What is up with the "Kill Teams"? [Alpha 17 Super Difficult Wandering Encounters]

[Vechs]

I'm just curious what's up with these. They are rare enough that I wonder if it's a bug. I'm mostly just looking for confirmation that, yes, these are intended to be in the game before I give further feedback on them.

 

Examples of KILL TEAMS:

(These are on difficulty 2, server is difficulty 1)

 

1) Working on my base in a random open grassy field, something like day 4. About to build the door to my base, ironically think "Better get this door up before some random zombie wanders in." As I am literally placing the door and rotating it, TWELVE FOOTBALL ZOMBIES run into my small house and I have a very bad day.

 

2) Different save file. Wandering on an empty road, not much in sight anywhere, no prefabs. Forget what day, I think it was day 9. Suddenly FOUR ZOMBIES BEARS AND SIX ZOMBIE DOGS come tearing ass at me, and I have a very bad day.

 

3) Multiplayer patron server. Just chilling at my castle, in an open field, no nearby prefabs. Hear people on discord freaking out, there is a group of TEN FERAL WOLVES attacking a wall of my base.

 

I have really mixed feelings on these. Part of me likes the very rare super mega death encounter, but at the same time they are bustedly unfair and will kill anyone who happens to not be standing on top of a building already, or walking around with blocks in their hand ready to noob-pillar to safety. I always liked the Day 5 dog packs, but these encounters I have described are way beyond the threat level of 3-5 zombie dogs.

 

So before any more is said about these "Kill Teams", are they even supposed to be happening?

[sinda]

hey veches <3

 

the specialized wandering hordes started in at least a16 (can't recall a15). most common were military hordes and the mixed animal ones.

have only seen normal mixed zombert wandering hordes myself on a17, but i've only got a small bit of normal gameplay in so far.

[myrkana]

Sounds like you're just unlucky On our 120 minute day server we're on day 6 and we've seen mostly normal hordes, most we've seen is a dog horde or two.

 

What was your gamestage? Some of those sound like higher gamestage or just plain bad luck xD

[Zourin]

I've gotten Football hordes, dog and bear hordes, dire wolf & wolf hordes, and a military horde.

The mechanic for having these kill squads dates back a long time as a "Cup Check" to make you aware horde night is coming. I think as far back as A9 maybe. You always had to prepare for the dogs coming for you on day 5 or 6. I don't think we need the reminder anymore, and with the new death penalty, the kill squad hordes are just cheap.

 

I was literally checking my perk requirements after walking out six steps from the trader. when a pack of direwolves pretty much just step up and murder em. This was literally a day after I came out of my desert mine, took a look around, and there was literally a zombie bear and pack of dogs right on top of me. This isn't a challenge, this is cheap and stupid. They aren't reminding me of anything, they aren't on a schedule.

 

The only one that isn't cheap is the military horde, and its actually kinda fun to throw down with these guys when it's daylight. The stupid part is that they came in at 6am AFTER horde night. The other 'permarun' encounters are not so much fun with the current run/stamina/encumberance system in play.

[sinda]

you can check your own gamestage by typing simply gamestage in the debug console. you can enable it so others on your server can check it, but i'm not sure where you'd do it.

 

the server owner of the one i play on does that for his players, everyone gets a kick out of being able to see for themselves.

[Euzio]

Think there is some balance issues with regards to the Zeds in general especially in the early game now. With the level gating implemented, it seems we're having to fight certain Zeds that are appearing way before we have the skills or weapons to handle them.

[sadpickle]

I dislike the dog/wolf hordes as they seem to always come when you're deep in a POI and beeline straight towards the player. If there's only one way in they're blocking the way out and the player is guaranteed dead.

[JCrook1028]

you can check your own gamestage by typing simply gamestage in the debug console. you can enable it so others on your server can check it, but i'm not sure where you'd do it.

 

the server owner of the one i play on does that for his players, everyone gets a kick out of being able to see for themselves.

 

No need for the console to check gamestage anymore. CLick the MP icon on your charactewr screen and the info is there.

 

Zombie bear/dog mixed wandering hordes were in A16 at very early gamestages as well. 4 zombie bears in it is new tho, it was only 1 in 16.

[Zourin]

Think there is some balance issues with regards to the Zeds in general especially in the early game now. With the level gating implemented, it seems we're having to fight certain Zeds that are appearing way before we have the skills or weapons to handle them.

