PC Open Letter to TFP's...

[meganoth]

Personally speaking, I don't get why people are so.... how do I put this... gatekeeping? of people surviving the 7th day?
It's like players don't have the right to survive the 7th day, and only the Best of The Best, The Chosen One, The One and Only, Champion of The Gods, The Bane of Evil, Banisher of Undead, Builder of Dragon, Avatar of Death may survive the 7th day, even on easy.

Dude, what's up with that?

All the time spent on making absolutely sure people get killed on 7th day is really distracting the gameplay. All this.... futile attempt of making 1000IQ hunter zombies that can pinpoint your location and mark the stairs with GPS simply results in people building even cheesier designs. All that time, spent on making a smart AI that can find the stairs, only for them to be shot as they walk single file wailing on a bunch of iron bars? Which part of that is smart?

Do people really revel in making the zombies act as dumb as possible and then proclaim they've succeeded? That they've earned the right to be called Survivor?

It's like proclaiming glory after you've shot through an APC with an anti-materiel rifle. Like, duh, that's the entire point of that rifle. That's not an achievement, that's just the rifle doing its job

sowhen the... inferior people can't handle it, they @%$*#!ed up somewhere, they have to bail, the answer is a Big Old "NOPE!" you have to die, by any means necessary. Git gud scrub. Grow a bigger brain. Cry to your mum and try again, maybe next time you can join the Big Boys Club

Really?

Setting aside the insensitive Ubermensch joke that basically writes itself, all that time spent on making sure Day 7 is Bombastic Crescendo leaves the other 6 days bare. I can walk into Diersville at night and, well, the roads are empty. Sure we have zombies in the buildings, yet the outside is as bare as it gets. You can fire 3 entire ammo box's worth of 7.62 with an M60 machine gun and there's relatively nothing. The outside is too safe

Meanwhile, a couple days after the next round of AI adjustments where people really, definitely, can't just cheese the @%$*#! out of this round of AI, swear to God, a YouTuber somewhere posts a video with clickbait thumbnail revealing exactly how he just cheesed the @%$*#! out of that AI

Presumably involving yet another elaborate staircase design where zombies feel they'd be too uncultured for not using staircases, and accept their fate as casing after casing gets ejected out of an M60 machine gun fired by some dude standing behind some iron bars, backed by a bunch of automatic turrets, who laments how easy the game is afterwards, dreaming up yet another set of "challenges" for next time

Honestly!

If somebody builds a cumbersome mansion up on the peak of the freezing mountains, or dig 100 feet underground for a nuclear bunker with 10 layers of blast door to escape the blood moon, by golly let them! They've earned the right!

"But oooooh why not just turn it off you spineless coward?" Why? People like to play differently. Maybe they want to have a safe haven, but feel like they should be punished if they forget to return? I don't know, why do you care?

The map is huge, there's a lot of exploration potential. What's with the fascination of dying on the 7th day? What's the point? "That's the name of the game dumbass" then why not just script you to die on the 7th day? What's with all this elaborate designs of zombies and traps and whatnot?

"To give us a challenge"

>:-\

You mean to let you build yet another cheesy base design?

The game is constantly balanced. Next patch try to shoot your gun in the middle of the night and a dire wolf might pick you up. Generally the game has a technical limitations how many zombies it can spawn in the worst case (8 players, low end PC clients), so vanilla will always have to be more about short bursts of danger instead of a continued presence of lots of zombies in the world.

What is so bad about cheesy bases when you are demanding in the same breath a more than cheesy escape vehicle. If there never had been vehicles in the game you would never have protested about missing one but accepted an objectively very harmless death as the penalty for a failed horde night or looked for ways to prevent that (like with a fallback base or running around with lots of coffee).

