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Survival is pretty hardcore and unfair right now


RedKrypton

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While I haven't died, it's apparent that survival mode feels unfairly difficult, at least with the current means of survival.

 

Without cars you are pretty much forced into a small amount of locations, because zombie density starts of thick and then increases more and more around former populated areas. Adding to this is that the stealth system isn't implemented. Yes I can walk slower looking around myself, but that doesn't constitute a stealth system for me. Looting anything but the outskirts is suicidal, because of the density and the lack of a good stealth system in which you can really sneak and take down zombies quietly.

 

Another problem I found was, that the random noise events just played Ping Pong with the zombies around me. If there is an event in the west the next day there is an event to the east and so on. It wouldn't be so bad if the zombies didn't play vandal at every occasion. Noise behind the house?-Fuck it, let's visit the neighbours and let's use the window for entering.

 

I know you want us to feel challenged, but shouldn't that come with time, like running out of the canned and other non perishables and giant zombie hordes from the city moving along the Highways?

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You got really good point here, all i can do is agree with you.

 

That zombie ping pong with noise events was driving me and my group insane since huge packs of zombies were constantly running every damn direction and the best parts was: there could be multiple events happening in one day and before we had our log walls, those huge packs of zombies went always thru our trailer base and trampled all our crops etc. funny things. :twisted:

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I can do nothing but agree with Kajin, just go Sandbox, I don't go and complain about difficulty in most games when I play on the hardest difficulty available by default. It's like playing Metro 2033 on Ranger and complaining you die in 3 hits.

 

The difference between Metro Ranger mode and survival mode is huge. For one the Ranger mode in Metro was balanced for the game, survival doesn't feel like that. The thing is, survival mode isn't even supposed to be the hardest mode, it should most balanced mode, the way the game is supposed to be played. It currently doesn't feel like that. Survival mode currently suffers from repetition. There are a handful of ideal buildings in each town, which can serve as your base. All others are either too dangerous or too far away. You can say, that's the fun of the challenge, but I say it's unbalanced having no room to breath and being in this very tight corset.

 

Zomboid prides itself in being a realistic game (as much as a game with zombies can be), but in the current version the game ignores its own logic. Zombies only care about one thing, food, but currently this logic is defied because zombies just more and more mass in the towns. Yes, zombies also spawn outside of towns, but the emphasise is on "spawn". The zombies should move out as giant hordes mindlessly roaming along highways and roads and fucking up your day, when they spot you and your base. A game, like any work of fiction should stay internally consistant.

 

Please enlighten me, why are zombies only massing up inside the towns and don't move out as hordes?

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snip

Yeah, Metro's Ranger Mode was balanced to the point where I found it easier than Easy thanks to enemies being less bullet spongy.

And zombies do move as hordes, clearly, you've never had your remote forest base where you lived off the land ruined by a horde.

Maybe I'm a veteran, maybe Kajin is a veteran, maybe Enigma is a veteran of PZ... Maybe we're right, maybe you should just play on easier difficulty and then try Survival when you have a really good grasp on game's mechanics. Hell, just like Metro's Ranger, don't ever expect to go baseball bat blazing on zeds in Survival, you need to sneak around, it takes a different way of playing than just running around killing zeds and scavenging stuff, you need to know what is where, you need to be comfy with your fav weapon, you need to be sneaky and your absolutely HAVE TO use the long term survival skills like Foraging, Trapping, Fishing or Farming, the world now belongs to the Zeds and you're not a god here to conquer it back, you're just a dude trying to Survive amongst a world where everyone else is a zombie, avoid them at all costs, don't enage.

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Why do I even argue with you? This is pointless.

I've been involved in and, hell, maybe I was once of the dudes responsible for the difficulty being bumped up a lot thanks to complaining a lot about PZ being way, way too easy.

Seriously, play easy mode, that's what Survival was 2 builds ago. PZ, for a game that was selling itself with the phrase "This is how you died" was very inept at causing the "died" part, it was up to the player to "Die of boredom" while playing Farming Simulator 2015.

The difficulty was bumped up after a lot of discussion and a lot of feedback, the game has gotten plenty of new preset Difficulties recently as well as a Sandbox mode where you can customize everything so it'll suit you.

