Horde Night feedback - less smart zombies

[hotpoon]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:10 AM, John Black said:

We use JaxTeller718’s x4 'Increased Wilderness Zombies', it's an amazing change and I would recommend it to anyone feeling that the apocalypse is empty. Just don't get stuck in the wasteland without ammo at night 😁. We had to go back to MaxSpawnedZombies=64 after the 2nd night in the wasteland but even after reverting things are still action packed all over the map(only 3 of us on the server).

I also use that mod. It's great, except, I would like it more if you could adjust the number of roaming zombies to be a lot higher around towns and cities and sparse in wilderness.  That was how it was in A15 when they had the hub cities.  Made it very, very exciting going to loot in the city.

[Maharin]

29 minutes ago, hotpoon said:

That was how it was in A15 when they had the hub cities.  Made it very, very exciting going to loot in the city.

 

That is one of the things I most wish they would bring back.  A city somewhere on the map with a LOT more zombies than normal.  It could even be a smaller city to make it lag less, if needed, so long as the extreme danger returns to that area.

[ijese]

On 9/2/2021 at 4:46 PM, AtomicUs5000 said:

I always wished that there were things you could do to mitigate demo damage using select materials. For example, putting a layer of dirt/sand in between two walls. 

 

+1

[dxbydy]

I must admit I had 1000s of hours in this game before the AI got changed. Horde night used to be great when you got surprised by a couple of zombies that had 'got in round the back'.

 

Now they just tend to line up and wait to be smacked on the head, I rarely play anymore.

 

I miss the random AI so much. I also miss the zombies ability to smell. Night time is now way too easy. I used to spent the first few nights in a dark corner hidden (with my meat stashed away) terrified. Now I just treat the nights the same as days. 

Edited September 14, 2021 by dxbydy (see edit history)

[Roland]

8 hours ago, dxbydy said:

Now they just tend to line up and wait to be smacked on the head, I rarely play anymore.

 

You can control this to a degree with how you build your base. If you build a base that specifically exploits them into lining up and waiting to be smacked then that is what you will get. But build a basic bunker style and you will get more of the random surrounding behavior that you remember. There is a current meta with designing a base that creates a killing corridor that they will mostly follow and predictably killing them all-- but you don't have to follow that meta. Make a simple tower surrounded by spikes like in the old days and you may get some surprises. Make an exploitive base that you saw someone build on YouTube that grinds up all the zombies in predictable ways and you will kill them all efficiently and boringly.  Its true that they will tend to go to the weakest point but there is also a lot of randomness in their behavior now.

[BFT2020]

8 hours ago, dxbydy said:

I also miss the zombies ability to smell. Night time is now way too easy. I used to spent the first few nights in a dark corner hidden (with my meat stashed away) terrified. Now I just treat the nights the same as days. 

 

Wait until Feral Sense comes in Alpha 20.  Based on Roland's feedback, nights will become more interesting if you set that to On.

[Kyonshi]

5 hours ago, dxbydy said:

I must admit I had 1000s of hours in this game before the AI got changed. Horde night used to be great when you got surprised by a couple of zombies that had 'got in round the back'.

 

Now they just tend to line up and wait to be smacked on the head, I rarely play anymore.

 

I miss the random AI so much. I also miss the zombies ability to smell. Night time is now way too easy. I used to spent the first few nights in a dark corner hidden (with my meat stashed away) terrified. Now I just treat the nights the same as days. 

This isnt really a problem from the game, its just that you now know how it works and you exploit the game design at your advantage. Its just a normal process and assurance that we acquire over time, in any game of the genre.

 

They still come from all sides, it just depends on the type of base you have. Case in point, you can watch the Lockdown series from Glock9. He made his horde base in the vanilla prison and although he has an open entry point on the front, the Zs came from various sides and angles and he had to adapt.

 

I also was afraid of going out at night during my early 7DTD sessions and i couldnt deal with Zs coming from all sides because my horde base setup was deficient. Nowadays, just like you, im comfortable whatever the situation is and my adaptation capacity is much sharper than before. But Darkness Falls can flip that up quite intensily, trust me on that. Its almost like you have to learn how to play, all over again.

[John Black]

I do believe the zombies started exploiting first!😆

 

But to be serious, I would much rather prefer switching off an unwanted behavior than trying to balance walls/doors to get a true random result that will only last until the first chink.

 

This 'unwanted' behavior stems from  - "1) Zombies will try to path X blocks to player probably adjusted based on HP of blocks in between."

