Feedback: Difficulty at lowest settings not that low

[Woodsfire]

Yeah, I know "Get gud, Scrub." Well, after 7k+ hours, I'm about as gud at this as I'm gonna get. :'D

Before 1.0, scaling difficulty down to Scavenger was a comfortable playstyle for me. Now, I'm up to Tier IV and I'm supposed to fend off over half a dozen irradiated soldiers with insane HP all at once (not to mention the adds) with a stun baton , pistol and ak (which may as well be a pipe pistol for all the so-called damage it does) all level 2 weapons in a POI that's packed as if it's infested when it supposedly is not (and this is in Pine Forest biome).

Are these balance issues or is it working as intended? In any case, I hope it levels out soon. Til then, I suppose I'll go do wimpy level quests.  

[ParadiseLostUK]

Do you know which POI it was?  I did a tier 4 in one of the army camps, I think it was called 'Goldrush' or similar and I was not prepared for the amount of soldiers.  Way more than on other tier 4's.  Safe to say, I'll be avoiding that one until I've got some better gear!

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, Woodsfire said:

Yeah, I know "Get gud, Scrub." Well, after 7k+ hours, I'm about as gud at this as I'm gonna get. :'D

Before 1.0, scaling difficulty down to Scavenger was a comfortable playstyle for me. Now, I'm up to Tier IV and I'm supposed to fend off over half a dozen irradiated soldiers with insane HP all at once (not to mention the adds) with a stun baton , pistol and ak (which may as well be a pipe pistol for all the so-called damage it does) all level 2 weapons in a POI that's packed as if it's infested when it supposedly is not (and this is in Pine Forest biome).

Are these balance issues or is it working as intended? In any case, I hope it levels out soon. Til then, I suppose I'll go do wimpy level quests.  

 

A stun baton with repulser mod is OP when dealing with radiated enemies.  The key is to keep kiting them, lay off the power attacks, and get them to fly backwards into other zombies.  At that point, they knock down the other zombies and you are controlling the situation.  Keep your stamina fresh and have an escape route, and if you can funnel them into a choke point, more power to you as you zap and stun lock them.

[d3.nephalem]

Wait, 7k+ hours?! I have 4k in Path of Exile and feels like noob, but PoE is league by itselfs. 7k is brutal amount of time.

Now 7DTD difficulty and progress is broken. My first playthrough in Alpha 22, ehm. 1.0 was horrible. 60 min day, warrior difficulty and playing as should be. Doing quests, building horde base etc. I died on the first horde night because fight all night with primitive weapons is what Fun Pimps want. Run out of stamina or ammo. Also radiated and feral zombies in tier 2 infected clear quests were common.

Second and third playtrough: ignore zombies, rush to bicycle and loot everything. Every book and magazine is important. I made simple ramp attached to some POI's attic, so i wasted no time on building horde base. AK47 on the seventh day and lucky grill knife made first horde night piece of cake. On the 28th day i have motorcycle, t6 M60, crucible and t6 Preacher gloves.
First few radiated zombies began to appear in T4 quests. All in Pine forest.

So what is broken? They made the RPG zombie survival game, where killing zombies and leveling is worst way to play game.
All this learn by looting, balance and slowing down leads only to me start playing effectively. Yes, efficiency and grind - exactly those things i sometimes hate in PoE and Diablo games.

[Stranded_Napkin]

I have noticed that the stun baton has become less effective without the points in Physician. I've maxed out the perk for batons and have zero points in the perk for knives. The machete is insanely more effective than the stun baton is even with the repulsor mod. No clue why. Just working out that way. Both are level 6 by the way.

[warmer]

I have been playing on all vanilla settings since 1.0 exp was released and it is definitely more difficult than it was before.

 

The biggest difference I think is how skills affect weapon skills and damage now vs previous versions. Previously in A21 After 3 lvls of pummel Pete the game became EASY. I feel like the knock down % chance was lessened because I would almost ALWAYS knock down a zed with a power attack to the head at lvl 3 pummel pete. Now it's not nearly as often.

[Woodsfire]

9 hours ago, ParadiseLostUK said:

Do you know which POI it was? 

It was the Red Mesa poi. Those two areas before opening the final loot room are packed with baddies. So many baddies. Infested-level number of baddies imo.

 

7 hours ago, d3.nephalem said:

Wait, 7k+ hours?!

Aye. Been playing since Alpha 12 and had a long stint of nothing but time on my hands for a while.

