Please stop trying to tell us how to play

[Roland]

6 hours ago, Urban Blackbear said:

I pretty much just disable horde night and I don't care if that makes me a scrub. I play solo and horde nights just leave me in an endless cycle of rebuild, get trashed, rebuild. Not fun for me.

 

If it is too many repetitions of the same cycle that you don't like I suggest changing the frequency of horde nights from 7 days to 30 days or maybe a random day somewhere between 20-30 days so that if you typically play 100 days, horde night would be an event that occurs only 3-5 times in your entire playthrough rather than a common cycle that dominates the game. Think about it..

[Ripflex]

Both sides of this conversation have valid points; some the Zombie AI pathing was flawed and exploited and some of the blocks also confused zombie AI and was exploiyed.  But also smart strategic base and trap building were also negatively affected.  If you had a few blades where zed can avoid they just did, metal spike here and not there, they ignored it, demolishers plow through most mid game traps as if they were not there, electrical fences are very effective unless a zed sneezed on it and is goes down.

 

Now you can say, well you build your defenses wrong, sure I'll give you that might be the case for some... but when I jumped on a few Public servers and the majority of bases are large cubes build from a large rock formation with very few traps, you start to wonder...

 

 

[Desmondbratcat]

23 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

This is likely because you are not playing things safe. For my underground bases I may hear screamers but I never even see them (in the base) because I use doors and trap doors. If you're just digging an open hole of course you should expect things to get to you easily.

 

I agree with the cost reduction on poles 100%.

concrete with v3 hatches.

[playlessNamer]

What is a honest defense without any abuse? A 4side concrete cube with arrowslits? Even the mechanic to lead all of them to 1 side of your base only feels cheese.

There are so much different ways to abuse mechanics its allready a varying gameplay aspect to choose wich exploit you wanna use.

 

-building underground removes every zombieattack but not hordenights and reduces your attacksurface to a minimum

-lead them all to a specific point where you want them

-fall bridges let them run endless circles

-use electric versions of fall bridges, it opens when they step on it

-1 bladetrap, 4-5 fencewire combos and 10 Darttraps are enough to hold nearly afk max gamestage hordes (standard difficulty)

-zombies dont attack walls because they see no pathblocking obstacles in it

-ladder towers stacking fall dmg over and over again

-gather them in holes and blow them up

-catch the first wave and no more waves will spawn until dawn

-wizard tower with a riddiculous pathway they have to follow just to get punched down at the top and start again

-gather them all behind a open hatchdoor and just mellee forever without problems

-classic kill corridors, all lined up for headshots

-sit on a bike in your base at hordenight and only vultures spawn and 4 bladtraps around a hatch is enough to defend the roof

 

Yes i feel forced to use any of this mechanics because any "honest" straight defense i can imagine will not work or i will for sure not maintain it.

So it doesnt matter in wich way any player abuse the game, its PvE and doesnt effect my gameplay. Since zombies are "intelligent" the game changed to a only abuse of this.

Undergroundbases are still good and way easier to maintain than overground. The pimps also did not cancel them like noobs, they added a new mechanic to the game. Digging down. Its like the new mechanic to make them crawl under 1 block space now, thats awsome! New mechanics!

 

A solution for this would be to make just 30% of the horde spawn dumb like before. Just attacking everything in their way and dont care about any path. Oh god the whine will be endless when all hordebases dont work anymore. But who wants to defend hectically 360° around? Thats not fun. Repairing is not fun.

 

Are there really players out there sitting in their cube and defend all sides of their base manually?

[canadianbluebeer]

in A16  sitting in the base, defeding 360 is exactly what we did.

many many many rows of spikes.  Shoot the cops as priority so they don't blow up.

weaker zeds died to the spikes.

 

Cleanup/repair/replace was a pain, but... 

 

 

[meganoth]

9 hours ago, playlessNamer said:

What is a honest defense without any abuse? A 4side concrete cube with arrowslits? Even the mechanic to lead all of them to 1 side of your base only feels cheese.