    ... with X being too high removing a lot of the randomness when a base is being attacked.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by John Black
clarity/spell (see edit history)

[Maharin]

Horde Night Challenge:  Always pick an unmodified POI as your horde base each time.

[Laz Man]

On 9/1/2021 at 6:20 PM, AtomicUs5000 said:

I also can't see them doing much more for AI during the blood moon. I understand the concern though. The conclusion I have come up with for myself is that if things are too easy during the horde, then it's really because things were too easy leading up to the horde. If you aren't running your butt off trying to prepare for it, and this is what you really want to experience, then adjustments should be made so that it's really hard to prepare. For myself, I would love to survive by the skin of my teeth horde after horde. However, adjusting settings perfectly to get this while at the same time fighting with the gamestage is something I have yet to accomplish. It seems like no matter what I do, there is always some point where I catch up and then it's clear sailing to day 200 and beyond. I suppose that crescendo needs to be reached at some point, but I just wish it took much longer before getting there.

 

Something I like to do in my SP game is use my horde nights as a barometer.   Once my horde nights start getting too easy (e.g. horde ends before 4am), I start turning up the difficulty. 

 

My favorite setting to turn up is the max alive zombies during blood moon.  In my last longplay, my max alive zombie setting reached 16 (default is 8 ) by night 63.  I'm sure this is easy mode for some people but it was perfect for me lol.

[Gamida]

On 9/4/2021 at 10:38 PM, KhaineGB said:

AKA - How to use your PC to cook your food and boil the water for your coffee

From what I have seen on line I think New World already has that as a feature...

[KhaineGB]

12 minutes ago, Gamida said:

From what I have seen on line I think New World already has that as a feature...

Oooooof. Too soon.

[Gamida]

5 hours ago, KhaineGB said:

Oooooof. Too soon.

lol. I know. I just found out about it yesterday myself.

[kidmo31]

The issue is 100% minimum system requirements. If you actually look at the XML for feral hordes you would actually find they do what you want them to. The issue is players have found ways to break the AI and simplify horde nights. It used to be you build a cube on the ground and you were ok because they were dumb and would beat the whole base equally. Then they added weakness detection to the AI . Now to beat it you just elevate and do a catwalk cube and once again your fine. The playerbase will always find a way to break AI because the more you have to add to the AI the less zombies you can actually have spawned because every "Smart" Zombie drains resources as the CPU has to calculate every possible path. Even a basic AI will cause the same drain on a system.   So because of player free will while building there will always be a way to break the AI simply because of the limitations of Unity and the Minimum Spec.

 

[meganoth]

26 minutes ago, kidmo31 said:

The issue is 100% minimum system requirements. If you actually look at the XML for feral hordes you would actually find they do what you want them to. The issue is players have found ways to break the AI and simplify horde nights. It used to be you build a cube on the ground and you were ok because they were dumb and would beat the whole base equally. Then they added weakness detection to the AI . Now to beat it you just elevate and do a catwalk cube and once again your fine. The playerbase will always find a way to break AI because the more you have to add to the AI the less zombies you can actually have spawned because every "Smart" Zombie drains resources as the CPU has to calculate every possible path. Even a basic AI will cause the same drain on a system.   So because of player free will while building there will always be a way to break the AI simply because of the limitations of Unity and the Minimum Spec.

 

 

What you call breaking the AI is in reality just playing one of the genres in 7D2D. This is typical tower defense. Typical in tower defense games is to find weakesses of your enemies and use the terrain to your advantage. Same here.

 

 

[John Black]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

What you call breaking the AI is in reality just playing one of the genres in 7D2D. This is typical tower defense. Typical in tower defense games is to find weaknesses of your enemies and use the terrain to your advantage. Same here.

 

 

You are 100% correct. Zombies are designed to do X, players are just doing what works best against X.

 

I’m sure it is all technically WAI but the end result might not be what the devs envisioned.

 

So what do you guys want (EDIT) for horde night zombies? (POI should have smart zombies as per OP)

1. Leave it as is
2. Make the zombies smarter to avoid them ending up in death corridor
3. Make them dumber and allow for more randomness and scalability options

I want no 3.

Edited October 5, 2021 by John Black
BIG Clarification sorry! (see edit history)

[kidmo31]

41 minutes ago, John Black said:

You are 100% correct. Zombies are designed to do X, players are just doing what works best against X.

 

I’m sure it is all technically WAI but the end result might not be what the devs envisioned.

 

So what do you guys want?

1. Leave it as is
2. Make the zombies smarter to avoid them ending up in death corridor
3. Make them dumber and allow for more randomness and scalability options

I want no 3.