I'm saying this generally: If players are averse to change and having to do things differently from time to time, they should not peek into and play a game that is in development. Then there is never a moment something gets taken away from you,

Then maybe those players need to ask for a different approach to blood moon because honestly building a single tile hallway with a grand staircase to shoot at single file zombies is really not that desperate. YouTubers post simple, cheap designs that let you shoot at zombies in safety all the time.

Ironically, in an attempt to make players "not cheese" the system, they make the "smart" zombies susceptible to all sorts of base designs.

So horde base building is generally not that hard, right? Especially on lower difficulties even a solid concrete block together with enough ammo is already keeping you from dieing. Add another and another block and you can last any amount of time. Why then do you still need an escape vehicle?

Your last sentence is puzzling: If they are susceptible to all sorts of base designs it means there are lots of successful base designs. Isn't that what we want? Variation in base design you can employ is a good thing in my book.

 

[Roland]

All the time spent on making absolutely sure people get killed on 7th day is really distracting the gameplay.

Are you sure you clicked on the title you meant to click on?  How can designing the game to match its title be a distraction from the gameplay they are designing? 
 

Personally, I hope they moderate what they did a bit to make driving around in the open possible for a longer distance. But I also think that it is faulty logic to ascribe normal vulture characteristics to the fantasy zombie vultures in the game. 

 

[meganoth]

Are you sure you clicked on the title you meant to click on?  How can designing the game to match its title be a distraction from the gameplay they are designing? 
 

Personally, I hope they moderate what they did a bit to make driving around in the open possible for a longer distance. But I also think that it is faulty logic to ascribe normal vulture characteristics to the fantasy zombie vultures in the game. 

What could work relatively easy is if that 50% ratio of vultures to zombies isn't fixed but a rising value the longer you sit on a bike. Means you can comfortably drive from or to craft base or a farther away POI you cleared. But ultimately they come in force.

 

[Feycat]

I did read through it. I know how to make bases. Made one that shrugged off the Day 126 horde @64 zom per wave on 2 hr days. Had a oopsie when it was almost over and had to run around for a couple of minutes on the 4x4 before I could git mah crap together and regroup in the base. Don't like how TFP have taken away the most basic and logical plan b with stupid broken buzzards just because they are butt hurt.

Just another comment boiled down to "git gud scrub"

How about Hey fun pimps, quit cheating??

The game devs literally can't cheat. That's not how cheating works.

But thanks for boiling down my long and thoughtful post to something I neither said nor implied. In order for me to tell you to "git gud" I would have to believe I'm better at the game than you, which I don't.

HOWEVER. You had plenty of time to get back to safety without using the truck. I watched your video. You could easily have pillared up and jumped to your base top. Or you could just make a column nearby with a ladder on it, in case you fall. I've done both those things, and I'm not even good at this game. 

Should you be able to avoid the horde? Well, it's literally the whole title of the game. So if you're not turning them off, then I'd say no. Besides which you can just die then hide if you really want to. 

 

[Demandred1957]

HOWEVER. You had plenty of time to get back to safety without using the truck. I watched your video. You could easily have pillared up and jumped to your base top. Or you could just make a column nearby with a ladder on it, in case you fall. I've done both those things, and I'm not even good at this game.

Multiple pillars had ladders. What the video doesn't show is how the fps had dropped at that point to around 15-25 fps... Awfully hard to make control inputs when you are swimming in molasses, and harder to climb back up when you just fell into about 25 zoms. And no, I don't have a potato pc. Rather high end in fact. But with the zom count at 64 per wave.. There was a pit under that base, and by the time I had turned around and started lighting them up with the M-60 it was full of zoms.

But to be honest, I don't care anymore. I've raised enough stink on here to get the attention of the higher ups, and will just nerf their nerfs in my game files, so I can have the enjoyable experience I had before, when playing on default.

