Question on gamestages and hordes

[HerrKingsley]

That's a combined GS of 99.

 

Personally I kept arguing for not ramping up the enemies so fast but in testing everyone kept asking for more and bigger.

 

Makes one wonder how testing was made?

Dm or actual progression?

[SnowDog1942]

That's a combined GS of 99.

 

Personally I kept arguing for not ramping up the enemies so fast but in testing everyone kept asking for more and bigger.

 

The testers are right

[Guppycur]

The testers are right

 

^^^^

[Brian9824]

Gamestages - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1572330402

Radiated Cops starting to spawn - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1572330437

Pictures of horde - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/941711796106351379/BEB146C4A11C5209A00D8B77B7D1D554405F3138/

 

So from our gamestages 3 out of 4 of us couldnt even make metal tools/weapons yet we had feral wights, radioactive cops, multiple cops, etc all spawning. Without any metal spikes nothing we could do would actually kill them. We can't even craft any medicine yet to help with fighting them.

 

Keep in mind in A16 we wouldn't see any ferals to gamestage 181 and we got about 6 of them alive at once, plus multiple radiated including at least 1 cop.

[thraka]

That's a combined GS of 99.

 

Personally I kept arguing for not ramping up the enemies so fast but in testing everyone kept asking for more and bigger.

 

Any game I ever dev'd, the testers were hardcore experts who knew the game better than anybody else and knew and exploited every possible trick. They were not the sort of people to consult for tuning the game to normal users.

[SnowDog1942]

Any game I ever dev'd, the testers were hardcore experts who knew the game better than anybody else and knew and exploited every possible trick. They were not the sort of people to consult for tuning the game to normal users.

 

I believe the testers know they are hardcore experts and give balance recommendations with that in mind as they give their recommendation.

 

I love it harder.... heheheheeh

[thraka]

I believe the testers know they are hardcore experts and give balance recommendations with that in mind as they give their recommendation.

 

I love it harder.... heheheheeh

 

Yes, that's my point. You would use that sort of input for tuning a hard mode. It would be a bell curve. Your default difficulty would very likely be a cakewalk for testers, because they were literally paid to play the game every day for hours for months. They have skills more casual players would NEVER develop, and if they were expected to, they would just not play.

 

Go look at the global achievements for some real eye openers. Compare how many people have killed 100 zombies to how many people have killed 500 or more. It's a pretty drastic falloff. Check out how many people ever reached 200 wellness, or lived 1250 minutes in a single game. We're talking a small percentage of players.

[Guppycur]

I did the testing thing for a few months.

 

...if you think they're able to actually play the game, you are mistaken.

 

Get new build, run through checklist, get assignments, test, report results. Do it again the next day.

 

And the next. And the next.

[Blake_]

Yes, that's my point. You would use that sort of input for tuning a hard mode. It would be a bell curve. Your default difficulty would very likely be a cakewalk for testers, because they were literally paid to play the game every day for hours for months. They have skills more casual players would NEVER develop, and if they were expected to, they would just not play.

 

Go look at the global achievements for some real eye openers. Compare how many people have killed 100 zombies to how many people have killed 500 or more. It's a pretty drastic falloff. Check out how many people ever reached 200 wellness, or lived 1250 minutes in a single game. We're talking a small percentage of players.

 

This game has its own tune. It has never intended to be easy nor "balanced to ease the way of new players". With the current pace, which I, (day 15, level 49 with no base, 768 zds killed, 6 clear quests completed) find perfect, a player can only dream of surviving a horde without some friends and lots of defenses. Then the dawn breaks and they are kind of easy to kill because not all of them run.

 

Would you want a Dark Souls with an easy peezy mode? Come on ,play creative or a lesser difficult, but let 7dtd be 7dtd. Wouldn't hurt to have npcs with safe places to rent though haha.

[Feycat]

This game has its own tune. It has never intended to be easy nor "balanced to ease the way of new players". With the current pace, which I, (day 15, level 49 with no base, 768 zds killed, 6 clear quests completed) find perfect, a player can only dream of surviving a horde without some friends and lots of defenses. Then the dawn breaks and they are kind of easy to kill because not all of them run.

 

Would you want a Dark Souls with an easy peezy mode? Come on ,play creative or a lesser difficult, but let 7dtd be 7dtd. Wouldn't hurt to have npcs with safe places to rent though haha.

 

That would be great if the difficulty settings actually worked.

[thraka]

This game has its own tune. It has never intended to be easy nor "balanced to ease the way of new players". With the current pace, which I, (day 15, level 49 with no base, 768 zds killed, 6 clear quests completed) find perfect, a player can only dream of surviving a horde without some friends and lots of defenses. Then the dawn breaks and they are kind of easy to kill because not all of them run.

 

Would you want a Dark Souls with an easy peezy mode? Come on ,play creative or a lesser difficult, but let 7dtd be 7dtd. Wouldn't hurt to have npcs with safe places to rent though haha.