We have already had that. Go back to A12 and it was just dumb zombies trying to get to you. It adds no randomness or scalability because every entity still has to be calculated by the CPU. The number of zombies will always cap in Unity because of resource management. Right now you can go into the XMLs and remove the one line that makes them look for weakness first. You can actually test anything your wanting here as the coding is not hard at all in the XML.  The issue will always be the never ending war of player and dev trying to outdo each other BUT still be fair and balanced within the bounds of what Unity allows.

 

 I am looking at this not only as a player but as someone who has broken this game doing game night mods for my group. I know the limits of what it can handle on a beast of a rig.

Edited October 5, 2021 by kidmo31 (see edit history)

[Roland]

41 minutes ago, John Black said:

So what do you guys want?

1. Leave it as is
2. Make the zombies smarter to avoid them ending up in death corridor
3. Make them dumber and allow for more randomness and scalability options

 

I vote #2 hands down. BTW, making the zombies smarter does not make them avoid death corridors-- it encourages them into those corridors. TFP dumbed things down and randomized things with zombie pathing in A18 and A19 and now we have zombies that hardly ever leap over a gap, often ignore you when you are just on the other side of a door, and that can't path back to you if you knock them off of a ledge. I'm talking about POI exploration and I see that as a much larger footprint in the game than the horde night. Making the zombies dumber might make for a more chaotic horde night but it will further kill the POI exploration experience.

 

POI exploration was at its best in A17, in my opinion. Zombies were relentless and could find you anywhere in the building when they were aware of you. Even zombies wandering in from outside could find you while you explored. Zombies almost always leapt over gaps making the claustrophobic interiors a lot scarier. (Not to mention the POIs were packed with zombies compared to now). Of course, as much fun as their superior pathing was for POI exploration, it was bad for horde night. 

 

So now they've been made dumber and horde night is better than it was but POI exploration is worse. I'd like to backtrack that just a smidge. I want zombies to once again better include gaps in their pathing so they jump them more often and for crying out loud if I am on the other side of an open door I want the zombie to walk through it instead of bashing the wall next to it. If I knock a zombie off of a ledge and it falls two floors down I would love if it came back to get me maybe 5 minutes later.

 

#3 would just kill POI exploration completely. MAYBE it would make the horde night more fun but that's debatable because a lot of people like building kill corridors so you would be removing their fun in favor of yours while at the same time destroying something that everyone does the other six days of the game week.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Roland (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

52 minutes ago, John Black said:

You are 100% correct. Zombies are designed to do X, players are just doing what works best against X.

 

I’m sure it is all technically WAI but the end result might not be what the devs envisioned.

 

So what do you guys want?

1. Leave it as is
2. Make the zombies smarter to avoid them ending up in death corridor
3. Make them dumber and allow for more randomness and scalability options

I want no 3.

I think somewhere between 1 and 2 if anything more would be good.

 

3 might sound cool at first but it invalidates the tower defense aspect too much and is not scalable.

 

As stated by others, with #3, horde bases just revert back to building solid steel I win platforms with no need to build anything else. 

 

Might satisfy some immersion senses based on Romero zombie lore but at the cost of more enjoyable scalable gameplay.

 

 

[kidmo31]

Here are my suggestions. 

 

Bring back the smell system. If your carrying raw meat it should be drawing attention even from the predators

Sleeper Zombies should have better sense in wake conditions . Scare closets work only once. Sleepers should only be effective for stealth builds. Otherwise activity in the building should wake them easier and less warning. Zombies screaming everytime they are aggroed leaves zero chance for surprise and single path structures make it impossible to sneak behind the player. What made A17 good was there were still open plan houses where zeds could take multiple paths and be quiet.

 

And stop the conga line timed wandering hordes. Make them more like Screamer Hordes they come from all sides and spawn based on GS. 

 

Biggest issue I have is players are given too much leeway to prepare for day 7 because there is no pressure days 1-6 cause everything is predictable. Making day 7 hordes too easy because there is no real threats looting besides maybe a early dog POI. 

 

And add POI kill conditions to the final loot chests. Have a hidden system that rewards players who actually clear a POI rather than loot room skip. If POI has a known amount of Zeds then make the chest require X percentage to allow for good loot. Otherwise if that is not met make it a garbage chest.

Edited October 5, 2021 by kidmo31 (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

25 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

I think somewhere between 1 and 2 if anything more would be good.

 

3 might sound cool at first but it invalidates the tower defense aspect too much and is not scalable.

 

As stated by others, with #3, horde bases just revert back to building solid steel I win platforms with no need to build anything else. 