AFTER I make a few exploit videos, so they can try to patch it some more. lolololol

 

[Nfg]

Part of the fun part of this game is learning how to build an effective base, which doesn't require much upkeep or cheese. I can have a mostly OP base by day 14 and maybe only replace one or two blocks on any given hoard night, and I generally have all my repairs done before 6am. I might have to do more if I have multiple explosions, but that is not too difficult to avoid either and is never anywhere near destroying my base.

The problem is people think they need to cheese the AI to have an effective base. 

 

[Feycat]

Multiple pillars had ladders. What the video doesn't show is how the fps had dropped at that point to around 15-25 fps... Awfully hard to make control inputs when you are swimming in molasses, and harder to climb back up when you just fell into about 25 zoms. And no, I don't have a potato pc. Rather high end in fact. But with the zom count at 64 per wave.. There was a pit under that base, and by the time I had turned around and started lighting them up with the M-60 it was full of zoms.

Your video showed the lag. It wasn't nearly bad enough that you couldn't pillar up with no zombies near you. And if you managed to get a frame against the wall, they wouldn't be able to knock it down without taking out the whole wall. You turned around and decided to shoot instead. 

 

[AtomicUs5000]

What could work relatively easy is if that 50% ratio of vultures to zombies isn't fixed but a rising value the longer you sit on a bike. Means you can comfortably drive from or to craft base or a farther away POI you cleared. But ultimately they come in force.

I think this is reasonable.
In the end, and although I agree with the change, I don't see any harm in them toning it down a little. If the only goal is to prevent people from riding around in a vehicle for the entire duration of the BM, that goal has been met. Although I find it hysterical, there really isn't a need to swarm that many vultures on the player so quickly. 

 

[Demandred1957]

Your video showed the lag. It wasn't nearly bad enough that you couldn't pillar up with no zombies near you. And if you managed to get a frame against the wall, they wouldn't be able to knock it down without taking out the whole wall. You turned around and decided to shoot instead. 

In your opinion. they were on me until i barged past them and jumped up the steps they had made and got out of the pit. at which point I turned around, and as it clearly shows they were already jumping up out of the pit. And the lag the video shows wasn't nearly as bad as what playing it was.

But besides all that, which is way off topic, in my opinion, as the person that was playing it, I had a good plan, that i executed, and it wasn't op, or a exploit. And I see no reason for it to be nerfed.

What could work relatively easy is if that 50% ratio of vultures to zombies isn't fixed but a rising value the longer you sit on a bike. Means you can comfortably drive from or to craft base or a farther away POI you cleared. But ultimately they come in force.

Even I would be ok with that actually. But what time limit? When I bailed to draw them away, I was in the 4x4 for aprox 30 min of game time, while I was trying to get a clear(er) path back into the base. But that was actually just up and down that little stretch of road twice, with turn around time. without looking at the video again maybe 3-5 mins irl time? (could have made it quicker, but did enjoy running them down for one pass)

 

[meganoth]

In your opinion. they were on me until i barged past them and jumped up the steps they had made and got out of the pit. at which point I turned around, and as it clearly shows they were already jumping up out of the pit. And the lag the video shows wasn't nearly as bad as what playing it was.

But besides all that, which is way off topic, in my opinion, as the person that was playing it, I had a good plan, that i executed, and it wasn't op, or a exploit. And I see no reason for it to be nerfed.

I'm sure the vultures will be dialed back after the vehicle damage system is in place. We will see if you like that better

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Even I would be ok with that actually. But what time limit? When I bailed to draw them away, I was in the 4x4 for aprox 30 min of game time, while I was trying to get a clear(er) path back into the base. But that was actually just up and down that little stretch of road twice, with turn around time. without looking at the video again maybe 3-5 mins irl time? (could have made it quicker, but did enjoy running them down for one pass)

I don't know what the timing should be... that would be a trial and error type of thing. I can see books and perks having an influence on this though. It would be a missed opportunity if it isn't considered. Players could then at least set things up so that contingency plans revolve around those skills. Ever since the notion of a stealth build, there has been the issue of how useful stealth could be on a horde night. Perhaps a stealth player could get the maximum benefit.

