Don't allow quests in POI's that are too damaged or destroyed -- add a cost to repair the POI to quest again.

[Brana420]

One way to get around building on horde night is to find a strong POI (one with walls that have lots of health) that's easy to make it so zombies can't reach you. One example is the tool store where all you need to do is destroy one 1k health ladder and they can no longer reach you if you're on the roof. Say they destroy half the store during horde night (which would be difficult for them to do even with increased settings and you doing nothing) all you have to do then is find the quest for that store to instantly and for free rebuild the entire store. It's like having a free horde base every week as long as you find the quest once during the week which is not difficult.

 

Rather than rebuilding existing POI's to have weaker walls or a stronger ladder, my suggestion to get around this is to add a fee to repair the building in order to do quests again in the POI, either in building materials like wood, concrete, or with dukes, or just not allow quests in POI's that are too destroyed. The rebuild cost could be determined by the tier of the POI or the amount of materials it would take to rebuild based on how much it is destroyed. Another idea is to add a repair time so that if a building is destroyed it doesn't just instantly reappear like magic when a player starts a quest.

[doughphunghus]

I like this, but i feel that "PvP" would suffer, though... would it? As long as there is a method to rebuild (i think dukes or materials would both be acceptable, as a low tier player can farm for materials, high tier can farm or pay. I almost feel that it would be "balancing" to have some sort of internal perk to offset if you jump into a game on day 500, like "oh it costs me leas to rebuild for a quest". In this way new players could be welcomed as "cheap quest rebuilders".  I see lots of ways to cheese/bypass the mechanic but.... who cares? Its "free" to rebuild today, and having a cost would be kinda cool so if you don't pay/grind maybe the trader simply has no more POI quests for you until you so. This also would make having T5 quests harder to farm.

 

But also, more importantly: even if this wasn't turn "on" for every quest, if it were a mechanic that was available to tune via mods or basic settings, it would add a bit to the "economy" aspect of the game, more variation, etc. you could even start having quests to hive you building materials to then repair a POI to then allow it to be quested. It would be cool if the "cost" were somewhat related to the current damage of the POi selected to be quested. Completely rebuilding a house that was leveled should be a lot, one with no blocks damaged should he "free" like it is today.

[theFlu]

I get the idea, but what are you trying to fix? PvP servers having players who play nomad with the hordes? Friends not willing to build horde bases as long as an exploit exists?

 

If just friends, there's too many POIs in the game to ever really run out anyway, so the fix wouldn't fix much.

If PvP.. I dunno, I don't play PvP here, but I'd imagine the advantage isn't that big? Plus you're risking getting players on your poorly defended location.

[Cr0wst0rm]

They will never implement this, as this feature absolutely makes no sense.. Why would player repair something at his own expense just to be able to get quest there? How do you want to check if the structure is destroyed, when it is not loaded? How fast do you think loading that structure will be in order to perform such check? Nonsense...

[theFlu]

56 minutes ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

How do you want to check if the structure is destroyed, when it is not loaded? How fast do you think loading that structure will be in order to perform such check?

Keep a list of integers for all quest POIs on the map, increment the number for that POI whenever a block is destroyed in the area. Basically O(1) operations all around, and a reasonably small array of numbers to keep track of. Swap the offered quest type based on the number.

[FA_Q2]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Keep a list of integers for all quest POIs on the map, increment the number for that POI whenever a block is destroyed in the area. Basically O(1) operations all around, and a reasonably small array of numbers to keep track of. Swap the offered quest type based on the number.

Sure, it is doable.  Heck, even fairly simple IMHO but the question remains what problem, hole or gameplay aspect is this serving?

 

I really see none.  As an 'exploit' this is pretty irrelevant.  There are far simpler ways to cheese horde night.  This one would not even be effective for very long.

[8_Hussars]

I am with theFlu, what issue does this solution fix?

There are an almost endless multitude of POIs that can survive a horde, instead of paying repairs a player can simply move from one to the next or fight on foot.  It is not a large inconvenience, if a player chooses to not build a horde base.  This situation pretty much negates the proposed repair fee mechanic in the first place. 