 

(shrug) If you say so, bro. If I want hard I play a Quake variant or somesuch where there is always someone who can throw me a sound beating if that's what I need. I am not much interested in 'hard' PVE, in that it's trivial to progam a game to kick my ass. That being said, seems to me the guys who want it hard die a lot....

[ReginaSilver]

Yeah, the hordes grow FAST.

But i honestly see no problem with it, cause we have ALL the options in the world to cheese the game into oblivion if we really fail.

 

I used hundreds of spikes, around 400 rounds of ammo, a few walls and a handful of mines to DESTROY my first bloodmoon horde... for the next i will crank it up from 32 to 64 to not run out of zeds so fast.

[Brian9824]

Yeah, the hordes grow FAST.

But i honestly see no problem with it, cause we have ALL the options in the world to cheese the game into oblivion if we really fail.

 

I used hundreds of spikes, around 400 rounds of ammo, a few walls and a handful of mines to DESTROY my first bloodmoon horde... for the next i will crank it up from 32 to 64 to not run out of zeds so fast.

 

The first horde is the EASY one, around the 2nd horde is where the gamestage changes kick in and it goes from mostly normal zombies to mostly ferals and irradiated ones.

 

Anyways I think the simplest solution would be to make the gamestages more like A16, and then make the difficulty mode have a VASTLY higher increase in GS. So playing an easier difficulty makes your gamestage change far slower, playing a higher difficulty makes it ramp up far faster.

 

So instead of

 

scavengerGameDifficultyBonus="1.0"

adventurerGameDifficultyBonus="1.2"

nomadGameDifficultyBonus="1.5"

warriorGameDifficultyBonus="1.7"

survivalistGameDifficultyBonus="2.0"

insaneGameDifficultyBonus="2.5"

 

Something like

 

scavengerGameDifficultyBonus="1"

adventurerGameDifficultyBonus="2"

nomadGameDifficultyBonus="4"

warriorGameDifficultyBonus="6"

survivalistGameDifficultyBonus="8"

insaneGameDifficultyBonus="10"

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Yeah, the hordes grow FAST.

But i honestly see no problem with it, cause we have ALL the options in the world to cheese the game into oblivion if we really fail.

 

I used hundreds of spikes, around 400 rounds of ammo, a few walls and a handful of mines to DESTROY my first bloodmoon horde... for the next i will crank it up from 32 to 64 to not run out of zeds so fast.

 

That is the biggest problem though, if your only option is to cheese the zombies to survive then their is something fundamentally wrong. Aside from the intense spawning the difficulty feels spot on as does everything else

[toxicbubble]

I'm absolutely for the game being difficult, and it already is much harder in a lot of ways that seem challenging but not ridiculous. However, when you're getting stuff on the first horde that absolutely obliterates you and 2 days prep in minutes with what feels like zero chance, I think something isn't quite right. I want the difficult to ramp up as I get stronger, however right now it feels like it starts at day 7 with a 9.5/10 and goes from there. We simply don't have the tools or the levels to unlock skills until much later on that can allow us to deal with multiple ferals and cops on what's supposed to be normal difficulty. We're not even bringing a knife to a gunfight, we're walking barefisted into a nuclear bomb, on the first night, it's going to get worse from there.

 

I think there's a happy medium between A16 and A17 where maybe instead of going from spawning at gamestage 540 to 59, irradiated ferals could show up somewhere in between those two.

 

 

Again, I don't mind it being difficult, but right now (with 4 low level players in a normal difficulty game), it didn't feel like we even had a chance. I want to see a bit of a ramp instead of an outright wall.

[Dazrael21]

I'm absolutely for the game being difficult, and it already is much harder in a lot of ways that seem challenging but not ridiculous. However, when you're getting stuff on the first horde that absolutely obliterates you and 2 days prep in minutes with what feels like zero chance, I think something isn't quite right. I want the difficult to ramp up as I get stronger, however right now it feels like it starts at day 7 with a 9.5/10 and goes from there. We simply don't have the tools or the levels to unlock skills until much later on that can allow us to deal with multiple ferals and cops on what's supposed to be normal difficulty. We're not even bringing a knife to a gunfight, we're walking barefisted into a nuclear bomb, on the first night, it's going to get worse from there.

 

I think there's a happy medium between A16 and A17 where maybe instead of going from spawning at gamestage 540 to 59, irradiated ferals could show up somewhere in between those two.

 

 

Again, I don't mind it being difficult, but right now (with 4 low level players in a normal difficulty game), it didn't feel like we even had a chance. I want to see a bit of a ramp instead of an outright wall.