 

[Demandred1957]

I'm sure the vultures will be dialed back after the vehicle damage system is in place. We will see if you like that better

If it's something fair, then ya I'm sure I will. Until then, I already dialed them back for ya. Ez Pz.. only two or three of the little annoying things, and made it so the 4x4 and motorcycle is just *barely* faster than they are. if you stop or turn around they are right up your tail pipe messing you up..

 

[Demandred1957]

I don't know what the timing should be... that would be a trial and error type of thing. I can see books and perks having an influence on this though. It would be a missed opportunity if it isn't considered. Players could then at least set things up so that contingency plans revolve around those skills. Ever since the notion of a stealth build, there has been the issue of how useful stealth could be on a horde night. Perhaps a stealth player could get the maximum benefit.

Whoa, now that's a nice idea. Sounds balanced even. I just got done dialing the birds back in my game now too, so I wont have to rage here. And I think it's fair. limit of 5 max, made it so they can't just stone stop the 4x4 or motorcycle, and they are just barely slower than those two at top speed. so if you slow down at all, or turn around, or have to make a sharp turn, they are right on you. Since you cant go at full speed all the time unless you are on a main road, that's as good a compromise as I am looking for. (or am able to edit at my skill level which is none). Also since the bicycle and minibike are much slower, but also much earlier game, shouldn't be a balance problem, since you wont be fighting a horde that you would have to bail out on (i would hope) and if you try it, you are still going to get rekt.

I never was looking to just run around all night anyway. Just want a plan B so I can regroup if needed before I rejoin the fight.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Whoa, now that's a nice idea. Sounds balanced even. I just got done dialing the birds back in my game now too, so I wont have to rage here. And I think it's fair. limit of 5 max, made it so they can't just stone stop the 4x4 or motorcycle, and they are just barely slower than those two at top speed. so if you slow down at all, or turn around, or have to make a sharp turn, they are right on you. Since you cant go at full speed all the time unless you are on a main road, that's as good a compromise as I am looking for. (or am able to edit at my skill level which is none). Also since the bicycle and minibike are much slower, but also much earlier game, shouldn't be a balance problem, since you wont be fighting a horde that you would have to bail out on (i would hope) and if you try it, you are still going to get rekt.

I never was looking to just run around all night anyway. Just want a plan B so I can regroup if needed before I rejoin the fight.

Sounds like fun actually to try to escape. I wouldn't doubt there is more in store for this in general. We still have vehicle mods to get. A "Faraday Cage" mod would be cool for this. Who knows... it might become a thing to experience as an alternative way to play. Might even be worth a new Steam achievement to survive an entire BM on a vehicle.

 

[Demandred1957]

Sounds like fun actually to try to escape. I wouldn't doubt there is more in store for this in general. We still have vehicle mods to get. A "Faraday Cage" mod would be cool for this. Who knows... it might become a thing to experience as an alternative way to play. Might even be worth a new Steam achievement to survive an entire BM on a vehicle.

well, yeah now that I think about it, it might be a fun thing to try on a fresh save, since I don't want to mess up my real one. Wasn't what I was thinking of when I was editing, I just wanted a way to regroup... but just what I got would be fairly challenging to try and do for the whole horde. They were spitting at me, and every time I slowed down just a hair, they were all over me messing me up, but the 4x4 has just enough power to break away after a few seconds of abuse. I was still taking a lot of damage to my health too, so that would be a factor as well.

Might have to try that with the motorcycle, just to see if it acts the same way. Was using the 4x4 as my test bench, so don't know if it could break away or not.

 

[Raestloz]

The game is constantly balanced. Next patch try to shoot your gun in the middle of the night and a dire wolf might pick you up. Generally the game has a technical limitations how many zombies it can spawn in the worst case (8 players, low end PC clients), so vanilla will always have to be more about short bursts of danger instead of a continued presence of lots of zombies in the world.