Slightly off topic

I find quests are OP (A20), I would find it interesting if that no POIs were resettable (or maybe keyed to the respawn loot timer).  If a player has looted/damaged the POI already, then so be it.  A player will need to wait until the POI has been "respawned" to be able to get a valid quest at the POI again.  Perhaps instead of some arbitrary fee for repairs, just charge an arbitrary fee (dukes or resources) for the quest in the first place.

[Brana420]

7 hours ago, theFlu said:

Friends not willing to build horde bases as long as an exploit exists?

 

Literally this, yes. Players exploiting the game in order to circumvent the arguably main mechanic of the game it's named after.

 

The problem or exploit I am mentioning (and some may not think it's a problem) is the lack of need for a horde base because there are plenty of good POI's that exist that can be used as a horde base. Once you clear out a decent POI you can practically go AFK on horde night with no need to ever build. My suggestion was to make it so you eventually have to build a horde base because the POI's you're using ultimately got destroyed and can't just be reset via questing to be used again and again. It would force players to repair their base and do some kind of building.

 

The Fun Pimps said "When something makes it so there's no risk or no fear... if something can be exploited that bad we gotta fix that." And I believe that not having to ever build a horde base because you can do a quest seems a bit exploitative. I find it akin to the underground bases from previous patches where you're missing a major chunk of the game because you don't need to build a horde base.

 

As a mostly solo player there may have been some aspects I didn't consider. Like how most servers don't like you building in POIs so that everyone can keep questing or joining a late game server as a new player and all the POIs are already destroyed. Not sure about PvP either?

 

theFlu has a good point, there are a lot of POI's in the world and this fix would maybe only affect the later stages of the game. If you used every POI in the world as a horde base and didn't repair any of them ever, it would probably take the zombies hundreds of horde nights to destroy every single one of them. Using a POI as a horde base isn't itself an exploit, however it feels like one when you repeatedly use the same building every week without repairing it because you did the quest for it.

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, Brana420 said:

Literally this, yes.

I can commiserate; I like to build bases, and for co-op I mostly play with one friend who, well, doesn't. Not a huge deal for me, I scratch my building itch in solo games.

 

To offer an idea that might help, maybe try building a small base inside/attached to the chosen sacrificial POI. Spend a day on it while the friends do their thing. Have a good fight, and a safe fallback to wherever they're AFKing (just make sure when your base fails it won't compromise their AFK, that'll upset people).

 

Bring plenty of boombooms since you'll have a multiplied horde, plenty of yellow bags to show for it after the night ...

[Brana420]

With 64x zombies at 300% block damage on horde night I still find no need to build a horde base in a game base on building horde bases. I love the game, I have 1900 hours since alpha 19 I just find it that sometimes I have to challenge myself to build a horde base otherwise I often just won't do it. Before I had that realization my early game horde bases had lots of trenches and spike traps and lots of time spent that first weeks prepping/building for those first horde nights. Now, I just quest and find a POI to hang out on top of for horde night. To each their own on how they want to play or what they want to build, but I kind of agree with 8_Hussars that quests feel somewhat overpowered. It's like having unlimited resources being able to reset a building not to mention not ever worrying about loot respawning because you can force loot to respawn via a quest. I kind of liked the idea of looting/dismantling an entire town, using all its resources, then moving on, but with quests you can stay in the same spot doing the same quests and not have to ever move.

[Maharin]

Finding a POI versus building a base is exactly the kind of choice this games allows you to make.  It's a good thing, really.  Not everyone wants to build from scratch and starting with a POI can be fun for some.  Picking some random POI to take the damage on horde night instead of your base can also be a practical choice.  There is nothing wrong here, the game is as it was meant to be.