 

You do not "handle" direwolf, bear, or dog pack unless you're high level and in armor, and in good health, and only then I give you a 50/50 unless you somehow shake them off and take headshots on them one at a time. If you're doing open field work (stones, trees, etc), you aren't wearing armor because of the stamina drain: You simply are dead. If you are in a POI, you SHOULD be wearing armor, but you're dead anyway as you bleed out trying to get away on a bike or something.

[AshaMarie]

It would be nice if hordes gave a warning and spawned further away from player. I actually had a rage quit from this once cause game had froze for a moment as they spawned in and killed me.

[Feycat]

You do not "handle" direwolf, bear, or dog pack unless you're high level and in armor, and in good health, and only then I give you a 50/50 unless you somehow shake them off and take headshots on them one at a time. If you're doing open field work (stones, trees, etc), you aren't wearing armor because of the stamina drain: You simply are dead. If you are in a POI, you SHOULD be wearing armor, but you're dead anyway as you bleed out trying to get away on a bike or something.

 

Why would you ever take off your armor? In a game where you know what zombies are more bountiful, more aggressive, and hordes are more frequent?

 

Keep frames on your bar at all times. The moment you see a dog or wolf horde (and seriously, your head should be on a swivel at all times now) then frame up next to the closest tree or structure. The frame will stick to the tree/structure, so if the dogs take out the bottom blocks you won't fall. Then shoot at your leisure.

 

You don't have to be great at the game, you just have to be extremely paranoid and cautious. Very rarely have the huge hordes got a drop on me without me seeing them. The biggest problem is that there's 20+ zombies and with their health it takes the entire day to kill them all.

[Pico]

Blimmen heck. A footballer horde is utterly unreasonable at any gamestage (as is the dogs+bears horde).

 

I hornestly do wonder at times if TFP are just a bunch of sadists. They're certainly not being kind when they dream up these things.

 

Luckily the dogs and wolves have had a major nerf in A17. Haven't yet faced a dire wolf to make any comparison there.

[Zourin]

I hornestly do wonder at times if TFP are just a bunch of sadists.

 

Have you even met Roland? I'm pretty sure if his bed ever creaked he'd tell it to HTFU.

[Kam R.]

Besides the clone swarm wandering hordes I also noticed some interesting new combination hordes. My favorite was a combination of 1 dog that arrived first, making me think "Oh crap, time to run and then not suck so much with the bow, there's a dog pack on my a..". But nope. Just the one dog. Then 10 Fat old ladies and their flexible twink boyfriends came running at me through the mist. Or jumping at me rather as the boyfriends where the Spider Steves. It looks like fleas jumping on Pig Pen's head from a distance.

[Guest]

There should just be some sort of subtle auditory or visual clue for these hordes. Current implementation feels like a bad dungeon master trying to ruin their players' fun.

[Khulkhuum]

After recently exploring the big hotel POI i eventually did manage to clear, i have some serious beef against wolves. I was like on the 3rd or 4th floor and the POI itself had some "walk around the edges" wandering to access further, which meant i was "in the open" a few times. Surprisingly, the wolf way on the ground somehow saw me and decided to run up to my floor... Alerting his friends... My bad for making a shortcut to that floor through the main staircase (which initially was messed up), but still... Lock on player, no matter where he's at.

 

Not to mention that when i died, the wolves stayed in the building and had to off them almost dying again.

[Vechs]

There should just be some sort of subtle auditory or visual clue for these hordes. Current implementation feels like a bad dungeon master trying to ruin their players' fun.

 

I think this will be my chief issue with these Kill Teams. They are basically silent, and you don't know about them until they are right on top of you. If you had even 10 seconds of warning, they would be a lot more fair. Well. They are still unfair BS, they'd just be LESS unfair. But that's fine, I don't mind occasionally running into OP enemies. It's just they effectively spawn on top of you with no warning, that's the issue.

[LuckyStar]

Why would you ever take off your armor? In a game where you know what zombies are more bountiful, more aggressive, and hordes are more frequent?

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

A tiny bit extra stamina isn't worth becoming fodder.

 

 

There should just be some sort of subtle auditory or visual clue for these hordes.

 

I wouldn't mind that at all, especially for lower difficulty levels.

Maybe remove the warning for harder levels?

