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Is alpha 17 hardcore, unbalanced or boring ?


nickdaska

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Before i start explaining what i mean by that let me say that I am not a hardcore gamer my self and I understand (and respect) people who say its to hard but I thing they over reacting, thats not the real problem. I have not yet played the firsts weeks horde night (I am in day 6) so have that in your mind wile reading. The reason for that is that I play for a few hours and then it get’s boring.

I play in default with just some small changes: zombies never run, 18 hours day and loot abundance 150%. So far in than settings I haven't had big problems although I died way more times than in alpha 16 (in early game days). What I find to be a problem is that I have eat like a bodybuilder in order to keep my stamina up (for 10 seconds ). When I saw that your food bar was actually your stamina bar the first that came in to my mine was (oh this is stupid), the fun pimps said that they want to make the game realistic right ? So whats realistic about that ? Wouldn't be more logical to lets say if you haven't eaten for a day or so to loose 25% of your stamina for “x” hours ?

 

An other thing is that I have to wait for 0,5 seconds or so that the stone axe hit the target again. Why

would you do that ? Let me get this straight, you had to made a repeatedly task more time consuming and that its supposedly make the game hardcore and not boring, realy ?

 

 

And that's not the only stupid thing in this alpha. Wile I was in doors waiting for the night to pass I hear a Screamer what I didn't mention is that it was day 3 (realy fun pimps ?). i didn't die and i manage to kill her, and the horde later but why would I have to lose time (lets say it was day time) in the firs week for that stuff? I have herd people saying about dog hordes in day 4 or so and many other difficult zombies tha should not be spooning that early in the game.

 

For closure let me explaine in a few words why I put this title, I don't believe the alpha 17 is that hard (for what I have seen so far ) but its is defiantly unbalanced to the point it gets boring and frustrating !

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Screamers where always there from day one if you managed to get enough heat early on in A16 already. Can´t defend vs a small horde? Tone down your heat. Makes sense to me. Unless the heat map changed, but so far i can use a torch and a campfire, without screamers. Forge/campfire/torch will ofc trigger a screamer for example, same as it was in A16

 

The early dog/wolve packs need to go. Staff and Fanbois can brabble about them not beeing hard and beeing able to see them early enough (wich is pure luck, you can´t always see them in time and often enough they are silent, propably a bug) all day, such a random cheap surprise challenge has to go.

 

No packs during the first 5 days or so is needed. Had one day 2 in my first two tries. On day 3 in my latest start. If this is too easy for someone they can mod them in.

 

Or they change it, that it depends on the difficulty at wich day they start to spawn.

 

Right now, those packs make the argument "Play on lower difficulty if it is too hard" invalid.

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The early dog/wolve packs need to go. Staff and Fanbois can brabble about them not beeing hard and beeing able to see them early enough (wich is pure luck, you can´t always see them in time and often enough they are silent, propably a bug) all day, such a random cheap surprise challenge has to go.

 

No packs during the first 5 days or so is needed. Had one day 2 in my first two tries. On day 3 in my latest start. If this is too easy for someone they can mod them in.

 

Or they change it, that it depends on the difficulty at wich day they start to spawn.

 

Right now, those packs make the argument "Play on lower difficulty if it is too hard" invalid.

 

I think the wolf packs are nothing, and I've been dying repeatedly to all kinds of stuff. I got attacked and only had a few pistol rounds and a club and managed to kill them all and my reaction was "oh good, free meat". As long as you backpedal and use power attacks timed properly a wolf pack is not really a problem even at low level. To be really safe, keep some bandages on you, which aren't hard to get.

 

I haven't experienced a dog pack yet on A17, but individual dogs haven't been much of an issue.

 

All of that said, they should probably be less common than they are, as I've seen one in the first few days on most new maps, which should probably be less consistent to get.

 

Before i start explaining what i mean by that let me say that I am not a hardcore gamer my self and I understand (and respect) people who say its to hard but I thing they over reacting, thats not the real problem. I have not yet played the firsts weeks horde night (I am in day 6) so have that in your mind wile reading. The reason for that is that I play for a few hours and then it get’s boring.

I play in default with just some small changes: zombies never run, 18 hours day and loot abundance 150%. So far in than settings I haven't had big problems although I died way more times than in alpha 16 (in early game days). What I find to be a problem is that I have eat like a bodybuilder in order to keep my stamina up (for 10 seconds ). When I saw that your food bar was actually your stamina bar the first that came in to my mine was (oh this is stupid), the fun pimps said that they want to make the game realistic right ? So whats realistic about that ? Wouldn't be more logical to lets say if you haven't eaten for a day or so to loose 25% of your stamina for “x” hours ?

 

An other thing is that I have to wait for 0,5 seconds or so that the stone axe hit the target again. Why

would you do that ? Let me get this straight, you had to made a repeatedly task more time consuming and that its supposedly make the game hardcore and not boring, realy ?

