Returning old hand looking for advice I thought I'd never ask for

[Ghostlight]

So I am coming back to the game after an absence since A19 came out, having played thousands of hours previous to that. Normally I build massive complex bases to combat and kill the horde on blood moon. This time around, my usual friends are now fathers and have little time to play, and I have a lot less free time myself. Long story short, if I get back into A20 I can no longer be bothered building such elaborate bases this time (never thought I'd say that). I am therefore looking for other ways I might handle horde night, if I no longer obsessively care about killing them all and just want to survive. I don't want to turn the blood moon off as the game needs that panic night for long term interest.

 

So what's the best approach?

 

Ride around all night on a bike?

Head to a building away from my simple live-in base and hide on a roof till it's all over?

Something else? (though I refuse to exploit the AI with an infinite ramp, if that is still a thing)

 

Also, can anyone advise of the actual mechanics here when you do not kill the horde. I have Max Zombies set to 24 as I always had. So will I get 24 zombies spawned in and that's it? Then they will run around wrecking the POI I am hiding in till morning? Will all 24 still be there in the morning? Will the rest of the horde spawn in if I start killing them?

 

Many thanks!

[Gr.o.m.]

Vulturehorde will kill you, if you try to drive a vehicle during hordenight.

 

Look out for a large concrete building and hide on the roof. You might have to kill some vultures. As long as you kill no zombies, there is no respawn.

 

No more respawn if hordenight is over.

 

 

[theFlu]

4 minutes ago, Ghostlight said:

I refuse to exploit the AI with an infinite ramp, if that is still a thing

It's a thing, not exactly as perfect as before, but absolutely doable.

 

There's plenty of usable options to just survive; electric fences are pretty much enough to disable any horde for the night, given you can repair them. Make any base, for the first couple horde nights figure out where the traffic is going, trap those areas.

 

A large enough POI with routes to upper floors destroyed will have them just pointlessly beating on things. Doesn't have to be massive, but the bigger the better.

 

You could honestly just run around, have a couple mega crushes to make it easy. Depends a bit on settings of course.

Vehicles will spawn vultures - not impossible, but not exactly a chill ridearound.

 

Max 24; it is limited by your gamestage somehow, so you won't see the 24 early on. Not sure of the scaling, but essentially "yes" to your question, you'll get to the max amount and have those in the morning. No more spawns after 4:00.

[Ghostlight]

Has to be a large concrete building? Would a typical house not work? I'm based right beside this huge water tower looking structure (with COC written on the side) how about that?

 

Or if I just built a huge, solid concrete (and later steel) cube, say 10 x 10 x 10, and just nerd pole up and sat on top of that? Perhaps with an iron cage on top so I can fight Vultures from within it and ignore non-flying zombies completely. (I'd have a wee hollow in top so cops cannot hit me with spit?

[theFlu]

Anything will work for the first few hordes, as long as they can't find or break a route to you. Either reinforce from there, or build something.

 

4 minutes ago, Ghostlight said:

solid concrete (and later steel) cube, say 10 x 10 x 10

That's a 1000 blocks, 800 of which are useless It will last, but adding any amount of brainpower to it will make it a lot easier to craft and maybe allow for some easy XP farming while at it ...

Say, 8 blocks on the ground (corners and middles), a 10x10 solid on the level they're actually hitting. And above that walls to protect you from spitters and a floor you can safely drop some boomers thru. Ceiling on top with a turret to pop birds on it.

[GlyphGryph]

IMO, the most fun way to deal with horde night is still just to hole up in a good POI. Construct some additional reinforcements where needed, knock out a few ladders, and make sure you have exit routes from each section to fall back to another in a way that zombies have difficulty following. It's a ton of fun either for strong defenses or for a running battle, and if the place ever gets too torn up you can just pick up any emplacements and then reset the POI with a quest (or move on to another POI!)

 

Right now my standard "easy night" blood moon handling defensive area (which has lasted me maybe a hundred days) is one building with a ladder on one end, a truck between it and a second building, and some blocks I placed down between the two to retreat, heal up, and let the zombies run off the edge before returning. Just kill em dead as they come up the later, basically.

If you really want to cheese them, just go up the smoke stack on the pill factory or something, from what I understand if you get that high they simply can't find you and you just have to worry about the occasional vulture. And if you have parkour or the drop shoes or the heist book or build a breakfall, even if they did get up there it would be pretty easy to hop down to the roof proper.