What is so bad about cheesy bases when you are demanding in the same breath a more than cheesy escape vehicle. If there never had been vehicles in the game you would never have protested about missing one but accepted an objectively very harmless death as the penalty for a failed horde night or looked for ways to prevent that (like with a fallback base or running around with lots of coffee).

I'm saying this generally: If players are averse to change and having to do things differently from time to time, they should not peek into and play a game that is in development. Then there is never a moment something gets taken away from you,

So horde base building is generally not that hard, right? Especially on lower difficulties even a solid concrete block together with enough ammo is already keeping you from dieing. Add another and another block and you can last any amount of time. Why then do you still need an escape vehicle?

Your last sentence is puzzling: If they are susceptible to all sorts of base designs it means there are lots of successful base designs. Isn't that what we want? Variation in base design you can employ is a good thing in my book.

Dunno how to split quotes like you did, have to do it all in one like this

> The game is constantly balanced.

Sure, and that's a good thing. Me personally, I saw the number of zombies roaming around in cities reduced drastically from, I think A15? Back when you still can craft fridges, I don't remember the specific number. I'd prefer that it's sprinting zombies that pick me up but that's small details

> What is so bad about cheesy bases

I didn't say they're bad. I'm saying their existence basically makes the whole zombie AI invalid, and pursuing the dream of people getting swarmed to death by zombies in Blood Moon isn't going to bear fruit. A lot of effort goes to making sure that *this time* the AI won't be fooled, and as of A19 B163, that dream was quashed yet again. As the game progresses, the AI doesn't change their behavior. You get special zombies mixed in sure, but you're still using the same base you used to fend off Day 7 horde, just with concrete and a lot of turrets this time

> cheesy escape vehicle

and here's the thing: despite there being cheesy escape vehicles in the previous versions, you basically don't see YouTubers recommending that. It's not fun to not shoot zombies in your base when the entire point of the game is to, you know, shoot zombies in your base. People don't go around the forums saying "devs hate me! easily clear blood moon with this one weird trick!". Escape vehicles are emergencies, you use them when you can't hold the zombies off anymore. As far as death goes, taking into account your statement that it's "objectively harmless", then what's the problem with escaping such that rocket vultures are needed?

Even looking at the guy who started this, he fought off blood moon as long as he could, only going for the car when he screwed up. As far as I can see, from YouTube to discord convos, people generally play like that, and don't find out about the rocket vultures.

> If players are averse to change

This is a weird stance. People offer feedback because not even a giant megacorporation is an omnipotent being capable of understanding exactly what is objectively the best. Sure you say "our game our rules", then why even bother with discussions in the first place?

Most importantly, laser focusing on "vulture missiles" is a red herring. Vulture missile shows the direction the game is moving, and me, OP, and the guy he quoted dislikes the direction more than the vulture missile itself.

Frankly, we write a lengthy post elaborating on our points instead of simply typing VULTURE MISSILE REEEEE NO BUY because we like the game and want it to improve. What is good being subjective is implied

> So horde base building is generally not that hard, right?

This is exactly it! Building a base is easy! The fact that we have to hop onto our vehicle means something has gone horribly wrong, thus the need to escape.

> Isn't that what we want?

Is that? Because almost every patch I see patch notes describing fixes to some tactics. A19 I believe removes the steep pyramid design

For what it's worth, it feels less of "there are a lot of successful base designs" and more of "there are a lot of successful base designs that get our approval"

This relates to the actual point: the focus on the 7th day horde takes away from the other 6 days. I don't mind a big boss battle every week, but I don't think it should make the other 6 days bland

Are you sure you clicked on the title you meant to click on?  How can designing the game to match its title be a distraction from the gameplay they are designing? 
 

Personally, I hope they moderate what they did a bit to make driving around in the open possible for a longer distance. But I also think that it is faulty logic to ascribe normal vulture characteristics to the fantasy zombie vultures in the game. 