 

 

And that's not the only stupid thing in this alpha. Wile I was in doors waiting for the night to pass I hear a Screamer what I didn't mention is that it was day 3 (realy fun pimps ?). i didn't die and i manage to kill her, and the horde later but why would I have to lose time (lets say it was day time) in the firs week for that stuff? I have herd people saying about dog hordes in day 4 or so and many other difficult zombies tha should not be spooning that early in the game.

 

For closure let me explaine in a few words why I put this title, I don't believe the alpha 17 is that hard (for what I have seen so far ) but its is defiantly unbalanced to the point it gets boring and frustrating !

 

I kicked A16 to the curb and back to the point where I started upping the zombie spawns and whatnot via config files, and even I agree with all of your points except the last.

 

The one that I hesitated to agree with was the one with the screamer - I don't think they need to go or be nerfed, but I do think they should tweak it somehow. It's excessive to have a constant stream of screamers show up due to a magic sense of "heat" from afar by zombies early game. When you're more established it just becomes a tedious chore to go clean up the screamers and their friends every few minutes, and you don't really have the option to not deal with that as the forge is essential.

 

Perhaps if the game mechanic of "heat" is literally meant to be heat in the scientific sense, there could be ways to counteract it? Maybe, for instance, there could be some action you could take at a forge to temporarily reduce the amount of heat it puts out while allowing it to continue to operate. This way the penalty would be more likely to affect people when they are AFK, multitasking, or outside of their base doing something unrelated while leaving a forge running.

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yea had a vomit cop at first mission I did.. day 3 every house has sleepers even at easy setting it is a die fest way unbalanced

The game is an absolute mess from a balance and agenda perspective. This is not what I bought 4+ years and 1500+ hrs ago. I cant believe I waited a year for this update. Quit making this a FPS zombie killer. But TFP doesnt care because they have all of our money. They will make the game they want and the game many of us would not have paid for. Very sad.

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I think the wolf packs are nothing, and I've been dying repeatedly to all kinds of stuff. I got attacked and only had a few pistol rounds and a club and managed to kill them all and my reaction was "oh good, free meat". As long as you backpedal and use power attacks timed properly a wolf pack is not really a problem even at low level.

 

i agree, this was an example though what i ment was that it neads balance and also not all pepole have the same skils, you and me maybe finds this easy but others may struggle so TFP realy needs to address this

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Stuff seems slow to me, I would like the pace of gathering materials to be a bit faster.

 

I think the fun pimps definitely have a few months of tweaks and bug fixes and balancing ahead of them, but overall, I think A17 is a smashing success.

 

- P

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Isn't it the job of the moderator to ban trolls, not to actually be a troll?

 

troll? That was a joke. I guess times are tense so I'll help:

 

Madmole is a body builder.

Madmole is a developer.

People have been wondering why the developers would change food and stamina to the way it is now.

 

Now go back and re-read my post along with the portion quoted and try laughing instead of aggroing.

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troll? That was a joke. I guess times are tense so I'll help:

 

Madmole is a body builder.

Madmole is a developer.

People have been wondering why the developers would change food and stamina to the way it is now.

 

Now go back and re-read my post along with the portion quoted and try laughing instead of aggroing.

 

I mean, he is known as Trolland. Jk bud lol, lighten up man. living life aggroing on jokes is a bad way to live.

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I wouldn’t describe A17 hardcoreish...after changing my play style from A16 (A16 mods) it feels easy...

But I’m not playing on insane yet...so...I could be wrong.

 

There is still a lot of balancing stuff to do and I’m very excited what the next build change and the build after and so on...

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

It's more tedious, not harder.

 

 

Because of balancing issues? I would sign that.

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I cant agree with that statement. The only issue is that ppl still play A17 like A16 and thats the problem. When you start approach to A17 as a "new" game you will fint out that A17 is easy...just to learn use proper skill and perks. Now you are able be lvl 50 in day 7 without problem. Default setting 90 min day and you can do this. Try use your club and smash those zombies into head. Just 2 power hits and they are dead. Loot only food and water, thats not hard too. Just quickly run from poi to another and thats it. Zombies didnt act same as A16 so you can go closer and hit them. They will not hit you back for miles away like in A16...Just try to adapt and learn a new way.

 

Ofc some features need tweak a bit, for example dogs and silent killers from behind, but game is fine and better in overall point of view

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Mostly a tedious grind so far.

 

POIs can be a challenge, but there's no incentive to doing them before you're clad in steel and holding an AK. Horde night is tougher without a decent base, but you can just sit it out on a roof, twiddling your thumbs for 20 mins.

 

Doesn't matter, I assume it will be changed heavily in the near future.

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The joke is that i perceived nearly no Difficulty difference between a Vanilla start and a start with 15 additional Skillpoints and a Bicycle from scratch on.

 

Only the pain was much less

 

Btw 5 Deaths in my Death is Death games

1x Vulure bug

2x Mining (Digging in Desert looks like suicide now)

1x "WTF, Chainsaw, damn make DAMAGE ..... AAAAAAAAAAA"

 

1x "Ok this pig i kill with my Sledgehammer, have 30 Hp, must be enough"

 

 

(Dont count the first few ones fresh in A17 i died by "out of stamina")

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It's about right in my opinion remembering that some things are bugged and are adding to the difficulty such as iron vein textures being impossible to see.

