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Difficulty balance after 41.15 (Do we need more Crowd Control?)


RuckiR

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First of all, I really like the new animations update and I absolutely dont wanna get that ultra easy gameplay back, which we had before, but the gamebalance is not really in an good shape at the moment.

 

Fighting single zombies is a lot more fun than before, but the occasions for fighting single zombies are too rare and besides fighting or avoid the building/location where we want to go, we have not really lot of options.

 

After I played a lot in survival (now called apocalypse), I must say that I got a little bit bored at some point to be honest. Either you die fast or you try hard to survive, which is possible but at some point just the fun stops here. Avoiding Fights all the time, cause you cant find small Zombie groups lost my interest at some time. 

 

And through all difficulty settings it is the same, even on absolute weakest zombie settings. It is nearly impossible to take a fight with more than 2, max 3 zombies at the same time. I mean if they are on one spot and after like 3-5 days you have often 10-15 zeds sometimes on one spot and same size groups on the side and behind that group, so luring single zeds away is not really possible anymore.

 

In the moment the only "fun" zombie setting is multiplicator=none (0) for me. Everything else is just too much with the new animations. We can not go backwards fast enough anymore and the TTK (time to kill) is too slow on the first 3-4 levels of each weapon type (besides spear, but the spear is quite fast unusable after 2-3 zombies, so that is kind a balanced).

 

Its absolutely fine for me to leave apocalypse difficulty settings like that, as an really hardcore Dark Souls like Zombie game mode. Smart play will still let you live for a long time. Using the new sneak/crouch abilitiy, beeing not noisy, using jumps over big fences, running away behind buildings or in the woods and never take more than 1, sometimes 2 zombies at the same time are all key options to survive. I wouldnt change this mode at all, its fine like it is. 

 

But the mid difficulty setting and all below needs adjustement (and of course the options in the sandbox menu). Either a lot less Zombies (or better arrangement of them, like smaller groups and more group distance) because the TTK is simply a lot slower now, or faster TTK or maybe more CC (Crowd Control) ?

If we would have more options to control the hordes I could see to get some fun gameplay out of that.

 

Maybe more alarm clocks to find (everyone had these alarm clocks in their bedroom in the 90s and its not something a lot people would think to take with them in an emergency house leave) and maybe make them throwable ? Maybe aiming with our melee weapons on the legs to make them go slower or fall ?

Also it would be handy to throw small stones or used empty tin cans to lure zombies away from the spot where we wanna go. Just some thoughts from me.

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19 minutes ago, NagashUD said:

The 41.15 remembers me pretty much 6 month after the apocalypse; Way too many zombies at the start for the survival mode.

 

It's not been changed. It uses the same settings as Survivor did previously for zombie spawning. 

 

If you want to see six months later, set it to "very high" in Sandbox. You should see a very obvious difference immediately vs. Apocolypse's high setting.

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8 minutes ago, EnigmaGrey said:

 

It's not been changed. It uses the same settings as Survivor did previously for zombie spawning. 

 

If you want to see six months later, set it to "insane" in Sandbox. You should see a very obvious difference immediately. 

Yeah you are right about the insane settings;
Sorry, just i had the feeling it had way more zombies than the last update,  esp in town were it was pretty much; sorry that i was mistaken ! ;)

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Just now, NagashUD said:

Yeah you are right about the insane settings;
Sorry, just i had the feeling it had way more zombies than the last update,  esp in town were it was pretty much; sorry that i was mistaken ! ;)

It's one of those things were it's easy to convince yourself otherwise. :D 

 

Varies so much.

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Well you guys are on the pretty good way about fixings and combat balance ! Stomp is still pretty messy, and weapons durability goes down too fast maybe ? waiting what other players think about, but i really start to enjoy better than the last build @EnigmaGrey !

 

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I didnt want to quote the entire OP post but I will address a few of the concerns.

 

One is the zed grouping issue. I also think the "group up" setting is a little silly. By default it is 20 which means zeds will gather together in groups up to 20 zeds and stand there waiting for a naive survivor to come around. I personally dont like this setting so I set grouping to 1 and increase the zed population count and increase the distance they stand a way from each other. This to me makes it more realistic. I also remove the respawn, I think infinite zeds is annoying because the mechanic makes it so if you clear a building and return to it within a certain time frame you will get the "same" zeds inside. For example a police station full of zed police officers. You clear the building and return later to find more zed police officers inside. This to me isn't realistic. So I turn the zed count all the way up to insane, turn respawn off but leave cell fill on so that zeds will move into areas that have been cleared but they wont respawn. It feels more realistic and you can occasionally find wanderers instead of new zeds in buildings you have cleared unless they hop in a window or beat down a door. 

 

Also the respawn bug seems to be back where you have a completely secure safe house where there is no possible way a zed could "walk" inside and youll find zeds respawn inside these areas. I had a safe house with all the bottom floor windows and doors barricaded and the only way in was a sheet rope to the second floor. After returning from a raid I found zeds inside the bottom floor. This is why I have now turned respawn off. It's "broken" if you ask me.

 

Also there is a crowd control method. You can use a molotov cocktail and burn zeds in large groups. It's not an end all be all solution but you can generally clear a location temporarily that will allow you to do some raiding. 

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I tried to get In my house in the country side which I abadoned for a while, because the location was swarmed in a storm.

There are still groups of zeds and I couldnt get rid of them.

Tried shouting and lure them away, by running around houses, but it seems like they see you throug walls.

In the end I died In a last frustrated attempt to lure them away in the forest, because they are still faster than the player, the zombies really need forestanimations, too and the slow down.

I think its a bit annoying that so many zeds are in the country region anyway.

When I tried to loot a hunting lodge, there were over 100 - 200 zeds, you would expect in this region maybe 30-50.

It should be harder to survive in the city but currently forest and farmland are far more dangerous.

So many zed were necessary before, but with the new combat, we also should get a realistic zombie count.

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I don't know if crowd control is the answer - but I feel like the player doesn't have creative solutions to problems that you would expect from a person who has already lived 3 - 6 months after the apocolypse would have.

 

Second issue that makes less sense is how the survivor has no ready supplies after surviving weeks the apocolypse. 

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Just now, ZombiesLoveBrainiacs said:

 

How? I never even fight 2 at the same time without splitting them up first... It's just too much of a risk imo.

Just push them and move back a bit. When 2 out of 3 are down start attacking the one still moving.

 

Sometimes you need to walk away and keep pushing them quite a lot, sometimes they got on the ground really fast but its not that hard. What you need is time, patience and a bit of free space to manuver.

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I dont understand the logic of the new build yet!

 

I played in survivor (former brawler) mode, but after 8-9 days i cant pass several zombie hordes around my base. I guess the respawn rate of zombies is just too high. I killed 35-45 zombies per day for a couple days around my base but still their numbers keep growing. At last I accept that i am overrun by them and i cant clear the area by killing them. But I dont understand without clearing certain areas how i can i loot the vicinity of my base. The horde of zombies are pratically in everywhere and they cant be eliminated by mere killing.

 

I strongly suggest a balancing patch for that issue!

 

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