Survival should not be treated as the primary difficulty, as it is with most "Harder than Hard" difficulty modes in most games, it is meant for hardened veterans, people who know ins and outs of the game and who want the challenge.

If you are looking for the utmost realism, I strongly recommend looking up your favorite zombie lore and setting up a Sandbox game accordingly, you'll have way more fun.

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While I haven't died, it's apparent that survival mode feels unfairly difficult, at least with the current means of survival.

 

Without cars you are pretty much forced into a small amount of locations, because zombie density starts of thick and then increases more and more around former populated areas. Adding to this is that the stealth system isn't implemented. Yes I can walk slower looking around myself, but that doesn't constitute a stealth system for me. Looting anything but the outskirts is suicidal, because of the density and the lack of a good stealth system in which you can really sneak and take down zombies quietly.

 

Another problem I found was, that the random noise events just played Ping Pong with the zombies around me. If there is an event in the west the next day there is an event to the east and so on. It wouldn't be so bad if the zombies didn't play vandal at every occasion. Noise behind the house?-Fuck it, let's visit the neighbours and let's use the window for entering.

 

I know you want us to feel challenged, but shouldn't that come with time, like running out of the canned and other non perishables and giant zombie hordes from the city moving along the Highways?

 

First of all, i agree on you on the lack of vehicles, i give you that, but as you know, they are going to be added later.

 

Now that i said that is going to be added later, here is the thing, Survival is, from my understanding, going to be even more brutal the next builds.

 

We are going to have a proper stealth system next build (dont quote me on that, lets just hope) with the animations on place, thats good, but also we are going to trip over when we panic, that means that stealth and overall just the movement itself is going to be more of a tactical thing than it is right now.

 

So even with stealth the game is going to become harder.

 

Then we some day we might see the mighty NPCs do a comeback and the difficulty is going to ramp up by 100x if what they promise is true. Lack of food, mood swings actually mattering and NPCs shooting near your home is going to be worse than a metasound. 

 

Now why the zombies dont move around and they stay in downtown?

Because food comes to them, lets imagine NPCs are added, i am sure NPCs will move around downtown looking for supplies, NPCs in downtown= more food. Also game balance because it would be extremely easy to wait it out the first week in the outskirts and then go to a desolated downtown area (this happen before when zombie migration was in, they had to add zombie respawn because otherwise the area would be clean of zombies.)

 

And the most important thing that i haven't seen here posted, this is alpha, the beta phase is when everything is going to be balanced, alpha is when you add features and make them blend together trying to not screw up something else while trying to keep balance.

 

I, alongside Svarog and countless other veterans complained about the lack of difficulty that we were expecting from the game, so now we get a difficult game that is doable to survive in.

 

People will complain about it, so the devs put in Sandbox and First Bite (which was Project Zomboid pre-difficulty update, that is how the game was before).

 

We just need to wait and see to make the fine-tweaks on the game when is in beta, but i assure you is going to be more difficulty later on.

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Try playing sandbox with spawning turned off (and if wanted higher zombie count) While won't fix your meta sound issue should fix the zombie density issue your having of course it will get boring adventualy but try exploring new places and add some map mods for extra fun so even if you clear all of West Point you can always try to clear out Muldragh or Even New Denver! lol

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It's not unfair. I just died after surviving for 27 days and it was a silly death. I had a fully barricaded house as a shelter, tools such as hammer, axe, saw... plenty of food in my previous shelter far away from the city centre, 3 first aid kit... as I said, it was a silly death, I was using my hunting knife in 90% of the time, just recently I have been use the Axe, and in a wrong swing a Zed bit my back :(

 

I loved the Survival mode, It gets pretty scary when you are surrounded by hordes, you have to run out most of the times, but eventually you find your basic stuff to keep going and establish yourself. the worst part is that a clear area can turn into a infestation in a matter of seconds! 

 

Now I'm back to my old performance and ready to test MP and, hopefully, new updates!

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I think that the main problem is that before b32 survival was that hard difficulty and 8 months leater was ultra-hardcore.

I remember other thread about survival mode, and I agree that it is more annoying than hard. The main reason is insane migration wich make you feel like in last stand mode. Now survival mode force you for nomadic playstyle. So players like me who like building aspect of PZ plays on sandbox mode.

