A suggestion for horde night in a17.

[Scyris]

Why not give the zombies spawned by the horde controller a much MUCH higher chance of dropping loot? I mean in a16 hordes weren't worth bothering with, and its even more so in a17 with the 2% to drop loot. Maybe 50% chance to drop loot for the gps zombies on horde night? Because to be honest, I don't see any motivation to bother sitting around killing them on horde night.

[SylenThunder]

Would be hard to code this without making separate entities for the bloodmoon hordes. Then you've got a whole lot of unnecessary duplication in the xml.

 

Currently the default value is a 2% drop.

 

On the other side of the coin, the items that are dropping are more useful. So in the end, you are very likely to be getting a similar amount of useful items now that you were before. There's just going to be a lot less junk to sift through and lag your system.

 

Also, it should be noted that the primary purpose of killing zombies is to survive, and to gain experience for leveling up. Loot is just a bonus.

People seem to forget about this fact.

[Darkaft]

For me, what is more preucupa and what I have seen is that a few zombies arrive in the horde, although I know you can change the amount of them, but they only come out during the first two or almost three hours at night and then stop No more zombies or anything. This is a good time until dawn without zombies and if you have killed them all. Does anyone know how many waves of zombies arrive by horde?

 

PD: Sorry but my english is not my language.

[Pico]

OP, you've got the priorities all back to front. A17 has switched it around.

 

Now on horde night your priority MUST be to defend your base (or to lead the horde away from it, possibly at your peril).

If you stay in your base and don't bother to fight the horde your base will fall, and you'll lose everything in it.

 

So it's not about what you gain from fighting the horde, it's more about defending stuff so you don't lose it to the horde.

[LuckyStar]

... the primary purpose of killing zombies is to survive, and to gain experience for leveling up. Loot is just a bonus.

People seem to forget about this fact.

 

Didn't you forget to say:

 

"Don't any of you have phones?"

 

Lol kidding.

Agreed about the duplication.

That's a whole new set of zeds to put in there.

 

Hopefully you're right about there being more useful items.

If I'm going to mod anything, it's going to be that loot list.

I'll make sure it's worth it on horde night.

[And no.... surviving isn't enough... I like loot!]

[KingSlayerGM]

Would be hard to code this without making separate entities for the bloodmoon hordes. Then you've got a whole lot of unnecessary duplication in the xml.

 

No.

 

Have you ever heard of an IF statement?

 

IF isHordeNight THEN dropProb= ...

 

Lol

[giltirn]

OP, you've got the priorities all back to front. A17 has switched it around.

 

Now on horde night your priority MUST be to defend your base (or to lead the horde away from it, possibly at your peril).

If you stay in your base and don't bother to fight the horde your base will fall, and you'll lose everything in it.

 

So it's not about what you gain from fighting the horde, it's more about defending stuff so you don't lose it to the horde.

 

Sadly I feel you are right. Want to protect all your crap? Just walk out naked into the night and sacrifice yourself. No point defending as you'll either lose all your crap or lose the next 3 hours rebuilding.

[RestInPieces]

People seem to forget about this fact.

 

Which is what I was saying to Trolland the other day about people seeing the game less as a survival game and more like an arpg/grinding one. Even if more loot seems like a good choice, in the end it will end up being detrimental to the experience. But each to his own.

 

Sadly I feel you are right. Want to protect all your crap? Just walk out naked into the night and sacrifice yourself. No point defending as you'll either lose all your crap or lose the next 3 hours rebuilding.

 

I find it very hard to believe that this will be the case. The zombies are after you, not your loot and this is a voxel game. Can't imagine how loot could be in danger if you place it at the right spots.

[Drunkwolf]

Sadly I feel you are right. Want to protect all your crap? Just walk out naked into the night and sacrifice yourself. No point defending as you'll either lose all your crap or lose the next 3 hours rebuilding.

 

you could i dont know......kill the zombies? protect your base?

 

to long people are use to just sitting in their safe base drinking their tea letting spikes kill the entire hoard like nothing.

 

Pimps we welcome more challenge. if people cant handle it they can turn zombies off and play build sim.

[LuckyStar]

Sadly I feel you are right. Want to protect all your crap? Just walk out naked into the night and sacrifice yourself. No point defending as you'll either lose all your crap or lose the next 3 hours rebuilding.