 

As for quests resetting POIs... I agree that there needs to be some way to limit this.  The way I do it is remove traders and quests from the game.  But you could just as easily remove the reset line from each POI quest or set it to false instead of true.  I have not tested this but I'm pretty sure this is the line to change for each quest:

 

	<property name="login_rally_reset" value="true"/>

 

[theFlu]

3 minutes ago, Maharin said:

But you could just as easily remove the reset line from each POI quest or set it to false instead of true.  I have not tested this but I'm pretty sure this is the line to change for each quest:

Login Rally reset.. I would guess that's about resetting the quest if you logout during one, not about resetting the POI. Could be, but .. would the quests even really work without a POI reset?

[Maharin]

2 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Login Rally reset.. I would guess that's about resetting the quest if you logout during one, not about resetting the POI. Could be, but .. would the quests even really work without a POI reset?

 

Not sure, since I haven't tested it. 

 

EDIT: But I'm pretty sure the "login_rally_reset" thing is the reset that happens when you "login" to the quest at the rally point.  This is why programmers should never write documentation. 

Edited December 6, 2022 by Maharin (see edit history)

[FA_Q2]

12 hours ago, Brana420 said:

With 64x zombies at 300% block damage on horde night I still find no need to build a horde base in a game base on building horde bases. I love the game, I have 1900 hours since alpha 19 I just find it that sometimes I have to challenge myself to build a horde base otherwise I often just won't do it. Before I had that realization my early game horde bases had lots of trenches and spike traps and lots of time spent that first weeks prepping/building for those first horde nights. Now, I just quest and find a POI to hang out on top of for horde night. To each their own on how they want to play or what they want to build, but I kind of agree with 8_Hussars that quests feel somewhat overpowered. It's like having unlimited resources being able to reset a building not to mention not ever worrying about loot respawning because you can force loot to respawn via a quest. I kind of liked the idea of looting/dismantling an entire town, using all its resources, then moving on, but with quests you can stay in the same spot doing the same quests and not have to ever move.

Or you can use 20 or so wooden frames.  Or you can down some coffee and walk away.  Or you can drive away (yes, this still works).  Or you can use a few wooden doors and a single wall.  Or... well you get the idea.

 

There are a thousand ways to cheese the horde.  Why is this one in particular, which is still more difficult than most of the other ways I have listed, the one that needs to be patched away with an entirely new system that will require system resources to run?  If you are going to avoid horde night then you are going to avoid horde night.  Taking this mechanic away just moves those that do not want to build a horde base into another one of the myriad ways of avoiding it.

 

[Cr0wst0rm]

21 hours ago, theFlu said:

Keep a list of integers for all quest POIs on the map, increment the number for that POI whenever a block is destroyed in the area. Basically O(1) operations all around, and a reasonably small array of numbers to keep track of. Swap the offered quest type based on the number.

And what do you want to use the rest of the list of integers? How do you want to identify such area? How do you assign it? What if you occupy it by bedroll? What if such structure has same preset loaded at second part of entire world and has same name? It might be doable, but it is too hard + not worth the effort, since no-one will care about it and literally no-one will want to repair something to get stupid quest when they can just get quest somewhere else... 

[theFlu]

Really? Ok, fine.

1 hour ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

And what do you want to use the rest of the list of integers?

What? A list of integers, one per quest POI, indicating an approximation of the total damage done to the POI. Could use any other data structure if applicable, but for the worst case scenario, a simple array with a lot of zeros on it. You can also trade runtime for memory and implement actual lists/trees, or whatever. What other use should there be?

 

1 hour ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

How do you want to identify such area? How do you assign it?

 

Chunk loader checks for POIs by their coordinates in the chunk, marks them active. Any destroy-block-event checks active POIs against its xy-coordinates. (peanuts-level additions to chunk loading and SI-checks)

 

2 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

What if you occupy it by bedroll?

The existing quest handling already avoids bedrolls, you want to add something there?

 

2 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

What if such structure has same preset loaded at second part of entire world and has same name?

You don't index things by name. Ever.

 

2 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

It might be doable, but it is too hard + not worth the effort

Too hard? Not really as such, but I agree, I don't see the feature worth implementing even if actually saved programming effort.

