage progression of the game itself as it gets more difficult. You can be a stealthy archer and survive.

 

But...all of this just sounds like a bicycle with square wheels to you right?

 

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

This is not "my definition", these are facts. If a player plays badly, makes bad choices, dies on low difficulty, builds a bad base, sorts things badly, or plans his actions badly, then this is a bad player. I do not humiliate anyone with this, it is a fact. If a person does something poorly, then he is bad at it

 

I get that you are not saying these things to be insulting. You are just stating facts as you see them. The problem is that your sense of bad is all wrapped up in efficiency and speed which are qualities of gameplay that you value. So just saying people play bad because they made bad choices is to general. We have to know that bad choices means choosing actions that don't progress your character as quickly as another action that is available.  This is why you will never play bow and stealth because as soon as you have a weapon that is better than the bow you must choose that weapon and dump the bow in order to make a good choice. 

 

People who value other aspects of the game will view keeping the bow and continuing the game as an archer as a good choice.

[Robbing Zombie]

Dear lord, is that tennis match still going on........ 

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

4 hours ago, bachgaman said:

Because I was a newbie not too long ago

Did you just respond to Dcsobral that you also had 8k hours in the game? Which is it, newbie recently or 8k hours?

Maybe you forget he's a "speed runner", he actually reached those measly 8K hours in a fraction of the time it took the other guy, you know? 

2 hours ago, bachgaman said:

This is not "my definition", these are facts. If a player plays badly, makes bad choices, dies on low difficulty, builds a bad base, sorts things badly, or plans his actions badly, then this is a bad player. I do not humiliate anyone with this, it is a fact. If a person does something poorly, then he is bad at it

Oh, you mean like your bad attitude and manners? ... Yes, that's a fact.

2 hours ago, bachgaman said:

Stop pulling phrases out of context and read in response to what I wrote this. The person said that all difficulty settings that go beyond the standard are not something to focus on when balancing

Yep, one of the devs just confirmed it... now what?

[Blake_]

31 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

Good and bad are very subjective terms.  If you want people to be open to your opinion/discussion, try not claiming things as "facts" that everyone should abide by and just objectively speak for yourself.  

 

Objectively speaking, every speech in the world is subjective to the one/s that made it, regardless of the neutrality of the words used, because it doesn't matter if it has or not meaning, as long as it exists, the objective is to transmit something or produce any kind of thought from the subjective emitter's opinion to the receptor.

 

Everybody thinks that's true

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

new motto of my life

This is better...

Spoiler

 

 

[Matt115]

Honestly i loose point of this argue and i rly don't know what is going on, who is argue with , who support what. Damn this is WW2 tier complitcated 

[Roland]

It should be done now that we all understand each other better. I completely accept Bach's assertions given the conditions and context of how he plays the game and what is important to him. I can't argue that he is wrong.

[bachgaman]

23 minutes ago, Roland said:

I don't need to prove that fun is the whole point of playing.

The game doesn't get more fun if it's out of balance

24 minutes ago, Roland said:

You've been told several times by multiple people but you can't understand it because it is alien to your way of thinking. This is not a dig. I'm just stating that we have no common frame of reference. Analogies don't work because you can't see the connection and so you dismiss them. Flat out telling you hasn't worked because you can't believe that people actually don't care about efficiency and are deceiving themselves as they play to maintain their fiction. It's taken us awhile to figure out where you're coming from but I think we are finally getting the gist of it.

 

This is not to say that I don't think that bow and stealth can't see some improvements but it is to say that I am perfectly happy with how they play right now and have had many enjoyable hours playing the game focusing on these areas for the sake of playing survival with a specific type of character. So in the sense that you can play and have an enjoyable time and experience some challenge they are balanced nicely vs the gamestage progression of the game itself as it gets more difficult. You can be a stealthy archer and survive.

 

But...all of this just sounds like a bicycle with square wheels to you right?

Once again, the fact of having fun does not confirm the presence of balance.

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

I get that you are not saying these things to be insulting. You are just stating facts as you see them. The problem is that your sense of bad is all wrapped up in efficiency and speed which are qualities of gameplay that you value. So just saying people play bad because they made bad choices is to general. We have to know that bad choices means choosing actions that don't progress your character as quickly as another action that is available.  This is why you will never play bow and stealth because as soon as you have a weapon that is better than the bow you must choose that weapon and dump the bow in order to make a good choice. 

 

People who value other aspects of the game will view keeping the bow and continuing the game as an archer as a good choice.

If they like to keep playing with the bow when they have a machine gun, then let them play with the bow, but the fact that there are people who do it does not refute my words that bows and stealth are incredibly weak and unclaimed in this game. You yourself admitted this, and even the developers wrote that the bows will be strengthened. What can you argue about, I don’t understand. I don't care about your philosophy of permissiveness, I really don't care what others do.

 

Again. I declare that bows and stealth are useless. You assure me that this is not the case, because you and 2 other people on the forum are using it. But here the logical connection is broken. Just because you enjoy using the useless does not turn the useless into the useful. This is easy to understand with an example. If you do not improve perks at all, then the unallocated perk points will not be useful. If in this case you say that the unallocated perk points will become useful because someone has enjoyed playing with them, then I wash my hands.