There are so much different ways to abuse mechanics its allready a varying gameplay aspect to choose wich exploit you wanna use.

 

-building underground removes every zombieattack but not hordenights and reduces your attacksurface to a minimum

-lead them all to a specific point where you want them

-fall bridges let them run endless circles

-use electric versions of fall bridges, it opens when they step on it

-1 bladetrap, 4-5 fencewire combos and 10 Darttraps are enough to hold nearly afk max gamestage hordes (standard difficulty)

-zombies dont attack walls because they see no pathblocking obstacles in it

-ladder towers stacking fall dmg over and over again

-gather them in holes and blow them up

-catch the first wave and no more waves will spawn until dawn

-wizard tower with a riddiculous pathway they have to follow just to get punched down at the top and start again

-gather them all behind a open hatchdoor and just mellee forever without problems

-classic kill corridors, all lined up for headshots

-sit on a bike in your base at hordenight and only vultures spawn and 4 bladtraps around a hatch is enough to defend the roof

 

Yes i feel forced to use any of this mechanics because any "honest" straight defense i can imagine will not work or i will for sure not maintain it.

So it doesnt matter in wich way any player abuse the game, its PvE and doesnt effect my gameplay. Since zombies are "intelligent" the game changed to a only abuse of this.

Undergroundbases are still good and way easier to maintain than overground. The pimps also did not cancel them like noobs, they added a new mechanic to the game. Digging down. Its like the new mechanic to make them crawl under 1 block space now, thats awsome! New mechanics!

 

A solution for this would be to make just 30% of the horde spawn dumb like before. Just attacking everything in their way and dont care about any path. Oh god the whine will be endless when all hordebases dont work anymore. But who wants to defend hectically 360° around? Thats not fun. Repairing is not fun.

 

Are there really players out there sitting in their cube and defend all sides of their base manually?

 

I don't know why kill corridors for example are so often listed as cheese. The developers themselves made the changes so that you can do that, it is also how tower defense games work in general. While there were changes to combat zombies endlessly running in circles they never tried to make kill corridors fail.

 

Blocks being misclassified and the zombies doing the wrong thing with them is a bug and Faatal has mentioned at the start of experimental that he expects many new cases of this happening in A20 because so many more blocks became available to players

 

I can think of 2 changes that together will make the bike exploit much harder to use: A bike standing around or being inside should make normal zombies spawn. And the vulture spawning should never go on for more than say one or two minutes at a time even if the player is on a bike.

 

This game is not finished and they still have time to fix many of the things they see as exploits. But it is also very likely that there will be a lot of cases where the AI doesn't work well even at release of the final version. That is unfortunate but most players will know of those exploits only if they look for them on the internet or watch a streamer who specializes in finding exploits. Thats okay, no one will object to what they do in their back yard.

 

 

 

 

[RipClaw]

4 hours ago, canadianbluebeer said:

in A16  sitting in the base, defeding 360 is exactly what we did.

Except that in A16 everything was different. The pathing was different, the zombies didn't do as much damage, barbed wire and log spikes still existed and steel blocks degraded to reinforced concrete blocks and these to normal concrete blocks.

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[seagas]

16 hours ago, Ripflex said:

Both sides of this conversation have valid points; some the Zombie AI pathing was flawed and exploited and some of the blocks also confused zombie AI and was exploiyed.  But also smart strategic base and trap building were also negatively affected.  If you had a few blades where zed can avoid they just did, metal spike here and not there, they ignored it, demolishers plow through most mid game traps as if they were not there, electrical fences are very effective unless a zed sneezed on it and is goes down.

snip...

 

 

The secret to effective use of electric traps is keep the most important ones close to where you defend from and place the end of the line where you can easily repair them throughout the night. Generally, only the last one gets damaged from use, like building material, keep some electrical parts on you for quick repair. 

[Viktoriusiii]

if there were a way to chose between old (dumb horde) and new (intelligent tower defense) A.I. that would be the dream.