IMO it wouldn't really fix anything; like I already said.

[Roland]

21 hours ago, Brana420 said:

Players exploiting the game in order to circumvent the arguably main mechanic of the game it's named after.

 

I'm not necessarily for against anything here but would like to point out that the developers view building your own base from scratch and modifying an existing structure as equally viable options in carrying out the base defense mechanic of the game. They are unlikely to implement anything that would hamper players from using existing POIs as starters for horde bases.

 

Just as there are exploity built-from-scratch strategies there are exploity upgrade-from-poi strategies and in both cases players can choose not to exploit. 

 

This is not to say that if TFP decides they need to close some loophole or other they will. But for the most part they recognize that there is no way to close all loopholes associated with building in a voxel world without seriously destroying the fun of the building. Its possible they may revisit how POIs are reset after quests but probably not too likely. After all, they have publicly stated that they do not consider double-dipping a POI before and after activating the quest rally point to be an exploit and perfectly fair game to do it if players wish.

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

[Cr0wst0rm]

15 hours ago, theFlu said:

Really? Ok, fine.

What? A list of integers, one per quest POI, indicating an approximation of the total damage done to the POI. Could use any other data structure if applicable, but for the worst case scenario, a simple array with a lot of zeros on it. You can also trade runtime for memory and implement actual lists/trees, or whatever. What other use should there be?

 

 

Chunk loader checks for POIs by their coordinates in the chunk, marks them active. Any destroy-block-event checks active POIs against its xy-coordinates. (peanuts-level additions to chunk loading and SI-checks)

 

The existing quest handling already avoids bedrolls, you want to add something there?

 

You don't index things by name. Ever.

 

Too hard? Not really as such, but I agree, I don't see the feature worth implementing even if actually saved programming effort.

IMO it wouldn't really fix anything; like I already said.

 

ad 3 -> Bedrolls can overlap chunks and thus structures in that chunk too. The system can bug out more easily when you add more features and dont consider all possible combinations.
ad 4 -> If you want to index everything by index, you still need a map so you dont iterate over everything, so naming makes more sense for distinquishing purposes as it still is O(1) access time. Do you know about binary trees? Word trees? They ease things up more than you could imagine. Index can sure be used as a identifier too. You would need to generate volumes for all buildings that reside on persistent level and when you enter such volume, this volume must detect what block you are placing/deleting. They already have some base to do this fairly simply so ye i think i can agree with you, Still not much of gameplay value i can see.....

[Flycatcher]

The big thing is rooftop is safe, then instead of changing buildings and quest wouldn't it be easier to add a climbing zombie. 

 

One with long stalky limbs and razor-sharp claws to climb up walls (Horizontal/vertical as example look at the alien v/s predator games) and shred people with that hunts by smell instead of sight

 

 

It would bypass stairs and doors that way.

Bring on the blood moon stalker.

 

The double loot for resetting building's, try setting the loot abundance to 95% instead of 100% you will see even the main loot and that dropped from the plane doesn't always have an item so you have to rely more on hunting and farming for food the perks don't change the loot chance.

 

As for the free building for horde night it should still be there but they should do something done about building (not repairing/ upgrading) where there is no claimblock for blocks and laders.

 

Talking about claim blocks, there needs to be an additional claimblock type that allows for allied to have that same rights as the person who placed the claimblock.

 

[theFlu]

4 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

Bedrolls can overlap chunks and thus structures in that chunk too. The system can bug out more easily when you add more features and dont consider all possible combinations.

Yup, but since the bedroll check already exists for questing, this feature wouldn't complicate that at all, as it wouldn't even need to touch that.

 

4 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

you still need a map so you dont iterate over everything, so naming makes more sense for distinquishing purposes as it still is O(1) access time. Do you know about binary trees? Word trees?

If you are able to index by name then why was it your counterargument earlier? (Same preset, same name -> problem) I may have missed something there.