23 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Maybe you forget he's a "speed runner", he actually reached those measly 8K hours in a fraction of the time it took the other guy, you know? 

He lied. I have never stated this

24 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Oh, you mean like your bad attitude and manners? ... Yes, that's a fact.

I did not offend anyone in this thread. The fact that you are offended by the mention of bad players is your personal problem. And this despite the fact that I did not call any of you bad players.

26 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Yep, one of the devs just confirmed it... now what?

Has he confirmed that the entire balance is directed only to the Adventurer? Show me where.

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, bachgaman said:

I don’t understand

 

I know. It's okay. If eight pages couldn't make it happen one more response won't either. Our values are completely different and that's fine. I've already said that I agree with you that under your conditions stealth and bows are unbalanced. Understanding your perspective, I agree that if I have a bow and find a machine gun that is much more powerful in every way, I should take the machine gun and since the machine gun exists it makes the bow completely useless and pointless. If I ever choose to focus on efficiency then I will remember all your tips and strategies.

 

10 minutes ago, bachgaman said:

then I wash my hands.

 

That's all we can do at this point. I just want to point out that I washed mine first which makes me a better hand washer by your rules.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, bachgaman said:

Has he confirmed that the entire balance is directed only to the Adventurer? Show me where.

 

Balancing is done with Nomad in mind. Nomad is considered normal difficulty by the devs. But default is set to Normal -1 for the express reason that gamer ego often prevents new players from reducing the difficulty to easy mode even if they should but never prevents new players from increasing the difficulty if they want. The default is the best level to learn how to play for many players so that is why it is selected by default but Nomad is considered normal difficulty.

 

I play on Warrior, myself, because I it isn't too tedious having each zombie fight take so many hits but it feels good that after a few level ups I can see the difference of how many hits it took to kill a zombie at the start compared to how many times it does now. Plus I like the more frequent Rage occurrences. I've been thinking about Survivalist but just haven't done it because Warrior feels perfect to me.

[BFT2020]

50 minutes ago, Roland said:

I've been thinking about Survivalist but just haven't done it because Warrior feels perfect to me.

 

I played Warrior at first and then went up to Survivalist.  I stick mostly with Surv, unless I am trying out something new and don't want to have to deal with the added challenges of Survivalist mode.  Insane, I tried it once or twice but decided it wasn't fun playing that mode so I haven't played it again.  Insane just felt.....like bullet sponges.

 

If you do try to go up higher, pick something you are comfortable with to start out with.  That's my recommendation.

[Maharin]

I play on inane mode.  It suits me, I guess.

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, bachgaman said:

I don't want to play stealth for the sake of playing stealth. I want to use stealth as a tool for further development and survival at a distance

 

So? To use stealth as a tool you have to invest in its perks and use bows, at least in the beginning there is no adequate replacement for the silence of a bow.

 

3 hours ago, bachgaman said:

What "derogatory terms and similes" have I used? I dont understand

 

Maybe "condescending", "dismissive" rings a bell ?

 

3 hours ago, bachgaman said:

I'm afraid to say for sure, because you can request new statistics, but it seems to me that this is not the first time you do this. And not only you.

 

I didn't say "ALL", I didn't even use the plural in "newbie". But from my experience it is

 

If you say "Default difficulty is incredibly easy even for newbie" you are not talking about one specific newbie (obviously, since we never talked about a specific one), you are talking about any newbie. You should know English well enough to know that this is a general statement.

 

You and your friends have probably the same background in games played, often the same tastes, nearly the same age maybe. When you started playing you surely talked about good and bad perks, what is best to play, formed opinions together. You and your friends are not independant samples.

 

 

 

[bachgaman]

13 minutes ago, meganoth said:

So? To use stealth as a tool you have to invest in its perks and use bows, at least in the beginning there is no adequate replacement for the silence of a bow.

Why would I invest in a perk that the game doesn't need? I never need to hide, under any circumstances. Again, I don’t want to play stealth for the sake of playing stealth

14 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Maybe "condescending", "dismissive" rings a bell ?

There was nothing like that in that message. Everything was written as it is. Why are you all so fond of taking offense at the truth? Anyway, I didn't try to insult her

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

If you say "Default difficulty is incredibly easy even for newbie" you are not talking about one specific newbie (obviously, since we never talked about a specific one), you are talking about any newbie. You should know English well enough to know that this is a general statement.

 

You and your friends have probably the same background in games played, often the same tastes, nearly the same age maybe. When you started playing you surely talked about good and bad perks, what is best to play, formed opinions together. You and your friends are not independant samples.

If think about it, I would really say that it have to be easy for most beginners. Except for people who are new to computer games generally. I am not passing it off as truth. I think so.

The problem with such low difficulty is that you will have little sense of progress. At the start of the game, you can kill a zombie with literally torch by 3 hits like this, check spoilers in linked post:

 

In fact, any difficulty becomes very easy sooner or later. The lower the difficulty, the faster it happens. This is a difficulty design problem. My mega graph about this:

Spoiler