 

Here is the thing, players of this game that want a challenge have been changing game settings and xmls for many versions. No one ever complained about that. Now that players who want to play a peaceful crafting sandbox have to change game settings and xmls, there is chaos on the forums.

 

There are so many survival sandbox games that let you chill and do whatever you like in your base and those dev teams have way more resources to throw at that type of gameplay, hats off to TFP for focusing more on a pure survival game as their base game. People have options to play either way in any case.

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It's about right in my opinion remembering that some things are bugged and are adding to the difficulty such as iron vein textures being impossible to see.

 

Here is the thing, players of this game that want a challenge have been changing game settings and xmls for many versions. No one ever complained about that. Now that players who want to play a peaceful crafting sandbox have to change game settings and xmls, there is chaos on the forums.

 

There are so many survival sandbox games that let you chill and do whatever you like in your base and those dev teams have way more resources to throw at that type of gameplay, hats off to TFP for focusing more on a pure survival game as their base game. People have options to play either way in any case.

 

^ Completely agree.

 

The game is finally challenging again. The first time in 2 year I've actually enjoyed playing the first week of the game (didn't get further, yet).

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...let me explaine in a few words why I put this title, I don't believe the alpha 17 is that hard (for what I have seen so far ) but its is defiantly unbalanced to the point it gets boring and frustrating !

 

Hey OP, I agree. I have about 1400 hrs in the game, the game is not particularly difficult, its just monotonous. Its a re-roll of the same content but with different rules.

 

I was surprised with the direction the devs went with A17. I remember Ark becoming popular during A12 and when the A13 overhaul was released we saw a game which used many Ark-style mechanics. And while the devs tried to be more like Ark, they didn't fully grasp what gave Ark its longevity(even in single player or co-op).

 

Many of the updates we've seen over the last few years seem to be based around a central goal of making the game last as long as possible before you get bored. That's a good thing, but there's a couple ways to go about it:

 

1. Don't expand the content and instead put everything behind level gates and reduce loot and add new debuffs, therefore making the same game take longer.

 

2. Expand the content, even presenting near-impossible challenges. The devs seem to like Ark, but missed the whole part where Ark's longevity isn't based on level-gating, its based on having certain areas of the map occupied by things you could never overcome without spending days, weeks, or sometimes months preparing. You could still visit those places and get a few things if you were cautious and lucky, but you experienced real fear knowing that something vastly outleveling you was around the corner.

 

A16 was a good game, but I guess I hoped for longevity in the form of difficult challenges....I dunno, maybe bandit hideouts where the further away from 0,0 you got, the more powerful weapons they would use and the better loot you could get. Or the more powerful and mutated the zombies would become. I feel like instead the game is in a perpetual state of receiving graphical updates to keep up with the current year, as well as level gating existing content, and introducing old bugs.

 

In other words I don't see them moving forward, I see them rolling the dice over and over, reinventing themselves instead of building on what they had, while breaking and changing things that weren't broken or didn't need to be changed, but ultimately not making much progress. Imagine if they stuck with the A13 or even A12 foundation, fixed the bugs, and focused only on new content and challenges.

 

Maybe we can wait another 1.5 and see "Hey, get ready for A18, we rolled the dice again and changed the mechanics, get ready to do the same things but in a different way, you get a diabetes debuff when you drink a jar of honey, btw the game is only $4.99 this time."

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The answer to the title is all 3. It depends on your playstyle and settings. The thing Im hoping will happen in gold is that the issues that affect gameplay style will all be changeable in the options page. Eg. Zombies dig - Zombie Block Damage % - Zombie Aggro Range etc.

 

That way we can tailor the world to our particular game style - underground bases - run and gun - Fortress bases - stealth nomad - etc.

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This

 

The answer to the title is all 3. It depends on your playstyle and settings. The thing Im hoping will happen in gold is that the issues that affect gameplay style will all be changeable in the options page. Eg. Zombies dig - Zombie Block Damage % - Zombie Aggro Range etc.

 

That way we can tailor the world to our particular game style - underground bases - run and gun - Fortress bases - stealth nomad - etc.

 

 

I agree. To me it is easier at the start because melee works for me in A17, I never could get it to work right in previous alphas. When your gamestage gets really high, most enemies are feral and irradiated, more so than A16 it seems.

 

I have over 1200 hours in the game, so I think A17, is challenging, but not to hard. A new player would probably wildly disagree. So it really is all subjective to the player.

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relax man the guy was making a joke and i was making a joke in the first place so no harm done !

 

Even with explanation it took me 30 seconds to get it. Perhaps I am lacking in the humor department. Unfortunately picking up tone from text is nigh on impossible and given the tense atmosphere on these forums I interpreted it as snarky. If you read this Roland, I apologize for leaping to the wrong conclusion.

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