 

There's also a decent chance that there already exists a suitable data structure to glue this one on. The quest system knows the distance to every quest POI - the way it chooses the closest/suitably distant POIs for questing requires location info. You could get away with a pre-calculated distance for that, but you'd have one of those per trader.

 

Word trees? How many separate entries for "irrelevant" will you find in a word tree?

[FA_Q2]

On 12/7/2022 at 4:03 AM, Flycatcher said:

The big thing is rooftop is safe, then instead of changing buildings and quest wouldn't it be easier to add a climbing zombie. 

 

One with long stalky limbs and razor-sharp claws to climb up walls (Horizontal/vertical as example look at the alien v/s predator games) and shred people with that hunts by smell instead of sight

 

 

It would bypass stairs and doors that way.

Bring on the blood moon stalker.

 

The double loot for resetting building's, try setting the loot abundance to 95% instead of 100% you will see even the main loot and that dropped from the plane doesn't always have an item so you have to rely more on hunting and farming for food the perks don't change the loot chance.

 

As for the free building for horde night it should still be there but they should do something done about building (not repairing/ upgrading) where there is no claimblock for blocks and laders.

 

Talking about claim blocks, there needs to be an additional claimblock type that allows for allied to have that same rights as the person who placed the claimblock.

 

That was the original spider zombie.  Before it could jump it used to climb walls.  

 

Considering they changed it, I would imagine they do not like the climbing zed idea.  It would certainly cause problems with most base setups now that they can dig as well.

 

[Cr0wst0rm]

21 hours ago, theFlu said:

Word trees? How many separate entries for "irrelevant" will you find in a word tree?

Word trees are used to filter by names, every time you reach a leaf/branch, you check if that is the building you want. Time Complexity is O(Log(N)). No clue what by "irrelevant" you mean, the words could have postfixes like _1 _2 for duplicates. If every building in the game uses common naming scheme, like city_family, city_industrial, village_family, village_cottage etc etc, it can speed up lookup, instead of doing a for loop for every building in the game there is.

[Melange]

Holy frap man @Cr0wst0rm. We're not into your super elite programming lingo. Bring it down to a plebian level so we can half-way grasp what you're trying to convey.

 

I've constructuted large machines that delivered the existing product at a much faster rate. But everyone involved in the project could at least understand in plain English what was going on within the internals.

 

Clever you are. Tell us how clever and likeable.  I'll start my laugh now.

 

I don't agree with having to rebuild a poi for further quests...isn't that done when we accept the next quest at this location? Not like I hang around in the game to complete T5 quests any way. As of A20, done some, then probably done them all.  Start over.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2022 by Melange (see edit history)

[Melange]

On 12/7/2022 at 5:33 AM, Roland said:

they have publicly stated that they do not consider double-dipping a POI before and after activating the quest rally point to be an exploit and perfectly fair game to do it if players wish.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I just want to get the quest over with. Now, in a modded world and I don't have a clue about the layout of the poi, I'll run it first then hit the dancing yellow exclamation. Once again, somebody wants to control how I should play my game. Grrr. Stick to election rigging. 'Cause I'm gonna do it how I want.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Melange
fat fingerd typo. should be good now (see edit history)

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

Word trees are used to filter by names, every time you reach a leaf/branch, you check if that is the building you want.

That sounds like a binary tree with words as values, no? "Word tree", afaik, is a net for predicting sentence structure, which would be pretty "irrelevant" here. May well be used for both of course..

 

But that still doesn't tell me what you're trying to solve with them; it seems you're just arguing against my "you don't index by name". What was the problem that would require indexing by POI name 1) for this feature 2) that isn't already solved in the game somehow? (quest system already knows what the POIs are, the damage tracking is missing, but doesn't have the POI name to begin with)

 

(And I said "you don't index by name" because you don't - values on a tree aren't indexes, the structure of a tree doesn't have indexes. That's why you need to seek in it to find the value. Sure, C# calls some such structures "indexers", but they're free to be silly, sadly. You might want to listen to them, I might be a purist, but hey... they can also be wrong... )