 

You now get a debuff when you die and can lose abilities/perks.

The patch notes also mentioned something about three of them stacking.

[Kam R.]

I'm with LuckyStar on this. Surviving isn't enough, I like loot too.

 

The death debuffs are sort of a negative enforcement not really an incentive. Will probably just lead to players doing hordes far away from their base in one of the stronger POIs. I have yet to see for myself how much effort you really have to put into defense to survive. I strongly suspect it still overall is going to be cheaper to just throw down some spikes around/in a brick or concrete POI. Why bother building something of your own to engage the horde? If it's just about surviving, I know I'll go for the cheapest solutions for sure.

 

Not denying it can be fun to try out defensive builds at a stage where getting the materials for that isn't a chore anymore, where you can "afford it" so to speak.

 

 

 

IF isHordeNight THEN dropProb= ...

 

Lol

 

IF that's possible, yeah that would be a great approach. Pair that with switching to a separate loot table during horde nights.

Then you could have certain items (schematics for end game stuff for example) only be obtainable at horde night and bam, there's a proper reason to engage if you want to progress in the game.

 

We need more risk vs. reward oriented gameplay, IMO.

[BloodDeacon]

"Will probably just lead to players doing hordes far away from their base in one of the stronger POIs."

Early on, this seems like a more than reasonable tactic. It's almost necessary when playing some of the tougher mods. If there are issues using later perks/technology to protect one's base in A17 in the long run, that is a problem that should be remedied -- but I can't imagine every bit of base-building has been looked at by the community yet.

[LuckyStar]

Will probably just lead to players doing hordes far away from their base in one of the stronger POIs.

 

I've been making a Kill Box away from my base to deal with hordes since A14.

 

Honestly, why are people so stuck on the thought that your home base has to ALSO be where you fight 7-day hordes??

 

If you build away from your base you only need the bare essentials.

Make a frame, Steel it up, spikes and turrets, and Bob's your uncle!

 

[Vaeliorin]

IF that's possible, yeah that would be a great approach. Pair that with switching to a separate loot table during horde nights.

Then you could have certain items (schematics for end game stuff for example) only be obtainable at horde night and bam, there's a proper reason to engage if you want to progress in the game.

 

We need more risk vs. reward oriented gameplay, IMO.

I've thought for a while that this would be a good approach. Have special zombies that only come out on horde night that have loot that can only be obtained from them. I even thought of going so far as to have a zombie that only spawned after you had completely wiped out the horde that was basically a loot pinata, but I don't know how much other people would like that.

 

I've been making a Kill Box away from my base to deal with hordes since A14.

 

Honestly, why are people so stuck on the thought that your home base has to ALSO be where you fight 7-day hordes??

My "starter" horde base usually isn't the same as my crafting/storage base, but I eventually like to build a new, combined base. Usually I spend the first week prepping for day 7, then week 2 looking for a nice place to live, and then the next several weeks getting my new base horde capable (though not "finished") by day 35.

 

This was my last base on day 37 (playing WotW 5.2.) As you'll note from the last picture, a few zombies did run off the edge and start digging, but I was planning on putting an area down there where I could kill zombies that fell down anyway (also spikes...I just haven't gotten that far...all that digging took a long time.)

 

I've obviously not gotten to the point of it being anything other than horde capable. Prettiness and storage/crafting (and lots more traps) are still to come.

[LuckyStar]

That's pretty interesting.

 

I didn't think anyone still used fire as a weapon.

[Looks like you modded in Embers. Nice idea!]

 

- Does that deal with the healing from Radiated zeds?

- How many light on fire?

- Can you put barbed wire on top and have it still work?

 

I might want to mod those in for fun.

[Vaeliorin]

That's pretty interesting.

 

I didn't think anyone still used fire as a weapon.

[Looks like you modded in Embers. Nice idea!]

 

- Does that deal with the healing from Radiated zeds?

- How many light on fire?

- Can you put barbed wire on top and have it still work?

 

I might want to mod those in for fun.

Those are fire traps from the initial release of War of the Walkers 5.2 (they've changed them, and they're now 3X3 instead of a single block...it's an old world.) I haven't done any real modding myself (yet...I'm bad at art, but I have some ideas that probably wouldn't have worked in Alpha 16...like an irrigation system to turn the dirt around your base into mud to slow zombies.) As far as I know, it basically just sets zombies on fire like a molotov. I haven't really done extensive testing, I just wanted to use them because I wanted something other than just spikes. Still need to string electric fences through the whole thing, add in dart traps at the inner wall, etc.