 

Yeah +1 for your idea.

[Scyris]

you can check your own gamestage by typing simply gamestage in the debug console. you can enable it so others on your server can check it, but i'm not sure where you'd do it.

 

the server owner of the one i play on does that for his players, everyone gets a kick out of being able to see for themselves.

 

You can also just press "i" to bring up the party/ally window and it lists everyones gamestage thats connected including your own even if your by yourself. I don't think its totally gamestage related, the game has a habit in a17 of spawning crap right by you at the worse times, its to the point that it happens often enough that I swear it has to be coded to do it on purpose. Cleared that poi? next thing you know 5+ zombies spawn on the roof and come busting in without making a sound like super ninja's. One guy had a pack of wolves spawn up on the roof of the poi he was in, no warning, and he didn't even know they were there till he was dead as they didn't make a single sound other than when they started attacking him. Stuff like this happenes daily to me in a17e, its to the point that it has to be programmed to do it on purpose because of how often it happens, it happens way to often to just be bad luck or a coincidence.

 

As for armor I feel the penalties are a little too extreme, we already get slowed down a ton due to the stupid inventory system we have now, but you wanna throw speed reduction AND stam regen reduction on top of it? just the speed reduction was more than enough on the armor. They need to balance it though, gloves/boots/helm shouldn't be debuffing you as much as the body/leg armor does, as they weight much less.

[Ghostlight]

OP, those are wandering hordes. You get two of these attacking your position per day. There are 50 different types of such horde in the game, so there's a 1/50 chance you get the more nasty ones like Footballers or Bears.

 

This was the exact same in A16 btw.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

What was your gamestage? Some of those sound like higher gamestage or just plain bad luck xD

 

Thing is in determining horde type, the game divides your gamestage by 50 and takes the remainder, so there is no "difficulty curve" with them, you can get unlucky on day #1, depending on when they spawn.

[Saera]

Yesterday, over two days, we had about 8 wandering hordes. Four of them were dog packs, 12 in each! If we weren't at the skill level we are at, there is no way we could have taken them out. I think that is pretty crazy amount even for our game stage. Can't get anything done, its just zombies constantly.

[Khulkhuum]

I think the problem is the gamestage is summed up for each and every player in the game. This means that if every player has gamestage 10, with 6 players we have 60, which is enough to spawn irradiated if i remember(someone stated that in some topic). So the more players you have, the quicker the game gets rough, with 2 people getting it 2 times faster, but with 6 you get 6 times faster (6 people contributing).

 

I think the gamestage should be averaged among all the player gamestage with some additions like +10% for every player (in Diablo3 [is or was] i think it's scaled so every player pumps enemies with 10% and some similar addition to the xp gained). This would make MP plausible, with 6 players on gamestage 10 the average 10 + 60% would be 16. In comparison on gamestage 30 it would be average 30 + 60% = 48.

[RestInPieces]

I think the problem is the gamestage is summed up for each and every player in the game.

 

Thought the gamestage is player/party exclusive?

[icehot]

I'm playing solo, restarted for b208, on day 8 i saw a wandering horde mixed with cops - i've had a horde of dogs, and a horde with spider zombies - luckily none of them actually saw me, as in this alpha I'm on a much higher alert and run whenever I hear anything, then I check it out from a distance to see if it's something I want to face or not. Needless to say I kept well clear of the dogs and the cops - unfortunately it was night time in my base when the spider zombies came, luckily though I had spikes down, they tore through them of course, but it did get rid of most of them, so I only ended up with 5 holes in my cobblestone wall!

[sinda]

You can also just press "i" to bring up the party/ally window and it lists everyones gamestage thats connected including your own even if your by yourself.

 

yes a very welcome change, jc mentioned it, too!

 

a lot of it all comes down to zombies NOT making the approach noises they should, for a long time now.

 

very end of 12.5 is when i started playing, and i distinctly remember hiding in a shamway and the freaking massive pitter patter of feet as a horde ran by was one of the single most terrifying experiences i had early game. now and then i catch a shadow of that when i'm looting somewhere, but nowhere near like it used to be.

 

i'm perfectly happy when a zombie gets a legitimate jump on me because i'm lalalala in my head chopping trees instead of shifting around watching, but i wish the footsteps etc would come back. it's not JUST for the warning factor, there is legitimate ambient creep that it serves, also.