 

It does feel like in the starting stages the difficulty got a lot steeper. Personally, I loved it, 'cos it was a real challenge. But I can see how it would put a casual off. They'd maybe invest just enough time to reach Day 7, and then get absolutely smashed. We're starting a private server next week, and I know some of the lads I play with are in for a shock

[Brian9824]

It really sounds like we need a slider for options to control horde difficulty. It could take your gamestage and multiply it to control horde difficulty so people can keep the zombie toughness and horde toughness as two different values.

 

The problem is in A16 that was possible via manipulating the calculations as the GS was high enough, now with the GS so low you can't really do anything. I mean a difference of 30 levels of gamestages is the difference between ferals and radiateds spawning where as in A16 there was a 400 GS level difference so you had time to build up before the radiated zombies.

 

As an example last night tried to fight 1 radiated feral wight at level 22, pumped 60 hunting rifle rounds into him and he shrugged them all off. Didn't have an AK or anything harder hitting, his damn regen made it next to impossible to kill.

[Guppycur]

@B

 

So by Gazz's absence, and his posts in other threads, I think it's safe to say that the GS's are intended. I'm still on the other side of the fence with you on it, I quite like it, but I am totally surprised, too.

[LordoftheMoo]

@B

 

So by Gazz's absence, and his posts in other threads, I think it's safe to say that the GS's are intended. I'm still on the other side of the fence with you on it, I quite like it, but I am totally surprised, too.

 

Whelp.

[fallonjeff]

Ok here was my experience:

 

My group (4 of us) were at a combined gamestage of 103. One guy had just hit level 20 on the night of day 7. The horde decimated us. They quickly drove through tons of spikes and barbed wire and proceed to destroy just about everything. The new pathing makes them way scary (cool). The problem was the feral zombies in the FIRST horde! We had irradiated cops, and spiders! We barely survived, but had no were near the tools we needed to defend ourselves well.

 

Day 9 things got worse, We all reached level 20 and stared to enjoy using tools! Then a screamer found us. She called in cops, football players and a feral lady that killed two of us fast. Bows and clubs just aren't enough to do this. The screamer was normal, and quite a fun mechanic, but what she called in was more than we could deal with in my opinion. It seems that it takes luck with looting to get sledges and guns is the only way you could survive this. This all "feels" like high end/ end game class zombies on day 7 and 9. The game can't really grow when we see these already, except for maybe more zombies, but it's just so difficult right now.

 

I love A17, and all the changes it brought. I DO believe that the gamestage mechanic is causing zombies too high too fast. We have been playing this game together for several Alpha versions (since A11 I think). I don't mind "loosing" to poor perpetration, but we had full health, dcent spike and barbed wire defense, and it all fell to crap when the zombies puked on it and destroyed all of it.

 

Please take a look at the gamestage to ensure this is what is intended. Thanks for all the hard work on this game. It sure is fun most of the time.

[Jarod_Silverstar]

Here is my recent encounter...

Level 25, Day 19. I had died twice earlier in the day after being first caught in a POI by a wandering horde and then killed by a football player outside the POI that stunned me and then beat the snot out of me before I could do anything to really fight back. So my my gamestage was probably high 40ish at best at that point.

Five minutes before nightfall I get another wandering horde consisting of ~20 mostly bloated walkers and the fat ladies. Took them less than an hour game time to beat through double cobblestone walls and knock down my platform. I think I managed to kill one, but since I only had a bow and arrows and they moved around so much it was probably lucky to get the one I did.

Anyway, after my platform fell, I was able to run and get away from them since it was not a bloodmoon horde that tracks you. Hid out until morning and on the way back I run into 2 feral wights. At least I think it was only 2, died too fast to be sure. My bedroll is almost a KM away so running back to get my bag I get hit again by the second feral wight. Another death but at least both of the wights are gone so I was able to get back, get my stuff and clean up the others still hanging around. About half of those left had arrows stuck in them, so at least I was hitting things while they were making powder of my base walls....

In the end however, I don't have nearly enough materials to rebuild what I had for a base so will need to figure out some new options for the next couple of nights.

I have been playing since A10 or so with over 1700 hours in the game. On A16 I played the second hardest setting in SP and tended to do well. I knew a lot of changes happened so I went back to nomad difficultly to get a feel for the updates and starting to wonder if that is too high for now...

 

At the moment I FIRMLY believe the game is poorly balanced for single players. Considering this was a wandering horde and not a bloodmoon spawn it seems that was way too overpowered.

Unless there is some serious rebalancing that happens soon, I think a lot of the more casual players will quit for other games that are not as frustrating.

[Brian9824]

Still hoping this gets changed

[wolfhorse]

go bump yourself, just because you don't like an opinion doesn'y mean it should be censored

[wolfhorse]

Roland probably read it and say you need to learn to adapt(ie learn to play better) like he did in another thread.

 

saying "get good" or "learn to play" or "play better" is assinine and robs you of any credibility. new players are gonna be the new MONEY for the FPs so maybe you need to give them a CHANCE to learn to play. this is a game. it's supposed to be fun not a way to prove your superiority just because you can't in any other way.