Because I absolutely loved the horde A.I.
It got better over time, but kill corridors will now always be a thing. I will no longer be scared because I know how the Z's will react to any obstacle.
They are "intelligent" but predictable.

fataal said he worked on zombie dumbness, and sure there are no conga lines anymore, but on horde night they all find the entrance 100% of the time and avoid spikes and other traps like the plague (yes because they are coded like a block, but they shouldn't be. They should be considered airlocks by zombies)

 

I really dislike that change, but sadly this won't ever come back.
Thing is: with "intelligent" zombies, you will always be able to abuse them because they follow a set of rules that can be abused.
If they did random stuff like hit support pillars even though they have a clear path, things would get interesting quickly.

But instead with age a counter-less demo zombie that just blows your base up... YAY fun 😕

 

 

[Boidster]

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

I don't know why kill corridors for example are so often listed as cheese.

 

PREACH IT BROTHER! Although I have been reliably informed that any base which affords the player a defensive advantage - i.e. the zombies have a harder time hitting the player than the player does the zombies - is "cheese". Only going mano-a-mano...mano-a-undead?...in a barren field is non-cheese.

 

What on Earth is the point of a blade trap or a dart trap or an electric fence or...*waves hands around* any of it...if not to try to get zombies to walk into/near them? The big "plot" point in this game is "a crapton of zombies are coming for you in 7 days, better be ready" and then they give you all of these murder machines and base-building features. Oh no! I built an effective base to keep my cranial goo out of the mouths of the undead! I AM A CHEESER!!! 

[BarryTGash]

54 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:

If they did random stuff like hit support pillars even though they have a clear path, things would get interesting quickly.

I think that would be quite fun. TFP could disable the damage multiplier zeds get when more than 1 hit the same block to balance (tbh, the multiplier is already there - it is x nZombies, so I don't know why an extra multiplier is even deemed necessary).

 

Regarding the underground base nonsense, it would have been a lot less work for TFP just to say "if you don't like impervious underground bases then just don't build one", then everyone could (not necessarily would) be happier. But I don't have a dog in this fight - the idea all that digging just puts me off the whole underground bunker thing. I ain't a dwarf.

 

Mods are a thing, and TFP exposed all the xml files - have at it!

[unholyjoe]

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

 

PREACH IT BROTHER! Although I have been reliably informed that any base which affords the player a defensive advantage - i.e. the zombies have a harder time hitting the player than the player does the zombies - is "cheese". Only going mano-a-mano...mano-a-undead?...in a barren field is non-cheese.

 

What on Earth is the point of a blade trap or a dart trap or an electric fence or...*waves hands around* any of it...if not to try to get zombies to walk into/near them? The big "plot" point in this game is "a crapton of zombies are coming for you in 7 days, better be ready" and then they give you all of these murder machines and base-building features. Oh no! I built an effective base to keep my cranial goo out of the mouths of the undead! I AM A CHEESER!!! 

i mean seriously, people have seen the vids where joel will use some of these tactics like blade traps under the iron bars he is standing on up where zeds cant reach him... i do it as well and have since i been playing and testing 7dtd.

 

biggest problem i think, is some people just want to complain if they see someone having fun. well i play sp and mp with my daughter, what we do and what others do is their own business and it doesnt affect my game nor does how my daughter and i affect any other game.

 

i will point out tho.. i dont waste my time with designing and using blocks that thwart the zeds... and thats just me.. others... have fun if thats what is fun.

 

just remember to stay off my grass and we be good..

[fragtzack]

16 hours ago, playlessNamer said:

What is a honest defense without any abuse? 

 

 

Easy answer: Any defense that allows the player to be 100% safe from harm without fighting. 

 

Currently in a20:

 

Kill corridor is not cheese, the player is not 100% safe.

I can think of zero current horde night strats where the player is completely safe without needing to fight. 

 

 In my last horde night (getting end game high game stage) , I used 3 different horde bases on same night:

 

1. A close range hatch hall

2. The killing corridor (Jawoodle build)

3. Elevated strong tower, with shoot down bars.

 

The close range hatch hall build fell, the Jawoold killing corridor also fell but I managed to finish the horde night safe on the last build.