 

Might satisfy some immersion senses based on Romero zombie lore but at the cost of more enjoyable scalable gameplay.

 

 

Actually, with 3 (if we assume that A16 was basically 3) it was entirely possible to build a killing corridor base (I know, I did it several times) it was just a lot more work.  You basically had to make a 5 wide gap all the way down to bedrock, then line the outside with something to slow the zombies down so they didn't fling themselves off the edge before they realized there was a big hole.  You'd still end up with the random zombie down at bedrock, but the vast majority of them would cross bridges you built across the gap.  Like so:

 

(Obviously that's not completely finished, btw.)

 

My biggest problem with the AI now is that it's almost impossible not to break it (in the killing corridor sense) unless you just build a boring on the ground, no kill zone type of base (which is hugely inefficient, and nothing to do with tower defense.)   I'd like to have to work for my easy kill base again, or go back to those chaotic nights when I'd have to shoot at zombies coming from multiple directions while standing on top of my base (I'd make a game of trying to shoot them all before they got to my walls, but I wasn't always successful...vultures have kind of killed this in the current iteration as it's not longer safe to hang out on top of a base and the zombies seem to spawn closer to the player than they used to.) 

[John Black]

First, sorry, I edited the question as the OP is about horde night.

 

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

3 might sound cool at first but it invalidates the tower defense aspect too much and is not scalable.

 

As stated by others, with #3, horde bases just revert back to building solid steel I win platforms with no need to build anything else. 

 

Might satisfy some immersion senses based on Romero zombie lore but at the cost of more enjoyable scalable gameplay.

I would personally bump up block damage during horde nights and you'll be forced to do a 360 defensive structure, i.e. back to castles with thick walls which allows you to scale out much more than the status quo.

 

 

2 hours ago, John Black said:

So what do you guys want (EDIT) for horde night zombies? (POI should have smart zombies as per OP)

1. Leave it as is
2. Make the zombies smarter to avoid them ending up in death corridor
3. Make them dumber and allow for more randomness and scalability options

I want no 3.

Edited October 5, 2021 by John Black (see edit history)

[kidmo31]

50 minutes ago, John Black said:

First, sorry, I edited the question as the OP is about horde night.

 

I would personally bump up block damage during horde nights and you'll be forced to do a 360 defensive structure, i.e. back to castles with thick walls which allows you to scale out much more than the status quo.

 

 

Problem is nothing is solved changing just the rules of Horde Night. All things are defeated with time for preparation. There is literally nothing the Devs can change about that event to make it harder that cannot be undone with player preparation. The balance is about time management.  We are given 6 3/4 days in game of pretty much free reign. There is only one wandering horde I actually fear early game and those are the animal related ones. Those are limited to once per 24 hours so can be planned around. The place to fix is that 6 and 3/4 days we have to prep. 

[John Black]

1 hour ago, kidmo31 said:

Problem is nothing is solved changing just the rules of Horde Night. All things are defeated with time for preparation. There is literally nothing the Devs can change about that event to make it harder that cannot be undone with player preparation. The balance is about time management.  We are given 6 3/4 days in game of pretty much free reign. There is only one wandering horde I actually fear early game and those are the animal related ones. Those are limited to once per 24 hours so can be planned around. The place to fix is that 6 and 3/4 days we have to prep. 

I understand where you’re coming from and your previous points. I personally will not touch a public server with a low respawn until some of your points are addressed. But unpredictability will always makes something harder so I can't agree with you on that one.

 

But to get back to horde nights, you have to start somewhere else you’re not going to get anywhere.

 

I do believe my original suggestion to limit the path finding would be a small change that could have a huge impact on horde nights...that is if it were to play out as I’ve imagined it in my head.

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, John Black said:

I understand where you’re coming from and your previous points. I personally will not touch a public server with a low respawn until some of your points are addressed. But unpredictability will always makes something harder so I can't agree with you on that one.

 

But to get back to horde nights, you have to start somewhere else you’re not going to get anywhere.

 

I do believe my original suggestion to limit the path finding would be a small change that could have a huge impact on horde nights...that is if it were to play out as I’ve imagined it in my head.

You can always roll back to an older alpha version in steam to test whatever theories you come up with.

 

Regarding raising block HP on horde nights, then what?  I'm curious what new base defense gameplay you had in mind that would be more enjoyable then what we have now.

 

My memory is alittle dusty but I believe prior to the "smarter" AI, the strategies players used were to surround their base with spikes and remove any stairs so the zeds could reach you easily.