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There are a number of outstanding things we think could be balanced a bit better in the game. However, they'll likely just make it a little fairer, *not* easier. Hardcore is trying to kill you. That's literally it's purpose. To Kill You.

 

But currently it feels like you are the point of interest for everything. I play PZ, because I like the game's feeling of unimportance. You aren't anyone special and you are trying to survive this terrible cataclysm. Yes, this world is harsh and tries to kill you, but it goes out of its way to kill you. Stuffing more and more zombies in the towns and sending hordes after your base does make it difficult to survive, but it doesn't make sense with the world you are trying to create here. If I wanted a perpetual horde mode, I'd play 7 days to die, not PZ.

 

Some of my suggestions would be to make qualitativly harder and not quantitativly harder. One of big big gripes currently is zombies grabbing you from behind. It takes way too long for them to grab you and bite you.

 

I just hope that with the addition of vehicles, survivors and the big city, the importance of both Muldrough and West Point will become smaller and the real motherloads will be in the city with it's hordes moving out and all. I also hope you will someday change the zombie desnity to be more migration and not just spawning.

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There are a number of outstanding things we think could be balanced a bit better in the game. However, they'll likely just make it a little fairer, *not* easier. Hardcore is trying to kill you. That's literally it's purpose. To Kill You.

 

But currently it feels like you are the point of interest for everything. I play PZ, because I like the game's feeling of unimportance. You aren't anyone special and you are trying to survive this terrible cataclysm. Yes, this world is harsh and tries to kill you, but it goes out of its way to kill you. Stuffing more and more zombies in the towns and sending hordes after your base does make it difficult to survive, but it doesn't make sense with the world you are trying to create here. If I wanted a perpetual horde mode, I'd play 7 days to die, not PZ.

 

Some of my suggestions would be to make qualitativly harder and not quantitativly harder. One of big big gripes currently is zombies grabbing you from behind. It takes way too long for them to grab you and bite you.

 

I just hope that with the addition of vehicles, survivors and the big city, the importance of both Muldrough and West Point will become smaller and the real motherloads will be in the city with it's hordes moving out and all. I also hope you will someday change the zombie desnity to be more migration and not just spawning.

 

Yeah, the cause of zombie density increase should be more migration than spawning.

I'd prefer that newborn zombies are only spawned at the edge of the map. The game will give these newborns a initial direction which they will walk toward to. 

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There are a number of outstanding things we think could be balanced a bit better in the game. However, they'll likely just make it a little fairer, *not* easier. Hardcore is trying to kill you. That's literally it's purpose. To Kill You.

 

But currently it feels like you are the point of interest for everything. I play PZ, because I like the game's feeling of unimportance. You aren't anyone special and you are trying to survive this terrible cataclysm. Yes, this world is harsh and tries to kill you, but it goes out of its way to kill you. Stuffing more and more zombies in the towns and sending hordes after your base does make it difficult to survive, but it doesn't make sense with the world you are trying to create here. If I wanted a perpetual horde mode, I'd play 7 days to die, not PZ.

 

Some of my suggestions would be to make qualitativly harder and not quantitativly harder. One of big big gripes currently is zombies grabbing you from behind. It takes way too long for them to grab you and bite you.

 

I just hope that with the addition of vehicles, survivors and the big city, the importance of both Muldrough and West Point will become smaller and the real motherloads will be in the city with it's hordes moving out and all. I also hope you will someday change the zombie desnity to be more migration and not just spawning.

 

Yeah, the cause of zombie density increase should be more migration than spawning.

I'd prefer that newborn zombies are only spawned at the edge of the map. The game will give these newborns a initial direction which they will walk toward to. 

 

but what about the fact that cities will end up empty in no time? that would be game breaking since in cities you can find everything you need to survive forever, straight back to farming simulator

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There are a number of outstanding things we think could be balanced a bit better in the game. However, they'll likely just make it a little fairer, *not* easier. Hardcore is trying to kill you. That's literally it's purpose. To Kill You.