[Krougal]

I was in the same boat, I played alpha 19 quite a bit but it's been months and it's always a lot to relearn coming back to this game, especially for a new alpha.

Right now I am greatly enjoying: 

 Which is not a load of work to build (especially since it starts with the single tower that by itself is viable for quite a few horde nights). It works well for SP but there are plenty of fighting positions for MP. Not to mention it looks really cool.

[Kosmic Kerman]

As stated just stand on top of a POI made of concrete (making sure to remove access to the roof). Move to another one once that POI is on its last legs. You will probably want to make a little pillbox for yourself with bars in part of the ceiling to shoot at vultures. Alternatively you can just turn Horde night off in the settings.

 

You also don't need an elaborate base to take on the horde. A elevated platform with stairs leading up to it coupled with electric fences on the path between the stairs and where you are standing is sufficient. Just place some bars between you and the zombies and you can shoot them while they are stun locked by the fences. Later on you will want to add blade traps and dart traps for Demos.  

[Limdood]

I have always made my horde and living bases the same....usually a foundation of 2 or 3 solid layers of blocks above ground level, then a normal base on top of that....crafting stations, storage, lighting.  Walled and roofed.  

 

The complexity of the base is that I add an "approach"  thats usually around 15 blocks long....that lets me put in 4 blade traps on the ground, with a spot in between each of them. the room is 3 high, so I put electric fences on the ceiling hanging down over the blade traps (and i use the in between the blades blocks to put some a block lower for the girls and dogs).  The approach is ALSO 2 or 3 solid layers above the ground, with a ramp into the entrance that has a turn, so cops can't shoot me from outside.  

 

The idea is a single-file walk to me with no movement obstacles like barbed wire or spikes that might make them path around...but instead the electric fences and blade trasp slow and damage everything and its shooting zombies all lined up.

 

It USES the AI, as opposed to ABUSING the AI....using classic, historical defense strategies of making your position unassailable except from a specific direction, and then concentrating all your defensive energy on that one direction.  In this case, the walls are not attackable because they're elevated, and the solid base (even if only the outer blocks are ever upgraded) just isn't a practical or viable target.  The zombies will occasionally whack at the walls, but they rarely even take a block out...they usually just hit it a few times, lose interest and move to the wide, easy access, ramp that points in many directions so its easy to path up.

 

 

Or just stand on top of any house and shoot the vultures....odds are the zombies won't take it down before morning...and if they begin to, run to a new house and repeat.

[Star69]

I’ve used the junkyard building on the second floor. The only prep is tear out 3 vertical blocks worth of both staircases. I then access it using wood frames that I pick up after I get up there. Pretty comfy and the lighting is good.

[Ghostlight]

5 hours ago, theFlu said:

That's a 1000 blocks, 800 of which are useless

Not useless. Remember I plan to not engage the horde while sitting on this massive thing. They will therefore slowly and surely destroy it as they will be able to smack on it for the entire night (6 game hours on my server) with no player intervention. Hence a lot of the cube will certainly be destroyed. Therefore it's 1000 blocks in a solid cube formation to ensure enough of it is not destroyed, and thus guaranteeing it will not collapse under us.

 

My other thought would be a square pyramid, pointed at the top and 45 degree ramps making up all 4 sides. I'd be inside it, access via a tunnel from underground to a hatch some distance away. Again, I will not be engaging them. I've never seen them dig down on a 45 degree slope before, however all my previous pyramids have had an opening tunnel on one side to funnel them into a long kill corridor inside the pyramid, so I am not 100% sure of this idea working.

5 hours ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

You also don't need an elaborate base to take on the horde. A elevated platform with stairs leading up to it coupled with electric fences on the path between the stairs and where you are standing is sufficient. Just place some bars between you and the zombies and you can shoot them while they are stun locked by the fences. Later on you will want to add blade traps and dart traps for Demos.  

Sorry but are you claiming this would work for a day 300 horde on highest difficulty? I doubt it personally, and that is what we'll be playing. With many many thousands of hours under our belt with this game we do really know exactly what we are doing. We simply have never tried a run where we deliberately did not NOT wipe out the entire horde every bloodmoon up to highest gamestage possible, that's the new part of the planned experience.

1 hour ago, Limdood said:

The complexity of the base is that I add an "approach"  thats usually around 15 blocks long....that lets me put in 4 blade traps on the ground, with a spot in between each of them. the room is 3 high, so I put electric fences on the ceiling hanging down over the blade traps (and i use the in between the blades blocks to put some a block lower for the girls and dogs).  The approach is ALSO 2 or 3 solid layers above the ground, with a ramp into the entrance that has a turn, so cops can't shoot me from outside.  