2-3 green cops at a time, multiple demo at same time, green vultures. Probably had about 10-15 demo's through the night..Yes, they will break that Jawoodle killing corridor. 

 

IMHO, late game high game stage hordes now requires multiple bases for fall back purposes.

 

Therefore, job well done TFP.

 

To hear the OP and some others  "Don't tell us how to play" is very discouraging to me cause I think TFP have done an incredible job of making the game more challenging for my play. 

 

 

[fragtzack]

.

 

On 1/2/2022 at 9:59 PM, Sydious said:

"They want a base that is 100% safe from harm" and yet they can not do that (to my knowledge), but they used to be able to if they so wished.  Is that not the very definition of OP's statement.  

What anyone thinks should or should not be allowed, for what ever reason, is not an argument to a factual statement.

There is the option to turn off zombies and/or turn off horde nights thus making the underground base completely safe. 

 

Therefore, the OP statement of "telling us how to play" isn't a fact. The player is very  clearly  given a choice in game settings.

Edited January 4, 2022 by fragtzack (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

23 minutes ago, fragtzack said:

Easy answer: Any defense that allows the player to be 100% safe from harm without fighting. 

 

By that definition is my base a cheese base. All I currently do is repairing the blade traps and electric fences during the horde. I may also refill the dart traps, but so far I've never had them run long enough to use up more than half of the darts.

 

Technically, the zombies can reach me, but most don't even survive the first two blade traps. Not even Demolisher. And behind those 2 blade traps there are 4 more waiting.

 

23 minutes ago, fragtzack said:

The close range hatch hall build fell, the Jawoold killing corridor also fell but I managed to finish the horde night safe on the last build.

2-3 green cops at a time, multiple demo at same time, green vultures. Probably had about 10-15 demo's through the night..Yes, they will break that Jawoodle killing corridor. 

 

Maybe no one has told you this before, but you shouldn't shoot at the green light on the chest of the demolisher. Only in the the head or at his legs.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[fragtzack]

The demo also chews through normal blocks without exploding I thought, at least that is what seemed to kill most of my hatch base. And then a green cop exploded.

On the Jawoodle base, what did the base in was a 2 cops exploding at top of stairs, totally demolishing the ramp up for the zombies to killing corridor.

 

No, your base is not cheese. Going around and repairing your traps is considered fighting. You are not 100% safe.

huddling underground and crafting while horde night rages above, that is clear cheese.  

[Maharin]

A new movie, "Field of Blades... build it and they will come!"

 

Maybe they could get Kevin Costner to be a zombie in it.

[RipClaw]

41 minutes ago, fragtzack said:

Therefore, the OP statement of "telling us how to play" isn't a fact. The player is very  clearly  given a choice in game settings.

I can also turn off the zombies completely but that's not the point. The point is that nerfs and changes affect different play styles differently.

 

The nerf of the blocks, for example, has mainly affected melee bases.  Poles were reduced to 25% of the HP of the full blocks. Since poles allow players to hit zombies and give some protection they where very popular in melee setups.

At the same time bars retained all thier HP despite containing less material than a plate, which was reduced to 50%. Bars allow a player to shoot through them.  Yes, the cop can spit through it but it's not really an acute threat since you can easily dodge it.

 

Now you could conclude that the fun pimps don't like melee bases and prefer playstyles with firearms.

That's certainly not the case, and perhaps they weren't even aware of the impact of the changes at the time of the decision. But you can't blame the players for assuming that.

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Roland]

Some people are always going to accuse others of cheesing horde night. “Cheese” has become simply a trash talk way of saying that you handle horde night in a way that I think is easier and takes less effort than how I handle horde night. 
 

The devs aren’t designing a la trash talk.  They want the zombies to be able to reliably path through the world and navigate the often complex terrain and they really don’t care how players develop strategies to survive. If they see behavior by zombies they did not intend they fix that. If that fix ends a particular strategy, it was just collateral damage.
 