So is the argument "it's good because it matches the title" or "matching gameplay to title is good"?

Because I'm saying neither is good. Not for the current state of development

Take for example, the 7th day itself. Aside from the red color tint, there's not much happening throughout the day until precisely 22:00 when the horde comes out, the mechanic that is supposed to kill you. I would say it'd have been much more exciting if, say, throughout the day the number of zombies that spawn outdoors increases progressively to signify that yes, today is indeed very dangerous, and the hunt is nigh

The focus on the horde to kill you takes away from the other parts of the game. Of course, I'm not saying that they're not working on other parts of the game, but instead of improving the zombies' AI for the blood moon horde, I'd say that improving on other AIs such as other NPCs (like the bandits they're developing) will yield better results.

 

[Laz Man]

Whoa, now that's a nice idea. Sounds balanced even. I just got done dialing the birds back in my game now too, so I wont have to rage here. And I think it's fair. limit of 5 max, made it so they can't just stone stop the 4x4 or motorcycle, and they are just barely slower than those two at top speed. so if you slow down at all, or turn around, or have to make a sharp turn, they are right on you. Since you cant go at full speed all the time unless you are on a main road, that's as good a compromise as I am looking for. (or am able to edit at my skill level which is none). Also since the bicycle and minibike are much slower, but also much earlier game, shouldn't be a balance problem, since you wont be fighting a horde that you would have to bail out on (i would hope) and if you try it, you are still going to get rekt.

I never was looking to just run around all night anyway. Just want a plan B so I can regroup if needed before I rejoin the fight.

That sounds like a great solution...I'd recommend putting that in your OP so it doesnt look like your just here to complain....see a problem...propose a solution gets better reception from most people...

 

[RipClaw]

The problem is people think they need to cheese the AI to have an effective base. 

The arguments I've heard for cheese bases so far are that the resources required to build them are low, the maintenance costs are low, and the resources required during the horde are low. So it's ideal for players who don't like building or mining.

My current base is for example a hatch base. It is designed for 8-12 zombies concurrent and the resource consumption during the horde is low. I use it mainly as a melee + shotgun base. The resource consumption for the horde and repairs is low but I invested about 4000 concrete and 2000 steel in this base until it was ready for the horde of the late game.

I had a base in A18 that could easily handle a late game horde of 32 zombies simultaneously. Often all 3 waves of the horde were done before 4am. But you had to feed such a base and it was hungry. 90000 iron per week just for the dart traps. Great for me but not for someone who hates mining.

You can build a cheese base in the first week and then it will work mostly unchanged throughout the game. The little resources you need can be found or bought at the trader.

 

[Solomon]

nice try op, but this is a tower defense game at this point with some grains of shooting & looting rpg stuff inbetween.

But tower defense games are all based on the idea that you can build a base what survives an onslaught and not on the idea that we need to make the game progressively harder by nerfing base strategies and adding more absurd enemies so the players need to be extra cheesy to survive.

Rise to Ruins suffers from the same issue where the devs tried their best to make the tower defense aspect as hard as possible, first a pathing change, then more mobs and now we are at a point there where its almost impossible to survive without maximum cheese.

The game devs literally can't cheat. That's not how cheating works.

In the meantime Warframe Developers are known to cheat in almost all their showcased videos and only the livestreamed general gameplay videos are not cheated. 

 

[katarynna]

In the meantime Warframe Developers are known to cheat in almost all their showcased videos and only the livestreamed general gameplay videos are not cheated.

Feycat said that in response to Demandred saying TFP were cheating by adding in the vultures attacking vehicles if you try to run away in them on horde night.

Meaning the devs are not cheating, since it is literally their job and their right to set the rules however they choose in the game they are making. Saying that you feel like the balance is wrong is fine. Saying the devs are cheating because they added a mechanic you don't like is wrong.