 

The idea is a single-file walk to me with no movement obstacles like barbed wire or spikes that might make them path around...but instead the electric fences and blade trasp slow and damage everything and its shooting zombies all lined up.

 

It USES the AI, as opposed to ABUSING the AI....using classic, historical defense strategies of making your position unassailable except from a specific direction, and then concentrating all your defensive energy on that one direction. 

Sounds great but way more elaborate for what I am looking for. I mean if I wanted to destroy the horde, I know right now exactly what to build, but it would be a major construction project that we simply won't have the time to invest in this time round.

[Ghostlight]

1 hour ago, Limdood said:

Or just stand on top of any house and shoot the vultures....odds are the zombies won't take it down before morning

With 3 of us playing and 24 zombies per player on blood moon and max difficulty, they eventually will once GS is high enough, I think.

[Frankencow]

If you manage your game stage well you don't need massive construction the first 3-4 horde nights. Just don't make it a goal to kick every Z you see and it keeps the game stage low.

 

I spend the first 2 in a cobblestone shack, 5x5 that uses arch windows for walls. Mostly just mele weapons. Switch off a lot to repair and drink stamina boosts.

 

By the time I need something bigger I'm 3 game weeks into it and have had lots of time.

[Krougal]

Wait! What? If you plan on not fighting the horde why would you not just turn them off altogether?

They gave us that option now.

 

[theFlu]

25 minutes ago, Ghostlight said:

They will therefore slowly and surely destroy it as they will be able to smack on it for the entire night (6 game hours on my server) with no player intervention.

 

Welcome back btw

 

Unless you get 64 demos up, they're going to need 6 real hours to dig through a 100 blocks. Given a 10-cube, they will essentially only dig the at-face-height layer anyway; some of them will stack for a while and they may break a block or two at the 4-height, dogs and crawlers will chew on the 1-height, but neither of those are going to be an issue. That's why I suggest making the layer they're actually attacking as strong as you can, and focusing some fire on the innards once they pile up into there.

 

All the layers above 3 will be truly useless since the collapse is going to happen once the zeds have fully cleared the layer 2. Usually they are way too confused to accomplish even that though.

 

If you want, you can make the 3rd layer out of bars (at the moment, the bar blocks are just as sturdy as their full counterparts.) That will effectively prevent them from piling on top of each other once they've managed to dig themselves a couple blocks into the defensive layer, while still allowing you to fire upon the concentrated mass. If for nothing else, each grenade is a swing or two lost per zed.

 

Another trivial option would be to wire a sexy 60x2 electric fence system up-down through the center of the borg cube to make most zeds inside just get permastunned. Needs a stack of electric parts, but that's what wrenches are for...

 

All that said, if you want, using 1k blocks to completely AFK will work just fine. I'd just find it, well, kinda boring

 

EDIT: Adding, I haven't tried a cube structure ever; if entirely solid it may by some fluke lead into the zeds creating a staircase though it. Nothing I've seen suggests that would be at all likely, but, I guess it might happen, and thus you might want to have some kind of non-solid layer at some suitable height to prevent that.

Edited December 22, 2021 by theFlu (see edit history)

[bloodmoth13]

At some point we have to ask ourselves just how much cheese we can live with.

Everything where you put an obstacle between you and a zombie where you can kill them but they cant kill you is cheese. Without cheese you would die every night. What is acceptable to you?

 

one of the more basic methods is going to any given 2 story building and knocking out the lowest level of ladder. That should be enough to survive a night as the zombies wont be able to reach you while you can potentially melee or shoot them. Go up to 3 blocks high for extra safety.

 

 

Thats my typical gameplan, roam for the first week and on day7 just defend a random house and let the zombies tear it down.

 

Alternatively you could build a few horde forts, 9x9 bunker with the best material you can muster with a roof escape, when they tear through the walls bail and run to the next one. Cheap and fairly easy to do.

 

My advice is just knocking out the stairs on any random poi.

 

[Loboling]

You could go for a light armor agility build, stack movement speed and when needed use consumables like mega crush, beer and coffee. You can out run the zombies that way and pick them off in the open field. 

[Ghostlight]

25 minutes ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Without cheese you would die every night. What is acceptable to you?