 

As for barbed wire...no idea. I used barbed wire in my initial horde base on that world and got annoyed with how much of a pain it was to repair/replace and haven't used it since.

[Kam R.]

I've been making a Kill Box away from my base to deal with hordes since A14.

 

Honestly, why are people so stuck on the thought that your home base has to ALSO be where you fight 7-day hordes??

 

Oh, I'm in no way stuck on the concept that I have to have everything in one place at all. I've been playing exactly the way you describe all the time (plus going around building random POIs for players to discover ). I'd love to actually play the one-home way for once – with it being a viable playstyle, that doesn't waste my time and resources and without the need to bury the crafting room.

[Red Eagle LXIX]

I've been making a Kill Box away from my base to deal with hordes since A14.

 

Honestly, why are people so stuck on the thought that your home base has to ALSO be where you fight 7-day hordes??

 

If you build away from your base you only need the bare essentials.

Make a frame, Steel it up, spikes and turrets, and Bob's your uncle!

Because many feel secondary horde specific bases are as bad and cheese as going to bedrock.

[Khulkhuum]

I usually build an arena for 7 day hordes and fortify at least a bit my storage base. Storage base is either a POI or digging underground.

 

First arena is rather small as the beginning hordes are not too tough. In the past used barbed wire (it's relatively cheap) and spikes. Now i mostly use wooden spikes (standing) and scrap metal spike (upside down and underneath the first, on which the Zs can walk over and get damage). Using molotovs (people always forget them and they are seriously useful) is necessary later on in the game, but early on can help too. Other weapons include bows, crossobows, hunting knife and hunting rifle. Later on mostly hunting knife/machete (for decapitation) and sniper rifle.

 

I don't think i will change my tactics here, though i will have to adapt against the hordes.

[Noompsie]

Hmm a loot game without loot? A survival game where the only way to survive is to walk out naked into the wilderness and sacrifice yourself? I guess it doesnt matter that they reduced your carrying capacity; there's not much to carry any more. Ark, here I come.

[Kalarro]

As far as I understood the change the first time they talked about it, most zombies dont drop loot, but when one does, its better/more. So the final loot per horde should be about the same value, just needing to loot a lot less.

I loved that change. I love loot but I hated needing to loot 30 zombies.

If indeed we just now dont get almost loot from a horde, it's a pitty of a change. It would have been easy to balance it to get more or less the same loot but instead a few from a lot of zombies, a lot from a few zombies.

[LuckyStar]

Because many feel secondary horde specific bases are as bad and cheese as going to bedrock.

 

Oh you have GOT to explain your logic on that one.

[i'm not buying the "many feel" part of that statement so...]

 

Let's hear it.

[Kattla]

Because to be honest, I don't see any motivation to bother sitting around killing them on horde night.

 

Me neither. I'd be happy to see a mod or an option to turn bloodmoon hordes off.

[Burakin]

Would be hard to code this without making separate entities for the bloodmoon hordes. Then you've got a whole lot of unnecessary duplication in the xml.

 

Currently the default value is a 2% drop.

 

On the other side of the coin, the items that are dropping are more useful. So in the end, you are very likely to be getting a similar amount of useful items now that you were before. There's just going to be a lot less junk to sift through and lag your system.

 

Also, it should be noted that the primary purpose of killing zombies is to survive, and to gain experience for leveling up. Loot is just a bonus.

People seem to forget about this fact.

 

mmm not sure I see that? Could [=bloodmoon] not be a general modifier to drop chance rates or quality, especially with all the fancy buff effects they seem to have build into alpha 17?

 

lol NM KingSlayerGM got there way before me

[Burakin]

Hmm a loot game without loot? A survival game where the only way to survive is to walk out naked into the wilderness and sacrifice yourself? I guess it doesnt matter that they reduced your carrying capacity; there's not much to carry any more. Ark, here I come.

 

If you're still reading: thats not completely correct: You start out lower, but can increase to more then before. It comes costly, since that would take some other benefit away - which sorta makes sense from a game design perspective.

 

The only that that this really hampers is nomad style early game (i'mm a turtler, so I can't say how much)