There have only been a very few enemy behaviors they have changed because of player strategies and in those cases they were up front about the fact that they didn’t want players to be able to do something they were doing. Zombies digging, zombies swimming, and vulture hordes attacking vehicles during blood moon are the only actual dev design vs player strats situations I can think of that were put in because of how players were playing. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[unholyjoe]

yep and actually digging was in for a long time... it just didnt work and if it did, it was seen as a bug because people didnt think it was possible way back then.

 

i play (AND NO i am not telling anybody how to play) with feral sense on and they jog during the day... everything runs at night.. and i still can deal with them a whole lot easier then starting a new game in ark completely naked in the mouth of a couple raptors... that is game play i really dont like... but after a couple deaths i manage to quickly survive and come back for revenge...

Edited January 4, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Kyonshi]

On 1/2/2022 at 12:11 AM, Ray Garraty said:

 

I hope the Pimps never listen to such annoying YouTubers like this [YouTuber] and push the game design further to pump up the challenge. The Pimps are not worse than any other developer and they don't think cheesing their game is the way to go. That's perfectly legitimate, id do the same. If they don't like what they're seeing, they will change things because if their game and they'll tailor it the way they want it.

 

TC displays the most obvious and blatant example of monumental entitlement ever. The game isn't made for your pretty eyes only. If you're unhappy with the design the Pimps conduct, go play something else. It's like you're telling someone how to drive their car the way [you] want it while you're the passenger and not making the payments on it. Stfu, seriously.

 

Hiding from the horde underground is the dumbest thing ever. If someone don't wanna deal with the hordes... just turn them off.

 

And I stopped watching the video when he went "this game's in developement since 753 years...". This moronic argument is so old, it's deader than a dead horse.

 

The better the mechanics of zombies are developed to get to us, the happier I will be. Keep up the good work Pimps.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Crater Creator
flaming/name calling (see edit history)

[Krougal]

1 hour ago, fragtzack said:

huddling underground and crafting while horde night rages above, that is clear cheese.  

And here I would just call that a smart design.

Although I'd also call it laziness and a waste of an opportunity for xp.

 

[playlessNamer]

second point:

 

Do you live in your hordebase? I always do that. On day 7 and 14 i have some separate structures but then i always include the defense in my actual single base. Everything else is, you know it, cheese!

[Crater Creator]

6 hours ago, RipClaw said:

By that definition is my base a cheese base. All I currently do is repairing the blade traps and electric fences during the horde. I may also refill the dart traps, but so far I've never had them run long enough to use up more than half of the darts.

 

Technically, the zombies can reach me, but most don't even survive the first two blade traps. Not even Demolisher. And behind those 2 blade traps there are 4 more waiting.

 

How's this for a definition?  A player's actions are cheesy if they take advantage of a significant oversight or imbalance in the game's design.  And then, what is balance?  The game is balanced when what you put in is commensurate with what you get out.  For example, if you put in a limited effort towards base defense, and get out unlimited safety on horde night, that is imbalanced.  This can be (but isn't necessarily always) assessed without making any moral judgment about how other people play: by focusing only on what the game is designed to allow the player to do.

 

Since you ask, I don't think what you describe is cheesy.  Your traps require you to actively maintain them to keep you safe.  That takes effort in the short term (making the repairs) and the long term (acquiring more iron/electric parts/ammo).  If you were to stop putting in any effort, the base - or in other words the result of the actions you've taken - would fail.

[Aldranon]

Killing the zombies on BM night is a no brainer, for me.

 

-A person can get most (if not all) of their ammo back (and more stuff) from loot bags.

-The shotgun still seems a bit bugged in POI fighting, so I use some of the thousands of shotgun shells I have (and my pump shotgun) to fire down on the zombies heads.

-I only use the MG's to mow down the exploders.

-I now WANT more EXP to make the game more interesting and I moved to the wasteland as it's the place to be, late game!

 

All while playing Dead-is-Dead.  I would not even try to say my way is the best way (edit: for everyone).  But its the best way... for me.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Aldranon (see edit history)