Very good question and very hard to answer. I would always look at infinite ramps and stilt bases as cheese because to me those exploit the AI's failings (rather than USING the AI's behaviour to my advantage as limdood described above in his approach). So putting stuff between us would be fine.

[Boidster]

26 minutes ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Everything where you put an obstacle between you and a zombie where you can kill them but they cant kill you is cheese.

 

Wait, so just plain defenses are cheese to you? Good heavens.

[pahbi]

I read somewhere that building in water will keep most of the horde at bay, maybe find a lake and build your crafting base there, and wait out the horde nights that way?

[PoppaSmirk]

Hmmm,  what an interesting topic.  I have to say that I have never had a Horde night when I didn't try to dismember, disembowel, decapitate or otherwise defenestrate every undead that came at me.  Sitting in the base letting them amble freely just never crossed My mind.   I find horde nights such a great time to pump up the adrenaline rush and gain several or more Player levels as well,  and usually some semi-decent loot. So, I suppose that as a simple suggestion,  I recommend,  if simply looking to "hop into" a POI to use on Day 7 or 14, find one of the smallish construction trailers.  The walls are metal and by placing a few wooden spike traps around the corners of the building,  the zombies seem to weaken themselves,   then place a double ring of spike traps around the single entrance to the construction trailer.   Normally by Day 7 I have scouted to find a location with a good roof,  and simply take on the zombies of Horde night with arrows (in the first Alpha 20 experience, I didn't think ahead enough and only had the "pipe shotgun"  which didn't have enough kill power at range,  so I went to the old classic,  bow and arrow.)  

 

But this topic is intriguing to me, as I have never used "infinite ramps?"  or any method beyond a good "seige survival strategy"  on a Horde night.  Normally our strategy consists of,  A; have lots of ammo  B:  have some wood, or cobblestone to reinforce doors as zombies try to break in on places,  that you don't want them breaking into  (by the 3rd or 4th horde night we carry a hammer,  some cement mix, and forged iron to do the quick repairs)  C' carry a few spike traps on your toolbelt to drop down if the zombies manage to start coming at you in a large cluster and you need some delaying tactic to slow them down  D;  Wipe out every groaning Mona, snarly Moe, decayed Delores, and in short,  every zombie you see,  and curse the "rot-weilers' and ankle-biters for being such a royal pain.   E: highfive your friend after 4 am.  or if playing alone,  have a beer.

 

Of course things do change as We start to move into mid-game.  Walls built to a minimum of 5 blocks are fairly standard, Overwatch Positions with turrets placed down,  and auto turrets guarding the open spaces at the back of the base to handle any zombie that manages to get through,  or over the wall.  An auto turret positioned on the roof,  with firing arc covering our backs,  to POP POP POP any vulture that swoops toward the Living Defenders.   Blade traps triggered to run for 6 seconds when anything walks over the trigger plate catch many of the zombies trying to assault the front entrance.  We always "choose"  the location that we provide for the zombies to come at us.  barb wire placements narrow the wandering path of the zombies, for best cluster for a sweeping  blast of machine gun fire.   These are a few of my favorite things.

[bloodmoth13]

On 12/23/2021 at 12:39 PM, Boidster said:

 

Wait, so just plain defenses are cheese to you? Good heavens.

to a degree yes. any point where you can kill them but they cant hurt you is cheesy, of course that isnt vs players its vs zombie ai so cheesing zombies doesnt hurt anyones fee fees.

for example, you run through a corridor, a wight turns up, you box him in with building blocks and melee him while hes trying to get through. he cant hurt you and you can kill him. its cheesy. Or you hang low on a ladder with zombies clamoring at your feet, they cant reach you but you can melee them. cheesy. most things are acceptable since the design of the game isnt making things fair between the player and zombie. building forts that keep you safe for a long time so that you can kill many zombies without them being able to hurt you is essentially the design of the game. some people dont like certain designs because it exploits the ai, but everything you do is exploiting the ai. thats how you get an advantage against hordes of dumb zombies.

Thats why i said you have to choose what kinds of cheese you are willing to live with. if you think being able to melee enemies without them retaliating to kill hordes for 'free' is cheesy then dont do that. if trap corridors are cheesy then dont do that.

OP draws the line at slits and infinite ramps, thats fine. Me personally, i avoid using the pipe machine gun because i think its OP and generally play very conservatively only using ammo when i am surrounded or desperate even when i have an abundance of ammo.

There is a fine line between playing optimally and cheesing the game. Another one is skipping to the end of a POI, its cheesy but its optimal. why screw with wasting ammo on zeds when you can just get straight to that sweet sweet loot.