 

But currently it feels like you are the point of interest for everything. I play PZ, because I like the game's feeling of unimportance. You aren't anyone special and you are trying to survive this terrible cataclysm. Yes, this world is harsh and tries to kill you, but it goes out of its way to kill you. Stuffing more and more zombies in the towns and sending hordes after your base does make it difficult to survive, but it doesn't make sense with the world you are trying to create here. If I wanted a perpetual horde mode, I'd play 7 days to die, not PZ.

 

Some of my suggestions would be to make qualitativly harder and not quantitativly harder. One of big big gripes currently is zombies grabbing you from behind. It takes way too long for them to grab you and bite you.

 

I just hope that with the addition of vehicles, survivors and the big city, the importance of both Muldrough and West Point will become smaller and the real motherloads will be in the city with it's hordes moving out and all. I also hope you will someday change the zombie desnity to be more migration and not just spawning.

 

Yeah, the cause of zombie density increase should be more migration than spawning.

I'd prefer that newborn zombies are only spawned at the edge of the map. The game will give these newborns a initial direction which they will walk toward to. 

 

but what about the fact that cities will end up empty in no time? that would be game breaking since in cities you can find everything you need to survive forever, straight back to farming simulator

 

There will always be zombies spawned at the edge of the map. And these new zombies come with a initial purpose, a direction to walk toward. These directions can be set to the nearest city centre. 

Therefore, the city center will continuously has zombies (hordes) coming in, which more realistic from my view. 

 

By the way, the zombies which I said are only spawned at the edge of the map are those zombies spawned after the game has already started. There should be (many) zombies in the city at the beginning of the game.

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There will always be zombies spawned at the edge of the map. And these new zombies come with a initial purpose, a direction to walk toward. These directions can be set to the nearest city centre. 

Therefore, the city center will continuously has zombies (hordes) coming in, which more realistic from my view. 

 

By the way, the zombies which I said are only spawned at the edge of the map are those zombies spawned after the game has already started. There should be (many) zombies in the city at the beginning of the game.

 

I see where you come from, but I think that the current system is mostly necessary due to technical limitations (don't quote me on what I'm about to try to explain)

as far as I know, even in single player, the game only loads the area around, wich means that only the zombies around you actually exist, the others are just "emulated" by the system, wich calculates where they are and what they're doing, the zombies won't respawn in a certain cell if you visit it in a certain amount of time, but zombies from near cells will migrate to compensate the loss (or, at least, this was true in build 32, the new helicopter that acts as a physical object might have change this balance for good).

all I can understand from these data is that spawning zombies from the edge of the map would obtain the same result, but it would also make things overcomplicated without any real need for them to be.

as Svarog said, zombies do eventually form hordes and migrate from the city to every corner of the map, and the cities are always well guarded as it is of now, changing this mechanic might bring more harm than good.

I do agree that the meta sound system is pretty broken, to the point where you feel like the game is joking you, as the OP said, it feels like zombies do actually act as a ping pong ball, but this was the best option we had until now, and I feel like the devs are aware of this as well and they don't like it.

changing the helicopter into a phyical object is a sign that they aim to rework the whole metasound system, wich will eventualy lead to a whole new behavior for zombies, and I feel this is a good thing to do

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There will always be zombies spawned at the edge of the map. And these new zombies come with a initial purpose, a direction to walk toward. These directions can be set to the nearest city centre. 

Therefore, the city center will continuously has zombies (hordes) coming in, which more realistic from my view. 

 

By the way, the zombies which I said are only spawned at the edge of the map are those zombies spawned after the game has already started. There should be (many) zombies in the city at the beginning of the game.

 

I see where you come from, but I think that the current system is mostly necessary due to technical limitations (don't quote me on what I'm about to try to explain)

as far as I know, even in single player, the game only loads the area around, wich means that only the zombies around you actually exist, the others are just "emulated" by the system, wich calculates where they are and what they're doing, the zombies won't respawn in a certain cell if you visit it in a certain amount of time, but zombies from near cells will migrate to compensate the loss (or, at least, this was true in build 32, the new helicopter that acts as a physical object might have change this balance for good).

all I can understand from these data is that spawning zombies from the edge of the map would obtain the same result, but it would also make things overcomplicated without any real need for them to be.

as Svarog said, zombies do eventually form hordes and migrate from the city to every corner of the map, and the cities are always well guarded as it is of now, changing this mechanic might bring more harm than good.