 

7 hours ago, Stranded_Napkin said:

I have noticed that the stun baton has become less effective without the points in Physician.

Now, that's intriguing...

 

It all just seemed overwhelming with my level of gear. I reckon it's a matter of getting used to the new ways some things are done in the game. Think I'd be used to it by now. haha

Thanks for all the feedback! Very helpful.

 

[Shinentai]

I feel 1.0 has forced me into a strength build when it comes to melee which I'm not used to... sneak triggers are insane which negates the creep and snipe approach so currently biting the bullet and hitting things. 

Baseball bat with barbed wire and fire is working well, along with a melee hoarde base since rifles and guns are pretty ineffective early on. 

I agree that an exit point is important for the occasional radiated who just won't go down..... but at the minute I just need to get over the early food and drink hump. 

[Fox]

Yes, the game is extremely unbalanced. See this topic to see the other side of the spectrum:  https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/36511-how-can-the-game-still-be-this-unbalanced-its-been-10-years/

 

Game can either become way too easy or way too difficult depending how you play, no matter the difficulty setting you set the game to. Unfortunately, the devs expect everyone to play a certain way and if you don't, you end up with one of those results. So you're either on a straight and narrow path or your enjoyment of the game gets ruined with unbalance. Who would have thought that an open world sandbox game had to be played a specific way?

 

But hey, what do I know... I'm just a kickstarter for this game. I'm sure the "experts" will chew me out and defend the game for this post.

Edited July 25 by Fox (see edit history)

[binf_shinana]

If you follow the optimal solution, it's too easy, otherwise it's extremely difficult.

 

In v1.0, the quest rewards were also nerfed, making it even more difficult for beginners (there is no room for beginners to realize that if you increase TS with adventurer skills, you can buy good weapons. The TS that corresponds to the amount of increase and the variety is a secret parameter).

 

Aside from that, this game has very high defensive power for players, so the difficulty level does not actually go up or down that much depending on the difficulty setting.
In v1.0, you can make good armor quickly, so this tendency became even stronger.
When you actually die, you die because you are overwhelmed by the number of enemies or because of overlapping debuffs, so the enemy's attack power is not a very important parameter.

Edited July 25 by binf_shinana (see edit history)

[meganoth]

20 hours ago, Woodsfire said:

Yeah, I know "Get gud, Scrub." Well, after 7k+ hours, I'm about as gud at this as I'm gonna get. :'D

Before 1.0, scaling difficulty down to Scavenger was a comfortable playstyle for me. Now, I'm up to Tier IV and I'm supposed to fend off over half a dozen irradiated soldiers with insane HP all at once (not to mention the adds) with a stun baton , pistol and ak (which may as well be a pipe pistol for all the so-called damage it does) all level 2 weapons in a POI that's packed as if it's infested when it supposedly is not (and this is in Pine Forest biome).

Are these balance issues or is it working as intended? In any case, I hope it levels out soon. Til then, I suppose I'll go do wimpy level quests.  

 

Which attribute did you mainly perk into, if at all? And are "level 2 weapons" meant to be "tier 2 weapons" or "quality 2 weapons"? Distributing your points too much into different attributes can make it much more difficult for you as your gamestage goes up but your progress in gear is distributed over the attributes

 

[ASSedOutnTN]

19 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

A stun baton with repulser mod is OP when dealing with radiated enemies.  The key is to keep kiting them, lay off the power attacks, and get them to fly backwards into other zombies.  At that point, they knock down the other zombies and you are controlling the situation.  Keep your stamina fresh and have an escape route, and if you can funnel them into a choke point, more power to you as you zap and stun lock them.

For me its the screamers, you cant get anything done at all, if i use my tier 2 pistol on radiated zed in tier 3 quest, the screamers pour in and swamp the POI, its either get out and fail or die, cause day 13 and im getting nothing but radiated zeds and screamers. Day 13 default settings in burnt biome lvl 37 game stage 90 it just too much at this stage, but you get sent here from rekt.

[Suxar]

2 hours ago, binf_shinana said:

In v1.0, the quest rewards were also nerfed, making it even more difficult for beginners (there is no room for beginners to realize that if you increase TS with adventurer skills, you can buy good weapons. The TS that corresponds to the amount of increase and the variety is a secret parameter).

Controversial statement. I didn’t play in A21, but in A20 I received weapons and armor of better quality and faster than they offered it to me as a reward. Nowadays the best reward is a set of magazines and they give it often.

Now the merchant has begun to buy weapons with installed modifications much cheaper than before, but this is not the most serious problem.