 

At least that is how i think of the game. One cheese i do is opening doors that zombies are attacking, hitting them with a power attack and closing the door before they can retaliate. You can time opening the door right after they hit it and strike them during the recover animation. If im honest thats cheesy but screw fighting zombies fairly when i have HP to maintain.

 

[Boidster]

8 hours ago, bloodmoth13 said:

any point where you can kill them but they cant hurt you is cheesy

 

I applaud your internally-consistent view of "cheese". You are the first person I've encountered who held this viewpoint. In my experience until now, the word "cheese" in the context of gaming was always an insult. Used to denigrate another player's playstyle just short of calling them a "cheater". In your view it seems the very core of any game where the player has an adversary - from 7D2D to CoD to PvZ - is "cheese". Take cover, cheese. Place a passive defense, cheese. Erect an active defense, cheese. Sniper rifle, cheese. The only non-cheese way to play any game is to stand face to face with your attacker or, if you both have ranged weapons, possibly facing each other across a distance with no obstacles.

 

It is a consistent, coherent viewpoint, but it sure applies the "cheese" denigration to a very wide spectrum of players across many games.

 

In you I think I have found the right end of the "what is cheese" bell curve. I think I am at or very near the left end, since my view - at least in a game like 7D2D - is that there is no cheese except for leveraging game bugs to gain information the virtual survivor wouldn't have. Infinite ramps? Not cheese at all - the player can observe the zombie behavior and take advantage of it. Just like I would if I were the actual survivor of an actual zombie apocalypse. Glitching through the terrain for x-ray vision? Cheese, since there's no way the survivor could actually do that. By that time "cheese" is synonymous with "cheat" I suppose. But other than that, if you survive the apocalypse by whatever means using information available to your toon, it cannot be cheese.

 

There's a vast hump of the bell curve between us, which was part of the point you were making I think.

[doughphunghus]

tldr: the games mechanics are already built in “cheesy” to an extent, and it’s almost too easy to hide (though a non cheese real world tactic), so using a “play as real life As you can” is a good self imposed “cheese throttle” but it will never be enough (even modded). Try not to plan/build impenetrable bases from day 1, try to build out only what you think you need based on previous zed/horde attacks because “in real life” you likely wouldn’t build a super bunker from scratch and also not as preparation because in early hordes your “experience” of a horde intensity is low. 

anyway….. after reading all this my logic is not super solid but I’m done trying to write it all…

 

I so far normally hike up in a poi and hide on the roof or first few floors, access like stairs or ladders destroyed. Generally I make a base out of any poi that’s not made out of wood. I’m not a person to make a super base or mega reinforcements. However, as I’ve gotten better at the game I’ve been thinking of a new “super no cheese” play style as hiding “up” or “down” is not really “unrealistic cheese” or it does take away the danger enough to go “I feel as if I’m not playing a game with dangerous zombies”.  Anyways, that’s what I have been doing mostly for a19.  Earlier than that I made bases from scratch and moats/stop pits/ fortifications…

 

my thoughts: I have been thinking of trying to force myself to play as much “cheeseless” as I can, and I define that by “play as realistic as I would in real life”.  This means things such as placing chests only at home and on the floor counters (not nailed to the ceiling 4 blocks up, safe from zeds).  It means trying to hook up lights and power in a normal way (meaning: nicely).  It means not upgrading blocks, only destroy a degraded one and put down new blocks (can choose new material then).  No picking up vehicles once placed. You get the idea.  Well…. In a real zed apocalypse, I probably would hide on top of a roof with no access. The dilemma is the game doesn’t have non cheesy looking ways of building this (like, with ropes or things zeds could likely not climb) but then again, it’s essentially the same as making a big jump to get to a roof. To make it “real” I would have to build a ramp out of wood, cross it, then destroy it (if not using the drawbridge). So “where I live” will likely always be unreachable, forcing zeds to destroy to get up to me or collapse the building. Which leads to another “built in cheese” of the game… but for zeds: they can break brick with their hands? Ok , fine it’s just how it works, but realistically I should be safe forever if I am in a brick building 2 floor up.  So… I have to “anti cheese” this built in game mechanic…

 

1. crank up the zed block damage. Just enough to make it easy for early game zeds to do a lot of damage if left alone to damage things. Maybe turn this back to normal after many hordes.