I do agree that the meta sound system is pretty broken, to the point where you feel like the game is joking you, as the OP said, it feels like zombies do actually act as a ping pong ball, but this was the best option we had until now, and I feel like the devs are aware of this as well and they don't like it.

changing the helicopter into a phyical object is a sign that they aim to rework the whole metasound system, wich will eventualy lead to a whole new behavior for zombies, and I feel this is a good thing to do

 

I understand that there are some technical problems to let the zombies to spawn at specific areas. 

What I am saying is that I don't like the idea of zombies spawn around my character at the same rate (if I am wrong, tell me) wherever I put him/her at. This forces me to become nomadic lifestyle in PZ, which reduce the fun of being settle down. 

Logically, urban area should be dangerous than suburb areas. So I'd prefer to have different spawn rate at different area, if the developers can't (or won't) set the zombie to only spawn at specific areas.

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changing the helicopter into a phyical object is a sign that they aim to rework the whole metasound system, wich will eventualy lead to a whole new behavior for zombies, and I feel this is a good thing to do

 

I understand that there are some technical problems to let the zombies to spawn at specific areas. 

What I am saying is that I don't like the idea of zombies spawn around my character at the same rate (if I am wrong, tell me) wherever I put him/her at. This forces me to become nomadic lifestyle in PZ, which reduce the fun of being settle down. 

Logically, urban area should be dangerous than suburb areas. So I'd prefer to have different spawn rate at different area, if the developers can't (or won't) set the zombie to only spawn at specific areas.

zombies can't spawn in the cell you recently visited (even more likely in the cell you live in), wich means that you're experiencing issues with zombie migration

the areas in the game are divided into "cells", every cell has a certain population of zeds, when the number of zeds in one cell is reduced drastically, zombies will migrate from other cells to fill it, like communicating vessels.

i "resolved" this issue by just not killing the zombies in my cell if I don't have to, this way they won't migrate XD

but I think you can set it as you wish with sandbox (correct me if I'm wrong).

another thing: if you wish to have more zombies around the map, you can set it to "everywhere" with sandbox.

honestly I play sandbox most of the time, it's not like survival is "too difficult" or anything, I just have some small preferences in the settings, and sandbox has a hell lot of options, I love it

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I understand exactly how you feel.

 

Survival does feel like it's very hard purely just for the sake of being hard- which is in no way a bad thing, just I have a slight gripe on how it goes about achieving this.

 

Rather than focusing on other various crucial survival aspects (Like making food/loot even rarer or forcing the player to use a range of all his skills to survive), it just focuses purely on hordes of zombies that are unrelenting (Which is great!) but in an unfair 'spawning' kind of way (Which I dislike :\ ).

 

But hey, it's waaaaay better than the old difficulty of Survival, so I'm still all for it. Just could do with a few tweaks.  :-D

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The only thing that bothers me is their stellar visual pathfinding skills and their telepathic path finding skills when you are not visible. Super cheap and unRomero-like but very effective. Or maybe zeds are just good at guessing what's behind door #X

Memory and even pathfinding debuffs don't seem to put any kind of dent in their telepathy or pathfinding.

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I really do have to wonder if anyone would have noticed the difference had there not been almost two years of comparison. Instead, certain people seem inclined to try and find what's different, and that difference must be a problem.
 
If we never had the streaming map, would people complain that zomibes ran around the map like a little hurricane of undead, smashing things in their wake (the only things back then being doors and barricades), and seemingly seeking out the player, as they did back in the early builds?

 

If there really was a (in memory) edge to the map, would players complain that zombies "spawned" in from it, because they'd never see zombies being added to their number?

If the map wasn't so large as to afford areas of lull, would players still be upset that zombies seem more dense in areas of high loot spawn / urban areas?

 

If there were never any audiable sounds within the world to attract the attention (or sometimes just add flavor to the world) of the undead, would peple still blame the game?

 

If there were no areas where you could be isolated temporarily from the undead, would people then be mad that they've been found out?

These conversations just repeat the past, and even when we acknowledge there's things we'd like changed or tweaked (but not ripped out), it's forgotten in the next thread and certain members try to sell their "It's not fair" or "it's broken" position all over again.

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