2 “always leave a path to you, even if on a roof”.  Go no further than 2 floors up any building unless chased. 
3. Home and horde base are the same. Likely I would not separate these.

4. No crazy “make the zeds jump block after block to slow them down to get to you”. 1-2 blocks is probably ok. 
5. obviously no floating blocks, little “floating patches” zeds jump on and cannot balance and fall. They need to be able to get up and come at you.

6. “Small path of a thin blocks to get to you”: likely not cheese (valid real world idea) but try to avoid as a master plan. Maybe use a little with a junk sledge once things get crazy.

 

this means that during any horde/day zeds can path to you…. So you must fight or barricade yourself.  Well…..here it gets weird…

 

the game *mostly* seems to have brass for “you to shoot zeds with” and iron/clay/etc as ammo and materials for traps. Sure, there are gun turrets that use up “ammo normally you would use” so it’s not a hard line for what materials are used for what (a good thing). Taken generally: mining most materials is for base and trap defenses, but looting brass is for personal defenses. So I’m going to say that using many traps is “ok” and not cheese, and using bullets is “only for me” and not in traps as gun turrets would seem like a “waste” of brass ammo since I use it to defend myself :). 
 

making doors seems ok to do, but making “a door corridor” seems like cheese.  Using hatches to block zeds is cheese (for me)…. So maybe the rule should be “as long as you and the zeds can see each other, you are allowed to attack… musically no “open and close a door real fast over and over as a “defense position” but maybe ok as a temp measure. and you can use a hatch as defense as long as you don’t repair it. Maybe you get to use 2 doors for every “room” of like 10 blocks long. Vs door after door or hatch after hatch.
 

the result seems to be: over time, you will be building a longer and higher corridor/maze of traps, with mini “defense positions” where you could stand and fight through bars. When you fall back, you turn on the traps for that area. Repairs only occur when zeds are gone.

 

im not sure how long a base like this will last but I kinda want to try it, especially working around an existing multistory tower poi like dishong. I feel at some point it will fail, likely exploding guys or too many ferals will just wipe it out.   Once that starts being apparent I feel that some cheese rules could be broken just to survive (like use the gun turrets)
 

also: in theory building a concrete wall 10x thick would eventually be “real” but I find it less fun than the trap corridors/rooms. You would only attempt this once the intensity of the horde is apparent (mass destruction of walls/traps) not after like day 21.  When it’s would be allowed is not clear…. It’s almost if you would have to self impose rules for “what is allowed” and base it off of gamestage + day/horde attack.

 

or maybe turn it into DND where every morning you roll for your allowed tactics/stats.  Like “I rolled a 2 for construction, so I get 2 hours to work on building/upgrades”

 

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2021 by doughphunghus (see edit history)

[bloodmoth13]

4 hours ago, Boidster said:

 

I applaud your internally-consistent view of "cheese". You are the first person I've encountered who held this viewpoint. In my experience until now, the word "cheese" in the context of gaming was always an insult. Used to denigrate another player's playstyle just short of calling them a "cheater". In your view it seems the very core of any game where the player has an adversary - from 7D2D to CoD to PvZ - is "cheese". Take cover, cheese. Place a passive defense, cheese. Erect an active defense, cheese. Sniper rifle, cheese. The only non-cheese way to play any game is to stand face to face with your attacker or, if you both have ranged weapons, possibly facing each other across a distance with no obstacles.

 

It is a consistent, coherent viewpoint, but it sure applies the "cheese" denigration to a very wide spectrum of players across many games.

 

In you I think I have found the right end of the "what is cheese" bell curve. I think I am at or very near the left end, since my view - at least in a game like 7D2D - is that there is no cheese except for leveraging game bugs to gain information the virtual survivor wouldn't have. Infinite ramps? Not cheese at all - the player can observe the zombie behavior and take advantage of it. Just like I would if I were the actual survivor of an actual zombie apocalypse. Glitching through the terrain for x-ray vision? Cheese, since there's no way the survivor could actually do that. By that time "cheese" is synonymous with "cheat" I suppose. But other than that, if you survive the apocalypse by whatever means using information available to your toon, it cannot be cheese.

 

There's a vast hump of the bell curve between us, which was part of the point you were making I think.

Well we are so different we are practically the same.

 

I think for me, cheese is everywhere, unavoidable and you just have to decide how much you are willing to accept. To you, chees is unacceptable but very restricted, solely to what i would just call cheating.

Its really just a matter of choosing what you believe is optimizing vs cheating.

 

If everything is cheese, nothing is cheese.